It's nearly the end of the week, so it must be time for the latest issue of the SEO Chat newsletter. Here's hoping you had a very happy Easter if you observed Sunday's holiday. We're still nibbling on chocolate bunnies around here, but we're not letting it distract us from getting you all the good stuff you need to get your web site visible in the SERPs.

If you're working for a start-up company, you'll probably be interested in the article were highlighting this week from eWeek. We covered Under the Radar, a showcase for new companies to give six-minute pitches to venture capitalists. It's held every year at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus. About 32 companies made the cut; what were they pitching? Read our article for the lowdown.

We didn't want to see Ask(dot)com give up on competing with the likes of Google and Yahoo...but it looks like they did just that. We covered the search engine's change of focus on Monday. On Tuesday we published an SEO glossary for those of you new to SEO to help you get handle on the jargon. We didn't leave our sense of humor behind for that article either. Those of you ready to tell those search engine spiders who's boss will want to check out the article we ran on Wednesday; it's all about the proper use of the robots(dot)txt protocol.

We're full of tips and tricks for you in the SEO-related tutorials that we're highlighting for you this week from Tutorialized. Learn how to use a 301 permanent redirect, improve link popularity, avoid using bad SEO techniques, and more! Stop by Tutorialized today and check out these and other tutorials we have for your edification.

Not all publicity is good publicity, as the original poster of our Thread of the Week learned. It's particularly frustrating when the bad publicity is totally unfounded, and showing up at the top of Google. What do you do? Other members in our SEO Chat forums chime in with advice. Why not visit the thread today and offer yours?

Finally, our spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, deals with the nofollow question -- again. Does Google really not follow links with the nofollow tag? Do such links get indexed at all? If they do, doesn't that mean that they pass along link juice? Scroll down to read the Spotlight and find out.

Thanks again for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

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Watch the video!

In this article, we will take a look at the Robots Exclusion Standard. It sounds like something straight out of a science fiction book, but is really nothing more than a tool to prevent web spiders and robots from accessing a particular section of your website, or even your entire website if you so desire, that you don't want indexed. The standard goes by many names, like the Robot Exclusion Protocol, but you most likely have heard of it as the robots(dot)txt protocol. No matter what you may call it, it is a handy tool that, when used properly, can help increase your ranking with the various web pages.

The standard was created in June of 1994 to handle robots that were accessing deep virtual trees, attacking servers with a succession of rapid requests, and downloading certain files over and over again. Despite its name, the Robots Exclusion Standard is not backed by any acting body or organization. Nor is it enforced by anyone, and there are no guarantees that any present or future robots will comply with it. There is a movement involving what is known as ACAP, or Automated Content Access Protocol, that is seeking to update the Robots Standard, and perhaps govern it, but that is beyond the present scope of this article.

Read I, Robots.txt

Same Game, Different Name
by Akinola Akintomide
2008-03-25

Here's a quick break down of all the "jargon" said in SES conferences worldwide. That's quite a bit of jargon! I will also explain words that some SEOs use to keep "non initiates" in the dark.

I picked up the lingo by subscribing to, and reading, an average of five industry newsletters (including SEO Chat's) and also wading through hundreds of pages of SEO. I have not had the opportunity -- yet -- to trade banter with hundreds of fellow SEO practitioners (read: plain ad execs giving themselves a snazzy name). While I agree that SEO is for real and is here to stay as an important part of Internet marketing, I sometimes find myself giggling helplessly as a new buzz word leaps into use. Nonetheless, I also start using the word in my articles as soon as I get near a word processor.

These terms should have you nodding sagely as your in-house SEO, e-commerce director, or external consultant speaks. And like all good techno babble, understanding these terms should elevate you to the status of that geeky fellow who runs your server and who only speaks in PERL (or UNIX or Shell -- aggravating, isn't it?), while you retain your reasonable hair length and mainstream status.

Read Same Game, Different Name

Ask(dot)com Changes Focus
by Terri Wells
2008-03-24

Ask(dot)com became the latest victim of the challenges confronting the search market. In the wake of announced layoffs, the number four search engine said that it would change its focus to concentrate on its core market. What that means exactly seems to be a topic of debate.

A story appearing on CNN reported that Ask plans to serve "a narrower market consisting of married women looking for help managing their lives." Indeed, Ask CEO Jim Safka has been quoted in the press as saying "The company found that about 65 percent of its user base are women, with a high concentration of users in their late 30s in the U.S. Midwest and Southeast." So does that mean the little search engine that could is now going to spend all its time answering questions about recipes, hobbies, homework, entertainment, and health?

It certainly seems that way. Ask laid off only 40 people, but that number represents about eight percent of its workforce. Ask spokesman Nicholas Graham claims the eliminated positions cut across all divisions of the company. It was not the people themselves who were superfluous so much as the positions, which were "not completely aligned with the new business strategy," according to Graham. Ask plans to hire people for new positions to "grow core teams" for Asks new direction.

Read Ask.com Changes Focus

Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other
tech related tutorials.

301 Permanent Redirect
301 Redirect is very useful when you migrate your website.
Read the tutorial.

SEO Website Tips Website Analysis
4 minute video tutorial covering site reviews and reports.
Read the tutorial.

Duplicate Content
Avoid duplicate content in print ready pages.
Read the tutorial.

How To Choose the Best Hosting
10 things that you should know before buying your first web hosting.
Read the tutorial.

The Best Ways To Improve Link Popularity
How to increase link popularity.
Read the tutorial.

5 SEO Techniques You Should Not Use
Get a top spot on the search engines without shoddy tactics.
Read the tutorial.

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The usual challenge in SEO is getting a good position in the SERPs. What do you do if your company's name gets a high position in the SERPS, but for the wrong reasons? One forum member is struggling with an unfounded bad review that shows up at the top of Google. What approach should he take to the bad publicity? Stop by the thread and share your advice.

Got my name in Ripoffreport(dot)com!

What a scam. Got a (seriously, unfounded) "review" of me in Ripoffreport(dot)com. My name is very unique and not much about me in Google, so this one has top billing.

I researched Ripoffreport(dot)com and found out that the guy is an extortionist. No way to get off the site, even though the commentary about me is totally untrue and slanderous.

What do I do? I was looking into Google Bowling to see if I could just get that particular page dropped out of the rankings. Possible?

Other suggestions? No flaming, please! This really has me bummed out already, just need help. Also - willing to pay for any hands on experienced help.

Make a page on your website titled "Ripoffreport(dot)com rebuttal from Company" and just say something simple, non aggressive, and non combative explaing how easy it is to place unfounded complaints on ripoffreport(dot)com and invite the posting customer to have the issue resolved with yourself.

That is one idea, another is to ignore it and hope it drops off after a bit. Also mention your company name write some articles and try to fill Google with quality off-site company information and try and bury the story to page two or three... should be easy as no one will likely link to the post on ripoff(dot)com and your stories will sit above it.

There are many blog sites out there (blogster, xanga, blog, blogspot, blogrox, vox) that you could create pertaining to your name also that you could get to rank above this ripoffreport listing. There are many reputation management companies out there that will do this for you, for a fee of course.

My company had a similar problem with the #2 and #3 ranking sites for our name being negative threads. We've created blogs and added listings to coupon sites and those threads are now #6 and #12.

It takes some time and some work, but it can be done.

Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts.
Read the full thread.

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Google and NoFollow: Once More, With Feeling

Google says that it does not follow rel="nofollow" links, but do they really mean it? It seems like this question crops up at least every other month in our SEO Chat forums. And the confusion is understandable. Recently fathom, one of our more respected forum members, noted that some of the backlinks that turned up in his Google Webmaster Console for one of his sites were nofollow links. Doesn't that mean that Google followed them and indexed the pages then, even if the links don't count for "link juice"?

At least part of that is right. To quote a post made by Matt Cutts to his blog: "Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it's carrying weight. I'm going to say that again: Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it's carrying weight." Wikipedia links can even show up in your Webmaster Console Links section, and it's widely known that the online encyclopedia uses rel="nofollow" on its links to avoid giving out link love.

The key thing to remember is that seeing a link reported in the console does not mean that Google followed the link, or indexed it, or counted the link as a vote for your site in its algorithm. So nofollow links should not affect your PageRank or your position in the SERPs.

Keep in mind also that nofollow and noindex are not the same thing. You can only use noindex on pages belonging to your own site, and they completely prevent the page from getting indexed. But nofollow doesn't prevent indexing of the linked page. A page can have any number of nofollow links pointing to it, but as long as one of those inbound links does not use nofollow, the page will be indexed.

Remember, the original point of nofollow was to prevent spammers from abusing "public areas" such as blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists. In case you've never seen this, a spammer might post a comment on a blog that is not even on topic but benefit from "link juice" by linking back to their own site from the comment. Nofollow is simply a way to make sure that all "votes" for a site are genuine and intentional. Keep that in mind when you see that some of your inbound links are nofollowed and don't despair. Even if you don't get the link juice, you'll still get traffic from visitors following the link. Good luck!

Read the thread for this article.