If it's the end of the week, this must be the latest edition of the SEO Chat newsletter. We're all back to work now that the holiday celebrations are over, so we're highlighting a very important work-related article this week from eWeek. If you work closely with your company's servers, or know someone who does, you'll want to look at this. There's a vulnerability in the Windows Server service, and there is a worm out there that directly targets that flaw. Better get the patch!

The New Year's celebrations didn't affect the number of articles we published here on SEO Chat; we brought you the full weekly complement. We kicked off the week with the first part of one of our special two-part reviews. This time, we focused on Yasni, a people search engine based out of Germany. It's pretty popular in Europe, and just entered the US search market a somewhat different challenge, we think you'll agree. On Tuesday we focused on Microsoft's search patents and considered what the software giant might be planning for the future. Where is Live Search going? Is it somewhere other than nowhere, fast? Finally, on Monday we noted that the search engines are starting to do a better job indexing Flash, and speculated as to how far that went. Hint: don't plan any all-Flash websites yet.

As always, we've highlighted an excellent assortment of SEO-related tutorials from Tutorialized. If you haven't visited that site yet, do yourself a favor and head on over there. It covers a lot more than SEO, too; if you do any web site design and development, for instance, you'll find your interests well represented on Tutorialized.

Trying to figure out what kind of link juice you can get from certain reciprocal link exchanges can make us do some pretty convoluted math. It can also make us put on blinders to other factors that can affect our SERPs. That's the subject of this week's thread, which has already led to some very lively discussion. Be sure to stop by the thread and add your voice!

Our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, takes a look at company blogs. More often than not, they're boring and that's the one thing that readers won't forgive. Your own company blog may suffer from this problem. What can you do about it? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out.

As always, thanks for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

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Watch the video!

Are you frustrated because your Flash website does not show up on the search engines? That is understandable. Keep reading, though, because there is hope; all of your work is not wasted. The search engines are getting "smarter" where Flash is concerned.
Introduction

You have put a lot of time, effort, and perhaps money into designing and developing your Flash website. Your next step is to submit it to the search engines so that other potential clients can see it. However, there is one problem. You cannot find it on those search engines, except if you have signed up for the pay-per-click program at Google or Overture.

You must find some way for people to be able to go to the search engine, type the keywords that pertain to your site, see your link, and come to your Flash website. Search engines are better known for indexing static links and text within SWF files. However, you want search engines that can index RIAs (rich Internet applications) and dynamic Web content.

Read Search Engine Indexing for Flash Websites is Improving

Microsoft`s Live Search Patents and Algorithms Related to Blogs
by Ivan Strouchliak
2008-01-06

In this article we will cover three Microsoft patents and draw quick conclusions on where Live Search is going. Will the patents and the methods they represent help the software giant win market share in the search engine space? The ones we will discuss were filed and approved by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
I have linked to the United States Patent and Trademark Office in case you want to browse; I have also linked to each individual patent below.

Patents Summary:

Identifying a web page as belonging to a blog
This patent covers the methods Live search uses to differentiate blogs from static HTML pages.

Ranking Method Using Hyperlinks in Blogs
This method permits a bias towards links from blogs in order to modify Page Rank and deliver higher quality search results.

Vision-based document segmentation
This patent explains how Microsoft differentiates unrelated content on one page.

In the conclusion we will draw parallels between Google five years ago and Live Search today.

Read Microsoft`s Live Search Patents and Algorithms Related to Blogs

Google mastery of search sometimes makes us forget its shortcomings. Specialized search engines insist that they deliver better, more relevant results for their particular fields. That seems especially true in the area of people search, despite the many search engines in this field that fall short of their promises. Today I am going to take a look at Yasni, and see if it stands apart from its competition.

People search engine Yasni recently launched in the United States, but it boasts European roots. It was reviewed by Killer Start Ups, but already delivers numbers beyond what you would expect from a typical start-up: nearly 24 million page views per month and about eight million monthly visitors in five countries. That does not hold a candle to Google, which fielded more than six billion searches from the US alone in October 2008, according to comScore Media Matrix. But every company has to start somewhere, and there are site owners who would kill for that kind of traffic.

So how does Yasni do it? "We run an extensive global people search resource, and have gathered a lot of public data about what people look for and how they act on that information," explained Steffen Ruehl, Yasni founder and CEO. "Global" is certainly the right word for this search engine; its pull-down menu includes options for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the UK, and of course the US. It is also global in the sense of the sources it indexes; Phil Bradley noted in his blog that the search engine pulls results from Wikipedia, Amazon, LinkedIn, NamesDatabase, MySpace, Friendster, Jigsaw, Vox, jobster, IMDb, Google News and blog search, Bloglines, Find a Grave and more.

Read Yasni: Yet Another People Search Engine?

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

Online Branding by way of SEO
Brand - a trademark or a unique name to identify your product or a manufacturer.
Read the tutorial.

Creating Search Engine Friendly URLs Using .htaccess
Using .htaccess is simple and easy.
Read the tutorial.

Secrets Behind Link Building
On reading this post you should be able to do link building with simple steps.
Read the tutorial.

10 Tips To Improve Traffic
Learn these 10 steps to increase traffic to your site.
Read the tutorial.

Bring Customers and Business Together Through Proper Keywords
The title says it all. Easy methods.
Read the tutorial.

5 SEO Myths
Are you still spending too long on worthless SEO? This can help.
Read the tutorial.

How can this SEO Newsletter be better?

What do you like or dislike about this issue?
Is there a topic you want to learn more about?
What issues in search engine news are important to you? We'll consider your suggestions and ideas for improvement,
so please email us. Email us.

If you have a choice of back links, how do you decide which one to go with? That's the implicit question in this week's thread. The answer is very complicated, and sparked a lot of debate in our forum. Check out the thread and join the conversation!

Link value

Hello,

I would like to check my assessment with the seo gurus.

Imagine you can get one back link from (i) a pr2 page with 50 outbound links, or one back link from (ii) a pr3 page with 250 outbound links.

I believe you get more pr juice in case (ii); right??

The reason is the logarithm scale (I assume a log10 basis). Because log(100/50)=2*log(1000/250).

So (ii) gets about twice as much juice as (i). Right?

Umm, that sounds right - let's see, inserted arbitrary number assignment for outdated and non-value-reflective number, invent mathematical equation, multiply by 2 for no apparent reason. Yep, checks out. Sounds about right to me.

Such theoretical musings are all well and good when it comes to whiling away the long winter nights, but they're not going to have any real world practical benefits.

As a hypothetical question it necessarily ignores too many important considerations to have any worth in terms of SERPs impact -- even PR impact for that matter.

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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Company Blogs: Growing a Forest, Not Just Trees

You've heard many, many times that one of the best ways to make your company web site rank well in the SERPs is to create a blog and update it regularly. That's all well and good, as far as it goes, but who actually READS your company blog? It's for more than just ranking well; it can encourage visitors to keep coming back and eventually become customers. It serves as the human face on your web site, giving your company a personality in the eyes of all who see it.

So think of your company blog as a person. When was the last time you hung out with someone whose only talked about his own company? That's not talking, that's selling and trust me, even a salesman's best friends tire of hearing the pitch. If your blog sounds like a salesman, it needs a personality transplant.

To put it another way, your blog needs to have its consciousness raised. It needs to raise its eyes from the trees and see the whole forest. Or as Mack Collier put it recently for the Search Engine Guide, it needs to find its bigger idea. And it's not that hard. Look at your company, look at the industry it's in, and consider what is on the mind of those who buy from that industry. Is it real estate? Write about what first-time buyers need to know, how to get a house ready to be sold, and so on. Are you a plumbing supply company? That's a bit more esoteric, but you could talk about better and worse materials, how plumbing has changed over the years, differences in regional wear and tear patterns, and so forth.

The most important point, of course, is that you need to know your customers and their concerns before you put your fingers on your keyboard. Write to those concerns, and your blog will get read and even bookmarked. Don't write as if you assume that your company's products and services can answer all of those concerns; think like a teacher, not a salesman. After all, notes Collier, which would YOU rather read: a blog about running shoes, or a blog about running?