We recently launched our product LinkInTxt and based on great feedback from our customers, the setup for Partners was just too difficult for large sites and very time consuming. We quickly went into brainstorming mode and came up with a brilliant idea that would take all of the setup out of our Partner’s hands.

Now, if you wish to participate in our LinkInTxt program, it’s as simple as including it in our “crawl list”. From that point, there is nothing else for you to do unless an advertiser decides to purchase a keyword(s) from your web page(s). We now have our own search engine that will crawl your site and index all possible keywords we were able to find. This will give Advertisers the ability to search for any keyword on your site. As always, Partners will have the final decision if the keyword will be placed or not. We do not force the link and then make it your job to remove it after the fact, like some places. If your site has hundreds or thousands of pages, you would not want a competitor plugging in their links throughout your site before you can say no.

We’re still adding a few upgrades to version 2, but it should be in full working mode by the end of this month.

Just a quick update from Seattle. It’s raining, oddly enough, but the conference is going great. This expo is done right and all the big names are here from our industry. For example, here is our own Matt hanging with their Matt:

We have lots more where this came from. We’ll check back in with more details soon.

I know we’ve spoken with several people and have quite a few people to meet and talk to, but just in case we have missed anyone, Matt and I will be in Seattle this coming week for the first SMX (Search Marketing Expo) Event. We’re excited to meet several people and see how this show goes.

For those who aren’t familiar with SMX, it’s the new expo created by Danny Sullivan who’s been kind of a pioneer in search news and conferences. He’s created other web properties/companies and sold them, with his newest venture being Search Engine Land.

If you’re out in Seattle, shoot us a line and let us know. We’ll be attending the expo, of course, but we’ll also be attending the Google Dance on the roof and the other search sponsored gatherings. Maybe if we’re lucky enough, we’ll make the “special party” that is top secret. I’m sure we’ll Fish it out.

After much anticipation, our first phase of the new website is up and running. A few little bugs here and there, but I think we gave it a thorough walk through to find anything that might cause problems to our customers. We’ll be monitoring support to answer any questions or issues that might come up.

A HUGE “Thanks” to our “Colombian Crusher“, “NEO” and the man behind the look, “The Eclecticist“. These guys are making it all happen. (Side Note: Dustin wants everyone to know he has nothing to do with the design you see once you login.) 😐

If you have any of our old pages bookmarked, consider updating the bookmarks because any pages that have changed names or were deleted, will be removed permanently within the next day or two. If you come across anything out of the ordinary, please report it so we can make things right.

Our next phase will be upgrading the part all current customers see daily, the Control Center. This is what most will be happy to see updated, including us!

Anyone that reads anything about making money on your site has heard of or at least read something from Shoemoney, aka Jeremy Schoemaker. I honestly have not read a lot from him just because there is so much to read and it’s tough to keep up and still run a growing business.

This all changed after visiting the SES in NYC recently and Matt and I sat in on a session where Jeremy Schoemaker was speaking. The first speaker, can’t remember the name, Jill someone, was good, but I fell out of attention quite a bit. Very nice and informative, though. Then Jeremy came up and did his thing.

I’ll tell you that I have not made it through many sessions, but give them a shot quite a bit, and Shoemoney really is a great speaker. Although I had to pee pretty bad, I didn’t want to miss anything and it was on a subject I wasn’t really interested in. He’s good at mixing in some fun and laughter but giving great info as well. THEN the check pictures and/or the money made pops in. This part gets me every time. Take for example, this picture:

Over 132K paid to Shoemoney from Google. WHAT! Most people I know work their way up to $50 and get their accounts shut down for whatever reason. I have it setup on an article directory that gets decent traffic and it’s earned $30 in one year. 😐

He reminds me of Carlton Sheets where him and his students tell their net worth all through the show and how big of a check they walked away with at closing. But as much as it bugs me, it’s probably one of the reasons he is so successful. People like to see other people making money. It gives them hope and makes them want to be Jeremy.

Jeremy, if you read this and you will be in Seattle for SMX, shoot me an email and we’d love to buy you a beer or few. You’re an interesting guy and I think we might have a good chat. ron[at]linkworth or matt[at]linkworth and we can hear more about what you do.

I read on a blog the other day where they were saying the nofollow attributes weren’t working, so after a day of letting it marinate, and feeling a little frisky tonight, I figured I would target a phrase with the nofollow tag and see how things go. Since the no follow is preached by one person in general, going after his name mixed up would be a good test since there are no results:

Tamt Tucts

Help us with the test and put this on your site. Make sure the nofollow remains.
Select code
<a href='http://mattcutts.com/blog/' rel='nofollow'>Tamt Tucts</a>

As of right now this is what I get in results:

Welcome a new Web 2.0 service, somewhat similar to other services that have come and gone, however, this one is different. Think of all the social networks, search engines and other informational sources. Now think about wanting to search for ohh, say “LinkWorth”. To do this manually, you would need to go to each individual site, enter “LinkWorth”, then click search.

What Sputtr does is consolidate everything into one single search field. I type “LinkWorth”, then click the respective button of the information supplier and it provides search results from that source.

While I’ve never heard of some of these places, I think it’s a kind of cool service.

Okay, okay…I’m kidding. It’s called Universal Search and while I’m remiss about hyping any new Google-gadgetry, this seems to be a nice progression in search. Now, I’m sure most or many or at least a few people were tuned in to Google’s Searchology webcast today where they unloaded lots of new features that are sure to please the shareholders.

Several of the announcements were impressive such as the cross-language search engine where if you do a search in French, the engine will translate the query to English, get results, and translate the results back into French automatically for the user. The idea there is that there could be better results in English yada-yada-yada. It’s a cool concept.

Another useful improvement they’re working on is the automatic correction of spelling mistakes in search queries. We’ve all seen this before, right?

Well, they seem to be making it a bit more intuitive now. Udi used the example of searching for “ABC Survivor.” Well, the show Survivor is actually on CBS and they’re “training” their engine to know the difference. It’s subtle and something you’ll take for granted, but cool all the same.

The thing that I was most impressed with is this Universal Search deal. Soon, when you do a search on Google, you’ll receive not only a listing of links but also images, videos, local info, even maps mixed within the results. In some cases you’ll even be able to watch video right from the SERP….tricky, huh?

I’d like to take the time now to suggest a new research project for Larry and Sergei. Telepathic Search. Come on, you know they’ve thought about it and it’s probably already in development. Why use a keyboard when you can just think something? It’s being done, boys, don’t fall too far behind, okay?

Another thing. I propose that we rename the Milky Way to the Google Galaxy. Screw it, they’ve already claimed our planet with Google Earth…now they have Universal Search….why not? (If I’m not mistaken, there’s already a huge Google logo on the ISS, isn’t there?)

So go get your goo on….they’ve got some new stuff to check out.

We’ve finally updated our affiliate section with quite a few up to date banners. You should find one that fits your site and if not, drop us a line to let us know what size would work best for you.

To find the banners, login to your Control Center (Partner Accounts Only), click the Affiliates option, then look for the Banners link. Use the code provided and it will pull the banner from our server and your affiliate code will be in the code.

A big thanks to Dustin, our new graphic/web developer for putting them together.

If you have any questions, please contact support.

We have been averaging 5-10 messages each day since we announced a much easier way to setup LinkInTxt for large sites. This led me to give another update so those eager beavers who are ready to rock n roll can get a better time line on when L.I.T. will be available.

So are you ready?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Year 2020

It will be purring like a kitten on January 12, 2020. You may be asking yourself, “Why in the world would a new product take 12.5 years to upgrade?” Well, hopefully I can make things understandable in the best way I can. With the new product, the difficulties and time required didn’t make sense, so we began working on a way to have our daily spider check all pages of all partners for keywords. Once that point was reached, there were space issues. . .BIG space issues. So we’re working on building a huge data warehouse that will have a state of the art facility and top of the line machines and the fastest fiber available.

Once the data warehouse gets constructed we should be completed in probably 2021, we are going to spend the next 1-2 years installing the systems. “IF” this schedule goes on time, that would leave the beta and reworking the code.

Ok, Ok, I was making all of that up. LinkInTxt should be up and running in 3 weeks! HAHA… I GOT YOU!!!