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During Search Engine Strategies San Jose back in August, I did a video interview with Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team. It will be uploaded to the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel on YouTube tomorrow.

Why the wait?

As Maury Sline explained to The Blues Brothers, “A gig like that, you gotta prepare the proper exploitation.”

So, here’s a taste of what you can look forward to seeing and hearing in tomorrow’s video interview: Matt talks about his job interview at Google before he joined the company as a software engineer in January 2000. He takes a look at trends in the industry, including mobile search. He praises an iPhone App developed by Barry Schwartz, President of RustyBrick. And he discusses the Cuttlets, the people who crowd around him at every search conference.

And what can you do today to ensure that you don’t miss the Matt Cutts video interview tomorrow? I’m glad you asked.

First, go to the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel and take a quick look around. You’ll find there are now 184 videos from SES London, SES New York, SES Toronto, and SES San Jose 2008.

According to YouTube Insight, these 184 videos currently have more than 45,000 combined views. That’s about three times more views than the number of people who attended these four conferences and expos this year.

And there will be more video interviews added during and after Search Engine Strategies Chicago, which will be held Dec. 8-12, 2008. That’s a lot of content — and a lot of insights from top search experts and the search engines themselves.

Now, some of these video interviews are uploaded to YouTube during each SES conference. But others are uploaded in the weeks and months following a show.

So, if you want to be alerted when the Matt Cutts video interview has been posted, all you need to do is hit the orange “Subscribe” button in the upper left hand corner of the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel, which already has 142 subscribers.

To embed one of these video interviews, just copy the code from the “Embed” box — which you can find in the “About This Video” box when you’re watching the video. Once you’ve copied the code, just paste it into your website or blog to embed it.

And if you want to embed several of these video interviews, use the Search Engine Strategies video widget. It will let you customize a SES Video Player Widget for the audience on your website or blog.

For example, in the header options, I selected the standard link and said I’m blogging at SES Chicago. For my playlist content, I selected videos of everyone, picked two thumbnails with a maximum of 25 results. And for my format option, I selected a vertical orientation. And the SES Video Player Widget generated the code for me to past into this blog post.

Now, I could have selected a customized header. And after going through an authentication process, I could have customized my playlist — and display only videos of my company. Or I could display videos of everyone, but with videos of my company first. You can see an example of this on the SEO-PR website.

Or, you can see an example of a more bi-partisan approach on the Search Engine Strategies Chicago home page — just below the fold. (By the way, if you register by Friday, Nov. 21, you can save up to $200 with the Early Bird rate.)

Now, I don’t need to explain the benefits of adding video to your blog. Search engine marketers and popular bloggers understand that already. But consider the benefits of adding relevant content from the latest SES conference and expo — quality content that can be customized for your audience. And, don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself. It is useful content that your website’s visitors will find beneficial or your blog readers will find valuable.

What’s the catch?

Well, if you select videos of everyone, then you might end up with a Matt Cutts video interview on your website or blog. And if anyone watches it, that would give the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel on YouTube more views.

Or, as Elwood told Maury Sline, “I know all about that stuff. I have been exploited all my life.”

Google’s AdWords API team has released version 13 of the open source tool. The update includes the following:

• New geotargeting options
• Active campaign and ad group retrieval
• Campaign budget suggestions
• Quality-based bid and quality score support
• Mobile Image Ad support
• Easier MCC account hierarchy retrieval
• MCC Alerts support
• Search volume data returned in KeywordToolService
• Minimum bids no longer supported

For more on the updates, read the release notes:

AdWords API advertisers will also receive 20% more API units from now through January 15, 2009. Here’s how it works:

• All developers can purchase API units at the rate of 1200/$0.25, up from 1000/$0.25, from now through January 15th, 2009.
• Advertisers who are eligible for free API units will receive credit at the rate 300/$ of AdWords spend, up from 250/$ of AdWords spend. They will be credited the holiday bonus based on their spend in previous months.

Related Reading:
AdWords API Gets Local Database Sync Update
Conversion Optimizer Now Supported by Adwords Editor and API
Google Adds Pricing Model To Google AdWords API: Opens Commercial Use

Today, there are more updates to Google products than you can shake a stick at. So intead of writing a bunch of short, little posts, I have consolidated them into one for you, faithful SEW reader.

Both my awesome husband and my awesome 11 year old son have pointed out to me the new changes to iGoogle. I personally don’t use my iGoogle page all that much (Keepin’ it real [simple]), but I did browse over to it and found some cosmetic changes (The Foo Fighters theme was already there.)

Notice the tab on the left hand side. It includes links to the widgets on your iGoogle page. When you click on one of the links, it switches to a screen with that widget. Some take up the whole page. Others present a list of similar widgets as suggestions. Still others make use of Google reader to present a feed.

Moving on to other Google properties….

Webmaster Tools now testing a Message Center warning that alerts webmasters to possible vulnerabilities with their Content Management Systems (CMS).

Google TV ads has announced new partnerships with COREMedia Systems and Harris Corporation. The COREMedia partnership allows CoreDirect customers to view their Google TV ads right along with their CoreDirect data. The Harris Corp. one adds more inventory for Google TV advertisers.

AdWords has separated the metrics for Google and search partners such as Ask, AOL, etc. This is probably in preparation for the implementation of the Yahoo search advertising partnership.

Last but most important is the changes to the Google algorithm regarding Adobe Flash. Brian Ussery has a writeup about it on his extremely minimalistic-looking blog. Basically, he finds that indexing of Flash still isn’t ready for prime time. I know there may have been some hope with recent news of Adobe working with Google to provide better indexing, but we’re just not there yet, folks.

And that concludes the flurry of Google updates for Friday, October 17, 2008. Leave your thoughts, impressions, etc in the comments!

Trust Google to come up with something new and useful for countless users all around the world. We have talked about the Google Keyword Tool and Google Alerts in previous posts. This time, they launched a new tool called Google Insights.
So what is new about this tool? Computer World reports:
Google Inc. yesterday [...]

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I have a disclaimer before I say anything else – I am not that knowledgeable when it comes to Google Alerts. Oh, I have used this feature every now and then but I have not really played around with it much. I think that it is my loss – especially after reading about [...]

There have been much discussion recently about using the “nofollow” attribute to sculpt a website’s PageRank for ranking purposes, a practice commonly known as PR Sculpting. If you are not sure what I am talking about or you want a visual description to help you understand, then I recommended you take the time to read the bucket post (even though it ignores PR flowing back in the opposite direction, but that is a post for another day).

PR Sculpting has been the focus of much controversy in the SEO space; most SEO professionals are either against or do not think that there is any value in PR Sculpting. Some have come to the conclusion that PR sculpting is bad for a website. Their reasoning: only SEO people know about PR Sculpting, so if a page is sculpted, SEO pros must have worked on the site. According to Eric Lander from Search Engine Journal, if you PR Sculpt, “you might as well alert the engines that you not only aware of optimization, but you’re willing to go out of your way to protect your site.”

Somehow, just knowing/doing SEO is enough to raise a red flag with Google. In other words, optimization is by its nature blackhat.

Of course, that’s a patently ridiculous thing to say. Matt Cutts from Google even went out of his way at the Web 2.0 conference to state very clearly SEO is neither Spam nor bad. Matt even addressed the PR Sculpting issue in a linking Q&A: “In general, worry more about the high quality of your site. After you’ve taken care of it, then think about sculpting.” Cutts sees nothing wrong with PR Sculpting on its own, but does qualify his statement with the coda that “Google is against abusive manipulation.” As we’ll see (and is often the case with SEO) the key word here is “abusive”.

The only post to date, backed by actual data, that I have seen that comes close to showing that PR Sculpting could hurt a site is from Branko Rihtman from 10s Search Marketing here in Jerusalem. His post is about Google penalties and how they may be keyword- and destination-specific. His client did some PR Sculpting and Branko concluded that the client was penalized due to “a combination of the implementation of nofollow and a significant difference between the on-page and off-page optimization.” Branko finds that the nofollow by itself wasn’t what “caused the penalty in this case,” rather “it was a combination of signals that caused the infamous red flag to be risen above the customer’s site.”

What Branko fails to mention in the post is how much PR Sculpting the client actually did. In the comments, when asked about the quantity of sculpting, he answered, “I would say that the percentage of followed pages was much smaller than the nofollowed ones.” That sounds like more than just some PR Sculpting; it sounds like abusive sculpting. (Branko also thought that the abruptness with which he did the nofollowing might have been abusive, although we’ve seen speed to be much less of an issue than quantity.) And as Matt Cutts emphasized, doing anything abusive in SEO will raise a red flag, whether with keyword stuffing, link stuffing or PR Sculpting.

So there is really no data to support the fact that properly-executed PR Sculpting will hurt a site. Google is already aware that SEOs exists, and—as Matt Cutts stated—has no problem with them as long as they are not “abusive” in their SEO practices. Cutts also said that after you work on the overall quality of your site, it makes sense to “think about sculpting.” It doesn’t seem like a practice to which Google objects, as long you do it with the same care as other SEO tasks. In fact, we’ve seen some great results from PR Sculpting—but that will have to wait until the next blog post.

Kalman Labovitz, Senior Account Manager at RankAbove, co-wrote this post.

No, this isn’t the latest update of Google Maps Guide to Grand Theft Auto IV.

This is the real deal: Manhattan crime committed in New York, NY and depicted over a two month period from April 2008 to the end of May, 2008.

Spotcrime.com claims it’s the most comprehensive online source of crime information. The site is probably right. They offer local maps, crime reports, crime classifications, and real-time interactive maps.

Soon you’ll be able to find the exact location of the Manhasset High School lockdown as reported by News 12 Long Island, where two students were found at the Manhasset high school carrying firearms.

Spotcrime.com is a Google Maps mashup. Sure Google I/O and 3D apps have drawn all the media attention lately. We thought it would be worthwhile to keep our readers safe in this dangerous world.

You have your choice of crime alerts if you’re interested in a particular illegal act, or if you need to brush up on definitions of illegal acts, Crimespot.com offers a handy index of crimes:

SpotCrime.com Crime Classifications

* Theft - The act in which property belonging to another is taken without that person’s consent.

* Burglary - The criminal offense of breaking and entering a building illegally for the purpose of committing a crime in that building.

* Robbery - Using force or intimidation to take property away from another person in the presence of that person.

* Assault - A physical attempt or threat to use violence with the intent to do harm to another.

* Arson - The crime of intentionally setting fire to a building or property of another or the burning of one’s own property to collect insurance.

* Shooting - The act of firing a weapon in order to hit, wound, or kill someone or something.

* Vandalism - The intentional destruction of or damage to the property of another.

* Arrest - The seizure of an alleged or suspected offender to answer for a crime.

Plus, you can drill down to see the details of the crime. Oh look, here’s one that occurred uptown just from last week:

Shooting - 126th St and Lenox Ave, New York, NY 2008-05-26

EMS command is reporting 10 people shot in total. During this situation multiple foot pursuits, random gunfire, and a RMP MVA took place. Several large pockets of crowds are within the confines this large scene. Ems command has given a general summarization describing the victims as either yellow or green tag patients.

Of course, if you’re a criminal it doesn’t hurt to know what neighborhoods have been overfished by your fellow criminal element. It’s all here for you at Crimespot.com, with new service available on the iPhone.

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