This allegation comes from small companies that they are not fairly ranked by Google when their names comes up in Internet Search

Google’s deputy general counsel confirmed that they’ve been approached by Texas Attorney General for further investigation. They also Asserted that the company’s success is by “building great products” and not by locking in its users or advertisers, he said that as Google grows, “we’re going to face more questions about how our business works“.

The Antitrust review will be interesting to follow as it will reveal if  Google actually manipulates their search results for more business. Hopefully, Google is asked to reveal the factors on which they rank websites as it might just change the face of the Search Engine Optimization industry and leave the SEO experts in a lurch.

It’s the exact same situation that RIM had been facing, so we could be looking at a case where India is merely “working its way down the to-do list.”

The new Digg site has essentially turned into nothing more than a glorified RSS dump for sites. In case you’ve missed the news, the biggest problem behind the new version is that it allows sites to push their RSS feeds directly into their timeline, which can cause the overall quality of front-page posts to diminish.

It’s obvious that Reddit has its Digg account set up to auto-publish any Reddit stories from its RSS feeds (a luxury afforded to any publisher). Publishers who are getting their content shared on Reddit are benefiting doubly.

Previously, it was harder to game Digg because a user would have to submit a link and then the link would have to be up voted by the population. However, due to the random nature of Reddit’s readership, it’s now quite easy to sway the entire front page as all articles are submitted regardless of how good, bad or indifferent.

Clearly, Digg is going to have to do something about the situation. It’s very doubtful that they’re going to let Reddit dominate the entire Top News section for long, particularly as the site is trying to reinvent itself, and spark a renewed interest

The government, meanwhile, says it won’t ban BlackBerry services for at least 60 days, easing up on the threat leveled over access to encrypted data.

The Ministry of Home Affairs says it will “review the situation in 60 days”, after telecom authorities examine Research In Motion’s proposals to give security agencies greater access to corporate e-mail and instant messaging.

RIM is facing widespread concern over its strong data encryption, which is beloved by corporate customers eager to guard secrets but troublesome for some governments in the Middle East and Asia, which worry it could be used by militants to avoid detection.

Nearly two months after insisting that it does not have the provision to grant access for such monitoring, RIM made certain proposals for lawful access of BlackBerry Enterprise Services (BES) and BlackBerry Messenger Services (BBM) by the law enforcement agencies.

RIM’s response came after the Indian Home Ministry made it clear that Blackberry has to shut down its operations in the country from 1st September  if it failed to provide access to monitoring of its messenger services.

The Ministry has made it clear that any communication through the telecom networks should be accessible to the law enforcement agencies and all telecom service providers including third-parties have to comply with this, it said.

Yahoo and Microsoft both gained in month-over-month share (2% and 4%, respectively). This is all good for Microsoft, as Bing has now completely overtaken Yahoo’s organic results in the U.S. and Canada.

“In terms of a Year-on-Year comparison there has been little change in Google’s share but more significant movement amongst its closest competitors,” says Nielsen. “MSN/Windows Live/Bing’s share has grown from 9.0% to 13.6% (a delta increase of 4.6% or a relative increase of 51%) while Yahoo!’s share has fallen from 17.1% to 14.3% (a delta drop of 2.8% or a relative drop of 17%). Consequently, over the last year Yahoo!’s delta lead over MSN/Windows Live/Bing has been reduced from 7.1% to only 0.7%.”

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft account for more than 9 out of 10 searches (92.1%).

The total number of searches in the U.S. over the last year has gone down by 16% from 10.5 billion to 8.8 billion. This is a very interesting stat. I wonder how much of this has to do with increased use of smartphones and mobile apps or mainly due to internet filled with all sorts of websites that contain good and valid content in large numbers. People are starting too bookmark these websites and search on them directly instead of going through search engines.

• Freshness of content—Google is always looking for sites that are updated on a regular basis. The more frequent you update your site, the more frequent Google’s spiders will visit your site. 

• Links from directories—Google awards points if directories such as Yahoo!, Looksmart, DMOZ, and About provide a link to your site. 

Most of the search engines are giving heavy weighting to link popularity— that is, the number of links to your site from other sites on the Internet. The search engines are getting very sophisticated in the weighting of link popularity, with the search engines giving extra points for link relevancy—that is, how high the site with the link to your site would rank for the same keyword. Other points are awarded based on the keywords in the text around the link pointing to your Web site.

Also called link acquisition, link velocity is something that you need to be aware of and it forms part of having a natural link profile.

Link velocity and is most apparent with new websites. Site owners go mad building links through press releases, campaigns etc that bring them in a quick amount of links. However, that volume of links quickly peaks, and then just as quickly as it grows, it falls back down to its “natural” level, which is usually virtually no new links being grown naturally.

This is something you need to be aware of, as an extreme growth and fall pattern can lead to you being scrutinised and possibly penalized if the search engine finds you have been building lots of those links manually. In other words, as the links drop off, the buildup of momentum to the site drops. As this momentum drops, so your pages will steadily rank lower and lower.

This partly explains why people talk of Google having a “sandbox” for new sites, where there is an initial spurt up the SERP’s, and then rather than staying there, their site drops like a stone despite having lots of links to the site, before eventually settling in its “natural” position.

So when you build your links, plan for continual growth. Build by varied means, continually and at a similar rate each day/week/month. Take things to the next level only as your site grows in stature and can sustain a permanent “jump” in the SERP’s as it grows in authority and trust with the search engine.

1. Find a great niche and create great content - This is the foundation towards your blogs success. Make sure that you  give your users good reasons to come back and to bookmark, tag, and link to your site. If you do only this and nothing else, your site will rank well without any specific optimization activity.

2. Lay the right foundations -  This is a very crucial factor to your blogs success. Make sure you  host your site with a fast and flexible provider, and structure the site symmetrically and with a logical domain name, directory structure, and filenames.

3. Do everything you can with the assets under your control – In terms of on-page SEO, but realize that this only gets you to the start line in the race for decent rankings. SEO is not simply an exercise in decent copywriting, but a continuous process.

4. Spend more time on directory submissions and article writing for E-Zines –  Provide a reason for visitors to come back to your blog. Your site must be newsworthy, funny, or controversial, or at the very least full of great resources. 

5. Target long tail keywords -  A decent organic search campaign will take your blog a long way. Save money by targeting long-tail terms, tuning match drivers, and crafting decent landing pages.

Feel free to add-on to the list, as this is what came to my mind at this point in time.

The importance of a having a good host can never be ignored if you’re looking at making your internet career a success. In the Internet world it could be said, that your hosting provider could either make you or break you.

At times it does get difficult deciding among the various web site hosting plans that are available in the virtual world. To help you sort out your problems on deciding which host to opt for, Webhosting Geeks provides you frank and honest reviews of the different web hosts available in the market.

Most hosts tend to make huge claims that they’re hosting is the best in the market. However, you must remember that each host will have their own pros and cons. Generally most hosts will provide you with a free domain once you sign up for their domain hosting plan. You should also be aware of various hosting scams that tend to have a huge online presence. To combat all the negative effects, you have Webhosting Geeks that provide you reviews by users about various domain hosting plans.

There are different kind of hosting plans that you can opt for which would depend on your requirement. The two most widely known types of hosting plans are shared hosting and dedicated hosting.

Shared hosting is a plan where a server is shared among different users. Here you will end up sharing bandwidth and disk space etc among different users.  This is generally a low-cost solution and is good when you’re just starting up.

Dedicated hosting is a more costly and private affair. The server belongs to you which means you have more bandwidth and more space. Here you end up owning the server and it’s up to you to decide on the  technical details of the server. This is a good solution if you’re more experienced and your website attracts a lot of traffic.

In conclusion, it’s up to you to decide which hosting plan to opt for based on your requirements. However, it does help to get good advice on which host to select. Webhosting Geeks is an excellent review website that provides you accurate reviews of the different web hosts available in the market.

Take aways from the Post…

Blogging is not a way to get rich quick. For every A-lister, there are literally thousands of other bloggers working hard and not making very much money at all.

Don’t get too fixed on one way of getting income from blogging. You might find that affiliate reviews work for you, not advertising – or you might freelance, like I did.

If your first attempt at blogging doesn’t work out, don’t worry. It took me a while to find my voice and figure out what I really wanted to write about.

Conversely, don’t keep starting and quitting blogs: tell yourself that you’ll give it at least a year.

You can read the complete post here