Bill Slawski digs into a new patent application from Microsoft that aims to include the age of the domains that link to a given Web site as part of the site's overall ranking criteria. The patent, called "Ranking Domains Using Domain Maturity" was published last week (but filed in late 2006), and assumes that newer domains have a higher likelihood of being spam and/or being part of a link farm--and should be judged accordingly. Thus, sites with a high influx of links from older domains would ultimately be ranked higher than sites with a host of links …

Citysearch has partnered with mobile bar code tech firm Scanbuy to offer local businesses an extra layer of functionality for mobile searchers. The local search giant is running a trial program with some 500 businesses (mostly restaurants) in San Francisco, and will place a scannable bar code right outside the location or on a billboard. After users point their camera-enabled mobile phone at the code, the downloadable application scans it and then serves up the mobile version of the business' Citysearch page--including contact info, promotions and user reviews. Citysearch is currently offering the service at no cost to …

"There is a golden rule to link building: links reflect value on the Web," says Adam Audette. Because of their inherent value, link building has become much harder today than it was pre-Google. Links are a commodity, and with that in mind, Audette delivers a detailed reference manual on effective link building. For example, Audette defines a number of key components that define a valuable link--with the top factors being relevance and context. Beyond those concrete characteristics, the most valuable links are often difficult to obtain, require a human element (two people need to exchange ideas), and involve …

During a Web site review session at SMX Sydney, Rand Fishkin and Danny Sullivan discovered that Flightcentre.com, a well-known Australian travel site, had been cloaking content from fellow travel site DiscoverTasmania.com. The panelists copied and pasted a snippet of content from DiscoverTasmania.com into a Google search and found Flightcentre.com outranking it for the exact same phrase. A further dig found no mention of the content on the referenced page itself, but a look into Flightcentre.com's source code (sans Javascript and as the Google-bot) showed that the latter site was indeed, cloaking content that it had copied from DiscoverTasmania.com. …

New Web site owners (or even seasoned pros set to launch a new site) should have SEO in mind from the onset, but Michael Gray argues that the trick is to avoid putting the cart before the horse. "Look for a way to differentiate yourself first and use SEO to promote it, not the other way around," Gray says. Without quality content (including text, images and possibly video), or a unique value proposition, all the time spent working on keyword density, meta data and link accumulation could actually lead to a smackdown from the engines. "At …

Chalk this up as one more log on the "SEOs are snake oil sellers" funeral pyre. Washington-based Internet Advancement has been barred from selling or advertising any SEO services to new customers by state Attorney General Rob McKenna. The firm fleeced customers out of a "set-up fee" (typically between $1,000-$3,000) and $150 monthly fees, all while guaranteeing them that their Web site would appear within the first 25 links on the major search engines. Over the course of four years, some 82 small businesses filed complaints with the Attorney General's office over the firm's unfulfilled promises, with …

Keirsun Scott does a deep dig into the goings-on at 23AndMe, the Web-based genetic research firm that Google invested some $4 million in last year. The company is the brainchild of Anne Wojcicki, wife of Google founder Sergei Brin. Wojcicki, Brin and Arthur Levinson (an exec on Google's Board of Directors, and CEO of Genentech, also one of 23AndMe's investors) each own significant stakes in the genetic research firm--and Scott wonders whether their shares count as a majority stake. He also wonders whether Google's shares count as a majority stake--and if so, whether that gives the search giant …