Six months to Google indexing

I am amazed. Way back in July, I whined about having a two month old site that I could not get Google to even index. After two reinclusion requests, and still no indexing, I chalked the domain up to a permanent ban. I had to assume that a previous owner had gotten the domain banned, and that Google was never going to forgive it, even though the site I have on that domain now is squeaky clean. Now, six months later, it is in the Google index! About one-fifth of the pages are listed so far. No rankings yet, but hey, I am just happy to see the ban lifted. I will be anxious to see how long it now takes to get any kind of rankings. This is definitely a long-term test.

Another reason for not blogging…

Wow, lately, I’ve had reason after reason for not working. Today, I spent all day at our local Ford dealership buying a brand new truck. Got a Ford Explorer Sport Trac. Kind of a split personality vehicle; part SUV; part truck. I totally love it. Lately, it feels like I’ll never get back into the SEO work mode. Maybe I should just aim for 2006, since the last half of 2005 has been pretty much shot to hell. Hopefully, you will all find something of interest from SEO Scoop at some point in the future.

Have a Happy SEO Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving has a wonderful day, with plenty to be thankful for. For those of you who do not celebrate Thanksgiving, have a wonderful day as well.

New upgraded Site Manager tool

As I mentioned earlier, I now have an upgrade to my free Site Manager tool. It includes an extra field for comments, as well as a Print function. The procedure is the same for new users or upgrades: Read more

Rumor of PageRank update

A few people are noticing some changes to PageRank today, although some are wondering if it isn’t a rollback. I have no idea, but I have added iWebTool’s PageRank prediction tool to my site, so feel free to check it out and see how your site is faring. Either click the link above, or find the tool in the nav bar to the right.

Great list of tools

I have been meaning to point out this list for a while now, but have only just gotten around to it. The Mr. Ploppy’s Monday Tool list is a great list of SEO and Web Development Sales Tools. I always love seeing Mr. Ploppy’s lists, and this one was another winner. Take a gander over at www.stuntdubl.com/2005/11/07/sales-tools/.

Things that ruin a perfectly good SEO work day

I was going to post several things here today, including an upgrade to my free site manager tool. But that post, as well as some others, got waylaid by the goings-on at SEO Chat. It is amazing that one little thing can explode into a mass of destruction. Frankly, I don’t feel like getting into the details about everything that happened, but you can get more info over at Rand’s blog.

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Rustybrick reports on pubcon

As usual, Rustybrick (Search Engine Roundtable) is giving us all his wonderful reports of what is happening at PubCon. These are not to be missed. Just to tease you, below are some interesting tidbits from Matt Cutts.

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Google Base – the next Orkut or the next Ebay?

Ok, you have probably heard by now that Google Base went live today. Rather than review the service, I am going to go out on a limb and make a wild prediction. My guess is that Base will end up going the way of Orkut and be off the radar by the time 2007 rolls around. Of course, if it ends up being the next Ebay, I will have to eat my words. Still, my gut says that it will end up being a spam paradise that ordinary people just don’t “get”. So, there you have it. My crystal ball gazing prediction. Oh, check it out for yourself at http://base.google.com.

Google Analytics (aka Urchin) is now free

Ok, everyone and his brother has already posted about this, but I have to comment as well. Google has announced that they are now offering Google Analytics (which is really Urchin – remember they bought them a while back) for FREE. No big surprise really, as we all expected it to happen at some point. Urchin is certainly a great web analytics program and considering people used to pay thousands of dollars per year for it, the deal is incredible. But, c’mon, doesn’t it scare you just a bit to give Google access to all your log data?

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Looking for a job in SEO?

Jobs In Search is a specialist job site featuring jobs with companies who are looking to recruit employees for search engine related roles, including the Search Engines, Search Engine Marketing Firms, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Companies, New Media & Digital Media Agencies, Companies providing Search Engine related Products and Services, and Corporate Employers recruiting for in-house Search Engine related jobs. Find your next SEO related job at www.jobsinsearch.com.

Downtime and lost posts

Unfortunately, the SEO Scoop server had some major problems over the last few days, and several days worth of posts have been lost. I do have backups and will get those posts reposted at some point, but in the meantime, the site has reverted back about a week and a half. Sorry folks, but I am happy just to have the site working again at this point.