Results count; whether it’s in spite or because of all those “20 percent time” projects floating around, and the company’s frequently touchy-feely way of handling business matters, Google has been quite clear on this issue.  So it’s nice, but not a huge surprise, that Alex Eckelberry was able to announce, “First, we can ring the all-clear bell.  Google took action on these domains and you won’t find them anymore in Google.”

Eckelberry is the president and CEO of Sunbelt Software, so you can pretty well believe what he says.  It was, for that matter, Eckelberry and his team who first discovered the malware links within some of Google’s top ten results, so they’re very much on top of the development.

“[I]f you use search terms like ‘inurl’ and ‘site’, you won’t see these malware pages in your results,” Eckelberry pointed out earlier this week.  “Clever, since that’s one way for malware researchers to find stuff . . . .  And, it only cares if you’re coming from Google. . . .  Quite interesting.”

Also interesting is the fact that Google hasn’t made reference to this episode in any public space that we can find.  Still, if everything’s safe(r) now, a little intentional forgetfulness probably doesn’t matter too much.

Credit appears to go to Trader Mike for discovering the list; it was hard enough to find that we’d begun to wonder if something sneaky might be going on.  That doesn’t appear to be the case, however – among the 93 corporations that made the Nasdaq Internet Index are major names like Yahoo, Netflix, Jupitermedia, IAC, eBay, and Baidu.

Also, it’s impossible to complain about the Index’s performance – in its two days of existence, it’s risen from about $152 to $159 (although admittedly, the rest of the stock market has also had a nice Tuesday and Wednesday).  Its ticker symbol, by the way, is QNET.

QNET might become a refuge for those who don’t feel like riding a single Internet company’s rollercoaster, or for those who don’t want to pony up over $690 for a single share of Google.  On the other hand, it’s not perfect – NaviSite, which suffered some embarrassing (and serious) problems earlier this month, made the cut.

Unvalidated Robots.Txt Risks Google Banishment

Webmasters welcome being dropped out of Google about as much as they enjoy flossing with barbed wire. Making it easier for Google to do that would be anathema to being a webmaster. Why willingly exclude one’s site from Google?

That could happen with an unvalidated robots.txt file. Robots.txt allows webmasters to provide standing instructions to visiting spiders, which contributes to having a site indexed faster and more accurately.

Google has been considering new syntax to recognize within robots.txt. The Sebastians-Pamphlets blog said Google confirmed recognizing experimental syntax like Noindex in the robots.txt file.

This poses a danger to webmasters who have not validated their robots.txt. A line reading Noindex: / could lead to one’s site being completely de-indexed.

The surname-less Sebastian recommended Google’s robots.txt analyzer, part of Google’s Webmaster Tools, and only using the Disallow, Allow, and Sitemaps crawler directives in the Googlebot section of robots.txt.

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It’s a humorous proposition. What would Google’s homepage look like if the company had to design it for indexing? Would it be able to keep that famously clean shaven face?

Palo Alto Joe thinks not, and has created a nifty SEO play-by-play to transform the homepage from clean to cluttered by adding links, new content, and keyword density.

Next to "social bookmark spam facilitators" (otherwise known as buttons), my favorite part is about the keyword density. Google couldn’t just be "Google," but would have to refer to itself as Google Internet Search Engine several times on the page to ensure relevancy.

Classic!

Utah, Wyo., Lead Search For Teen Bride Site

Revealed to be a hoax orchestrated to bring attention to inconsistent state marriage laws (and attention is what they got alright!), supposed publicity director for the website John Ordover stirred up some hornets nests via radio talk shows. Snopes had them figured out as early as August, though.

Before it was more publicly unmasked as a hoax by the New York Times two weeks ago, the site had received 20 million page views – who knows how many now?

But Yahoo’s Buzz Index reveals most of the search traffic, as of Sunday, is coming from a very specific region of the country: Utah and Wyoming, especially, followed by Idaho and Montana.

"Whether that’s from outrage—or interest—we can’t say," writes Molly McCall, and we’re not going to venture a guess either.

But it is fascinating that the sparsely populated Western states showed much more interest – or outrage – than the Midwest, South, and Northeast.

ShopLocal Introduces Online Retail Index

The Index, updated monthly, is based on an average of 20 million monthly consumer visits to online store promotions that are featured on the sites of major U.S. retailers. The retail segments covered include computers, consumer electronics, office supplies, home improvement, department stores, mass merchants, grocery, drug and specialty stores.

ShopLocal found a strong link between shopper’s pre-purchase activity and in-store purchases.  A July 2007 ShopLocal survey of 23,600 shoppers online found that 65 percent made an in-store purchase within a week after visiting a site and another 23 percent within three weeks.

"ShopLocal has a unique vantage point for observing how the Internet is being used to influence in-store shopping," said Vikram Sharma, CEO of ShopLocal.

"The ShopLocal Index reflects that an increasing number of shoppers are using the Internet across a wide range of categories to decide what products to buy and where to buy them in their local stores.

The Internet’s influence on multi-channel shopping is growing, according to Forrester Research. The company projects that a quarter of all retail sales are impacted by the Web.

"Shoppers are increasingly turning to the Internet as a research tool prior to purchasing in-store," said Greg Sterling, founder of Sterling Intelligence. "The ShopLocal Index is a helpful new barometer and scorecard for online-influenced offline shopping."

The Spartan Internet Political Performance (SIPP) Index employs 650 quantitative factors focused on finding out the level of interest a candidate is generating online. Each factor comes from numeric values on the Internet such as social network outreach, Web site traffic, blog presence and search engine utilization. The score for each candidate indicates their overall ability to reach people online and connect on issues.

"This can be compared to counting the number of digital yard signs and bumper stickers posted for each candidate on the Web," said Ryan Vartoogian, President of Spartan Internet Consulting.

The index was created because of the growing influence of the Internet in the political process. According to a July study from iCrossing.com, 42 percent of voters will turn to the Internet for information on the 2008 presidential candidates.

"In the 2008 presidential election and beyond, the Internet will play a dramatic role in shaping the decision support mechanism for voters," said Vartoogian

Weekly updates of the index will be published every Thursday online, with charts comparing the position of each candidate.

ClipBlast To Index Metacafe Video

Metacafe automatically promotes the most popular video content on its site, so viewers can find something they are likely to want to watch. The VideoRank system measures viewer’s interaction with and reactions to videos, and displays the ones that receive the best audience response.

"As video continues to proliferate on the web, it becomes increasingly important that we organize content in a way that makes it quick and easy for people to find something they’re likely to enjoy," said Erick Hachenburg, CEO of Metacafe.

"We’ve designed our site to meet that imperative, and ClipBlast!’s automatic indexing capability is another great way for people to find interesting and entertaining videos on Metacafe."

ClipBlast’s Video Navigator interface is designed according to how people interact with online video, allowing viewers to search, browse and personalize video.

"Our entire focus is making the Video Web accessible to as many people as possible, and this relationship is a key part of that promise," said Gary Baker, founder and CEO of ClipBlast!

"Metacafe has a wealth of content from a multitude of providers the world over. We’re now providing another platform from which viewers can find and enjoy that video."

The new feature to the Hitwise Data Center measures which candidates are the most visited online and which candidates receive the highest volume of searches. The sample of Hitwise data is available to the public.

The top Republican candidate 2008 Web sites for the week ending August 4, 2007 were Ron Paul with a 44 percent share of the market, followed by Mitt Romney with 16 percent and Rudy Giuliani with 11 percent.

The most popular Democratic candidate 2008 Web sites for the same time period were Barack Obama with a 40 percent market share, trailing was Hilary Clinton at 24 percent and John Edwards with 18 percent.

The Hitwise Election 2008 data is based on online usage and search behavior of over 10 million U.S. Internet users who interact with more than 1 million Web sites across 160 industry categories. The data updates every Tuesday.

There are nine categories that the Hitwise Election 2008 Data Center cover including Top Presidential Candidate 2008 Web sites, the Top Democratic and Republican 2008 Web sites, the Top 10 Presidential Candidate Search Terms, Top 10 National Political Web sites, Top 10 National Political Search Terms, Fast Moving National Political Web sites, Candidate of the Month and Election 2008 Blog Articles.

"As the Internet continues to evolve as a major communications channel for candidates and a platform for the public to research issues, we are delighted to share insights on how American Internet users react to political campaigns and policies online as the election unfolds," said Tessa Court, chief marketing officer, Hitwise

• Followed by webmasters with feverish interest
• Can cause intense depression
• Is linked to the visibility of web pages in SERPs (Search Engine Report Pages)
• Receives more attention than it deserves

If you guessed the Toolbar PageRank, as symbolized by that little horizontal thermometer (values from 0 to 10), then you’re right. Clearly the publishing of such an item would seem to be of questionable value to Google given the anguish it creates among clients. You would imagine the powers that be would be deciding when was the most appropriate time to cease publication.

Google apparently sees this in a different light for the moment. They do publish something else that is somewhat similar although certainly a number 2 choice as an answer to the question. You may not even be aware of it. In the SERPs you will occasionally see a web page result that has the words ‘Supplemental Result‘ added. That label is also an answer to the question. Given the concerns, Google has now taken action and as of this morning the label no longer appears. That doesn’t mean your web pages are no longer in the Supplemental Index. It just means Google won’t tell you whether they are or not. Danny Sullivan for one regrets its disappearance and would still like to be able to get the information in some way.

The big question remains. Does Google have an equal concern about that Toolbar PageRank? By the same logic, it should. There’s even more furious and inappropriate anguish and reporting on that. However a different answer may apply. Publishing or not publishing the Toolbar PageRank will not be decided by the Google technocrats. More likely it will be decided by the Google Marketing group. Like the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky Button’, it’s become part of the Google brand. The Supplemental label had no such redeeming quality. Since you can’t afford to mess with a winning brand, I guess the Toolbar PageRank is safe.

Related:

Supplemental Result in Google – Hell or Help

Google Supplemental Results Index – A Word To The Wise

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