The Google -60 penalty has been talked about in the SEO message boards and forums for some time. Google has not officially stepped forward to weigh in on this specific penalty. It has been up to SEO’s and Webmasters to come up with the name Google -60 Penalty by observation.

The observation has been that web pages that had previously been number one in the rankings were all of a sudden thrust into the number 61 spot in and thus the name. Now, because of the introduction of Google Sitelinks, this penalty is more obvious.

There have been a few occasions where authority sites occupying the number one position with Sitelinks have all of a sudden dropped to the top of the seventh page of Google results. The theory is that Google has penalized these websites for using spammy techniques on-page or for buying links from other sites.

The use of spammy techniques such as hidden text is a no brainer. Don’t do it. But, if indeed a website is buying links from other websites this is more troubling. This is troubling because how do we know these links are bought and not bartered for, or part of the business owners other properties or worse yet, part of sabotage from a competitor?

If this penalty does exist from the buying of text links, then the potential exists for competitors to manipulate each others page rank by buying links that point to the opposing website. This open door to negative SEO means the SERP’s may be damaged delivering more irrelevant results due to manipulation.

A few months back Google was asking users to tattletale on websites that buy links. Let’s hope the Google -60 penalty is not the result your nearest competitor but rather something that each web business can fix if it chooses to do so.

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Yahoo announced yesterday that it has partnered with security application specialist McAfee to integrate SiteAdviser into searches. McAfee SiteAdviser will help Yahoo searchers to avoid malicious websites such as those engaging in adware, spyware, phishing, spam or other bad neighborhoods.

McAfee SiteAdviser will not block Yahoo users from going to such sites, only raise a red flag that gives searchers the choice in avoiding such sites. Users can also click on the McAfee SearchScan option to further identify websites as suspicious or malicious.

This tactic by Yahoo is a bit different than Google, who tries to drop websites in the rankings that it identifies as spam sites. Those who do long-tail searches, however, will appreciate Yahoo’s teaming with McAfee to flag sites that may slip by unnoticed by other search engines.

Since user experience is the top priority for most search engines, the Yahoo McAfee flag will give users one more tool in which avoid suspicious websites. We’ll have to wait and see if the speed of searches is impacted by this new tool, which could take away a bit from user experience.

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It’s always good to hear what Google’s Matt Cutts has to say about anything search related. It terms of the search engines, Cutts is “relevant.” So, at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Matt Cutts was giving tips on cutting down on spam.

Now, who doesn’t want to do this? Spam infects all areas of the Internet from our email to search results to blog and message board comments. Cleaning out spam is a chore that can waste many productive hours per week.

So, combating spam in order to take back your time is a number one priority for many. Some of the simple tips that Matt Cutts gives for cutting down on spam include using captcha systems, (or other non-standard manual systems to prove a human filled in a form instead of a robot), reconfiguring software settings after installation to thwart the spambots, use systems that rank users by reputation and trust.

Also, good news for us SEO’s is that Cutts says there are many legitimate search engine optimizers and that people should not be afraid to use us. Google has come a long way over the years in seeing the value of SEO’s. Spam is something we all have to fight against, though. Remember the days when we had to use the word sp@m for fear of being dropped in the rankings? Now, it’s much easier to tell just who the bad guys are.

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Though the economy is faltering due in large part to the subprime lending debacle, Internet advertising dollars continue to rise. In the past couple of weeks, both Google and Yahoo have reported better than expected earnings.

For instance, Google has announced that despite losing a little market share to Yahoo, that the world’s largest search company revenues of $5.19 billion for the quarter, up 42-percent from the same time last year, and 7-percent better than the preceding quarter.

Yahoo, on the other hand posted a 57.6-percent jump in online ad spending over the same time last year. Yahoo’s market share has also jumped 4.6-percent while Google’s has fallen 4.1-percent over last year. Analysts are saying the rise in Yahoo is due to its Panama platform released last year.

Later today, Yahoo is expected to report its first quarter earnings that will likely affect the Microsoft takeover bid price. If the earnings are high enough, the bid may be thwarted altogether or at least Yahoo will receive prime dollar for its properties.

But, no matter what happens, one thing is for sure. The soft economy in the U. S. has not hampered the hard dollar on the Internet and one can expect this trend to continue for some time to come.

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There are some websites and blogs that are location specific such as for realtors, dentists, restaurants and many others who need to optimize their websites for the local marketplace. Local SEO has not come of age yet, but marketplace forces are headed in that direction.

For those who want to be on the leading edge of local search, then geo tagging your website or blog may just put your online business in position for future traffic. Many online advertisers are already buying geo targeted ads, so it makes sense for SEO purposes that these same advertisers may want to geo tag their websites as well.

So that I don’t reinvent the wheel here, there is a good article on Geoblogging that explains how develop meta tags that have latitude, longitude and physical postal address in them. I’ve placed geo meta tags in a different website of mine that is more location specific and am experimenting with them now.

After applying the Geo tags to one’s website or blog, it is important to submit your page to GEO URL that has a database of such targeted websites. This way you can see if your local competition is also doing local search engine optimization or if they are behind the curve like you have been.

Though geo tagging for local search may not get your online site much business now, it is trend that is sure to pick up steam in the near future. Why not get a jump on your competition? All it takes are a few meta tags to get started.

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It’s tax day, not April Fool’s Day, but Yahoo Slurp 3.0 is rolling out anyway and this is no joke. Yahoo Slurp 3.0 is said to include some infrastructure updates and will now respect the directives outlined in a website’s robots.txt file without modification to this file.

Webmasters will start to see the Yahoo Slurp 3.0 crawler appearing in log pages over the next few weeks. Yahoo recommends using a reverse DNS detection system to monitor Yahoo Slurp 3.0 as IP-based recognition will slow down to a crawl (literally). Webmasters who are using a Slurp 2.0 user agent will need to upgrade to the new ‘Yahoo! Slurp/3.0” user agent for accurate results.

Now, is Yahoo Slurp 3.0 responsible for the latest shakeup in the search engine’s results pages? This could be or it could be the lingering effects from the last Yahoo algorithm update that was reported on March 3 that was supposed to shake out after a week or two.

Perhaps it’s even a combination of the two. Now matter as Yahoo Slurp 3.0 is here to stay. Better get out your long straw and pull out your best convenience store joke as this would be a good time for it.

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In an effort to fight back against the Nofollow regime over the past couple of years in which a wide net was cast to thwart spammers, the Dofollow rebellion is now taking hold. Bloggers and others have decided that enough is enough and they do want to share the link love with there best blog buddies who make many comments.

Many bloggers have turned to link love measures such as the list of Dofollow plug-ins for WordPress listed Andy Beard’s blog (and why not check out Beard’s Bumpzee Dofollow community while you’re at it). The SEO Expert Blog is experimenting with Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin as we speak as a form of dofollow tag.

So, why are bloggers fighting back? It’s simple. Bloggers want control over who receives link juice and who doesn’t. By casting a wide nofollow net, the search engines put a wet blanket over the whole community for a while. In order to punish the spammers, everyone else must be punished as well (this philosophy is sort of like in team sports when one member messes up and the whole team must pay the price).

But, now webmasters want to reward the members of their communities not only on blogs but on message boards and on websites as well. How does one find dofollow sites, however. There have been many lists flying around the internet that grow daily and are not organized in any fashion and literally contain thousands of links one must sift through.

In addition, a few Dofollow directories have now sprung up such as Dofollow.us and Dofollowblogs.com that add some organization to the websites that are participating. The Dofollow movement does put more responsibility upon a webmaster’s shoulders to keep the spammers (who are of course attracted to dofollow) off their websites. But, many webmasters want this responsibility and see it as a good trade in order to grow their online communities and reward those who actively participate and have something to say.

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The Yahoo AMP (Advertising Management Platform) is about to change the face of buying and selling ads online. Formerly known as Project Apex, Yahoo AMP will help advertisers, publishers and intermediaries communicate swiftly and effectively, eliminating phone calls and long wait times.

The buying and selling of large blocks of ad impressions has long been an inefficient process. Advertisers, publishers and intermediaries not only spend much time online searching for fragmented information, but also spend an inordinate time on the phone wheeling and dealing.

The point of Yahoo AMP is to streamline this process, making it more transparent, more effective and help generate money for all parties involved. Advertisers, ad networks and agencies will be able to buy space and impressions across all Yahoo properties, the 600 online newspapers that are currently signed up plus many smaller, niche publishers who are currently a part of the Yahoo Publisher beta program as well.

Publishers will benefit from new inventory management tools, more control over delivering relevant advertisements, linking directly with advertisers and as a robust replacement for current ad management software. Increased revenue for publishers is also one of the key selling points of the Yahoo AMP system.

With the Google Ad Manager beta application being unveiled three weeks ago, the Yahoo AMP announcement was timed to take some thunder away and tell the masses that the world’s number 2 search engine is still a player in the online advertising market. From what has been announced so far, Yahoo AMP looks to be more robust than the Google offering, but we’ll also have to wait and see as more details unfold if this is an accurate assessment or not.

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The secret squirrels have finally left their holes and have been able to now publically speak about the C-block auction where Google eventually lost out to Verizon. Because of the FCC’s anti-collusion rules that were in place while bidding and shortly thereafter, mum was the word among all participants.

Google met the minimum bid of $4.6 billion and then went on to exceed this bid. The idea was to force Verizon (or whomever eventually won the final bid) to adopt an openness policy in regard to wireless communication.

There are many who have stated that Google did not actually want control over the C-block, but rather, just wanted to bid high enough so that they would have open access to this block from the high bidder. This was a shrewd move confirmed by Google, who will also be bidding on the D-block spectrum later this year as well as roll out the first Google phone based up the open source Android system.

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Google News has been the subject of much speculation over the past months so company software engineer Andy Golding decided to clear the air on the official Google News Blog.

In a nutshell, some of the Google News myths include:

• Having a photo in your article helps with the rankings
• Sitemaps help rankings
• Timing of publication is important
• Adsense will help in the SERPs
• There’s no way to tell why articles aren’t included

In a second nutshell (the nuttier the better, right?), the facts include:

• When posting an article, then updating it, the crawler may not pick up the changes
• Redesigning a website may affects results in Google News
• Articles that are videos or images only may not be included in the results

Google News has also rolled out an experimental feature that allows the subjects linked in an article to comment on the story. The comments have to be reviewed by Google employees to prevent mischief first, however, but this gives voice and a chance for rebuttal or to add more information for visitors.

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