Google’s Countdown To 2009 Promotes Products & Services

Did you know Google has a countdown to 2009 calendar? It is available at google.com/countdownto2009/ and it basically is a dressed up calendar with ways to use Google for the holidays. Each day of the calendar has a new Google tip for the holidays. There is also a mobile version and it can be added to your iGoogle home page.

So far, Google has offered tips on using Google Product Search, using Google Docs for greeting cards, searching for scores, conversions, gifts, and many other services. It is a cute way for Google to promote their search services. Here is a screen capture of what I see on December 16th at the countdown to 2006.

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Settings Section & Enhances Crawl Rate Controls

The Google Webmaster team announced three main things at their blog over the past day or so. The first we covered, was the new Google help discussions area. The second was adding a new settings link in webmaster tools to consolidate some features. The third item is enhancements to controlling your crawl rate.

Let me take you through the last two in more detail.

Google has moved four features to this new settings area. The features include setting your geographic target, controlling your preferred domain, opting in to enhanced image search and setting your crawl rate control. The crawl rate control will be discussed below, cause that feature was slightly changed. Here is a picture of the new settings page:

Google enhanced the crawl rate controls to let you either choose to let Google determine the best control rate or let advanced users pick their own crawl rates. Do note, like I said at the Search Engine Roundtable, some webmasters are reporting that they are unable to change their control rates. Here is a picture of the new AJAX slider you can use to change your crawl rate at a more granular level:

Free .EDU & .GOV Backlinks

Obtaining high-quality backlinks is obviously the undisputed king in any SEO campaign. You need targeted backlinks with good anchors to really drive your rankings in the SERPS.

Everyone knows about spamming around do-follow blog comments on Wordpress blogs but what about getting links on coveted EDU or GOV domains?

EDU and GOV links have authority. The problem with gaining backlinks on GOV and EDU domains is the work it involves and is generally impossible to search out any webmaster on those domains for a link exchange opportunity.

Fortunately there are tons of EDU and GOV domains out there– we just need to find them, and Google makes this process faily simple.

Running the Google command site:.gov or site:.edu will tell Google to only show results from those two type of domain extensions. So, if I wanted to find Wordpress blogs on .edu or .gov URL’s I would run something like site:.gov wp-admin or site:.edu wp-admin. That will give you a few thousands Wordpress blogs to check out, but also try site:.edu blog or site:.gov blog or site:.edu comment.php, etc. for other blogs that may have comment forms enabled. Those searches bring up a few million results.

Ever wonder how blackhatters compete on the most competitive terms in the world (like Viagra)? EDU backlinks of course! (And lots of other techniques)

So I’ve located a blog on the Harvard school site, actually a student blog hosted by Wordpress MU. Wordpress MU is great and I will discuss it further in a later post but regardless I have successfully placed a link on an EDU domain — Harvard Law at that. (and a note to everyone, thay have the MU blog creation turned off unless you own a Harvard domain e-mail address.)

And that concludes this tutorial. Getting quality EDU and GOV backlinks just takes a little bit of imagination, and with patience you will soon get in to the groove. It may take a bit of frustration starting out but once you hit the jackpot you’ll be thankful you took the time!