Google has many advanced search operators.  Over the years I’ve found lots of great information by digging just a little deeper with these extra queries.  I’ll break them down below:

allinanchor:
Starting a search with this string will restrict results to pages containing the terms you  specified in the anchor text of links on the page.  A search for allinanchor:seomike will return only pages with the word “seomike” in a link somewhere on the page.

allintext:
This query makes Google show results containing the text you specify.  For example, a search for allintext:seomike kansas city will display pages that contain the text “seomike” “kansas” and “city.”

allintitle:
This query will make Google display only the pages which contain the text you specify in the title of the pages.  The title is what is displayed at the top of your browser, and usually as the blue link in the Google search results.  A search for allintitle:seomike will produce only pages that have “seomike” in their titles.

allinurl:
Allinurl Google will display results containing all the words you entered in the page or site URL.  For example a search for allinurl:contact seomike will deliver www.seomike.com/contact.html.

book:
This query allows you to search the text of a book.

cache:
The query chache: plus a URL will display Google’s cache of a webpage.  For example, cache:www.seomike.com will display Google’s cache of my webiste.  You will also be able to see the last time Google cached my page.  TIP: you can check the “text-only” version of the cache to see if a website is doing any Google Cloaking.  (Google Cloaking means displaying something that only Google will see and is a blackhat technique. Usually the only way that you can see if a website is cloaking is by checking Google’s text cache.)

[city] [city]
By entering two cities right next to each other you can search flights between those cities.  For example. kansas city washington dc will allow you to search flight times between the two cities on a date range you specify.  It’s pretty much useless because all it does is send your request to a third party site anyway.  Might as well start there.

define:
You can check for Google’s definition of a word or phrase by starting a search with this query.  A search for define:seo will show definitions.

filetype:
Filetype has to be one of my favorites.  You can find all kinds of things with this query.  One thing that is particularly interesting is to run this against a competitor’s website searching for files that shouldn’t be there such as PSD, DOC, XLS, etc.  For example, If someone uses a “production” folder on their site to collaborate with a designer but doesn’t delete the directory or block it with robots.txt, you can get all kinds of production notes, design drafts, memos, email addresses, phone numbers, etc.  You might even find a site redesign in progress.   This is a really sneaky little trick and if you’re reading this, congrats – you found a little golden nugget of electronic corporate competitive intelligence collection.  I won’t tell you the exact query that makes this happen, but you can figure it out from this list.

info:
The info query is a little lame.  It just displays the Google listing for a website.  Check it here: info:www.seomike.com

intext:
The intext operator will display all documents that contain the text you’re looking for.  If you further modify the query by adding quotes around your search phrase, you’ll get an exact match.  An example of this would be intext:”browser ubiquity testing” which returns a bunch of my blog entries on the topic.  Without the quotes, the results are littered with barely relevant results.  I find this query works best with the quotes.

intitle:
The operator intitle restricts the results to only pages that contain a specified word in the page title.  Remember, page title is defined in the TITLE tag and is displayed in the top of your browser and as the blue link in Google.  For example, you can find every page where I discuss browser ubiquity testing with this string; “browser ubiquity” intitle:seomike Without the quotes Google will pull pages with either word of the phrase and the whole phrase.  In this example I wanted pages that list exactly “browser ubiquity.”

inurl:
Using this query will restrict google results to a certain website which contains the specified search term in the URL.  For example, inurl:seomike will display all pages that contain “seomike” in the URL.  You can further hone this query by including a specific website to search like this: inurl:seomike site:www.dmoz.org which will return any pages with “seomike” in the url.

link:
The query link: is awesome.  It shows a list of links from third party websites to the site you specify.  However, the info presented is often used in link development so Google doesn’t display a complete list of the links they know about.  An example query would be link:www.seomike.com.  Notice that the list isn’t very long.  I know for sure, from Webmaster Tools, that Google is aware of far more links than they are displaying.  If you need this information about a competitor for your link building campaign, you can go to Yahoo and use their linkdomain: command.  Unlike Google, Yahoo tells you everything they know.

location:
I’ve been leaving out queries that only work in Google News and Google Groups, but this one is kind of fun.  I am not sports fan – in fact I hate basketball – but there is a great example of this functionality right now.  A query in Google News for lebron james location:cleveland returns news articles on lebron from sources in cleveland.  Similarly, lebron james location: miami will show you what news sources in Miami are saying about him.  It’s a fun example because there’s so much anger in Cleveland, but so much love in Miami.

movie:
The movie query doesn’t function like it did originally when it was announced in 2005.  When it first came out you could input a string like movie: man talks to horse and it would look through all the movies that ever were to find ones with that kind of subject.  It was great because you could search for movies with sweet car chases or dog fights and Google would make suggestions for movies you might like to see.  Now, the movie query only seems to respond with current films and displays results for theaters nearby playing that movie.

phonebook:
The query phonebook is pretty fun because it will display all results of publicly available phone numbers  it knows.  A fun query is; phonebook: george bush tx which comes up with George W. as the first result.  I didn’t have the guts to call it, but feel free.  I did check the location on Google Maps and there is no data listed.  This happens sometimes with “high value” people… their stuff isn’t on the map.  It may be his number, it may not be.

related:
The related query will show a list of websites that Google thinks are related to your website.  This can be a pretty interesting way of judging your content and external link optimization efforts.  Is Google getting what you’re telling it?  A search for related:www.seomike.com shows that Google believes that my website is related to SEO by displaying other SEO websites in the listing.  Good job Google.

site:
The site query is a very useful tool.  The results displayed are a list of the pages that Google is aware of for a website.  It’s also interesting to see how Google ranks the pages against each other which, with a little investigation, can tell you a lot about your content optimization and link building efforts.  You can also tell if Google is having a lot of trouble accessing your website.  site:www.seomike.com shows a list of all the pages on my website.

weather:
The weather query is pretty straightforward.  This search is most effective when used in combination with your zip code.  weather:66211 will show you the weather for us today.

This has been quite a long post.  Thanks for hanging in there.  Remember, there are lots of combinations of the queries above that will work.  You just have to play around with them to refine your search until you get exactly what you’re looking for.  Happy hunting!

Want a downloadable copy of this article?  It’s available here: Google Advanced Search Query List.

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The Postcard Google Will Send You (Click for Larger Version)

You have two options to claim your listing, Google can mail a postcard to you which takes about two weeks, or they can try calling the phone number THEY have on file for your business.  If you have a client and you’re trying to claim their local listings for them, you’d better first take an inventory of the information Google has about the locations and confirm that the client can be reached by those means.  Also, make sure that if you’re using the phone option that someone at the location is aware that the call is going to come in.  The phone option only works well when one person answers the phone 100% of the time.  If the client has a phone system that “hunts” it’s best to just mail a postcard and wait.

I’ll be talking more about local search in the future including what you can and cannot change, how the search engines go about finding your company information, the differences between Google, Yahoo, & Bing, as well as how you can get the most out of your local listings.

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During all this controversy Google applied for a patent the technology used to snoop out those unencrypted networks.  I don’t think they are sorry.  Turns out that Google is getting into the WarDriving business.

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I’m no advocate for unlicensed use of images, let’s get that clear. I do have a big problem with the way Getty is handling this.  Getty’s behavior in this case is unethical at best. To them it seems the ends justify the means, just like those who steal from them.  They are relying on their image discovery bot called PicScout to find their images on the web and then cross-reference that with their records of purchase.  If they find no match, they are sending the registrar of the domain a letter demanding $1,000.00.  Where does that leave the small business that had their site coded by a third party?  Responsible for the fine.  If you can’t produce your proof of purchase, you have to pay or risk a lawsuit which could result in owing Getty “damages” of up to $150,000 per image!

On top of the unethical mass-mailing, Getty is using their PicScout unethically.  The PicScout bot is disregarding robots.txt instructions, masking it’s identity, bypassing website security measures, and ignoring terms-of-service.  They are without-a-doubt unauthorized visitors to your website.  You can find more information about PicScout’s crawling behavior at IncrediBILL’s blog here.  It’s a little dated, but the overall message is relevant.

What can you do about this?  I recommend blocking the PicScout robot from your site – if you can find it.  If you have the ability to edit your .htaccess file you can follow the tips here: .htaccess bot trap.  Adding that line of code will block robots that don’t obey the robots.txt file.  Since PicScout doesn’t adhere to your rules, they will get blocked.  Careful though – if you mess up your .htaccess file, you can take down your whole site.  For now that’s the only solution I’m aware of.  I’m looking for something like this that would work with IIS and if I find one, I’ll post it here.

The second thing I recommend is to block the Internet Archiver from your website.  Even if you go through all the trouble and expense of repurchasing your images and blocking the PicScout bad robot, you can still get busted for what the Internet Archive shows on your site.  Blocking the IA robot will completely remove current and past versions of your site.  I have talked about the Internet Archiver before and the ramifications of allowing it to index your site.  Check out my post on blocking the internet archiver robot.

To sum up: Don’t steal, pay for your images.  Someone is trying to feed their family by shooting them and selling them on sites like Getty.  If you have a third-party company design and develop your site, make sure they provide you with receipts and licenses for every image they use.

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I have a client that needs to run analytics using two accounts on the same website.  There are many reasons for this kind of implementation, but the most common reason is to setup tracking for multiple third-party marketing firms so each can define their own filters, conversion goals, user funnels, etc.  Unfortunately, the implementation of the additional account ID on my client’s site was not correct and it “broke” analytics for the other account.  One account had good data, the other account couldn’t keep track of the users.  This is because the way the code was written, one tracking cookie was being overwritten by the other, and the one associated with the account being overwritten was reading 99% bounce rate, 0.00 time on page, and could not follow users into the site.

Since some of the posts discussing this topic online are a bit technical, I thought I would post an easy-to-understand version here.  I’ve placed the correct code below with examples of how you add additional account ids to a website without breaking the analytics.

Using Multiple Accounts With Asynchronous Tracking

You can see in the image that I’ve input multiple account ids. (UA-XXXXXXXX-X)  Each new id starts with a new letter (b._, c._) and you can continue this for as many analytics accounts that you want to hook up to your site.  Remember, the more accounts you connect, the slower the pages will load so I suggest keeping the number of accounts to a minimum.

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“The Chrome operating system will be centred around the web browser, with all software including high-end applications such as those used in photo and video editing housed in external servers known as a cloud.”

So what exactly will your computer be doing?  Accessing everything “out-there” putting all of your files in someone else’s hands.  You will also need to run apps, like on android phones, to access services.  The real challenge to this kind of model is the fact that a Google OS based computer will be a fancy paper-weight when there’s no internet access.  I keep going back to the rumors I’ve been hearing for years about Google getting into the wireless business.  It would be nice for them to have a strong mobile phone platform, a mobile computing platform, and then jump into offering cut-throat rates on wireless broadband / wireless phone service.  Big brother keeps getting bigger…

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Up until the recent algorithmic change, SEOs have been complaining about the power of big brands. Big brands dominated the search index because of the power of their domains. (reputation, links, trust, etc) It was as if they could post anything they want and almost instantly rank #1 for that term. Google was paying attention.

The algorithm change that was launched in May has been dubbed the “Mayday” update because many folks are convinced that it’s a mistake and that Google will roll it back. I doubt it. I think they are right on the money with this one. Instead of relying on powerful domains and solid internal linking structures for ranking pages, the individual pages are now standing on their own. It makes sense – just because you’re a big brand doesn’t mean that you have a document that’s more important than another sites’ document. For example: A document on a less important site (compared to a big brand) may be more useful to a searcher (and have the same number of links) compared to a page with less useful information ranked solely upon the power of a big brand root URL. Now it seems that those two documents are being compared as equally viable competitors instead of one document being from Beverly Hills and one from Starkville Mississippi. (sorry Rob, best hillbilly town I could think of)

Some people are honestly freaking out about “massive losses of traffic” on their “authority sites.” Well, they’ve been turning out crap for content and getting it ranked based solely on the power of their domains. This change in Google might root out some in-house SEOs that over-sold their experience and qualifications and have been coasting by based on the power of their big brand. They’d better get with the program and get back to basics fast or they might find themselves on the street.

Has this affected me or my clients? You bet. We’re getting more traffic! Why? Because I believe in a solid SEO campaign based on what I call the Keyphrase Pyramid. My Pyramid starts with the very long-tail of search. We start building content and links for that long-tail and then as time goes on we keep building upon that wide, deep base with higher and higher value keywords until we reach the top one or two big performers. As the content and links grow and we capture more popular phrases, traffic expands exponentially. This little update has just compressed the timeline it takes to increase traffic. If you take the time to build a strong base of content and links, you won’t go wrong. If there’s anything that I’ve learned in my 13 years as an SEO it’s that content is king, links are queen, and slow-and-steady wins the race every time.

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Since I edit several popular categories I get hundreds of submissions per month. That’s a lot to go through. Since so many of the submissions are from spammers, affiliate sites, lead-gen sites, content cloakers, and morons, it takes quite a while to sift through the submissions to find the sites that are of real value. Here’s a list of the steps I take to review EACH submission to my categories:

• Check to make sure the URL doesn’t redirect by reading the server response codes.
• Check for content cloaking.
• Check all the links on the site to ensure that they function and send the user to the expected location.
• Check the content of the site to make sure it is themed to match the category where they submitted. If not, I find the appropriate category and send the listing there.
• Check for a valid cert if the site collects personal information.
• I try to be sure the site isn’t just an adsense advertiser, a lead generation site, or an affiliate site. The site has to actually offer the services they say they offer.
• Most times I have to edit the title and description of the submitted site because the submitters very rarely adhere to the submission guidelines for a category.

I try really hard to dedicate an hour a day to editing DMOZ submissions.  Checking each site for the items above takes anywhere from 1-5 minutes so you can understand why it takes a while to get your site listed in DMOZ.  If you’re having problems getting listed, check out my Webmaster’s Guide to DMOZ Inclusion.

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The plan is to have the appliance, TVs, and satellite boxes ready for a pre-Christmas launch in order to give it the best possibility of success. Expect a massive conventional marketing campaign from these heavy hitters.

The platform will be based on the Android operating system and come with the Google Chrome browser. YouTube is also in the mix planning on releasing a new product for viewing videos on big screens. Existing Android apps will work on the platform and allow an Android phone to control the system. I expect the functionality will be very similar to the relationship between my iPhone and my AppleTV. GoogleTV will also allow for a wireless keyboard and most. They could make navigating the web on GoogleTV super-easy by introducing a remote similar to the Wii remote.

One of the biggest features – at least to me – is the fact that the GoogleTV appliance will support Flash. That’s a big dig on Apple amid recent controversy over their lack of support for Flash.

Bridging the gap between the internet and the TV has been extremely challenging. Every attempt to blend the two technologies has seen less than enthusiastic adoption. Sony’s Playstation, Microsoft’s XBOX, the AppleTV, all have access to the internet but none of them have gotten it exactly right. The GoogleTV seems to be on the right track. However, it’s unknown if people will leave their computer for the TV to view the internet.

What may hurt proliferation of GoogleTV? Lack of Apps. Adoption might be a little lack-luster, especially if the appliance has a high price tag. It’ll be even worse if there aren’t many apps for the platform. There probably won’t be many apps until late in Q1 of 2011 since the SDK (software developer’s kit) isn’t scheduled for launch until early 2011.

One last point about GoogleTV… If it takes off it’s likely going to put a huge strain on websites. Delivering TV-quality video is no small feat. We may see a resurgence of user-agent based content delivery, not out of malice, but out of necessity. Why would a large video site waste all their bandwidth delivering TV-quality videos and images to every device. Also, why would a site deliver a watered-down experience to every user because the GoogleTV needs to have one mode of navigating the site, pre-selection of expected navigation, and limit vertical scrolling. (See Google’s tips for designing websites for GoogleTV) Sites are going to cloak, and Google’s going to have to be ok with that.

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I was surprised when I checked my privacy settings on Facebook to see that there is a new feature allowing my friends to share information about me with websites.  This is different than it was a couple weeks ago when I heard about the partner websites thing for the first time.  It looks like Facebook intentionally changed the selection option after all the press.  I’ll be it was intended to slip one by the users who opted out.  This latest updated overwrote my previous settings and made everything public.

• status updates
• online presence
• website
• family and relationship status
• relationship details (significant other, looking for, etc)
• my videos
• my links
• my notes
• my photos
• photos I’ve been tagged in
• about me
• my birthday
• my religious and political views

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