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by: Anne Haynes and Twitter SEO Experts

Too many times I’ve seen SEO firms that use underscores or hyphens when constructing websites. So I sent a question to my Twitter network and following is what I received. It seems that us SEOers are all over the map on what works and what doesn’t. When I worked at SEOINC in San Diego, CA I was raised to use hyphens and not underscores. During the early SEO years the hyphen was considered a word separator when programming websites for Google.

In that last few years I’ve noticed the underscore has made a come back. My hat is off to @adamlevenson for finding this pretty SEO article from Matt Cutts on July 23rd 2007, but notice Twitter friend SEM_SEO states if you have underscores don’t go changing (heehee his name has an underscore).

In the CNET article Matt Cutts states that Google’s algorithm is referencing underscores as word separators. Which from a development perspective is developer friendly. I like that Matt Cutts is one of the experts in the SEO industry, but I know there are deep seeded constraints for an internal employee of Google to declare anything from a broadcast level. From a non biased SEOer perspective, it’s about testing and documenting results.

I’d like to see a study on this subject since Matt announced this algorithm enhancement in 2007. It’s been a year since his declaration and well, there have been multiple updates since this announcement. Any takers? Aaron Wall where are you?

Many thanks to the following friends that have helped me navigate through my question!

sem_seo: @AnneHaynes In the last Google webmaster chat they suggested if you have existing underscores don’t change, but going forward use hyphens. (about 6 hours ago)

kevinthompson: @AnneHaynes That used to be the case, but it seems most search engines now interpret both as spaces. I still use hyphens just to be safe. (about 9 hours ago)

adamlevenson: @AnneHaynes Yeah, check this out: News.CNET from AdamLevenson (about 9 hours ago)

gregspradlin: @AnneHaynes Hi Anne, I’ve been told that if given the choice, go with hypens over underscores. (about 9 hours ago)

by: Anne Haynes

I just lost my sitelinks in Google! Damit! I was reading about the algorithm update and I can’t find anything about sitelinks. I’m trying to think of what I’ve done to the site that would affect my sitelinks. I renewed my domain for 9 years yesterday. I couldn’t imagine this hurting my site. I just read up on sitelinks at Google and they are completely automated and it’s based on a site’s link structure. Sitelinks are designed to help people navigate through a website yada, yada, yada. UGH! I want my sitelinks back!

If anyone has some insight, please send me a message.

By: Anne Haynes

Today I watched the Search Marketing Now Blended Search webinar with Chris Sherman, Executive Editor for Search Engine Land. It was a great webinar and cleared up my understanding of the difference between Universal Search and Blended Search; Universal Search is a Google term and Blended Search is everyone else’s term. I prefer Universal Search because it’s all inclusive and has nothing to do with searching for a blender to buy or finding a blended drink recipe.

Sherman goes into the history of search starting with Search 1.0; Boolean logic and keyword matching. During Search 1.0 content was less structured; no video, limited images and no three tier navigation structures. It was the early 90’s when applications like JAWS for the visually impaired were around, but definitely not mainstream or associated to the W3C. This was the time when InfoSeek sold the keyword “Homes” for $100 dollars and Yahoo! founders; David Filo and Jerry Yang interviewed with Dan Fortune; host of Sound Bytes on KSJS. Note: I was the production assistant for the show and it was amazing to meet the masters behind #1 search engine of it’s time. During Search 1.0 days organizations didn’t need Search Engine Optimization firms or specialists; content wasn’t complex. Just add a few keywords and you were #1.

Then the Search 2.0 era started; Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were searching on Yahoo! during their studies at Stanford and started thinking about citing resources in their papers and drew a logical tie to building a search engine based on document citations. Citation analysis is the logic behind Google and the birth of PageRank and TrustRank. During my college days at San Jose State University I remember meeting people in classes, coffee shops, and bars and writing down the word G-O-O-G-L-E. I felt like a bit of a pioneer during those days, but today everyone knows Google, but people are still learning about blogs.

Chris Sherman made 1 or 2 statements on the above, so assume I did the rest. While he never went into a true definition of Search 3.0, the majority of the webinar was around Blended Search.

So let’s dive in – later this week.

by: Anne Haynes

Update: 9AM April 1st 2008
I found the joke this morning on the Official Google Blog site. This years April fools joke is permanent human settlement on Mars.

Googles Virgle Project

10PM March 31, 2008
I’m doing my homework. This is what I get for the term “Google April Fools 2008″
Number 1 rank - previous ranker for the term.

Number 2 rank - Google Operating System.

Number 3 rank - get educated with the wikipedia.org.

Number 5 rank - prediction from the Marketing Pilgrim.

I’ve read this document and it has some good forward thinking about Universal Search and Personalized Search. A post on ReelSEO titled Universal SERPS - Video Results Get Higher Clicks made me think of this study, so I decided to post the paper. Enjoy, it’s a long read.

International Search Engine List

by: Anne Haynes

I watched i-CAUGHT tonight for the first time. While it’s the second episode, it-is-what-it-is: a force to bridge the gap between traditional commercial video producers and “Joe” the online video producer.

One of the i-CAUGHT segments was around the Canadian car thieves. Canada has the secret to finding car thieves by placing cameras within cars. Think of the cars like decoys or dummies; the keys are in the ignition. These camera devices easily help identify criminals stealing cars that area frequently visited on YouTube.

After the episode tonight I decided to conduct a search on Google. It took several queries to find what I was looking for, but the following search term police cameras in canadian cars rendered the first result in Google SERPS.

How much more long-tail can you get?

While the search engines are getting smarter these days (Google) the dynamic query strings within the URL do not help a search engine understanding the meaning of a page. The URL is one of the first variables the spiders visits. And when it sees “?id=3451526&page=1” it’s clueless. Google has updated the algorithm to index dynamic URLs for years now, but it’s obvious that understanding the meaning of a page based on the title tag meta and a friendly URL helps the search engines serve up more relative results.

Come November when Universal Search rolls out prime time, SEO strategies must be udpated to support an organic marketing approach.

Updated 04-09-08
by: Anne Haynes

In the Office Google Blog last week, Google states, “Recently we completed this process for the DoubleClick Performics businesses, and have decided to split them into two separately-run business units: Affiliate Marketing and Search Marketing. It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business.”

I’m confused aren’t they in the search marketing industry? And aren’t business units just a fancy way of separating departments. Do the heads of the business units get together and share information or do they keep their business units under a secret code of silence. All of this reminds me of a few old friends of mine that work at Google. I would run into one of these friends at a bar in Los Gatos and ask how things are going at Google. He would say, “I can’t talk to you about work.” Honestly, you’d think the guy worked for the CIA. Oh, how I could rant….

Here’s another question; don’t affiliates use search marketing to generate leads and commission? I know from my experiences that many affiliates make a killing using organic marketing and paid search marketing. Moreover, I know of firms that buy out these affiliates because they pay them too much! Why does all of this not make sense when Google publicly states, “It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business”? Because it doesn’t!

While I’ve worked in agencies and closely with Google, I’m not an expert in regards to the DoubleClick Performics Google purchase, but I pose some good questions. Does anyone know why I’ve seen a 200% click through rate with 2 impressions, 1 click, at position 1 with a poor quality score? Someone clue me in. Bottom-line, if you think you’re getting incorrect data from Google, you’re right. Will Google be able to update an affiliate management and reporting network to be more accurate than their current ad network, let’s hope so! I love Google, its how I find all my information, but the cost-per-clicks just keep going up and viable alternatives keep showing up. To see the larger image from below, click the image here.

by: Anne Haynes

Social Media and Social Networking are used interchangeably and in my opinion have two totally different meanings:

Social Media is users’ rating videos, blog posts/content and consumer products. Since, I am in the market for a new road bike this summer. I used the search engines to find out what people post about bikes; buying bikes, selling bikes, discount bikes in Kansas City, etc. This helps with my ability to make a valid decision on my purchase and in my opinion is user edited content (social media).

Social Networking is connecting people-to-people through the Internet. Being the social butterfly that I am, I want to keep up with people within business and the search industry. I seek specific sites around “business” social networking Linkedin and RYZE.com

The lines blur between social media and social networking because people have names and unique identifiers and this will forever keep social media and social networking in the grey area of understanding.

When I was at SES San Jose 2006, my opinion of ghostwriting: being the unknown on the internet, was quickly changed. The big players in the search industry were present during the Social Media Session and I just stood up and spoke, “I want to be me and be someone” else!” Very quickly I was shot down by the panel of guests. It’s clear after building different social media accounts for myself and for clients, you can’t hide on the Internet.

My name is Anne Haynes – I have a voice – I have an opinion and in a perfect world the team I work with has massive data!

Thank you Rand, Jim, Matt and others for giving me the 411!