Forget the fact that Google's Matt Cutts rocked the SEO community earlier this month by "casually stating" Google has "significantly" changed the way it prescribes PageRank sculpting. What really matters is Google "flipped the switch a year ago," and all the while "misled" the public with incorrect information on nofollow tags, according to Marty Weintraub. While the change is positive, because it forces SEO experts to police the integrity of links, Weintraub's concern stems from thinking either Google didn't tell the truth from the beginning, or the company hung its search ambassador, Cutts, out to dry. Weintraub …

The Google Affiliate Network has sent an email to select people asking them to participate in a program that would return product ads as paid listings in search results on Google, according to Philipp Lenssen. The product ads will feature specific information, such as prices and images. Google plans to test a variety of ad formats, the email states. The email also goes into detail on a variety of topics. These include where ads will appear, how to access reports during the beta test, how the ads compare with free product listings, how keywords are added to …

When Microsoft set out to transform Live into Bing, one goal was to improve the organization of query results. Martin Stoddart explains that the focus led Microsoft developers to create Explore Pane, which contain three sets of tools -- Quick Tabs, Related Searches and Search History -- to help people navigate through the searches on the engine more easily. When optimizing Web sites for Bing, SEO professionals should take into consideration the keywords that appear in the Explore Pane on the left side of the page. They can provide insight on the type of long-tail words to …

High bounce rates can slow success, as metrics move to include more than unique visitors and page views. The term "bounce" defines a site visitor who lands on a landing page only to leave the Web site without clicking through to other pages. Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury identifies nine possible reasons why Web sites can have high bounce rates and how to keep people from bolting. Web design and usability, content, navigation, wrong keyword selection, ad copy, page titles and meta descriptions can lead to high bounce rates, according to Chaudhury. Some external factors include occasional irrelevant results …

A patent application from Yahoo describes a process to serve-up 404 (not found) server messages that SEO experts might use when a site isn't set up properly to communicate the page the query requests. Sometimes the site might send a 200 message instead to tell the browser everything is okay when it's not, according to Bill Slawski. The patent application attempts to identify soft 404 errors and redirect them to login pages, Slawski writes. It does this by clustering Web pages from a site sharing similarities based on "characteristics of the content of the Web pages" in …

For those who missed it, Search Engine Roundtable relayed Father's Day wishes from Google, Yahoo, AOL, DogPile, Bing, Ask, and Cre8asite Forums by posting the logos.

About $760 million will be spent on mobile search advertising in 2009, according to eMarketer. Those numbers are expected to hit $2.4 billion by 2012. As interest in mobile campaigns rise, it's time to start paying more attention to mobile PPC campaigns, if you have not done so already, according to Mike McDonald. McDonald explains that mobile PPC campaigns should take a slightly different approach because people don't really browse the Web on a mobile device the way they do on a PC. People who search the Web on a mobile phone are more direct and targeted. …

Marketers know PPC and SEO campaigns will never live up to their full potential if they continue to run in silos. Information gained in PPC campaigns can help marketers improve SEO campaigns, according to Andy Heaps. He looks at ways PPC campaigns can inform SEO strategies, and vice-versa. Working with keyword lists, messaging, tactical testing, blended cost per sale, positional analysis, multivariate testing and content network are a handful of ways marketers can stay informed. Knowing the words that convert the most in PPC campaigns can tell marketers what types of keywords on Web sites to focus …

For non-SEO experts who want to learn more about 404 pages, Rand Fishkin's latest post on redirects may seem like a bunch of random and jumbled numbers. But Fishkin explains how 404s effect SEO and when it's appropriate to use 301s to redirect pages. To make his point, Fishkin refers to a recent project. In his example he explains the client receives a lot of search queries on the site, many of which map to category and subcategory pages that act more like landing pages than search-query pages. He explains some pages don't have content for one …

Keywords in Twitter tweets teach people the importance of optimizing the 140-character real-time bites of information. Reminding us that relationships are built on tweets through keyword searches, Joshua Odmark runs down a few tips and tricks to getting your tweets noticed. He believes there are two types of keywords in tweets: the word "seo"; and the hash tag, "#seo." When deciding on the keywords to use, Odmark points to a few things to remember, such as Twitter has problems with punctuation, uses absolute matches, word recognition, and shortened URLs. Timing is everything, especially in the world of …