Morning July 01, 2010 Google AdWords was banned from Google search because of cloaking its help pages. If Google banned its AdWords- “money” page, what can we entrepreneurs expect? Maybe its Google Honesty or Googlebot software? Anyhow it’s the second time that I know Google banned its own pages.
Looking closer the snippet for the Google AdWords Help was strange looking, the page was different from the page that visitors suppose to see.. I checked the Page source and found different content (not relevant to the pages) especially in header with markings “hidden”
Google spokesperson told us that some Google support pages were inadvertently showing different content to the Google crawler than to users but it's fixed now.
Conclusion: We have to be aware of Google preparedness to quickly find and bane website for showing different content for search engines then to content users.
Different Platforms are sending different contents: blogs, microcontens, website contents. For Real Time Search results URLs, meta data are significant as a signals that help search engine understand:
• What the content is all about.
• Where does particular content come from.
• Content association with the subject matter
There are many dilemmas about continuing to publish articles when the microcontent is so popular. According to Dylan Casey, Search Product Manager at Google we definitely need to continue publishing fresh content with the focus on frequency and quality, which Google delivers and value as any other content.
Our other concern is if old content has any value today. Just recently Google launched Twitter Archive Search which retrieves all old tweets.
How about paid ads vs. Natural content? Google doesn’t make a difference. Ads are created on real content bases with relevancy in mind. Well SEO ad is treated equally as natural content in real time search. There is actually no real connection between natural content and paid ads because what ever changes in natural live search, will not influence paid advertising.
Social networking is a great player in real time search opening the daily microcontent to the world. Google like it because the more content available online the better result are selected.
News in real time search is Google favorite. It’s very hard to get the news the same moment it happens. Real time news is always prioritized as latest news.
Google is still struggling with real time search but they are evolving with the promise to improve.
3 years ago Facebook Platform for different Social Networking was launched
Today the new Facebook Platform is improved for more social and personalized experiences and networking everywhere online. Facebook Connect is an important shift from social platform focusing on the web not only social network themselves
Key features are:
Open Graph-We know that the web exists of unstructured links and pages. Open Graph puts the people at the center of the web and shows a Map connection between. If we put all this Graphs together we will get a social web. In other word web is becoming a set of connection between people and things.
Instant Social and Personalized experience where ever you go.
Make all of this very Simple to do.
More then 400 mil people are on Facebook and growing. With this Platform especially with Connect it's growing 5x faster. We Simplify Platform with changing some policies
Connect dialog box which combine all dialogs in one step permission and when a user come to your site you show a dialog box with all the different information and permission you need (explained clearly what info has been shared) so they just click that application.
Before we couldn't store or cashe any received data for more then 24 hours. Facebook will soon get rid of that policy too. Now when person get to your site and you give them permission to access it the cashe is stored so the person doesn't need to ask for permission over and over again.
Google is progressing in giving users more useful information about the page they are about to open. With the Rich Snippet it's easier for user's to determine the relevancy related to their interest. Nevertheless it's beneficial for webmasters to label their content ( like address, name, specific product type, product price..)
Improved listings is called rich snippet and can appear on the search result pages or Google Maps (Place Pages).
Google currently supports the following information types: reviews, people profiles, business listings, and events. Read more
NewSocial Networking Tool-Buzz-Google Buzz They say Twitter is simple to use. True, but usually what is so simple is not so usable. Twitter is simple but very limited. For example: Your message can't exceed more then 140 characters. There is no text formatting. No option to paste photos or videos. No message filtering. You can't rank people or messages. Google Buzz on another hand is very similar to Twitter (Social Networking Tool) but with much more to offer. There is no text limitation in message box. You can give "Thumbs up" for messages, forward messages to an e-mail or even post a comment through the e-mail account. Comments and replays stay attached to posts. There is an option to link Buzz to Flickr, Picasa or YouTube accounts. When launched, Google Buzz automatically assigned a followers to your Buzz from the people you contact and chat the most frequently via Gmail. But the knead is this; anyone who follows you can see all the people you follow. It would not be a problem, unless they can see all those private "sticky" notes (comments) attached to posts and if you flirt with your friends husband it's visible to everyone. Because of some annoying situation last week (many complains about Privacy issues) Google was working furiously whole weekend to improve some instances of Privacy. Google don't assign anymore automatically followers but you choose (approve or decline) people to follow. For now Buzz is not much of Privacy. For entrepreneurs who want to spread the world about their business, Buzz is the right place to do so. Others, very privacy sensitive people, wait a while. In near future it will be all about Buzz with many more improvements and features.
With no doubt Google is a dominant search engine and when it changes, it's Algorithms, it is affecting the whole World Wide Web. Caffeine updates and new Algorithms are here with all it's glory.
Speed of loading sites-Website loading time is of a great importance for Google positioning. Slow loading RSS feeds, widgets, Flash applications and images may bring your site down a notch, or 200 positions, as it were
Real-Time Search with the return of Immediate, relevant and fresh results. Google want to reward Social media sites {Facebook, Twitter). How can small business owner benefit from real time search? With costant updating, adding fresh content to websites, blogs.
Social Bookmarks- Outbound links has no extra value except if they are coming from Social sites. Understandable; Before you could buy one way links and increase your positioning. Now only reader interest can influence your page position. How can you add a value to your website? Blogging, Publishing unique Articles, interacting with potential clients on Social media websites.
Google Goggles: Google new app for mobile devices and cell phones which enables real-time direct interaction with Google. Simply take a picture with a mobile device and use it as a search query – no typing necessary! On one hand it could be useful for faster search, on another it will somehow replace SEO based on keyword search.
Sidewiki-It's a sidebar on a browser window and in use to put some comments to websites of your interest. Similar to Social bookmarks. It could be very helpful with a good comments added besides your website or just opposite; destroy your good reputation. Well this is out of our hands, just hoping it will not happen to us. This definitely adds another question: How to manage your company’s online reputation?- since now you need to monitor your web page comments in Sidewiki as well as all the other tracking & reporting you do for your web site and social media marketing efforts.
Personal search-It was launched in 2005 for signed user for better search experience (so, if you didn't bookmark a site of your interest, you can always find it in a personal search section). Now personal search is available for all users and when you search for certain keywords you will receive real-time and the most relevant results which will be saved in your personal search. I assume that will also mean that the websites you are visiting will become favorite for Google to rank it higher.
Google Place Page-Another good resource to be aware of. Posting your business on Google Place Page which is an extended visibility of your business.
It's about it what we can expect from new Caffeine search engine. SEO Professionals will have handful of work as well a webmaster will need to do more researches and tracking.
To summarize: Keep "White Hut SEO", follow the rules and regulations (FTC), constantly update your website with fresh content, a lot of blogging, twitting, article copywriting and you will be OK. Expect SEO Prices to raise so if you are in need for Search Engine Optimization act now. We will keep our prices stagnated just for a limited time. Now is a very good time to get aboard
Always fresh SEO Related News about different search engine and Algorithm changes and new rules and regulation.
December 24, 2009
As of December 1, 2009 the new Federal Trade Commission rules will probable change everyone's online experiences. Fedreal Trade Commission FTC is targeting blogs, website Social Networking with the scamm contents.
In order to comply we need to have: Privacy Policy-Explaining users how we use their informations Terms of use Affiliate Disclosure Testimonial Disclosure explaining where this testimonial is comming from? Is it a testimonial of an avarage person-person with avarage skill targeting your product?
FTC is the most after: Deceptive Advertising-Fake advertising: "How to lose 30 pounds in 10 days", "Work with Google" and similar.
Let's see in detail:
Blog
Some Bloggers are receiving small fees for reviewing a particular product or writing a blog post about it. FTC require all Bloggers with this kind of practice to have disclosure about receiving a fees for reviews or blog posts. If a Blogger is receiving a free gifts: gadget, books or other products or services, they need to include a disclosure about it.
With other words :If you receive any gifts, money or other type of compensation from manufacturers or vendors you have to disclose it. Testimonials or reviews you must clearly disclose the typical results someone can expect to get from using that product-What result can expect an average person using that products?
Social Networking
It's unlikely the FTC will be interested in you and your post about your business, but if you make some testimonials and have a large amount of Twitter followers or Facebook friends, it might be a good idea to disclose your affiliations.
Chat Rooms, Message Boards and Commenting
Don't post comments that undercut your company's competitors unless you make it clear who you are. This one is especially important to follow, since the FTC has dealt with this before.
November 21, 2009
On the last Search Marketing Conference held in Las Vegas Matt Cutts (Google Software Engineer in charge of WebSpam) gave some tips that can greatly affect search results of users and webmasters. Here are some key points:
Google Caffeine. Per Matt Cutt Google Caffeine will be launched after Holydays. New search engine will be faster, much faster to display search results and much friendlier for readers. In my opinion SEO requirement will be in accelerating website loading time and providing more information and richer content for reader's satisfaction.
Site Speed-Especially with new Caffeine Search Engine. Faster your site loads better experience for users, higher positioning.
Google Closure Tools Many websites have JavaScripts codes and files that make websites load slow (Forms, Tracking …). Google find a free solution with it’s own high speed loading Closure Tools
Webmasters are encouraged to follow and learn about social search with Google Experimental
No more Duplicate Content Google now support a format that allows you to publicly specify your preferred version of a URL.
Google is trying to implement some new features in Google Webmaster Tools like: sending e-mails to webmasters about some errors in Site map or "Fetch as Googlebot. Fetch as Googlebot will provide webmaster access to see what spyware are on their websites or better how Googlebot see it and recognize it. Great feature isn't it! Many websites are banned because of excessive spyware on their sites.
Google Analytics- Included in Algorithm or not? With the answer: "I don't think so but we will come back on this later" I am almost sure they will include Analytics too which is not bad at all. Google Analytics is actually your measurement of your profit.
November 3, 2009
After 5 months of debating and brainstorming about using the pattern for displaying the search results finally Google was granted patent from U.S. Patent Office.
What that means?
Depend of your searches (keyword phrases) or better multiple searches at the particular time Google search engine will try to determine the pattern of your searches and display results accordingly. Let’s say you are searching for: grapefruit, banana, melon. Google will recognize it as searching for fruit and that will result in displaying all kind of fruits.
New headaches for SEO Professional.
October 26, 2009 Yahoo “Search submit” ends
Yahoo has announced that they are closing paid inclusion at the end of this year.
There was a lot of polemics and criticism about Search submit Basic and Search submit Pro (PPC),especially about accepting money-charging annual fees for website inclusion in“Natural”, “Organic” search -We know that should be free as it is on Google.
As Yahoo is commenting they are focusing on providing best customer satisfaction-better experience with increasing ad relevancy which will increase user engagement and ROI for advertisers.
August 29, 2009
As Google says, "We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we're able to put the most relevant and reliable results first."
All those algorithms serve as filtration system to clean a web from garbage website, spam and massive contents that has absolutely no value to consumers.
One of Google most important algorithm is PageRank. PageRank is an independent measure of Google’s perception of the quality/authority/credibility of an individual web page. It does not depend on any particular search phrase. For the public (you and me), Google conveniently reports this as a number from 0-10 (10 being the best). So, assuming for a second that your web page and your competitors web-page has the same relevance – then whoever has the higher PageRank gets the better ranking – and shows up at the top of the results page. This is why PageRank is so important. Your relevance is based on your content. Your PageRank is what counts. July 30, 2009
Yahoo redesigned it Homepage, featuring colorful icons for search topics, mails, social media sites and so much more. All menus can be customized by the users. The question is: How much customization do users inquire in reality?
The center stage of redesign took Third party applications (Nasdag:Yhoo), Facebook, MySpace, eBay. Users can add or subtract the applications they want to see on Yahoo Homepage.
Homepage is cleaner then old Homepage version. In the center there are boxes with 16 images presenting news, sports and entertainment stories (emphasis on entertainment), recipes and consumer tips rotate through in groups of four on the page. There's a box to the right showing the top 10 Yahoo search topics, another smaller box with rotating images and headlines, and the standard grouping of nine or 10 text news headlines. After three years Yahoo's first homepage is redesign and its content has been trimmed down.
Google (Nesdag:Goog) improved its Homepage adding a few links to other services (Microsoft Nesdag-MSFT).
Bing has landscape pictures worthy National Geographic and a few more links different than Google.
Editor of “Search Engine Land” Greg Sterling made a comment that there is a history of people not using enough a customization options. They do not spend a time customizing their Homepages maybe because they are too busy or too lazy or they don’t find it useful for their purposes. He said also that Yahoo will make distinction between constant users of My Yahoo and other less engaged.
The site redesign will get a beta launch for mobile users over the next week, along with the PC beta for users in the United Kingdom, France and India. Mobile users are in demand and they will make heavy investments in this field.
July 22, 2009
Various companies and major search providers are working to make better search experience.
My primary search engine is Google and I am overall satisfied with the results. But often I must explore several links or a few pages to find what I am looking for.
Searching with any primary search engine you often have to insert a lot of different keywords orkeyword phrases in order to get the information you're looking for. Google or Yahoo typically won't answer your question directly but will try to point you to a Web page that will provide answer for you.
Maybe we can expect high-profile and better search experiences from Microsoft and new Bing search engine. Comparing Bing and Google there is a similarity, but Microsoft has added a few interesting tweaks.
In a column to the left of your results, you get a list of search history and links to recent searches you've done. And if you position your mouse over one of the text results, Bing will display the first several sentences of information from the linked page. That will save you some time.
To get the same information on other search engines, you usually have to click on the link, go to the Web page and then click back to the search results if the page wasn't what you were looking for.
On another hand Google has improved search experiences with Web + Show options (on the top left hand site) with the same keyword phrases searches in different categories and related searches. This is an excellent tool for keyword researchers.
Another new site is Wolfram Alpha. It’s not only a general Web but also search engine that generates information from databases and try to answer questions directly.
Say you wanted to get the population of Virginia Beach. A Google search points you to the Wikipedia page and gov. sites or city's homepage. Wolfram Alpha gives you immediate result: a number (438,514 people as of 2008) and displays a graph illustrating the city's growth over time.
Similarly, if you're trying to find out what your monthly payment will be on a $300,000 loan with a 5.9 percent annual interest rate, a Google search would lead you to a loan calculator. But Wolfram Alpha will make the calculation for you, estimating not only what you'll pay each month but also the total interest you'll pay over the life of the loan, and how much principal you'll pay each year.
The idea is to cut out mediator steps. You get your answer immediately, rather than having to find the right page that might have the answer.
All search engines have some improvements and weaknesses. We need a search engines that will provide“real time” information.
Lately the most interesting development in search is Twitter.
Many people first heard about Michael Jackson's death on the microblogging.com site and some of the first reports about the plane crashing into the Hudson River came from the site.
Making such Twitter reports easier to access could be a real boom for news, stock, marketers, emergency personnel and more.
July 6, 2009 Twitter results showing up on Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. Launched just last month, Bing has begun indexing popular Twitter feeds. This means that a search of the names of a few thousand famous people will bring up their Twitter feed on the results page in addition to the more standard search results. Microsoft said the tweets will be indexed based on popularity and profligacy of tweeting, and include technologists as well as more well-known names like Al Gore and Ryan Seacrest.
Bing has been running an aggressive campaign of advertisement, new features, and partnerships with social media (Facebook, Twitter), video searches, travel companies.
The blog post mentioned that the current Twitter indexing plan is only a first step and could eventually include every person on Twitter. More immediate access to tweets, essentially real-time individual news updates, could be just what Bing needs to drown out the sound of its competitors’ success.
June 30, 2009
Combined, foreign language markets can be worth more than your domestic market. Need proof? Look at Google. The dominant search engine in all but a handful of countries, Google derives 52 percent of its revenue from the foreign language Internet.
Putting together a foreign language Internet site may sound daunting, so here are a few things to keep in mind as you begin planning your strategy.
Develop your understanding of the market. If you have customers abroad, or domestic clients with links abroad, ask them whether they think your offering might be attractive internationally. Ask for contacts that can validate your ideas and perhaps become your first customers.
Check out the competition. Google’s automatic translation tools can help you quickly determine what your competition is up to.
Evaluate the demand. Use Google and Yahoo’s tools to identify the key phrases you need to target in your foreign markets.
Have your site professionally translated. Google’s translation program is adequate for understanding content, but completely unreliable for a company website. Use a professional translation company to get the message right for your customers.
Market your siteonline. The principles are the same as in English. Build links through partners; use pay-per-click; and try to get mentioned on sites your potential customers frequent.
Following these steps (and repeating the process in other languages) can result in a larger, better-diversified business.
June 26, 2009 A common problem for those who have already optimized their website, and have created a wide array of content across social media outlets and networks is how to fight the traffic stagnation that comes after the initial launch of your comprehensive search engine optimization and online marketing campaign. The key to fighting this is as true in traditional marketing as it is in search engine optimization and management. This key is relevancy.
Whether you are selling a product or service, promoting a mission, campaigning for a politician, or just pushing for internet PR, you must cater to the impeding change of focus from static content of websites to fresh content available on blogs and social networks. Each of these topics at the title came from Google Trends today, and represent different approaches to making your constant need of traffic relevant to changes. This is not about using black hat techniques, but legitimately connecting your project to the topics of the day. June 15, 2009
There is currently a trend among search engines (translation: at Google) to derive search results snippets from the content that's right there on the page, rather than <description> metatags. That makes for meatier, more relevant snippets, but some sites that optimized for a different search sensibility -- sites that the search engines interpret as simply long content-free lists of products, for instance -- are finding the change dismaying.
Many webmasters will be upset upon preferable and better placement of sites with reviews, techniques, articles, giving customers and readers most pleasure. That means that customer and reader will determine which site will be higher ranked.
Going by what's revealed in the white paper, Rosenbaum says that Microsoft is taking an even more aggressive approach to scraping sites for content. "So," he says, "sites that are upset that search engines are giving readers and prospects 'all the good stuff' will not be made happier by Bing."
Site's with long and rich content will take over higher positions, because they more completely answer the prospects' questions. It seems to be already in place. If you put any keyword phrase in search bar, you will encounter that reviews, articles, wikizines are already taken first position in search engines.
June 13, 2009
MSN Live search evolved into Bing search engine.
Just released a new white paper titled, Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. Key features from the perspective of webmasters and publishers
New Crowler software should replace human adCenter but I noticed that the language of the white paper was very human-agency-oriented -- I'm sure they're trying to automate as fast as they can,
There's no direct discussion of the algorithm, nothing about inbound links; the paper sticks strictly to matters of on-page SEO (that is, what's actually on the page being parsed by the crawler).
