As always, it is our job to educate you as to how to make your Web site "search engine friendly." The better you can comply with what the search engines are looking for, the happier they will be, and the better rankings you can achieve.

Specifically, here are some of the risk factors that we believe could get your Web site penalized or banned by Google. Many of these tips were derived from a recent live Webcast interview of a Google engineer:

1) Google frowns upon participation in certain services to artificially inflate link popularity. Google's ranking algorithm is heavily dependent on the number of links to your Web site. Some Web sites have been reported as being banned by Google for participating in services where you agree to add a list of links page on your site. Other participants in the link exchange service agree to do the same, thereby improving everyone's link popularity.

These services often work well to increase links to a site. However, be cautious about participating in any link services that are easily identifiable. For example, if every links page includes the phrase "Jerry's Link Exchange Service" at the top of the page, Google may decide to either ignore all such pages in its index or ban sites that are listed on such pages. Obviously, Google must be cautious about how far this is taken since many Web sites are included in various link directories that have nothing to do with inflating link popularity.

As I've mentioned in past articles, starting your own affiliate program can be the ideal way to improve link popularity without raising red flags with an engine. Affiliate programs pay people to link to your site either based on the number of visitors they refer to you or by the sales resulting from those referrals. These affiliate links can improve your link popularity as well as your traffic.

There are many other ways to improve your site's link popularity such as giving away content to other Web sites if they agree to credit you for your information and link back to your site. For example, we allow Web sites to reprint content from this newsletter with permission if they clearly credit us for the information and place a link back to our site near the article.

Another technique is to give away special awards to Web sites. In this scenario, those receiving the award may display your award logo on their site. They'd also include a link back to your site when the image is clicked on. However, be sure your award system has real criteria for winning. Don't send out spam mail awarding everyone with a Web site your "Site of the Week" award.

2) Use of hidden text or abuse of hidden links may get you banned by Google. Hidden text containing content that does not apply to your Web site or page's visible content is the worst such abuse. We have always recommended against using techniques to hide text regardless of the content. But, if you choose to use hidden text anyway, be sure it contains content that applies to your page's visible text.

In regard to hidden links, a few of these links will not likely get you into trouble with Google. There are many valid reasons to use hidden links. For example, you may wish a search engine spider to be able to spider to a page but you don't wish your site's visitors to traverse the same link from that particular area of your site. Still, too many hidden links may be considered spam by Google and could get your site red-flagged for review or banned. In particular, hidden links to pages that lack significant content is the worst such abuse according to the Google representative.

3) Google hates spam mail. Sending spam mail to Google (by accident or on purpose) can get your Web site banned from their engine.

4) Do not over-submit! It's best not to submit more than five URLs per day to Google. WebPosition Gold will warn you of all known submission limits for each search engine. Google will allow more than five submissions, but the more you submit the greater chance you have of being red-flagged for spamming whether you submit manually or using an automated query tool.

Since Google is normally very good about spidering the rest of the site based on a single submission, this is not much of a problem. It's best to submit a hallway page (i.e., site map) of your Web site to Google, which links to all the other important pages of your site. It's probably best to limit the number of such links to fifty or less per page.

5) Over-use of any automated query tool may get you red-flagged or banned on Google according to the Google representative in the Webcast interview. Other Google representatives claim any amount of use of automated tools is not tolerated.

In past months, a small percentage of WebPosition users (a fraction of one percent) have reported to us of having their IP address blocked by Google, presumably for querying Google excessively. The magical number of queries that puts you on Google's radar is not known.

Users who have an IP address that is dynamically assigned on each connection are not nearly as susceptible to this issue. This is particularly true if you re-dial your connection between running a Reporter and a Submitter mission so the queries cannot be associated on the same IP.

We have recently updated WebPosition Gold to be more "polite" when accessing Google by only conducting one search at a time against the service in most cases. We are working on another update to be available soon which will allow you to slow down searches even further in consideration to Google.

The recent interview of a Google engineer recommended that if you conduct automated queries on Google, that you keep those queries to a minimum and that you schedule them to run late at night. In the case of WebPosition, you should try to utilize the built-in scheduler feature to run missions late at night and to space them out over a greater period of time whenever possible. Never conduct thousands of queries on Google in a single day.

In addition, you can space out queries in WebPosition by limiting the number of parallel searches on the WebPosition Options tab for either the Reporter or Submitter. The default is eight searches or submissions at a time spread across the selected engines.

Reducing the number of parallel searches to four will approximately double the amount of time between each search on any given engine. This will require more time for your mission to complete, but it will be more polite to each search engine. This example assumes that the mission has four or more engines selected. The current version will attempt to query a different engine for each parallel search allowed if enough engines were selected.

Important: Since we are working on a free update to greatly reduce the chances of you being red-flagged or banned by Google, while being more considerate to Google's wishes, we recommend that you consider postponing your rank checking on Google until this update is released (expected by mid-February).

On a related topic, we have recently received copies of some e-mails sent to WebPosition users by Google representatives. These e-mails incorrectly state in regard to FirstPlace Software: "We have tried to contact the people who write this software [WebPosition] to talk to them about this, but they have steadfastly ignored us..."

However, for the record FirstPlace Software has sent multiple letters to Google's attorney since October 2000. We did this after their attorney sent a letter asking we either remove support for Google from the WebPosition product, or alternatively contact them in regard to reaching an agreement that would address their concerns. Since they encouraged us to contact them, we did so.

It is our stance that anyone has the right to access publicly available information on Google.com whether they use a browser or another tool to do so. However, it is our desire to be accommodating whenever possible and to work in the best interests of our customers as well as the search engines. We would prefer whenever possible to work together rather than against each other. We have built mutually beneficial relationships with other engines though advertising with them, participating in affiliate programs, or educating Webmasters as to the search engine's policies.

Our continued goal remains to educate users on how to create search engine friendly pages. We attempt to report exactly what each search engine likes to see and does not like to see in regard to your Web site. We've also recommended for years against many common spam techniques.

This policy benefits not only the Webmaster, but the search engines. The rules of each search engine vary, change often, and are generally not clearly defined. Therefore, the need for resources like WebPosition and this newsletter has never been greater.

After multiple letters, and a phone call in November, Google's attorney promised to get back to us as to what would satisfy Google. At the time of this writing (February 1st), we have not heard from their attorney as promised. Instead, we've received reports that Google representatives are operating under the false belief that we've made no attempt to contact them in regard to the matter.

Therefore, under the assumption that this is simply some type of misunderstanding, we have now made a fourth attempt to formally contact Google's legal representative in regard to resolving the matter. It is our desire that the needs of all parties can be accommodated in a fair and reasonable manner.

If you are a WebPosition user, we ask for your patience and understanding in this matter. We are confident that concerns regarding Google can be resolved. We also wish to reiterate that all automated products are subject to scrutiny by Google based on their current policies. However, we are taking multiple, pro-active steps to ensure that WebPosition remains an important tool to aid you in creating search engine friendly Web sites and for monitoring your progress.

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