Matt Cutts from Google has mentioned that there areover 200 variables in the Google Algorithm that effect how your site shows up in their engine. Here are the top 50 that I could find:

Domain: Age of Domain, History of domain, KWs in domain name, Sub domain or root domain,  TLD of Domain, IP address of domain, Location of IP address / Server

Architecture: HTML structure, Use of Headers tags, URL path, Use of external CSS / JS files

Content: Keyword density of page, Keyword in Title Tag, Keyword in Meta Description (Not Meta Keywords), Keyword in KW in header tags (H1, H2 etc), Keyword in body text, Freshness of Content

Per Inbound Link: Quality of website linking in, Quality of web page linking in, Age of website, Age of web page, Relevancy of page’s content, Location of link (Footer, Navigation, Body text), Anchor text if link, Title attribute of link, Alt tag of images linking, Country specific TLD domain, Authority TLD (.edu, .gov), Location of server, Authority Link (CNN, BBC, etc)

Cluster of Links: Uniqueness of Class C address

Internal Cross Linking: No of internal links to page, Location of link on page, Anchor text of FIRST text link

Penalties: Over Optimization, Purchasing Links, Selling Links, Comment Spamming, Cloaking, Hidden Text, Duplicate Content, Keyword stuffing, Manual penalties, Sandbox effect

Miscellaneous: JavaScript Links, No Follow Links

Pending: Performance / Load of a website, Speed of JS,

Misconceptions: XML Sitemap (Aids the crawler but doesn’t help rankings), PageRank (General Indicator of page’s performance)

Have an hour or two to kill. Want to read something interesting?

• Dr. Sherry Jarrell: Finance and Economics in the Modern Economy – interesting pro-business commentary from a Wake Forest professor. I don’t agree with everything she writes but she backs up here points very well.
• The Moscow Times | Daily newspaper – I was an international relations major at UCLA – the USSR was one of my major focuses. While I was bummed that the cold war ended as it ended my ambitions to be a CIA agent in East Germany, it is interesting to see how other cultures report the news.
• Joe Saward’s Grand Prix Blog – I’m an F1 fan. I stumbled onto this blog. He has a large following and writes a lot of good blog posts about Formula 1.
• Search Engine Watch: Link Building Tactics 101 – I’ve been thinking a lot about link building lately (ohh how ironic now that I blog about some web sites…. LOL)

Not much to do with websites (well except the last one) but I like to look at interesting things not related to my normal job to get insight and creative ideas that I can bring back. I hope you enjoy them.

If you have any interesting links post a comment.

I was thinking today about the “price war” marketing campaigns that TimeWarner Cable and Fox are running. Time Warner Cable says that “some networks” (like FOX) want a 300% raise. I didn’t research the exact amounts but lets just assume they want more money for their channels as a given.

Fox retorts with the fact that TWC charges up to $36 for six channels. I’m not sure what market that is in, but here in Charlotte the minimum cable package was $12: “Broadcast Cable – Your popular local, network, community and public affairs channels.” For $30 you received 180 channels.

With all the discussion about Net Neutrality going on the past few months I am wondering if we would be seeing these kinds of debates in the future with Internet networks. Fox Internet makes TWC and Comcast pay more to distribute their websites and videos. Google/YouTube makes DirectTV pay a premium for HD YouTube Videos, etc.

You can find out more on the debate on each site:

• Keep Fox On – http://www.keepfoxon.com/
• Roll Over or Get Tough – http://rolloverorgettough.com/

Personally I don’t know why Fox has to charge more than what they would charge to broadcast over the airwaves (i.e. $0). Don’t they make money off commercials? I’ll have to ask some folks I know at Time Warner to clarify that for me. I’m guessing TWC has the right to input their own commercials at sometimes or something. I’d really like ala carte pricing because even though I have 300+ channels and duplicated HD versions, there’s just a few that I watch.

If TimeWarner REALLY wanted to get tough, they would just let FOX drop, lower our cable bills accordingly, then give their subscribers FREE digital antennas.

Google Suggest, Google Real-time Search, Google Goggle, Google Music Search … is Microsoft’s Bing or Apple’s iPhone the real competitor here?

I think it depends based on the vertical:

Google VS Apple = phones/pda
(e.g. iPhone vs Droid)

Google VS Apple = Online Music
(e.g. iTunes vs Google linking to music sites)

Google VS MSFT = Search
(e.g. Google vs Bing)

I think as the mobile phone becomes more and more important to the internet (and search) Apple will emerge as the major player for Google to compete with.