Google Social Search Is Now Live
A couple of days ago we did a post on Google Social Search to let you know it is coming. Today, Google announced that the Google social search feature is now active. This is both good news and bad news, depending on how you look at this... Here is a cool video presented by Google's Matt Cutts about Google Social Search and How it Works: The reason Google Social Search is good news is because you can now get additional search results whenever you query Google for information. Those additional results, however, do not appear based on any algorithm or Google-biased data. Rather, it comes from your social graph, the people in your social circle that Google knows about. Google knows about your CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
2 Social Integrations From Google
Watch this video and you'll hear the two social integrations that Google recently announced. After you've watched the video I'll comment on them briefly. First, Twitter will soon be integrated into Google's search results. Of course, you knew that by now. But I think it's interesting that Twitter will be integrated into the universal search results while the company is rolling out its new "social search". Isn't that ironic? Now, moving on to the "social" search. This is going to get sticky because in order to take advantage of the social search you have to opt in. That's going to pose a privacy issue for many people. Yet, it seems like a good product. You'll be able to search through your network of friends to find relevant CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is Yahoo! The Center Of Your Online Life?
When Yahoo! brokered a deal with Microsoft to let the corporate monolith handle the former's search functions, both companies were criticized all over the Web. Of course, there were the kudos as well. Some people thought the deal didn't go far enough while others thought it went too far. But the bottom line, for Yahoo! at least, was could it be profitable? The answer is in. But I have one question: What does this little sentence mean? "With new products like Yahoo! homepage, our brand revitalization campaign and expansion in the Middle East through Maktoob.com, our execution is improving and we're focused on what we do best - being the center of people's online lives." Yahoo! has always defined itself as a Web portal. To many people, CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Would A Google Algorithm Change Affect Your Rankings?
It happens every couple of years or so. Google will undergo a huge algorithm change that seriously affects some rankings. Sometimes those algorithm changes affect the search engine optimization strategies at a large number of websites - sometimes they affect a wide variety of different types of websites - and sometimes they only affect a few websites of a certain type. But you can bet that Google will drastically change its algorithms again at some point in the future. When it does, will that change affect your site in a negative way? Search engines are unpredictable. In one sense. You don't know what they'll do next. But they are very predictable in that you know they'll do something. Google will likely make a large and serious algorithm CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is The Semantic Web Just Around The Corner?
Google has made it very well known that it plans to take over the Web. Sidewiki is just another example of how ubiquitous the search giant is trying to be. Another example is the race to semantic language indexing. Google isn't the only search engine trying to move the Web away from forced search engine optimization and toward natural language. Personally, I'd like to see a natural language Web. It would be a big improvement. Spammers would all but disappear and people could actually find what they are looking for just by typing in a query. Right? Maybe. One of the cool things about the structure of the Web today is that searchers can find what they are looking for just by querying a search engine CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Should Google Charge For Services?
In March 2006, Danny Sullivan wrote a post titled 25 Things I Hate About Google. Are his criticisms still valid today? Two criticisms, I believe, are very apt for today. First, 16. Stop giving away Blogger for free. It's just full of junk. Junk, junk, junk. If you let anyone have it with no barriers, surprise, some are going to take it and do bad things with it. and secondly, 23. Charge for things! Seriously, I'm getting frightened. I love that anyone can get free analytics, email, you name it from you. But I'm fearful that people also can't get support for when things go wrong. Meanwhile, I worry that companies I want competing with you, to keep you on your toes, can't do so when you CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Should Google Sidewiki Scare You?
For the longest time, about the only useful feature of the Google toolbar that I could find was its PageRank feature. I'd check the PageRank of every page I encountered on the web. Then I decided that, because so many people learned to game and it was not that important for search engine optimziation anymore I stopped caring about it and did not use the toolbar anymore. Google toolbar became pretty useless too. Now, just yesterday in fact, Google has introduced a new tool that is a part of the Google toolbar. It's called Google Sidewiki. Watch the video below about Google Sidewiki To Learn More: So what is it? It's a tool apparently somewhat like SearchWiki except that comments made by Google Sidewiki commentators CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Yahoo! Will Help Keep Google On Top
Matt Cutts posted an advertisement on his blog requesting that Yahoo! search engineers to apply at Google. I'm sure this is part of the reason Google is winning right now. Google has always pioneered excellence in search, search marketing and search engine optimziation, but truth be told, it is its pay per click advertising model - AdWords - that is driving, and always has, the business. Search doesn't make money, not directly. But advertising does. And because Google early on was able to leverage its search technology to deliver to advertisers a way to reach new audiences at a price they could afford - because they got to choose their prices - pay per click advertising became a big thing. Google AdWords specifically. The popular CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Have You Search Engine Verified Your Website?
One of the most important things you can do as a webmaster as a start to your search engine optimization efforts is to verify your site with the search engines. This proves to them that you are the owner and they'll share valuable information with you about how you can better manage your site. Here's where to go to get your site verified with each of the search engines. Google - Webmaster Tools Bing - Webmaster Central 1. Open a new browser window and go to the Search Engine page where you enabled the Sitemap feature. 2. Enter the Sitemap verification file name up to and including the .html file extension and click Done (see figure 1). CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Blog And Ping To Become Bing And Ping
People don't say it much any more, but "blog and ping" used to be the catch phrase when people first started learning to blog. Nowadays, every one blogs, but do they ping? If not, they should. Ping services are services like Technorati that allow bloggers to notify the service automatically whenever a blog post is updated. Your blog software sends a notification to the ping service and the ping service publishes a summary of your blog post with a link so that anyone watching the service can visit with just one click. In the early days of blogging, this was a popular way to gain new readers to your blog. Now, it's just another SEO tool as many ping services offer link juice for blog posts CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Bing: Poor Site Structure Will Hurt Your Rankings
Can poor site structure hurt your rankings? Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center says it will. Speaking in the Bing Community Blog, he stated: "You can have great content and a plethora of high quality inbound links from authority sites, but if your site’s structure is flawed or broken, then it will still not achieve the optimal page rank you desire from search engines." It shouldn't come as a surprise. We have reported in the past that poor site structure can be an obstacle to a search engine spider 'seeing' all of your pages. If they cannot see those pages, they won't visit them and they wont be indexed. So what does Bing suggest? Use descriptive file and directory names - this has become a standard in CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Compare Google Caffeine – See For Yourself
A few days ago we took a look at Google Caffeine and made a few notes. At that time I didn't know about another site that allows you to make side by side comparisons of individual searches. This is a cool tool. Comparecaffeine.com allows you to compare current Google search results with Google Caffeine search results. You can do this in American, Dutch, Irish, or UK versions of Google. What I like about Comparecaffeine.com is you can perform a search result and see where specific web pages fall within the rankings and judge, based on side by side comparisons, how Google Caffeine is different than current Google SERPs. When you arrive at the site you'll see the following search CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Have Some Google Caffeine
Google is giving a sneak preview of its future search engine. That's nice. Here's how they explain what they've done: For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search. It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we're opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback. I'm with Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim. In an CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Yahoo! Is Not A Search Company?
As I scoured the Internet this morning for headlines, I came across at least a dozen headlines telling me that Yahoo! is not a search company (and never was). Of course, all the news stories and blogger taunts were about Carol Bartz's statement about Yahoo! never being a search company. Everyone seems to think that's what Yahoo! should be. After all, isn't that where the money is? I'm going to take the road less traveled by and say that Yahoo! isn't a search company. Never was. And shouldn't be. I'm on Yahoo!s side on this one. Even if their stock is down right now. You see, it's like this. Search was never Yahoo!s core business. They didn't try to make it be. The provided their users with CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is Citysearch Making a Big Mistake?
For years, the popular local search website Citysearch has offered free business listings to anyone with a business who wants to get more local exposure. Now, Matt McGee of Small Business Search Marketing has written a blog post suggesting that Citysearch has done away with free business listings. If so, is that a mistake? I understand the desire for businesses to want to make more money. Don't we all? But any business that acts as a directory or resource for others must understand two things about site visitor behavior: Users won't necessarily pay for something unless they can get a good feeling about you and learn to trust you Just because you exist doesn't mean they will visit you Citysearch has a solid reputation in the local CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
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