Google Posts Record Number of Searches in Q2

Google's 5.65 billion U.S. queries placed it at the top of the Web
ferret pack for the quarter, followed by Yahoo, with 4.65 billion
queries and a 30.4 percent market share; MSN, with 2.39 billion
queries and a 15.6 percent share; AOL/Time Warner, with 1.41
billion queriesand a 9.2 percent share; and Ask Jeeves, with 934
million queries and a 6.1 percent share.

Source: http://seo.canadian.com/

Google combats Spam with Humanpower

Google uses Human power all over the world to evaluate the accuracy of Google’s search results in its effots to combat Spam.

These “international agents”, who are paid $10 to $20 an hour, were recruited mainly through universities. They’re paid to check search results at Google every day.

Journalist Henk van Ess has caused a flurry of excitement on blogs and forums by revealing the existence of:

Google’s 'Spam Recognition Guide for Raters' which is the document provided by Google to their 'international humanpower agents' as a guideline for locating and downranking webpages set up by Spammers.


Source: http://www.marketingdefined.com/blog/archives/2005_07_01_md_archive.html

Why GOOGLE is World Best Search Engine?

Google today, is undoubtedly the World’s BEST search engine and has been acclaimed for its ranking procedures and policies. We believe that Top-10 ranking on Google will enable your website to have similar or even higher search rankings on other Search Engines and Sites like Yahoo!, AOL, Netscape, AskJeeves, Webcrawler, Hotbot, Alexa, NBC, BBC etc. And of course, Google’s 70 search engine listing country wise, separately. Google covered countries like Deutschland, France, UK, Japan, Korea, Columbia, Italy, Switzerland (Schweiz), Canada, Mexico, Netherlands, Belgium (België), Chile, Australia, Argentina, Panamá, Austria (Österreich), Poland (Polska), Denmark, Taiwan, Russia, Brazil, New Zealand, Suomi, India, Pakistan, Dominican Republic, Singapore, Turkey, Mauritius, British Virgin Islands etc., all appear here. Click here for Complete List


Source: http://o3.indiatimes.com/india_seo_expert_seo_expert_india/archive/2005/07/02.aspx

Lessons learned in the first 60 days on a new site follow:

1) Google crawls 250 pages on first discovery of links to site. Then they don't return until they find more links and crawl slowly. Google has failed to index new domain for 60 days.

2) Yahoo looks for errors pages and once they find bad links will crawl them ceaselessly until you tell them to stop it. Then won't crawl at all for weeks until crawling heavily one day and lightly the next in random fashion.

3) MSNbot requires robots.txt files and once they decide they like your site, may crawl too fast, requiring "crawl-delay" instructions in that robots.txt file. Implement immediately.

4) Bad bots can strain resources and hit too many pages too quickly until you tell them to stay out. We banned 3 bots outright after they slammed our servers for a day or two. Noted "aipbot" crawled first then "BecomeBot" came along and then "Pbot" from Picsearch.com crawled heavily looking for image files we don't have. Bad bots, stay out. Best to implement robots.txt exclusions for all but top engines if their crawlers strain your server resources. We considered excluding the Chinese search engine named Baidu.com when they began crawling heavily early on. We don't expect much traffic from China, but why exclude one billion people? Especially since Google is rumored to be considering a possible purchase of Baidu.com as entry to Chinese market.

Source: http://www.seo-news.com/

How to Submit Your Site to Directories

Submitting to Open Directory

DMOZ is run entirely by volunteers and your site submission must be hand-reviewed by one of these volunteers before it can be considered for inclusion. DMOZ is extremely under-staffed and it can take 6 or more months before your submission is reviewed – you must be patient. When submitting to DMOZ, make sure you follow the directory submission guidelines and prepare to wait, wait and wait some more.

Procedure to follow for a successful DMOZ Submission:

1) Submit site
2) wait for 3 months
3) follow up email to category editor
4) wait for 3 months
5) escalation email to category editor above your category
6) wait for 3 months
7) ask for assistance in the Open Directory Public Forum
8) wait for 1 month
9) escalation email to DMOZ senior staff

Rules of Submission

1) Do it once: Despite the hype, there is NEVER a need to resubmit to a search engine or directory unless your site is dropped entirely (which is a very rare occurrence).

2) Do it properly: Be very thorough when submitting, especially to directories. Take the time to research and locate the most appropriate category for your site.

3) Be brief: Don’t waffle on about your site in the description field. Get to the point and describe your site in a short sentence or two.

4) Be accurate: Don’t try to trick potential visitors by using vague or misleading descriptions about your products or services.

5) Be relevant: There is a fine line to tread between relevance and keyword optimization when creating your site descriptions for submissions. Try not to cross it by using descriptions over-stuffed with keywords.

6) Be humble: “Best Web Site in the World!!!!” is not going to convince anyone and may earn you the wrath of search engine editors.

7) Be patient: Search engines and directories can take up to 6 months to index and list your site. Re-submitting won’t help things and could result in your site being shoved to the bottom of the review pile.

Source: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/How-to-Submit-Your-Site-to-Directories.htm

Grokker is a good clustering search tool.

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, Grokker is a nice tool to visually see the results from your searches. If clusters the search results as some of the other search engines have started to do.

If you've ever gone to Clusty.com, you will see a similar type of result. What I like about the Grokker tool is that it's very easy to drill down into the results you want and presents them in a nice way. It gives a lot of flexibility with the results to see what you want to see. When you drill down to the ultimate result you want, you will see a sidebar page which will give you that web site in a thumbnail version which you can click on to go to it.

It's a helpful tool which will give people the option to see things in that context of groupings rather than just raw listings. I think this is a trend for the future to cluster results into logical groups. Right now, when people are searching the lists are endless and a little bit confusing. By clustering them together, people can get the information they need in a specific area which will give them more of the results that they would want.

Before, all you could do was go through pages and pages of results, but now you can get clustered results and that should give better direction to people doing a search.

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SearchEngineNewsOpinionsForImprovedOnlineMarketing

Optimizing for Google AdWords' New Quality Score System

In the coming weeks, Google will release a new method for deciding when your ads show up. Out with the old system of "on hold, in trial and disabled" keywords and in with "the quality based system," where keywords are either active or inactive.

How Google will derive the Quality Score:

"New keywords will no longer be disabled or have a minimum clickthrough rate (CTR) threshold. Instead, your keyword will trigger ads as long as it has a high enough Quality Score (determined by your keyword's CTR, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors) and maximum CPC."

Because there are more exposed aspects of the algorithm, you have more control over where your ads appear in the ranking.

Think the Quality System sounds simple? Think again.


Source: http://www.virtuawebtech.co.uk/news.php?s=2

Comparing MSN Google and Yahoo Optimization Techniques

Two search engines, Yahoo! search engine and the newly revised MSN Search, both are vying for supreme positioning to compete fully with the search leader, Google.

In more than a few ways, the website optimization techniques that work well in Yahoo! will serve you very well with the MSN Search algorithm. Many of the same optimization methods work for both search engines. The emphasis placed on creating keyword rich content on topic-centered pages as well as off page content, lets you get double value from your optimization efforts with either search engine.

Yahoo! and MSN search engines both share in common the importance placed on targeted content. With both search engines, content is clearly king.

To obtain a higher “score” and search engine ranking Yahoo! and MSN Search, we recommend maximizing your keyword densities. This also helps with the overall Google ranking algorithm. But unlike the Google algorithm which involves many facets of their ranking process, MSN and Yahoo! are more partial towards extra heavy use of keywords and keyword phrases.

A good SEO technique for writing on page copy (which really is no SEO technique at all) is to write it naturally. The targeted keywords will appear as needed, and you must always keep in mind what the topic page(s) copy it all about. Enhancing your site’s conversions from site visitors to paying customer or client is another area to never forget when writing good search engine copy. Dedicated uses of the right search engine keywords and also their synonyms may result in your site gaining additional high rankings for other related search terms as well.

Write good search engine friendly content for your site visitors and your rankings will do well in the search engines as the keyword phrases will appear naturally and not seem forced into places where they obviously don’t belong. To accompany this, always keep in mind that relevant on-topic cross linking between pages or sections of the site can help boost your search engine placements as well.

Source: http://seoposition.com/blog/index.php/archives/2005/07/

Directories and Your SEO Campaign

Web Directory vs. Search Engine
First, a quick refresher on the difference between directories and search engines. Directories differ from standard search engines in that a search engine will query a database of indexed websites before it produces results, and a directory is a database of websites that has been arranged by subject or category. Most directories have search functionality but the websites are still listed in specific categories.

As far as inclusion of your web site, typically a search engine will find your site on its own, whereas with a directory you have to submit your site for inclusion. Sometimes the process of getting into a search engine's index results from their crawler finding your site listed in a directory.

Do People Search By Directories Anymore?
Should we worry about making sure our sites are listed in directories? Do people still use directories or go straight to a search engine such as Google to find what they are looking for? To answer this question, I went to my server logs, which track all activity on my sites. As I expected, the majority of traffic coming to my web sites was from search engines, but to my surprise I did see some directory referrals as well. They were not in great numbers, but all the same they were still there.

Therefore I would say directory inclusion, at least in the free directories, is important because they may send you some traffic. It may not be in great quantities but with the ever-increasing competition on the web, I'll take traffic from wherever I can get it. Besides, if it is free, why not take a few moments to submit your site?

The Disappearance of Free Directories
Free directories are becoming scarcer all the time. Most are now requiring some kind of fee for inclusion; whether that is a one-time fee or some kind of recurring fee. We have to ask ourselves then if it is worthwhile to pay these fees or should we just forget about paid directories altogether?

For the little bit of traffic they may bring you I would say no. However, there are additional benefits a good directory can provide. The first benefit would be to brand new sites that are trying to gain inclusion into the indices of the top search engines and the second is that they will contribute to your site's overall link popularity score.

Source: http://seotoday.com/browse.php/category/articles/id/503/index.php

Google launches Google Moon

(July 20 2005) No it's not a matter of Google preparing for Moon colonization. It is rather an attempt to use Google Maps to present images from the lunar surface.

With the help of Google (and NASA) you can now surf the Moon's surface and check out the exact spots that the Apollo astronauts made their landings. And yes, it is all in memory of the first lunar landing on July 20, 1969.

According to Google's own blog the new site was launched in a week. These people definitely know how to tell a good story!

It should be noted that our colonization theory is not to far off the mark though:

According to the Google Moon FAQ Google can confirm that on July 20th, 2069, in honor of the 100th anniversary of mankind’s first manned lunar landing, Google will "fully integrate Google Local search capabilities into Google Moon, which will allow our users to quickly find lunar business addresses, numbers and hours of operation, among other valuable forms of Moon-oriented local information."

We are all looking forward to it.

Source: http://www.pandia.com/searchworld/

Pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and campaigns are the premier way of advertising on the internet. A PPC campaign lets you determine exactly who comes to your website. Additionally, an important advantage is that you only pay for actual click throughs to your site. In other words, you only pay if a person clicks on a link or banner and lands on your site (also called pay-for-performance advertising). If the person only sees your link, but does not click through, this is called an impression. You should not pay for impressions.

Using clickstream analysis, a tracking system will tell you what people do on your site once they arrive through PPC advertising. This information is necessary to manage your advertising, and determine the best ways to:
1. obtain quality traffic
2. ensure that visitors are converted into customers
3. stimulate action that brings revenue

PPC advertising is based on keyword selection. The entire internet advertising market revolves around choosing the correct search terms and keywords. Well managed PPC advertising will bring traffic that achieves your goal, or 'desired outcome', whether it is to publicise an event or sell goods and services.

Quality is more important than quantity: ‘Quality’ traffic refers to traffic that is well-targeted. This means that the visitors:
1. are looking for what you are advertising
2. enter the site and look around
3. complete a transaction or become a lead (i.e. convert)
4. come from countries and regions that you are interested in
5. return to visit your site again

Quality traffic will bring you a higher percentage of success, in terms of seeing your visitors complete a transaction, or subscribe to the service that you provide.

List of companies who sell PPC traffic: Google, Enhance (ah-ha), Overture, FindWhat, Kanoodle, ePilot, LookSmart, Search123, eSpotting.

Source: http://www.opentracker.net/en/articles/pay-per-click-ppc.jsp

Target ‘Internet Marketing’ Responsibility

Blogs are being used by some Internet marketing people to boost their rankings on search engines without actually developing any useful content on their blog.

Developing useful and relevant content is an effective tactic for generating a number of links to your site. Setting up a blog and just including a series of keywords in the blog is a fast way to having your website banned by search engines. Search engines don’t like link farms and these types of practices, if discovered will get your site banned.

To produce effective Internet marketing you have to consider who is going to read your content, not just the search engine spiders, people search, and when a searcher reaches a website they are looking for content that makes sense and is useful. A series of keywords is of no value to anyone.

A company’s content strategy is very important to its success in getting higher search engines rankings, both from developing a lot of good content and generating interest in the content that produces a lot of backlinks.

Source: http://seoblog.backbonemedia.com/2005_07_01_backbonemedia_archive.html

Fresh Content

This is very common slogan in the SEO world today. Even people talk about getting natural links to the site by adding good content. Assumption is …..other webmaster will link your site because you have ‘good’ content.

Content is very useful for visitors, even for commercial sites, we can add good relevant content and visitors will love that. Is that make considerable number of ‘natural’ links, in other words, other webmasters will links your site because of good content. How many links you can get this way per months?

I don’t think it is a good and efficient way to get links and probably you will get one link per month. Will they use keyword you want in links? But is that mean content is useless? No, good and fresh content help for visitors and visitors will love your site and that may lead visitors to buy your product. It helps to get lot of new keywords if the content is relevant to the keywords your target. Sure, content helps but not to get new ‘natural’ links as highlighted in some SEO forums.


Source: http://easytool.org/seo/news/2005/07/

Google to create realistic 3D mapping solution

Google will soon be using trucks equipped with lasers and digital photographic equipment to create a realistic 3-D version of San Francisco, and eventually other major US cities that will be available from its interface.

The move would trump Amazon’s A9 service, which offers two-dimensional photos of buildings on US city streets.

The trucks would drive along every San Francisco street using the lasers to measure the dimensions of buildings, to create a 3D framework onto which digital photos can be mapped. This would complement the mostly top-down view of San Francisco available through Google’s Keyhole satellite photo application.

The goal is to create similar 3D online versions of other cities in the US and overseas.

There have been several test runs of the specially equipped truck along San Francisco streets.
One problem is that vehicles and people can block the automated laser and digital photo systems. This could be eliminated with a second pass, but Google wants to achieve results with a single run.

Researchers at Stanford university are working on this and other city related projects. For example, here is another Google-funded Stanford project.

The Google 3D project would be used to highlight and distinguish the company’s push into local business listings—the next big opportunity in online advertising.

Source: http://www.seomasters.com/news/

The most popular Search Engines in the US currently are: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL& Ask Jeeves

About Google:
67.1 million unique visitors in December 2004*
Google has become the pre-eminent web search engine. It started out in 1999 and has become the largest index in the world, comprising more than 4 billion web pages which can be searched in often less than half a second. If printed, this would result in a stack of paper more than 227 miles high.

About Yahoo!:
49.7 million unique visitors in December 2004*
Yahoo! is one of the best known and most popular Internet portals. It originally started out as just a subject directory, but has grown to become a search engine, directory, and a portal. In Feb. 2004 Yahoo! introduced its own search engine database which appears to be primarily from the search engine Inktomi. When performing a search on Yahoo! you will get category results from their directory, several paid listings from their partner Overture, web sites within their new database. Yahoo! also has an image database similar to Google’s and provides yellow page searches, product searches and news to their users.

About MSN:
37.7 million unique visitors in December 2004*
MSN's new Search Engine, Like Google is based on a page ranking system and will return search results based on relevancy to a user’s search. So far they claim to have over 5 billion web pages indexed. It also features the ability to search MSN Encarta's online Encyclopedia. Images and News searches are also available.

About AOL:
25.4 million unique visitors in December 2004*
AOL’s search service is primarily used by AOL subscribers. It’s search results come from both Google’s database and directory listings provided by the Open Directory Project (DMOZ).

About Ask Jeeves:
11.7 million unique visitors in December 2004*
Ask Jeeves Search Engine ranks search results based not just on the global popularity of sites but also on linking patterns within individual subjects. For example, if many financial-related sites linked to a particular page, that page would have higher results in a financial-related search.

Source: http://www.101webbuilders.com/web_design_seo_news.htm

Yahoo to translate German search terms into English

Yahoo is to launch a new service that takes German search queries and translates them into English and French, and returns results in German from around the globe.

Currently, less than 10 percent of all Web pages are in German, so when German speakers search the Internet for information they are missing out on the huge amount of content that may be useful to them but is in a different language, said Eckart Walther, vice president of product management at Yahoo Search.

The beta, or test version, of Yahoo Suche (Search) Translator, available at Yahoo's German search site, will make it possible for people to search knowing only their own language.

The test site includes a search option that turns on the machine-based technology that performs the translations on the fly. After a query is typed in, it translates it into English and French, searches across the Web and provides a list of result abstracts in German.

Each item has an accompanying link next to it that points back to the Web page in its original language. When a result in German is clicked on the entire Web page is then automatically translated into that language. Walther concedes that there will be mistakes because it is machine-based translation, which is not nearly as accurate as human translation.

The next language Yahoo will tackle is French, followed by additional languages in Europe and Asia in the coming year, Walther said.


Source: http://news-01.rankforsales.com/news-bq/001184-0714050965735516-sem-news.html

Google's market share fell slightly in June

According to comScore Networks, U.S. search data for June showed that Google's market share fell slightly, as Yahoo and MSN both made small gains.

Google's market share of U.S. searches for the month was at 36.9% compared with 37.5% in May, after having an increase of 100 basis points in May.

Yahoo had a 30.4% market share, a gain of 23 basis points, and MSN had a share of 15.7%, a gain of 48 basis points.

Bear Stearns noted that Google's query volume rose 36% year-over-year versus a 28% increase for the industry, outpacing Yahoo's 32% increase but trailing MSN's 42% increase.

Sequentially, Google's query volume declined 6%, which compares with a 4% decline for Yahoo, a 1% decline for MSN, a 4% decline for Time Warner unit AOL, and a 7% decline for Ask Jeeves.

The research firm noted that for the second quarter, unique searchers versus the year-ago quarter increased 31% for Google, 21% for Yahoo, and 14% for the industry, while the number of searches in the quarter increased 38% for Google, 42% for Yahoo, and 31% for the industry.

Bear Stearns cautioned investors not to rely too heavily on only U.S. volume data to form an investment opinion for the quarter "as other factors such as international traffic (which we will report soon), click-thru rates and pricing should be considered."


Source: http://news-01.rankforsales.com/news-bq/001187-0719050864621962-sem-news.html

Yahoo expirements with MyRank search technology

Yahoo hopes to build a more personalized and community based version of the web with their new "MyRank" system. "My Rank will be part of the latest My Web version dubbed 'My Web 2.0'. The first My Web allowed Yahoo users to archive their search results and share them with other users. This latest version will attempt to make the next logical step.

Yahoo users will be able to bookmark and cache copies of their favorite web sites as well as labeling them in certain categories and attaching personal comments. Users will then be able to search among their peers' knowledge base using Yahoo's "MyRank" search technology.

The company has stated that it created My Web and "MyRank" to deal with three problems facing today's searcher:

1) Search engines are limited in their ability to answer opinion-based queries such as the definition of the best plasma television review site. The reason is that search engines are impersonal and purposely do not capture opinions and recommendations of friends and experts.

2) Search engines are not able to always interpret the meaning of a user query. For example, a user searching for The Beatles' record label Apple Records might instead be directed to the more generally popular Apple Computer web site.

3) According to a spokesman for Yahoo search ", Today’s search engines can deliver great results ... but typically do a poor job of connecting you with new items that might be interesting, timely and personally relevant. Your friends and people who share common interests with you are better sources for this information..."


Source: http://www.seoproject.com/news/yahoo-myrank-search290605.shtml

Google kicks out cyber squatter: Sets precedent

Google has one yet another cyber battle, and in the process, has set a new precedent of sorts. It has defeated a cyber squatter that owned various domains based on common misspellings of the word "Google". The mega search company has won a ruling from the National Arbitration Forum giving it control of these domains. The NAF gave Google control of googkle.com, ghoogle.com, gfoogle.com and gooigle.com which had all been registered by Sergey Gridasov of St Petersburg, Russia.

The panel uncovered the fact that Gridasov registered the addresses after Google had launched. It ruled that the web addresses were confusingly similar to Google's and that Gridasov had no legitimate rights to them and was using them in bad faith by attempting to profit from misspellings of the branded term "Google". The domains sent browsers to web sites which tried to download trojans and spyware.

Gridasov did not respond to emails, faxes or letters from the arbitrators, so I'm assuming that he is not the most legitimate of businessmen. This case may lead to other arbitration disputes regarding the use of domain names that are similar to branded domains, so don't bother buying domains such as "yahop.com" or "msj.com".


Source :http://www.seoproject.com/news/google-typosquatting-ruling110705.shtml

Google kicks out cyber squatter: Sets precedent

Google has one yet another cyber battle, and in the process, has set a new precedent of sorts. It has defeated a cyber squatter that owned various domains based on common misspellings of the word "Google". The mega search company has won a ruling from the National Arbitration Forum giving it control of these domains. The NAF gave Google control of googkle.com, ghoogle.com, gfoogle.com and gooigle.com which had all been registered by Sergey Gridasov of St Petersburg, Russia.

The panel uncovered the fact that Gridasov registered the addresses after Google had launched. It ruled that the web addresses were confusingly similar to Google's and that Gridasov had no legitimate rights to them and was using them in bad faith by attempting to profit from misspellings of the branded term "Google". The domains sent browsers to web sites which tried to download trojans and spyware.

Gridasov did not respond to emails, faxes or letters from the arbitrators, so I'm assuming that he is not the most legitimate of businessmen. This case may lead to other arbitration disputes regarding the use of domain names that are similar to branded domains, so don't bother buying domains such as "yahop.com" or "msj.com".



Source: http://www.seoproject.com/news/google-typosquatting-ruling110705.shtml

Directories Help Build Link Popularity

What is this "link popularity” and why do you need it? Link popularity is a score that is accessed to a web site based on how many external and internal links are pointing or linking to any particular page. External links would include those that come from any other web site other than your own whereas internal links would be those that come from within the same domain name. Link popularity is also based not only on the "quantity" of links but the "quality" of those links as well. Therefore to have a good link popularity score, it is not necessarily required to have a large number of links pointing to your site but rather a good number of quality links.
This is where directories can help. Many of the top directories that I will mention shortly have good link popularity that can be passed on to your site. They also have specific category pages that are related to the nature of your site. In a day and age where link popularity is becoming more important in order to be found in a search engine, directories are a fairly inexpensive way to increase your own link popularity.

"Can't I just ask other web site owners to link to my site or exchange links with me?" Sure you can but this can be a very tedious and cumbersome task. First there is the time-consuming task of finding other quality and relevant sites to seek links from. Then there is the reality that most link requests go unanswered. I get tons every month that are simply deleted. "But if I build a great site, won't others naturally link to it?" Maybe they will but how does one get to the point where they have a great site and to where it is "out there" so people can find it? A lot of hard work!

Therefore I firmly believe that directories can be foundational for building link popularity and a very important reason why a web site owner should make sure they are included in them. It is a step in your marketing that you can easily control. It is a task that can be completed quickly and then you can move on to other things.

Source: http://www.seotoday.com/browse.php/category/articles/id/503/index.php

Google, Yahoo gets most RSS buzz in first half of 2005

Microsoft, who recently announced that its upcoming Longhorn platform will include support for RSS, along with its Internet division, MSN, garnered 10% of interest, making it the leader among the tier-two buzz generators that also include Ask Jeeves (6%), Mozilla (5%), and Bloglines (5%).

The news story that got the most attention over this period was, unsurprisingly, about monetizing RSS: RSS feeds attract venture dollars. Interest from venture capitalists, such as veteran Internet investors Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, helped push RSS to the next level. The article mainly focused on start-ups like Rojo, but also mentioned Google and Yahoo, which helped boost their visibility in our BT Trax tool. Other popular stories included the purchase of Bloglines by Ask Jeeves, Kanoodle’s bold move into pairing advertising with RSS, plus Google's, and MSN's addition of content feeds into its MyMSN pages.

RSS and similar formats like Atom, have spread like wildfire since the XML-based syndication technology was introduction in 1999, a time when it was better known as Rich Site Summary. Since then, feed aggregators and search engines emerged and innovation outstripped the original design goals for RSS, giving rise to pod casting and emerging corporate uses.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Research/index.php?p=227

The Three Principles

Speeding Up Image Load Times

The main idea behind making an image load faster is to make the file size smaller. The smaller the image, the smaller the file size. Imagine an image that is a square 80 pixels by 80 pixels. The number of pixels contained in the image is 80x80 or 6400 individual pixels. If we reduce the image size by one half to 40 pixels by 40 pixels we then have 40x40 or 1600 pixels. So reducing the image size in half reduces the file size to one fourth of the original.

This is our First Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Use the smallest image dimensions that will work with your layout.

GIF images are limited to 256 colors per image, are better at displaying images with large solid blocks of color and images with very small physical dimensions. The GIF format will produce smaller file sizes than JPEG for these types of images.

JPEGs reproduce photographs very well. The JPEG format will produce smaller file sizes for these types of images than the GIF format will.

This is our Second Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Choose the correct image format for the image you are using. Most web pages will contain a combination of GIF and JPEG images.

Decreasing the coding is called image compression. Both GIF and JPEG images can be compressed but the process is different. In GIF images we try to limit the number of colors, in a JPEG image we use software algorithms to remove redundant information from the file.

This is our Third Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Find the least acceptable level of image quality. Most images can handle some compression with very little quality loss, and all images can stand more image quality loss and still be acceptable. Your job is to decide how much quality loss you can accept. In other words, the lower the quality, the smaller the file size.

GIF images can usually be reduced from 256 colors to 128 colors or less, the fewer colors used the smaller the file size. JPEG images can almost always be reduced to a quality setting of 80% and frequently can be reduced down to as little as 15-30%.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2005/july/8.html

How to Hotwire Your Site to Google!

RSS

RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication.' Basically, RSS allows you to directly deliver your content to all interested parties... don't come to us; we will deliver the information to you or your website. It syndicates your content.
It was first used by News sites to send updated headlines and brief summaries to all interested parties. Many people associate RSS with Blogs or Blogging because Blogs are usually written in XML or RSS format (code like HTML) so that these headlines and postings can be easily read and accessed.
Actually, Google has just introduced a new XML powered Sitemaps. You are basically setting up a direct 'hotwire' -- linking your site to Google. Any or all changes on your site can now be instantly updated and indexed by Google.

Add RSS Feeds to Your Site
Another way to attract the search engines is to place high quality RSS feeds on your site related to your subject area. Use these feeds to provide valuable content to your visitors.
And it's quite simple to do; just add "&format=rss" at the end of the URL in your Msn search engine query. For example, to get an RSS Feed for 'tsunami relief' you would use this url:

http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=tsunami+relief&format=rss

Conclusion

Trying these RSS positioning strategies will give your site added visibility on the web and a greater presence in the major search engines. It will create dynamic links to and from your site and this will result in faster spidering/indexing of your sites. You should be using RSS to basically 'hotwire' your site or sites to the major search engines such as Google, Msn and Yahoo -- in fact, it should be your number one priority.

Source:http://www.seo-news.com/archives/2005/july/7.html