You've seen the (unsolicited) ads: Your website on Google page one search results for $99--Guaranteed!

I'm sure you wonder how they do it, what services they offer, and if they have any tricks that might actually be valuable for you. Well, before you fork over $99, the basic trick is that you are banking on the fact that a search will be for a specific keyword, phrase, or phrases.

When a given search phrase includes your brand, you may have improved your chances of attracting potential clients and customers. When the search is your brand, those chances might be a lot better. But you will get those improvements if--and only if--your brand is known independently of the SEO trick.

When the phrase generically describes your products, you are very likely to increase your traffic and your rate of conversion of visits to real sales. But if--and only if--web surfers are likely to enter that particular phrase. The content you offer about your product is key, but so is understanding how people will search for products like yours, so you can match keywords on your site with their searches.

Gaming the System and Playing Nice
Part of the game the SEO scammers play is to find popular keywords and embed them in your web pages. It's called keyword stuffing. Don't get me wrong, however: If the keywords are really in your content, this is quite legitimate.

To show you how to play the game, without charging you a penny, let's develop a strategy for a hypothetical SEO provider who wants to attract more clients:

First get yourself a Google AdWords account, which provides an analysis of your web pages, telling you its most popular keywords that appear to be relevant to your page. Our new site will want to include obvious terms like search, optimization, SEO, keyword, etc. (Note that an SEO expert would help you to use those keywords in meaningful ways in your content.)

SEO scammers will take this to the extreme, by assembling odd combinations of these keywords until they find search phrases that return your website on page one of the search results. They may embed the selected phrases in your pages, sometimes making the font white on a white page, so they are not visible to people browsing, but are seen by the search engines.

The engines give highest weight to visible elements like the page title, the first and second level heading text, and the opening text of a paragraph. They will read your meta="description" tag. They will be especially happy if your site has a robots.txt file and a sitemap.xml file to tell them what’s important and changing frequently on your site. And they have a special place for domains with the keyword in the name.

The Name Game
So next we look for a clever unregistered domain name as our company name, say SEO-123-GO.com. How did we come up with this? First we enter a candidate name into Google Search. If we find one that produces no search results, we will be unique. SEO-123-GO produces no results as I write this column, but it will be very different a few days after this column appears. As EContent's site pages are highly ranked and crawled frequently by the engines, SEO-123-GO will soon be in the Google database.

Since names are so low cost, I actually purchased http://www.seo-123-go.com and will put up a web page with this article. I will add links to my other articles and websites and a few resource links to great SEO reference pages. You will be able to see that Google will list it first in search results for the unusual site name.

Google has monetized the lexical space with its AdWords program, which sells keywords and phrases to the highest bidder for placement in Google search results. But, and this a big but affecting the cost of your AdWords campaign, Google charges you based on the "quality score" of your web page. Quality score is Google's judgment of the relevance of your page for those searching the target phrase.

Google is being responsible to its true customer base, not advertisers but those using the Google search engine. Google makes trolling for customers with bait and switch keywords very expensive. And if they decide you are keyword stuffing they may actually de-list your site

So it is best to find a good playbook to optimize your site, instead of trying to game the system. Just follow the best practice advice in books on search engines like David George's ABC of SEO, Fredrick Marckini's Search Engine Positioning, or SEO for Dummies by Peter Kent.

The bottom line is to create sites with valuable content full of the keywords you might purchase as Google AdWords. They will cost you more than the $99 the scammers charge. But just keep experimenting until your purchased words produce more sales (profits actually) than they cost you. Your best search result is a better bottom line.

Microsoft has announced Search Server 2008 Express, which will be available as a free download, and is said to combine simplicity of installation and ease of use with a powerful set of search features, including what the company says are new security-enhanced capabilities that help businesses connect to a wide range of information.

The company reports it has taken the enterprise class search capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and made them available as a stand-alone server for free. Search Server Express has no preset doccument limits, so it will scale to meet a company’s evolving needs. For users, Search Server Express provides advanced security and easy access to relevant, action-oriented results using a familiar Web search experience.

Microsoft has added federated search capabilities to the Search Server 2008 and reports that free connectors that index content from Documentum and FileNet are scheduled to be available across the portfolio of Microsoft search products in early 2008.

MetaLincs has launched Version 4.0 of its Enterprise E-Discovery Suite. The company says the new offering is the first integrated application that delivers all the core e-discovery functions and processes needed to meet enterprise-class requirements associated with litigation and compliance-related investigations.

MetaLincs further reports Version 4.0 incorporates a variety of new search and analysis features aimed at lowering the cost of legal and investigatory document review and enabling more powerful early case assessment, including:

• automatic topical clustering--MetaLincs 4.0 automatically creates hierarchical clusters of documents by grouping documents with similar content;
• context search--with Version 4.0, investigators can initiate a search based on any e-mail or document in the system and find more documents that are similar;
• instant clustering--the new context search feature allows reviewers to create custom clusters of documents around any document they uncover during early case assessment or review;
• scripting engine and interface--the new scripting engine with a graphical user interface allows common case management and analysis tasks to be customized and automated; and
• graphical query builder--new search operators and a graphical query builder make search more powerful and easier to use.

ISYS Search Software, a global supplier of enterprise search solutions for business and government, announced the availability of an ECI Adapter to enable customers of EMC Corporation's Documentum Enterprise Content Integration Services (ECI Services) to access data indexed by ISYS:web and to federate ISYS:web's search results. ECI Services is a federation engine that processes and distributes queries to corporate content already indexed by various third-party search tools; it then normalizes and displays the consolidated results. This level of functionality provides end-users with a comprehensive access point to search all of a corporation's content repositories from a single window. ISYS now provides ECI Services customers with a search engine, enabling customers to include ISYS:web indexes in their searches, as well as providing administrators with the ability to incorporate content not already indexed by other tools.

(www.isys-search.com)

Pixsy Corporation, a media search platform that powers private label video and image search engines, announced an agreement with online travel and leisure retailer lastminute.com. Under the terms of the partnership, lastminute.com will utilize Pixsy's media search technology to operate a travel focused video and image search engine. Pixsy's media search technology enables lastminute.com to operate a vertical multimedia search engine, giving users the ability to search millions of travel photos and videos while simultaneously shopping for travel services.

(www.pixsy.com, www.lastminute.com)

ACIS Consulting Inc, a Canadian reseller and systems integrator of powerful search and knowledge discovery solutions from Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), has released its newly redesigned RapidAnswer V3 FAQ Knowledgebase Management System; a Search Derivative Application (SDA) that directly integrates with FAST's Enterprise Search Platform (FAST ESP).

RapidAnswer V3, according to the company, is a complete Web 2.0 solution package that enables product owners and customer support departments to work in collaboration, with direct web based access to their respective product FAQ Knowledgebases, for end-to-end management of their product FAQs starting from initial creation; through approval workflow; to publishing to the website. FAST ESP is then used to automatically process this content and serve the search results along with the rest of the site search results.

Users can search the knowledgebase or browse by category to discover the most relevant and the most active FAQs. Category ranking is influenced by user interaction. The most frequently accessed information gradually moves to the top of the list. Questions at the top of the category list gradually move down if these are not being accessed for a long time.

The RapidAnswer solution leverages FAST ESP capabilities in natural language processing, rank tuning and relevancy modeling to quickly deliver precise answers to customer questions.

CMS Watch, a vendor-independent analyst firm that evaluates content technologies, has found that the software-as-a-services ("SaaS") model for enterprise search has faltered, as hosted players fail to make inroads into enterprise-wide scenarios and appliance vendors increasingly address the kind of simpler scenarios typically fulfilled by hosted services. CMS Watch finds at least three reasons for the decline of SaaS search: 1) SaaS offerings have been limited largely to website search scenarios. 2) The rise of search appliance vendors (especially Google) has cut into demand for simple, web-oriented solutions of the type offered by SaaS vendors. 3) Google's own hosted search offering, although targeted at the SMB market, has likely dampened enthusiasm among potential competitors.

(www.cmswatch.com)

VentureForward is employing visualization and mind mapping technology to reveal connections between products, market research and ideas. It's using BrainEKP, TheBrain Technologies' Enterprise Knowledge Platform, to help companies map internal knowledge to gain competitive edge.

VentureForward, which focuses on knowledge management services and support, will use BrainEKP to organize, visualize and share complex sets of research, ideas and strategic innovation practices for internal patent management and collaboration with its Fortune 1000 clients.

The solution connects related information from a variety of sources, so users can see how key ideas and all aspects of a product line fit together, as well as identify new avenues of innovation, TheBrain reports in a recent news release. Furthermore, the solution's search display and linking technology reduces time to market by allowing users to discover connections that would be missed in standard search lists and folder directories.

Sandy Ping, CEO of VentureForward, says, "With the amount of information people are faced with, creating an environment where ideas and collaboration flourish is a challenge. Accumulated information can inadvertently contribute to confusion and overwhelm research teams, if the content isn’t presented intuitively. With BrainEKP’s intuitive user interface, key relationships and ideas are instantly visible."

VentureForward has been granted hundreds of patents during many years of product development—Tide Buzz Ultrasonic Pen, Swiffer WetJet and Cascade Action Packs, to name a few—and has become a reseller of TheBrain Technologies.

Iron Mountain has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Stratify for approximately $158 million in cash. Iron Mountain reports the move will enhance its suite of e-discovery services, providing businesses with a complete, end-to-end discovery services solution that efficiently manages paper and digital information for discovery and data investigations, compliance and associated records management and litigation matters.

As a division of Iron Mountain Digital, Stratify will continue to provide its electronic discovery services and software to AmLaw 200, Fortune 500 and other firms for investigative, regulatory and litigation matters, augmented by Iron Mountain's scale and distribution. The Stratify Legal Discovery service enables organizations to drive down the total cost of review by providing in-house and outside counsel with a comprehensive, easy-to-use, high-productivity review and analysis solution.

Connectbeam introduces Social Computing Appliance Version 2.0, which it describes as the first integrated social bookmarking and social networking applications appliance for plug-and-play deployment and integration into the enterprise environment. Connectbeam further claims Appliance 2.0 helps enterprises add social computing capabilities to their existing IT and business environment to improve information worker productivity and business innovation. Key features of Connectbeam's appliance include:

• collective intelligence discovery--secure collective search toolbar,
• information discovery--social bookmarking and tagging,
• people discovery--social networking,
• expertise location--live profiles, and
• group sharing--project communities.

Web content management provider FatWire has acquired Infostoria, which develops Web 2.0 collaboration and content sharing tools for the enterprise. Infostoria’s technology enables single-click wiki creation and blogging, and provides a content integration platform to help organizations manage, find and securely share content stored in disparate repositories.

FatWire's Content Server helps organizations build, deploy and manage Web sites and online communications from a simple interface. The company claims that with the addition of Infostoria functionality, its customers can significantly improve the Web experience they offer to drive increased loyalty and sales.

Omniture has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Visual Sciences. Omniture says the combined company will offer substantial scale and resources to deliver products and services that address the rapidly expanding online business optimization market. It adds that the new company will be able to accelerate investments, meet a wider set of customer needs through a richer solution set and have a greater opportunity to grow into new markets.

The stock and cash transaction is said to be valued at approximately $394 million. According to the agreement, Visual Sciences shareholders will receive $2.39 in cash per share and a fixed exchange ratio of 0.49 shares of Omniture stock for each Visual Sciences share, on a fully diluted basis. Based on Omniture’s closing price on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2007, this yields a total consideration of $18.04 per share. Upon the close of the transaction, Visual Sciences stockholders will own approximately 13.7 percent of the combined company on a pro forma basis.

The acquisition, which is expected to close in early- to mid-2008, is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval of stockholders of both companies and regulatory approvals.

MuseGlobal, a provider of comprehensive search products and management systems worldwide, announced the launch of its content access platform by Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2007 enterprise suite. With Muse technology, SharePoint customers are now able to provide search of and integrated display of information from local and licensed content to their users within the organization's SharePoint portal.

(www.museglobal.com, www.microsoft.com)

Recommind, a provider of enterprise search, automatic categorization, and eDiscovery systems for law firms and enterprises, announced the availability of the MindServer 5.1 platform, which combines navigation and grouping controls over external content with multi-layered security to deliver a search framework. This latest version of Recommind's flagship MindServer enterprise search platform is intended to bring the full potential of federated content to organizations with high relevancy, intuitive navigation, and strong security. In addition to finding information from within an enterprise's applications, databases, file servers, and other repositories, MindServer 5.1 delivers external results to a single UI via out of the box integrations with a number of online publishers as well as public sources. Search management controls support restrictions across secure content, enabling only users with specific access rights to perform searches on certain external content (e.g. on password protected subscription sites or pay per search sites).

(www.recommind.com)