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Showing posts from October, 2010

SEO - The Beginning of the End

Over the past 5 years, web publishing was heavily dominated by SEO or search engine optimization. So much so that keywords became far more important than a site's actual content or audience. But this movement towards SEO seemed to be quiet dangerous, for web owners deviated from their most important goal of creating great content, to false goals, such as paid links, keywords and hacks that the audience primarily doesn't even care about. Furthermore, even venerable publishers like Forbes, completely traded in their leadership legacy, in order to chase the Huffington Post pufferfish strategy of filling up Google’s database with more posts, more low-cost content and more frequency. While, stalwarts like Time Inc. seem to be chasing SEO basics. However, the recent announcement of the Bing and Facebook partnership, which will integrate social and search results, clearly marks the beginning of the end of SEO, and some of the smartest digital publishers will soon be dropping everythin

Google to Offer Free SEO Reviews and Tips for Your Website

The Google staff has always provided advice on how to organize and manage your web site in the best way possible. This further assists you in increasing your Google ranks. After all, Google would want the best of the web sites up there. All this happened only at live site clinics and conferences up till now. This time, however, Google has started issuing a call via the Webmasters Central blog that it owns. This site invites people to submit their web site and get a brush up on their SEO tactics, absolutely free of cost. Google will use its SEO advice scrubbing brush on the registered sites and dish out a few handy tips or so. Of course, there are certain rules that apply to this whole arrangement. Only a non-profit or a government site can be submitted to the Google Webmaster blog. Also, all the analysis and advice will be posted with the screen shots of the web site. This will be done so that all can benefit from it. Likewise, this offer is exclusively aimed at beginners. So, it might

Optimizing for Google TV

Google TV is finally in the market and what’s so special about it? Well, it has got a browser in it. Can you believe that! Of course with Google, anything can happen. So, if you have video content as a part of your marketing campaign, you might want to optimize it for larger audiences and screens. Google has also published some optimizing tips which you can follow. In their blog post, they have suggested an optimization tip for the 10 ft user interface and instead of a mouse you will have to use a remote like they have done in YouTube videos with YouTube Leanback. The text will be viewable from a short distance and the navigation can be controlled with the arrows of the remote. The Google TV site optimization guide also provides tips on how you can implement the 10 ft UI in practice and offers site architecture as well as URL structure recommendations. If you are designing for mobile devices, first decide whether you will be using a device specific style sheet with a one piece content

Google's Privacy Debacle Reaches its Peak

Recently, Google seems to be getting quite a bit of rekindled heat, over some private data it collected without the necessary permissions, in more than thirty nations. The British Information Commissioner's Office has been asked to take a closer look at the evidence that Google made available this year, after the company admitted that cars carrying Internet eavesdropping gear were sent to take photos, for its Street View mapping service. Along with U.K, Canada also seems to believe the fact that Google may have indeed collected a large amount of sensitive information and not just "fragmentary data," as the company had earlier indicated. Canada's Commissioner of Privacy, Jennifer Stoddart, said that "Some of the captured information was very sensitive, such as a list that provided the names of people suffering from certain medical conditions, along with their telephone numbers and addresses," she went on to say that, "It is likely thousands of Canadians

ValueTrack Tool Updated for PPC Marketing

ValueTrack is a tool that has been designed for advertisers that use third party software’s for their campaigns. It has also been structured for those advertisers who have total access to web logs. Recently, Google announced the current updates for ValueTrack. Jason Shafton, writing on Inside AdWords, says that the changes made will help a lot. They will make things easy for the users of the Pay per Click services of any company. With the help of the updated tool, they will be able to separately monitor the clicks on search and content ads. He added, “With the additional ValueTrack enhancements available today, you can track even more detail including the keyword matching option for your ad clicks”. The keyword matching option for the ad clicks is achieved by an extra network parameter and match type to the destination URLs. All this can be explained with the help of an example. Say, someone clicks on an advertisement from a search partner. This advertisement must be triggered by a bro

Google Testing its Ultra High Speed Internet Network

Google is trying to launch a 1 Gbps broadband network for 850 faculty and staff homes at Stanford University campus in 2011. Currently they will install it for an experimental test drive. Google has struck a deal with the University of Stanford to build a broadband network that will fuel the Internet speed to 1 gigabit per second. The experiment will start early next year. This is Google’s latest effort to test how the ultra high speed broadband access works in homes. This could mean the current residential online connections would be 100 times faster. The search engine depends on fast speed broadband connections and they have ensured its applications that they would serve their consumer effectively. They also proposed to test such networks in American communities that serve 50,000 to 500,000 people. They will announce the selected community or communities by the end of this year hopefully. The network for now will be installed at the Stanford University’s residential subdivision on th

Google Instant is Important for SEO

When Google Instant was launched, everyone thought that nothing new could ever be innovated in the realm of SEO. That Google had finally reached a dead end. But, have you ever tried to analyze the importance of SEO in terms of this new innovation? Google Instant promises a new search experience for the users. Not only that but it is on a mission to bring down the influence of unethical SEO methods on search ranking. Google Instant is a major development in the search technology as it is saving us time and at the same time filters the search before we even hit the search or enter key. When you type in the keywords, you don’t have to hit the search button or push the enter button. With each letter that you type, Google will predict the result and you can see them at the page bottom as you type. When you see your search result, you can just stop typing or continue typing till you get it. This way Google Instant saves time significantly by eliminating the need to click on the search or the

Google Offers more Transparency and Control over Location

Google has always focused on providing their users with more relevant results. Location is one key factor that they have been using to customize the way we find information. Now, they have moved the location settings to the page result’s left panel. That will be seen easily and we can also control our preferences. Though there is nothing new in the search relevant results but it will be easier for us to see the location and make any changes as per our choices. Google is doing their best to detect the most useful location automatically but sometimes, we do not get the right results and we would want to change the whole setting. We may also want to change the location to explore another area for more relevant information. The location that we can set can be as specific as an entire nation or a particular zip code, but it will lead us to more relevant search results. To see the setting, just click on “View Customizations”, which can be seen on the result page and if you want to modify the

First Personalized Doodle by Google

Google's Doodle's have always been extremely aw-inspiring to all those budding artists out there and to the layman as well. They tend to put up some amazing pieces of art on their homepage from time to time. This time, they have taken doodling to a whole new level! Google has now found a way to even wish us, their user's, on our birthdays through their Doodle's! If you visit Google’s homepage when you are signed in, and it happens to be your birthday, you can see a special Doodle linking to your Google profile. You will be able to see colorful confetti and a birthday message – just for you! Google strives to make the search experience for their users smoother as the time goes by. But, it is not just all about the searches but about the users. Doodles are a fun part of the whole search experience and Google is sharing these little interesting ways to help celebrate their users big day. If you include your date of birth on the Google profile, a special treat will be seen

What Facebook and Microsoft Could Learn From Google

Although Google shares a ‘love or hate’ relationship with Facebook and Microsoft, it is important however, for the latter two to learn something from the legend. Google is credited to have 66% of all searches, a slight increase from the past few months. While on the other hand, Facebook and Bing are combining their force to improve the search engine results. Facebook and Bing may try different means to throw down Google but they seem to make the same mistakes over and over again. Google may be a search giant but it is definitely not a search company. One of the strongest strategies that Google took in the last quarter lies in its advertising. That helped them gain a 23% hike in the growth. They have done a great job to match the ads that someone might click on to the person searching and they do it on a straight content. Facebook has been driving a huge amount of traffic but as compared to Google their revenue is pretty small while Bing is way behind both. Google actually is an adverti

Google Vs Facebook? The Battle Is On

Google and Facebook are both battling for future dominance on the web. With Microsoft and Facebook’s partnership, Google has received the biggest threat since their inception. Facebook and Microsoft announced that they are teaming up to make Internet search more social. Now, if you search for something on Bing, you can also see whether your friends liked it or not. This way, it will be easier for any searcher to get opinions from friends before purchasing or making any decision. This is an interesting innovation for search and it is quite obvious that Facebook had to turn to Microsoft for this deal and not the search giant Google. Just imagine, if they did, Microsoft and Yahoo would have to wait for centuries to dominate the search market. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, however said that they had a specific reason for why they had to choose Bing. According to him, Bing has serious potential and are the real underdogs. Microsoft has always been all about innovating. They have got some o

Facebook siding with Microsoft to fight Google

Microsoft has announced that they are partnering with Facebook, integrating their search engine into the most popular social network. After the September’s search share results, it looks more like Bing will be trying to take on Google, after the search giant saw an increase in its share. When Bing is integrated into Facebook, it will unlock the wide potentials of social networking. But more so than Bing vs Google, the most likely partnership to occur is that of Facebook, who has been trying in earnest to overshadow Google. From mid August till last week, Facebook’s engineering team were in a lockdown mode and they emerged to unveil an updated Facebook Group and a lot more of other improvements. Google on the other hand, is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to forcing its way into the social networking scene. So far, Google has been failing to amass as much attention as Facebook, but the latter is beginning to become fidgety as they know that Google's efforts may just pay off

Search Share in September

Now the September search share is out and here’s the verdict. Google is gaining the share and Yahoo is collapsing. Ok, here’s the detail. For the first time in several months, Google has gained a modest share. We have seen Bing and Yahoo having a tremendous growth in the market share for the past few months and Google was spiraling down a bit. Now, they can heave a sigh of relief as this modest amount of growth may be a sign showing an upward trend. Yahoo’s share has dropped significantly and Bing’s share is steady but the share between Bing and Yahoo together has lost again to Google yet again. The total US explicit core search volume has increased to 16.1% Y/Y last month and accelerated from 13.0% growth in August. Google’s domestic explicit core search share was 66.1 % last month and it grew a meager share from august which was 65.4%. Yahoo’s share decreased to 16.7% last month and a meager drop from August which was 17.4%. As for Bing, the share grew to 11.2% last moth and the numb

Google Upgrades Search Appliance 6.0 to Index Billions of Documents

Google Search Appliance 6.0 is receiving a touch up to keep up with their reputation of providing the best search solutions. The new upgrade will boost the capacity of indexing the search device to billions of documents. In the new GSA software, there is a more flexible structure that helps to link the devices with ease and increase the indexed documents. There is more. Google is introducing GB-9009, a new model that will index up to 30 million documents instantly. The least capacity of indexing is 15 million documents. The Google Search Appliance is a hardware box consisting of enterprise search software Office 2010, which is a powerful feature. It has been designed to let organizations index and retrieve data in the corporate systems. The data is indexed in systems like document management tools, Web servers, files and applications databases. This software is based on the technology that Google uses in its Web search engines. This new upgraded capacity of indexing would be a breakthr

Yahoo! Search BOSS V2 Coming Soon

New details about Yahoo! Search BOSS is out. Yahoo said that the BOSS will be a transition to a paid model early next year and the new version will be rounded up with monetization options and with advanced security access. Yahoo launched the BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) in 2008 for providing developers with a way to leverage the search infrastructure and enhance innovation. The BOSS API is connected to Yahoo’s search infrastructure currently, which allows, start ups, individual developers and established consumer Internet companies to take advantage of Yahoo’s search capabilities. Initially the latest BOSS V2 platform will provide a cost-per-query model. The cost will be based on the type of services that is used and will vary from $0.40 to $0.75 CPM (cost per 1000 BOSS queries). Developers will have the option to legalize the search experience through the ad marketplace that will result from the Microsoft and Yahoo Search Alliance. Yahoo also plans to provide a nominally-price

Google Seeking Twitter to Upgrade their News

Google is now testing a new feature that will bring Twitter into Google news. This is not an addition of tweets within the news mix but it is rather a means for users to customize their experience while using the Twitter followers. Though Twitter has been integrated within the Google news, it may emerge as an actual feature after testing. This feature consists of a small box to the right side of the page which allows users to connect with their Twitter accounts and see when people followed and what the users are discussing about the news. The feature’s description says that it allows users to find out news articles that other friends are sharing on Twitter. But the articles that will be shown at the Friend section will be found in Google news only. If the person you followed has shared a link or an article that cannot be found in Google News then that update cannot be seen in the Friends section. It is not clear whether the links analyzed by Google for the feature will include blogs or

How to use Google Latitude on a Computer in an easy way

There are ways to use Google Latitude from a computer but do you know the easiest way? With Google Latitude, you can start using Latitude apps, see where your friends are and share the location from one place when you are at your comp. Finding Friends: The Latitude was launched along with a desktop iGoogle gadget to allow users to stay in touch with friends and family who don’t have a smart-phone. A desktop experience is vital to users even if they are not using Latitude on the phone. You can visit any dedicated site that will make it easier to use Latitude when you using your comp. More with Latitude: You can also see that both Latitude and Latitude apps are in one place together. After you browse the friends list, turn on the optical Latitude when you go to the History or Apps tabs. The following are the optional Latitude apps that you should turn on: Google Location History (Beta) to view personal history dashboard, Google Location Alerts to get alerts from nearby, Google Talk Locat

Now iPhone is coming with Google Goggles

When you have Google in your mobile phone, it can be a great experience to search anything. Now, you can learn a lot about the world with the help of your phone’s camera. Google Goggles was introduced in December last year and it lets you search just by clicking pictures. Google Goggles is now available as a feature of Google Mobile App for iPhone. The Google Mobile App allows users to make queries, and it in turn uses the phone’s location to provide more relevant search results. In this new version of Google Mobile Application, you only have to tap on the camera button to use Goggles. The images will be analyzed by Google and it will highlight the objects it recognizes. You have to click on them and find out more. The computer vision is still a hard nut to crack and Goggles is still a young product from the lab. It is working well for some things like logos, landmarks, book covers, games and DVDs. But, it still has to work for some things like plants, food and animals. The Google Gogg

New Faster Image Loading Format Launched by Google

Google’s commitment to making the web faster has always been interspersed with problems, but has come out stronger than ever. Recently, they have announced an internally developed image format specially for use on the net. This could have a huge impact on the page loading speed. Photos and images take up 65% of the bytes that are transmitted per web page. It significantly slows down the web experience. The JPEG, PNG and GIF formats were established over a decade ago and are out-of-date formats. This led to Google trying to see if they could find a way to compress the images to load faster in an HTML browser without reducing its resolution or quality. They tool the wraps off the WebP image format. It is an open source project which is derived from related work to improve the video image compression. After random tests on 1 million images picked from the web, Google has determined that the average advantage to use the WebP format is 40% without any noticeable loss in the visual quality.

Google Instant and Link Building

Most SEO specialists were not happy with the arrival of Google Instant. Another innovation, another long way to master the technique. It did wreck havoc on their nerves, but has anyone thought about Google Instant and link building? When you look at the Google search results as of September, you will find no articles or info regarding Google Instant and link building. Considering the merit based link building, which remains the most effective way to assure a site of long term ranking success, at least people should talk about it. There are so many articles written on Google Instant and how it is affecting or not affecting something but not a single article has been written on its impact on link building. Now the question is, does it really affect link building or haven’t they fully understood about it? The final result of Google search will remain the same as before Instant came and the existing links and total link signature as well as single produced - nothing changes. All you see ar

Google Street View reaching all 7 Continents

There are some unique and spectacular places on this planet and now Google has given an opportunity for all to see these places from the comfort of our home or office. This is a great news for all of us as Google just announced that Street View is available in all seven continents. Now Street View imagery has been added in Ireland, Antarctica and Brazil. As we know road names and street addresses are quite difficult to come by in Antarctica, but Google has developed a Street View image gallery, which will help people get started in Antarctica and other locations around the world. This is a cool adventure as we can explore the world that is hard to reach and at the same time it is a good marketing and public positioning for Google, especially when they are in this ongoing privacy and legal issues over Street View. Google has updated in its blog post that the Street View images in Antarctica are quite limited to the area known as Half Moon Island. You may also see many photos across the