18 Effective Search Engine Optimisation Techniques.
Proper Search Engine Optimisation, otherwise known as SEO, has quickly become a popular topic of conversation among website owners and entrepreneurs. The difference between having a successful website, and hosting a flop, is often the difference between whether or not you've incorporated proper keywords and phrases into your webpages.
Learning proper SEO techniques can seem like a daunting task, especially to those who are not familiar with the concept. The following list offers 18 simple SEO techniques you should keep in mind when developing and marketing your website.
1. Make sure your website is initially designed with your search engine optimisation needs in mind. Search engines look for text, not flashy graphics and cool layouts. The trendiest web designs will mean nothing if no one is able to find your site.
2. Every page of your website should have a title tag with text describing either your site or what is on the page. Be sure the text includes SEO-type keywords instead of the name of your website. Unless you're incredibly popular, no one is going to be looking for you by searching for your name. They'll most likely search for a product or service and the keywords you use will lead them to your site.
3. Consider canonicalization, or whether or not your website address includes or excludes the www prefix. If you choose to use the www version of your website, make sure the non-www version directs users back to the one you use. Make sure you use your preferred version (http://www.mydomain.com or http://mydomain.com) every time you place a link to your site on the web. Don't use both!
4. When designing your website, be sure to avoid too many drop-down menus, confusing image maps, and excessive images. If you must use any of these methods, be sure to include plenty of text links for the search engine spiders to find and identify. Without links, the search engines will not pick up your site information.
5. It does not matter what type of website extension you use (ie. .html, .htm. .asp, .php). Search engines do not look at the web extension and it will not have any impact at all on search results or ranking.
6. Every page on your website should include a link to your home page and your sitemap. Make sure every link is the same. Home page links should go directly to your domain (http://www.mydomain.com). Make sure your internal links do not include the additional /index.html or .php text as it is not needed (ie. http://www.mydomain.com/index.html).
7. Are you sharing a server with other websites? If so, you'll want to conduct a black-list check to make sure you are not sharing a proxy with someone who has been banned by search engines in the past. Being on the same server as a website with a poor reputation may damage yours.
8. You'll hear the same phrase over and over again: "Content is king". It is imperative that your website have fresh, unique, and quality content that is updated on a regular basis. Be sure to include your favorite keyword phrase within the body of the content!
9. People are more likely to input a phrase instead of a single word when conducting internet searches. If your business has a physical location, incorporate the name of your city into the text as well. For example, you might use "our Philadelphia location" instead of "our location". Including your city name will improve the chances of your site being seen in location searches.
10. If the information on your company website doesn't change regularly, or remains static, you might want to consider starting a blog. Search engine spiders are always looking for fresh content. Use your blog as an advertising tool and link back to your website within each and every post.
11. Write naturally. The worst thing you can do is try to cram a zillion keywords into your article or blog entry, making it messy and difficult to read. Search engines are able to determine whether or not your text is logical and they will ignore content with ridiculously high keyword density.
12. Building links to your website is essential to its success. As a matter of fact, links are like the queen to complement your king's fresh content. Choose a keyword phrase and network with other websites, asking them to place links on their pages. Don't hurt your ranking by having non-related websites place haphazard links. While it may seem great to gather 100s of backlinks, you're better off limiting your links to related websites. Ten relevant links stand a better chance than 100 irrelevant links.
13. Links within your website should be built with keyword phrases as well. Try to avoid using generic anchor text such as, "click here".
14. Don't place a list of links on your website. Always place a link within at least two to three lines of related content. The better your description, the more likely it is someone will click on the link.
15. Don't limit your keyword or phrase to text links. You should also incorporate your keywords into your image alt tag and domain name, whether it is part of the name itself or contained within the description.
16. Try to avoid using frames, Ajax, and Flash as much as possible. None of these functions are keyword or search engine friendly and will hurt your SEO results.
17. Before your website can be found by the search engine spiders, it must be indexed. Search engines such as Google have regular submission forms, but it can take days or weeks for your form to be processed. Having a highly ranked website place a link to your site is a sure-fire way to have your site indexed quickly.
18. No matter what you hear, don't be overly concerned with the Google PageRank of your website. A website that is properly developed and contains good content can outrank a website with higher PageRank.
Bradford Web Design and SEO Specialists Killerwebs Web Design Studio have been providing affordable web design and SEO services for the last 15 years.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Nobody Can Stop Facebook Because Nobody Understands Facebook
Can companies turn confusion into a competitive advantage? It occurred to me when attempting to explain Facebook’s Open Graph this week that the social web has become increasingly complex — relating the full implications to a broad audience is a Herculean feat.
How do you explain the Open Graph to the average user so he or she can make an informed decision? Should we take pains to differentiate between the “Open Graph API” and the “Open Graph Protocol”, or should we just gloss over the specifics to make the story halfway digestible to a reader who isn’t either a web developer or a social media professional?
Every time Facebook() changes its privacy settings, we write a 500+ word post explaining what all the dials mean. Every time, it’s massively popular — Sunday’s article “HOW TO: Disable Facebook’s Instant Personalization” has more than 4500 Facebook shares. Why the high demand for an explanation of what all this stuff means?
Have the nuances of online privacy become so complex that they’re beyond the comprehension of mere mortals? I’m not saying that Facebook has any intent to cause confusion, but the complexities of the open vs closed debate and the prescriptive vs descriptive nature of the “everybody” setting effectively act to shut down public discourse.
Perhaps this paves the route to success: After all, how can anyone stop Facebook if no one understands Facebook?
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How do you explain the Open Graph to the average user so he or she can make an informed decision? Should we take pains to differentiate between the “Open Graph API” and the “Open Graph Protocol”, or should we just gloss over the specifics to make the story halfway digestible to a reader who isn’t either a web developer or a social media professional?
Every time Facebook() changes its privacy settings, we write a 500+ word post explaining what all the dials mean. Every time, it’s massively popular — Sunday’s article “HOW TO: Disable Facebook’s Instant Personalization” has more than 4500 Facebook shares. Why the high demand for an explanation of what all this stuff means?
Have the nuances of online privacy become so complex that they’re beyond the comprehension of mere mortals? I’m not saying that Facebook has any intent to cause confusion, but the complexities of the open vs closed debate and the prescriptive vs descriptive nature of the “everybody” setting effectively act to shut down public discourse.
Perhaps this paves the route to success: After all, how can anyone stop Facebook if no one understands Facebook?
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Monday, 26 April 2010
Google Places Wants To Help You?
Last week Google announced the name change from Google Maps to Google Places along with some changes to the local listing service that is so important to local search. At the end of the week Google also announced something that they are not real well known for: support. Here’s how the Google LatLong blog puts it:
With a new name comes a fresh support experience. The Google Places team wants to make sure that, as a business owner, your experience with Google Places is a good one, so we’ve taken some steps to expand and refine our support offerings.
Before we look at the details let’s make sure you don’t get too excited. Why do I say that? Well, there is no support option that allows you to talk (you know as in hearing a real voice of a Google employee) to anyone about your issues. As a result, I say that while Google claims to be “improving” its support experience it is really just doing the classic “putting lipstick on this pig” routine. Many may think that’s a harsh assessment but oftentimes the issues with Google Places listings really need customized answers and improved forums or FAQ’s are just not customized. As a result, I am playing the cynic and expecting that not circumstances will be addressed to the level necessary for Google Places listings.
Here is what Google is touting as improved support from their blog:
Google Places Help Center: Here you can learn more about managing your business listing on Google, new features and how to report problems. This includes a revamped user guide, support channels, and more.
Feedback for Google Places: Post your burning questions and awesome ideas to our new Google Moderator page. After you post, take a look at what other people are posting, and vote up the ideas you like the most. We’ll keep the page open until May 21, 2010, and then our team will review the top questions and record video responses that we’ll post in our Help Center.
Google Places Help Forum: Discuss with other users how to improve your listing, newly announced features, or issues you’re encountering. We have dedicated volunteers known as “Top Contributors” who can help answer your questions and discuss your ideas. Google Employees will also be monitoring the forum to facilitate discussions in this forum and provide assistance when needed.
Google Places Webinars: Sign up for our webinars to learn about a variety of topics ranging from “Adding a Listing” up to “Enhancing a Listing”. We’re excited about providing a learning environment that allows us to interact more closely with you, the business owner who all these tools are made for! If you can’t attend the webinars, don’t worry – we’ll post the videos on our YouTube Channel at youtube.com/googleplaces.
I have already taken in the first webinar and it is certainly Google Places 101. There were some tidbits here and there but generally it was a death by PowerPoint approach with no interaction. Ain’t that the Google way?
Bradford Web Designers
With a new name comes a fresh support experience. The Google Places team wants to make sure that, as a business owner, your experience with Google Places is a good one, so we’ve taken some steps to expand and refine our support offerings.
Before we look at the details let’s make sure you don’t get too excited. Why do I say that? Well, there is no support option that allows you to talk (you know as in hearing a real voice of a Google employee) to anyone about your issues. As a result, I say that while Google claims to be “improving” its support experience it is really just doing the classic “putting lipstick on this pig” routine. Many may think that’s a harsh assessment but oftentimes the issues with Google Places listings really need customized answers and improved forums or FAQ’s are just not customized. As a result, I am playing the cynic and expecting that not circumstances will be addressed to the level necessary for Google Places listings.
Here is what Google is touting as improved support from their blog:
Google Places Help Center: Here you can learn more about managing your business listing on Google, new features and how to report problems. This includes a revamped user guide, support channels, and more.
Feedback for Google Places: Post your burning questions and awesome ideas to our new Google Moderator page. After you post, take a look at what other people are posting, and vote up the ideas you like the most. We’ll keep the page open until May 21, 2010, and then our team will review the top questions and record video responses that we’ll post in our Help Center.
Google Places Help Forum: Discuss with other users how to improve your listing, newly announced features, or issues you’re encountering. We have dedicated volunteers known as “Top Contributors” who can help answer your questions and discuss your ideas. Google Employees will also be monitoring the forum to facilitate discussions in this forum and provide assistance when needed.
Google Places Webinars: Sign up for our webinars to learn about a variety of topics ranging from “Adding a Listing” up to “Enhancing a Listing”. We’re excited about providing a learning environment that allows us to interact more closely with you, the business owner who all these tools are made for! If you can’t attend the webinars, don’t worry – we’ll post the videos on our YouTube Channel at youtube.com/googleplaces.
I have already taken in the first webinar and it is certainly Google Places 101. There were some tidbits here and there but generally it was a death by PowerPoint approach with no interaction. Ain’t that the Google way?
Bradford Web Designers
The Google Duplicate Content Penalty: the Truth
The truth of the Google duplicate content penalty is quite simply that there is none! If that confuses you, then you have been reading too many misinformed forums or blogs where people get stuck on some popular term that they have no idea what it means, and then profess to be experts.
The only experts on the Google duplicate content penalty, and the only people who are qualified to define it, are Google, and in Google's own words "There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty". This comes directly from Google's Webmaster Central Blog.
That should be the end of this article, at precisely 96 words excluding title as I define my word count. But it is not. Why? Because even though this blog is operated by Google, and even though much the same has been stated by Matt Cutts, Google's main software engineer, and other Google experts, people still argue and complain about the Google 'duplicate content penalty'.
So here is the truth: you might ask who am I to know the truth, but I read all the Google blogs and their official statements, and in applying what I learn, I achieve excellent results for my web pages on Google search engine listings: and those of Yahoo, MSN and Bing. So I am coming from a sound base that my results can prove.
As a professional article writer whose customers trust to get them the best results from the articles I write, I have to be very aware of the policies and the way the algorithms work of each of the major search engines, and so I am as qualified as anybody to comment on myths such as this.
The Truth of the Google Duplicate Content Penalty
There is no duplicate content penalty. Google's major search engine function is to provide a customer the best possible results for a search, based upon the search term (keywords) that the customer has used in the Google search box.
Google's customers are not:
1. You, who use it to get your web pages listed.
2. Adwords advertisers that use Adwords to advertise their products.
3. Corporations or individuals that use it to have their web pages listed.
4. Internet marketers who recommend others to use Google for advertising or searching.
Google's customers are those seeking information, whether that is to solve a problem, where to purchase a product at the cheapest price, find a sports result or to get directions to a specific location. Everybody that uses Google uses a search term to find some information that they need. That search term is what you and I refer to as a keyword.
If Google detects several web pages offering exactly the same content, its algorithms will select that which best offers the information required and list that. It might also list one or two other pages offering exactly the same content if there are good reasons for it doing so (e.g. more links to other relevant websites, more other relevant pages on the domain, and so on).
So, not all duplicate content pages will be refused a listing. If these duplicates are articles, then the algorithms that the spiders carry on their backs will take the links from these articles into consideration, the authority of the directory on which it is published, and other factors, before deciding which should be listed. It is wrong to believe that this decision has a chronological factor, but, if you include a link in your article Resource section to your web page that contains the same article, then your page is liable to be listed above the others, partially because of a greater number of links back to it from the other copies, and partially because your entire site is liable to be more relevant than these others to information being sought by Google's customer.
This is not because yours was created first, but because it better meets Google's criterion for authoritative back-links. However, if the rest of your website is not equally authoritative, your page might be listed behind another with the same content or even not listed at all.
All of this is designed by Google so that its customer is offered the most relevant range of results to the keywords they used. That is what Google is for, and is its ultimate objective. Google will not penalize any individual or any website for publishing what you refer to as 'duplicate content', and it will take your version into consideration for publication just as any other version.
What counts in the long run is which version Google's algorithms believe to be most likely to provide the best possible information to the person seeking it, and if that means not publishing a whole host of duplicate information, then that is only fair, isn't it? If you used Google to find some information, you wouldn't want to find page after page saying exactly the same thing, would you?
No, and neither does Google. A Google listing comes from its indexing of billions of web pages that contain the keywords used by the searcher: both in relation to the entire phrase and to the individual words used in the search term. If you want your copy to be different, make some minor changes and perhaps change the form of the keywords, but most importantly, change the title and the introductory paragraph to which the crawlers will take special notice.
You then have a better chance of your version being listed along with some of the others, but remember: the next time you use the term 'duplicate content' you are using a term that does not exist in Google's vocabulary for any reason than to deny its existence. The Google Duplicate Content Penalty does not exist: the truth!
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The only experts on the Google duplicate content penalty, and the only people who are qualified to define it, are Google, and in Google's own words "There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty". This comes directly from Google's Webmaster Central Blog.
That should be the end of this article, at precisely 96 words excluding title as I define my word count. But it is not. Why? Because even though this blog is operated by Google, and even though much the same has been stated by Matt Cutts, Google's main software engineer, and other Google experts, people still argue and complain about the Google 'duplicate content penalty'.
So here is the truth: you might ask who am I to know the truth, but I read all the Google blogs and their official statements, and in applying what I learn, I achieve excellent results for my web pages on Google search engine listings: and those of Yahoo, MSN and Bing. So I am coming from a sound base that my results can prove.
As a professional article writer whose customers trust to get them the best results from the articles I write, I have to be very aware of the policies and the way the algorithms work of each of the major search engines, and so I am as qualified as anybody to comment on myths such as this.
The Truth of the Google Duplicate Content Penalty
There is no duplicate content penalty. Google's major search engine function is to provide a customer the best possible results for a search, based upon the search term (keywords) that the customer has used in the Google search box.
Google's customers are not:
1. You, who use it to get your web pages listed.
2. Adwords advertisers that use Adwords to advertise their products.
3. Corporations or individuals that use it to have their web pages listed.
4. Internet marketers who recommend others to use Google for advertising or searching.
Google's customers are those seeking information, whether that is to solve a problem, where to purchase a product at the cheapest price, find a sports result or to get directions to a specific location. Everybody that uses Google uses a search term to find some information that they need. That search term is what you and I refer to as a keyword.
If Google detects several web pages offering exactly the same content, its algorithms will select that which best offers the information required and list that. It might also list one or two other pages offering exactly the same content if there are good reasons for it doing so (e.g. more links to other relevant websites, more other relevant pages on the domain, and so on).
So, not all duplicate content pages will be refused a listing. If these duplicates are articles, then the algorithms that the spiders carry on their backs will take the links from these articles into consideration, the authority of the directory on which it is published, and other factors, before deciding which should be listed. It is wrong to believe that this decision has a chronological factor, but, if you include a link in your article Resource section to your web page that contains the same article, then your page is liable to be listed above the others, partially because of a greater number of links back to it from the other copies, and partially because your entire site is liable to be more relevant than these others to information being sought by Google's customer.
This is not because yours was created first, but because it better meets Google's criterion for authoritative back-links. However, if the rest of your website is not equally authoritative, your page might be listed behind another with the same content or even not listed at all.
All of this is designed by Google so that its customer is offered the most relevant range of results to the keywords they used. That is what Google is for, and is its ultimate objective. Google will not penalize any individual or any website for publishing what you refer to as 'duplicate content', and it will take your version into consideration for publication just as any other version.
What counts in the long run is which version Google's algorithms believe to be most likely to provide the best possible information to the person seeking it, and if that means not publishing a whole host of duplicate information, then that is only fair, isn't it? If you used Google to find some information, you wouldn't want to find page after page saying exactly the same thing, would you?
No, and neither does Google. A Google listing comes from its indexing of billions of web pages that contain the keywords used by the searcher: both in relation to the entire phrase and to the individual words used in the search term. If you want your copy to be different, make some minor changes and perhaps change the form of the keywords, but most importantly, change the title and the introductory paragraph to which the crawlers will take special notice.
You then have a better chance of your version being listed along with some of the others, but remember: the next time you use the term 'duplicate content' you are using a term that does not exist in Google's vocabulary for any reason than to deny its existence. The Google Duplicate Content Penalty does not exist: the truth!
More SEO News ....... click here
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Sunday, 25 April 2010
Google Delves Deeper Into Transliteration
As Google's made certain content and services available for free, some newspaper editors and book publishers have come to loathe the search giant, and it wouldn't be surprising if translators join that group, too. Late last week, Google took several steps to make switching between languages easier on regular people.
The most mainstream and noticeable change relates to Google Transliteration. This product has begun to support Amharic, Hebrew, Oriya and Sinhalese, and Tigrinya, bringing the total number of supported languages to an even 22.
Then Google's Input Method Editor, which exists for the purpose of letting people convert words while offline, has also been upgraded with the addition of five new languages (although the group's slightly different: Amharic, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian and Tigrinya).
Finally, a post on the Google Translate Blog asked, "Now what if you come across a language that you can speak but can't read? For example, if you can speak Hindi, you may know that 'namaste' is a greeting, however you may not be able to read 'नमस्ते' in Hindi script. Our new Script Converter tool converts a given web page or piece of text from one script to another so that you can read it phonetically."
And Script Converter supports an impressive 17 languages at the moment: Bengali, English, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
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The most mainstream and noticeable change relates to Google Transliteration. This product has begun to support Amharic, Hebrew, Oriya and Sinhalese, and Tigrinya, bringing the total number of supported languages to an even 22.
Then Google's Input Method Editor, which exists for the purpose of letting people convert words while offline, has also been upgraded with the addition of five new languages (although the group's slightly different: Amharic, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian and Tigrinya).
Finally, a post on the Google Translate Blog asked, "Now what if you come across a language that you can speak but can't read? For example, if you can speak Hindi, you may know that 'namaste' is a greeting, however you may not be able to read 'नमस्ते' in Hindi script. Our new Script Converter tool converts a given web page or piece of text from one script to another so that you can read it phonetically."
And Script Converter supports an impressive 17 languages at the moment: Bengali, English, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
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Businesses Should Know About These New Local Features from Google
Facebook made some of the biggest news of the week with the anouncements from its developer conference, as far as online business goes, but Google had some significant news about local search that may have taken a backseat, but should not be ignored.
The Google Local Business Center is now called Google Places, as the company aims to rebrand the product around the Place Pages it introduced last fall. Place Pages are the pages for business listings that are found in Google local searches. They contain relevant information about a business from various places on the web, such as reviews and images, as well as other info the business puts up after claiming their listing.
Is Google's rebranded local business center a step in the right direction? Tell us what you think.
Google Places, the company says, is "just the beginning of what’s to come from our efforts to make Google more local."
New features that come along with the name change include:
1. Service areas - Businesses who travel can show the geographic areas that they cover. Those without a storefront can make their address private.
2. Advertising with Tags - For 25 bucks a month, businesses (in certain cities) can use Tags to highlight their listings on Google.com and Google Maps. These are yellow markers that let you promote important aspects of your business. They can be used for thins like coupons, photos, and other select features. They don’t affect the rank of search results, but they give customers more information and may prove beneficial. You can expect Google to increase the number of cities where this option is available.
3. Business photo shoots - Businesses (again, in certain cities) can request a free photo shoot from Google to have the interior of their business photographed and added to their Place Page. We've seen Google do this in the past. Now we know what they're doing (learn more here). You can upload your own photos as well.
4. Customized QR Codes - Google is providing customized QR codes from the Google Places Dashboard. The code will take customers to your place page, and can be used on business cards and other marketing materials. Customers can scan them with their smartphones.
5. More Favorite Places - Remember Google's "Favorite Places" program in which the company sent brick and mortars window decals with QR codes? They're sending them out to 50,000 more businesses in the U.S.
Google also gives businesses using Google Places info they haven't been able to see in the past, like who's searching for them, how they're finding them, and where they're coming from. This is through the dashboard, as explained in the following clip:
"One out of five searches on Google are related to location, and we want to make sure that businesses are able to be found and put their best foot forward," says Google Maps, Earth, and Local VP John Hanke.
The standard rules still apply to Google Places. Every listing must have a mailing address and there can't be more than one listing per physical location. Even doctors with multiple practices and services that cover multiple towns shouldn't have two listings. Google recommends in these cases that businesses use the description or categories to explain the different services offered. Google's quality guidelines can be found here, and may be helpful to businesses with questions about their listings.
Back when Google first launched Place Pages, we asked if Google would eliminate the need for small business websites(at least brick and mortars). As Google improves this and Facebook continues to provide more opportunities for businesses, I'll pose the question once again. To be clear, I'm not ready to give up on the website yet, but with the tools that are becoming available to businesses
Bradford Web Designs
The Google Local Business Center is now called Google Places, as the company aims to rebrand the product around the Place Pages it introduced last fall. Place Pages are the pages for business listings that are found in Google local searches. They contain relevant information about a business from various places on the web, such as reviews and images, as well as other info the business puts up after claiming their listing.
Is Google's rebranded local business center a step in the right direction? Tell us what you think.
Google Places, the company says, is "just the beginning of what’s to come from our efforts to make Google more local."
New features that come along with the name change include:
1. Service areas - Businesses who travel can show the geographic areas that they cover. Those without a storefront can make their address private.
2. Advertising with Tags - For 25 bucks a month, businesses (in certain cities) can use Tags to highlight their listings on Google.com and Google Maps. These are yellow markers that let you promote important aspects of your business. They can be used for thins like coupons, photos, and other select features. They don’t affect the rank of search results, but they give customers more information and may prove beneficial. You can expect Google to increase the number of cities where this option is available.
3. Business photo shoots - Businesses (again, in certain cities) can request a free photo shoot from Google to have the interior of their business photographed and added to their Place Page. We've seen Google do this in the past. Now we know what they're doing (learn more here). You can upload your own photos as well.
4. Customized QR Codes - Google is providing customized QR codes from the Google Places Dashboard. The code will take customers to your place page, and can be used on business cards and other marketing materials. Customers can scan them with their smartphones.
5. More Favorite Places - Remember Google's "Favorite Places" program in which the company sent brick and mortars window decals with QR codes? They're sending them out to 50,000 more businesses in the U.S.
Google also gives businesses using Google Places info they haven't been able to see in the past, like who's searching for them, how they're finding them, and where they're coming from. This is through the dashboard, as explained in the following clip:
"One out of five searches on Google are related to location, and we want to make sure that businesses are able to be found and put their best foot forward," says Google Maps, Earth, and Local VP John Hanke.
The standard rules still apply to Google Places. Every listing must have a mailing address and there can't be more than one listing per physical location. Even doctors with multiple practices and services that cover multiple towns shouldn't have two listings. Google recommends in these cases that businesses use the description or categories to explain the different services offered. Google's quality guidelines can be found here, and may be helpful to businesses with questions about their listings.
Back when Google first launched Place Pages, we asked if Google would eliminate the need for small business websites(at least brick and mortars). As Google improves this and Facebook continues to provide more opportunities for businesses, I'll pose the question once again. To be clear, I'm not ready to give up on the website yet, but with the tools that are becoming available to businesses
Bradford Web Designs
Friday, 23 April 2010
Will Users Like the New Facebook Like Button?
Facebook has announced that it is giving people a chance to tell their friends even more about what they like. With the introduction of a “Like” button that will appear on partner sites, Facebook users can easily share content that they find “valuable” with their Facebook friends. So we are now left to wonder if the new feature for Facebook will be a winner or like, a loser.
The Wall Street Journal reports from the f8 Facebook developer conference
A centerpiece of the changes involves a simple button, offered to other Web sites, that says “Like.” For free, other Web sites can install a Facebook “Like” button that users can click on to signal their interest in a piece of content, such as a band or an article. The user’s approval then shows up on his or her Facebook page, with a link back to the site.
The idea is that other Web sites will drive traffic back to Facebook.com, and in turn receive traffic from Facebook. Other sites can also offer personalized modules, telling individual users what their Facebook friends have done on the site, such as review a restaurant.
The new “Like” buttons transmit data about user activity back to Facebook. If they like a band, for example, a link to the band could appear in their interests. Since advertisers can already target ads to users’ interests, the new buttons could give advertisers more data to target ads to, but Facebook said it isn’t currently launching any new ad-targeting products in conjunction with the service.
While the button itself is a big deal it will also be a big deal how Facebook and its partners address any privacy concerns. There are three instant personalization partners Docs, Yelp and Pandora. According to the Help Center these sites are required to show a Facebook box at the top of their site so you can get out of the instant part of personalization. I tried it on all three and the box did not appear on Pandora.
Here’s Facebook’s version of notification of the new service to its users.
From the leaders of Facebook comes this take on the privacy issues.
In a news conference after his keynote address, Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives stressed that the new services would not loosen its privacy policies. They said that Facebook won’t share any individual user data with Web sites that implement the “Like” button, but may share aggregate data like how many people “Liked” an item. Whether Facebook would share that data with a user’s Facebook friends would depend on the user’s privacy settings.
As with anything related to Facebook and privacy it will take a little while for people to look for the “likeholes” (that’s a Like button privacy loophole). Considering Facebook’s privacy track record you have to go in expecting that they will try to get over on their users regarding privacy concerns that could block revenue opportunities and backpedal if they need to. Maybe I’m wrong but if history is any indicator I’d be, like, surprised if there weren’t some privacy concerns raised.
So do you like the idea?
Bradford Web Design & SEO
The Wall Street Journal reports from the f8 Facebook developer conference
A centerpiece of the changes involves a simple button, offered to other Web sites, that says “Like.” For free, other Web sites can install a Facebook “Like” button that users can click on to signal their interest in a piece of content, such as a band or an article. The user’s approval then shows up on his or her Facebook page, with a link back to the site.
The idea is that other Web sites will drive traffic back to Facebook.com, and in turn receive traffic from Facebook. Other sites can also offer personalized modules, telling individual users what their Facebook friends have done on the site, such as review a restaurant.
The new “Like” buttons transmit data about user activity back to Facebook. If they like a band, for example, a link to the band could appear in their interests. Since advertisers can already target ads to users’ interests, the new buttons could give advertisers more data to target ads to, but Facebook said it isn’t currently launching any new ad-targeting products in conjunction with the service.
While the button itself is a big deal it will also be a big deal how Facebook and its partners address any privacy concerns. There are three instant personalization partners Docs, Yelp and Pandora. According to the Help Center these sites are required to show a Facebook box at the top of their site so you can get out of the instant part of personalization. I tried it on all three and the box did not appear on Pandora.
Here’s Facebook’s version of notification of the new service to its users.
From the leaders of Facebook comes this take on the privacy issues.
In a news conference after his keynote address, Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives stressed that the new services would not loosen its privacy policies. They said that Facebook won’t share any individual user data with Web sites that implement the “Like” button, but may share aggregate data like how many people “Liked” an item. Whether Facebook would share that data with a user’s Facebook friends would depend on the user’s privacy settings.
As with anything related to Facebook and privacy it will take a little while for people to look for the “likeholes” (that’s a Like button privacy loophole). Considering Facebook’s privacy track record you have to go in expecting that they will try to get over on their users regarding privacy concerns that could block revenue opportunities and backpedal if they need to. Maybe I’m wrong but if history is any indicator I’d be, like, surprised if there weren’t some privacy concerns raised.
So do you like the idea?
Bradford Web Design & SEO
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
11% Original Content + 89% Duplicate Content = Google Buzz
“Andy, when are you going to add Google Buzz monitoring to Trackur?”
I think Google Buzz was barely a couple of days old, when I was first asked that question.
My response?
I wanted to wait and see how (if) people used Google Buzz, before deciding to jump on the bandwagon that other tools were so quickly willing to hitch a ride on.
Now–I’m trying to not look so smug–it appears that decision was a fortuitous one. PostRank is reporting that 89% of all content on Google Buzz is simply the duplication of stuff that can be found in Twitter or via blog feeds:
In other words, just 10% of the content posted to Google Buzz has the potential to be unique. Adding Google Buzz to Trackur would result in more noise and less signal. Add to that the fact that Google Buzz’s buzz has pretty much fizzled and it’s hard to see where the value is in the service–as a user or as a monitoring firm.
How are you using Google Buzz? Are you syndicating your other content or are you using it to create new stuff?
-------------------
Killerwebs Web Design studio based in Bradford, West Yorkshire providing cost effective web solutions, Web design, Logo Design and SEO services
Also offering pc and laptop repairs in the West Yorkshire area 2D's Pc Repairs
I think Google Buzz was barely a couple of days old, when I was first asked that question.
My response?
I wanted to wait and see how (if) people used Google Buzz, before deciding to jump on the bandwagon that other tools were so quickly willing to hitch a ride on.
Now–I’m trying to not look so smug–it appears that decision was a fortuitous one. PostRank is reporting that 89% of all content on Google Buzz is simply the duplication of stuff that can be found in Twitter or via blog feeds:
In other words, just 10% of the content posted to Google Buzz has the potential to be unique. Adding Google Buzz to Trackur would result in more noise and less signal. Add to that the fact that Google Buzz’s buzz has pretty much fizzled and it’s hard to see where the value is in the service–as a user or as a monitoring firm.
How are you using Google Buzz? Are you syndicating your other content or are you using it to create new stuff?
-------------------
Killerwebs Web Design studio based in Bradford, West Yorkshire providing cost effective web solutions, Web design, Logo Design and SEO services
Also offering pc and laptop repairs in the West Yorkshire area 2D's Pc Repairs
Monday, 19 April 2010
Killerwebs Web Design Studio - Bradford
Killerwebs a web design studio based in Bradford West Yorkshire with many years experience in Web Design, Logo Design and SEO.
Check us out at http://www.killerwebs.110mb.com or http://www.killerwebs.info
Killerwebs have designed and created many websites from as little as £50.00, below are some of the most recent:
http://www.a2z-freight.com
http://www.dsdremovalsltd.com
http://www.kinkiz.110mb.com
http://www.acreroofing.110mb.com
http://www.bradfordremovals.com
http://www.hv-transport.com
http://moneymattersadvice.blogspot.com
http://www.bradford-pc-repairs.co.uk
To see our full Web Design Portfolio, please click here
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/portfolio
Killerwebs are currently providing SEO services for
http://www.speednetuk.com
http://www.truck-load.com
http://www.aztekintl.com
Plus many more.
Our website packages start from as little as £50.00, check out our full range of packages here.
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/services
Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully visit our site, you can also follow us on twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/killerwebs_info
Or Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Bradford/Killerwebs-Web-Design-Studio/321770449160?ref=ts
Check us out at http://www.killerwebs.110mb.com or http://www.killerwebs.info
Killerwebs have designed and created many websites from as little as £50.00, below are some of the most recent:
http://www.a2z-freight.com
http://www.dsdremovalsltd.com
http://www.kinkiz.110mb.com
http://www.acreroofing.110mb.com
http://www.bradfordremovals.com
http://www.hv-transport.com
http://moneymattersadvice.blogspot.com
http://www.bradford-pc-repairs.co.uk
To see our full Web Design Portfolio, please click here
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/portfolio
Killerwebs are currently providing SEO services for
http://www.speednetuk.com
http://www.truck-load.com
http://www.aztekintl.com
Plus many more.
Our website packages start from as little as £50.00, check out our full range of packages here.
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/services
Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully visit our site, you can also follow us on twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/killerwebs_info
Or Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Bradford/Killerwebs-Web-Design-Studio/321770449160?ref=ts
Thursday, 15 April 2010
More Relevant Results: Google or Bing?
Remember when Bing launched its recipe results? Now Google has launched a similar feature with recipe rich snippets. "For example, if you were searching for an easy to make thai mango salad, you can now see user ratings, preparation time, and a picture of the dish directly in search result snippets," explains Google. It may not be incredibly far-fetched to suggest that maybe Bing's offering nudged such a feature into development, whether or not Google would admit this.
This story isn't about recipes though. It's about the major search engines' quest for gaining or keeping you as a user. It feels like Bing has been around quite a while now, but in reality, it hasn't even been out for a year. Right out of the box, Bing seemed to make Google want to improve. Google is even in the process of testing redesigned search results pages that borrow some design characteristics from Bing.
Where are You Getting the More Relevant Results? Let us know.
Both Google and Bing still have their relevancy issues. We recently looked at an example of a query for "matt cutts" on Google (though we compared them to Yahoo rather than Bing, as Yahoo mentioned the same query in a blog post). Frankly, Google's results left a bit to be desired. It wasn't that that they were bad exactly, but personalized results pushed the more relevant results further down the page, and Matt's Facebook profile was MIA, despite Facebook being one of the most popular sites on the web, a good result for a search on a person's name (It was in the first few on Yahoo's results).
Microsoft may like consumers to think that Bing gives all the right answers. Those commercials would certainly seem to suggest they have a leg up over the competition in that regard, but they've got their own relevance issues. For example, for an article I was writing recently, I was looking for that site Bing has that showed all of the latest features they've released. I couldn't remember the name of it, so I searched (on Bing) for "latest bing features". Given Bing's philosophy of wanting to provide answers, I would expect to easily find what I was looking for through such a query, but instead the first organic result is an article called "The Latest News from Bing" from November of 2009.
Search Diversifying
In the latest search market reports, Google has lost a little bit of market share. Bing is gaining (and has the potential to gain a lot more for reasons discussed here). Another thing Bing has going for it, or Google has working against it rather, is that search itself is becoming much more diversified as a result of mobile, social media, and geo-location. People are simply using more ways to find the information they're looking for. It's not that they're not using Google anymore. It's that they're maybe using it less for certain types of queries. For example, where someone may have once used Google to search for a movie showtime, maybe they now have an app for that on their phone.
Is a Bingized Yahoo Good for Yahoo Search?
At some point in the near future, Bing's results will be taking over Yahoo's results to some extent. While most will agree that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal will be good for search advertising. Another question would be is it good for people who use Yahoo to search? Are Bing's search results better than Yahoo's? I'm not so sure, looking at the "matt cutts" example. For the "latest bing features" example, however, I can't say that Yahoo's results are really any better than Bing's.
I realize that just looking at a couple of examples is kind of grasping at straws and are hardly representative of all queries in general, but it's still a question worth pondering. Are Bing's results better than Yahoo's? Does it even matter? Will the average Yahoo user even notice a difference?
Google's Edge in Innovation
Google still seems to have the edge in getting out new and interesting features. Take real-time search. Microsoft and Google both announced deals with Twitter around the same time. Microsoft even had one with Facebook too. While Bing had a separate destination relatively quickly, where users could search Twitter with Bing, they didn't integrate real-time Twitter results into Bing results themselves. Google did this after a little while with not only Twitter, but many other sources to make up its real-time search results. Just this week, Bing announced that it is starting to include such results, and only from Twitter, and only to a small subset of users in the U.S. Google is even doing Twitter archive search now.
That's not to say that Bing doesn't do some things first (like the recipes for example), but Bing has a lot more to prove (and in all fairness, they do regularly release new features). Google is already established. Bing is still trying to win people over.
Google is frequently making acquisitions to better its search technologies. Just this week, Google acquired Pink, to better its Google Goggles product, which lets people search with their phones by simply pointing their cameras toward an object. They recently acquired Aardvark, a social Q&A search service (a space that is growing rapidly - see AnswerBag/MerchantCircle news for one of the latest examples).
Wrapping Up
With regards to relevance, you're going to find better results on Google, Yahoo, and Bing on a query-by-query basis. In reality, none of them deliver perfect results all the time, and that is why the diversifying of how people search is likely to continue, and for the better. The search engines can work to personalize results all they want, but in the end, it's the user that personalizes how they search, and right now, it's not looking like any single search engine is going to control all of that.
Bradford Web Design Killerwebs
This story isn't about recipes though. It's about the major search engines' quest for gaining or keeping you as a user. It feels like Bing has been around quite a while now, but in reality, it hasn't even been out for a year. Right out of the box, Bing seemed to make Google want to improve. Google is even in the process of testing redesigned search results pages that borrow some design characteristics from Bing.
Where are You Getting the More Relevant Results? Let us know.
Both Google and Bing still have their relevancy issues. We recently looked at an example of a query for "matt cutts" on Google (though we compared them to Yahoo rather than Bing, as Yahoo mentioned the same query in a blog post). Frankly, Google's results left a bit to be desired. It wasn't that that they were bad exactly, but personalized results pushed the more relevant results further down the page, and Matt's Facebook profile was MIA, despite Facebook being one of the most popular sites on the web, a good result for a search on a person's name (It was in the first few on Yahoo's results).
Microsoft may like consumers to think that Bing gives all the right answers. Those commercials would certainly seem to suggest they have a leg up over the competition in that regard, but they've got their own relevance issues. For example, for an article I was writing recently, I was looking for that site Bing has that showed all of the latest features they've released. I couldn't remember the name of it, so I searched (on Bing) for "latest bing features". Given Bing's philosophy of wanting to provide answers, I would expect to easily find what I was looking for through such a query, but instead the first organic result is an article called "The Latest News from Bing" from November of 2009.
Search Diversifying
In the latest search market reports, Google has lost a little bit of market share. Bing is gaining (and has the potential to gain a lot more for reasons discussed here). Another thing Bing has going for it, or Google has working against it rather, is that search itself is becoming much more diversified as a result of mobile, social media, and geo-location. People are simply using more ways to find the information they're looking for. It's not that they're not using Google anymore. It's that they're maybe using it less for certain types of queries. For example, where someone may have once used Google to search for a movie showtime, maybe they now have an app for that on their phone.
Is a Bingized Yahoo Good for Yahoo Search?
At some point in the near future, Bing's results will be taking over Yahoo's results to some extent. While most will agree that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal will be good for search advertising. Another question would be is it good for people who use Yahoo to search? Are Bing's search results better than Yahoo's? I'm not so sure, looking at the "matt cutts" example. For the "latest bing features" example, however, I can't say that Yahoo's results are really any better than Bing's.
I realize that just looking at a couple of examples is kind of grasping at straws and are hardly representative of all queries in general, but it's still a question worth pondering. Are Bing's results better than Yahoo's? Does it even matter? Will the average Yahoo user even notice a difference?
Google's Edge in Innovation
Google still seems to have the edge in getting out new and interesting features. Take real-time search. Microsoft and Google both announced deals with Twitter around the same time. Microsoft even had one with Facebook too. While Bing had a separate destination relatively quickly, where users could search Twitter with Bing, they didn't integrate real-time Twitter results into Bing results themselves. Google did this after a little while with not only Twitter, but many other sources to make up its real-time search results. Just this week, Bing announced that it is starting to include such results, and only from Twitter, and only to a small subset of users in the U.S. Google is even doing Twitter archive search now.
That's not to say that Bing doesn't do some things first (like the recipes for example), but Bing has a lot more to prove (and in all fairness, they do regularly release new features). Google is already established. Bing is still trying to win people over.
Google is frequently making acquisitions to better its search technologies. Just this week, Google acquired Pink, to better its Google Goggles product, which lets people search with their phones by simply pointing their cameras toward an object. They recently acquired Aardvark, a social Q&A search service (a space that is growing rapidly - see AnswerBag/MerchantCircle news for one of the latest examples).
Wrapping Up
With regards to relevance, you're going to find better results on Google, Yahoo, and Bing on a query-by-query basis. In reality, none of them deliver perfect results all the time, and that is why the diversifying of how people search is likely to continue, and for the better. The search engines can work to personalize results all they want, but in the end, it's the user that personalizes how they search, and right now, it's not looking like any single search engine is going to control all of that.
Bradford Web Design Killerwebs
Twitter Gives 3 Huge Reasons for Businesses to Use Twitter
19 Billion Searches Per Month, 105 Million Users, 100,000 Apps
If you truly feel that not using Twitter for your business is the way to go, then don't use it. However, Twitter dropped some pretty interesting statistics at its Developer Conference, which may perk your ears up, if not make you reconsider your position.
1. Twitter Gets 19 billion Searches Per Month.
Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan spoke with Twitter CEO Evan Williams who says Twitter gets about 19 billion searches per month. If you compare that with comScore estimates for the major search engines (as Sullivan did here, along with all the caveats that come with that), that puts Twitter in 2nd place, just behind Google - ahead of Yahoo and Bing.
Where Twitter ranks in searches compared to the search engines really isn't the point. The point is that people are using Twitter and Twitter apps A LOT to find information. I think you can see where this could be useful to know from a business standpoint. By the way, Twitter also just announced a little thing called "Promoted Tweets" - ads that will initially show up for Twitter searches.
2. Twitter has over 105 million users.
Last week, Matthew Daines, the lead developer of our own Twellow did some math and suggested that Twitter had probably surpassed 100 million users. It turns out he was right, because Williams said at the conference that Twitter actually has over 105 million, and adds about 300,000 a day. Once again, I think you can see why this might be of interest.
3. There are over 100 thousand registered Apps
There are so many Twitter apps out there that are making Twitter usable and more efficient to people. There are apps that shape Twitter around a person's specific needs. This no doubt plays a huge role in Twitter's growth, which will continue. It also means there are a lot of ways you can use Twitter yourself as a business.
At WebProNews, we recently revisited a Twitter app directory called OneForty. Now this directory has only a fraction of that 100,000 apps listed, but there are nearly 2,700, and that's still plenty. They are broken down into categories like advertising, analytics, business, email, mobile, monitoring, networking, shopping, etc. There is no question you will be able to find some useful apps there or in another Twitter app directory.
Bradford Web Design & SEO
If you truly feel that not using Twitter for your business is the way to go, then don't use it. However, Twitter dropped some pretty interesting statistics at its Developer Conference, which may perk your ears up, if not make you reconsider your position.
1. Twitter Gets 19 billion Searches Per Month.
Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan spoke with Twitter CEO Evan Williams who says Twitter gets about 19 billion searches per month. If you compare that with comScore estimates for the major search engines (as Sullivan did here, along with all the caveats that come with that), that puts Twitter in 2nd place, just behind Google - ahead of Yahoo and Bing.
Where Twitter ranks in searches compared to the search engines really isn't the point. The point is that people are using Twitter and Twitter apps A LOT to find information. I think you can see where this could be useful to know from a business standpoint. By the way, Twitter also just announced a little thing called "Promoted Tweets" - ads that will initially show up for Twitter searches.
2. Twitter has over 105 million users.
Last week, Matthew Daines, the lead developer of our own Twellow did some math and suggested that Twitter had probably surpassed 100 million users. It turns out he was right, because Williams said at the conference that Twitter actually has over 105 million, and adds about 300,000 a day. Once again, I think you can see why this might be of interest.
3. There are over 100 thousand registered Apps
There are so many Twitter apps out there that are making Twitter usable and more efficient to people. There are apps that shape Twitter around a person's specific needs. This no doubt plays a huge role in Twitter's growth, which will continue. It also means there are a lot of ways you can use Twitter yourself as a business.
At WebProNews, we recently revisited a Twitter app directory called OneForty. Now this directory has only a fraction of that 100,000 apps listed, but there are nearly 2,700, and that's still plenty. They are broken down into categories like advertising, analytics, business, email, mobile, monitoring, networking, shopping, etc. There is no question you will be able to find some useful apps there or in another Twitter app directory.
Bradford Web Design & SEO
Sunday, 4 April 2010
If Google Indexing Goes Real-Time, What Will it Mean for Ranking?
Last year, we saw the emergence of the technology PubSubHubbub, which provides real-time notifications to subscribers of content when there is new content or updates being made. There has recently been talk about Google developing a system that would use this technology it its indexing process.
"Maybe some small site, you might only find a chance to crawl its pages once a week, but if that site is blogging like every 20 minutes, boom , you hit the submit button, and the search engines can find out about it," explained Cutts.
"Now the tension is that more spammers would use this as well, so you can't just say, 'I'm gonna index everything that everybody pushes to me.' So finding the right balance there is tricky, but the potential is really, really exciting," he said.
"You can definitely imagine the reputable blogs getting very fast updates - the ones that we think are trustworthy, and then over time, maybe ramping that up, so that more and more people have the ability to do...just like, instant indexing," he says.
And here we see another way Google may end up looking at the trust factor, with regards to ranking.
Can We Learn from How Google Does Real-Time Search?
Liz Gannes at GigaOm recapped a few things Google senior product manager Dylan Casey said at SMX last month:
Casey said perhaps the most complex project in real time is to determine when to trigger the appearance of real-time results in search results. "We have huge internal debates on: Is this a good answer to this question, or are we just creating a tool for low-quality content?" he said.
Casey spent some effort justifying Google paying to include Twitter’s real-time firehose of tweets, saying it was an intensive technical integration on both sides, and that tweets are a fundamentally different form of communication due to the restrictions of their form. For example, Google has developed a 'complex system' for removing users' public tweets that are later deleted or marked private.
Earlier this year, Amit Singhal, who has led development of real-time search at Google talked about how Google ranks tweets. According to him, Google ranks tweets by followers to an extent, but it's not just about how many followers you get. It's about how reputable those followers are.
Singhal likens the system to the well-known Google system of link popularity. Getting good links from reputable sources helps your content in Google, so having followers with that same kind of authority theoretically helps your tweets rank in Google's real-time search.
"One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation," Singhal says. "As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well."
Now Google's current real-time search product is separate from the whole PubSubHubbub-based system that isn't in place yet, but Matt's comments about blogs being trustworthy, indicates to me that trust is going to be key in being able to push content to Google's index in real-time. So, I wonder if a similar strategy to how Google ranks its current real-time and Twitter results will be employed in determining this kind of trust.
Does This Mean If You're Not Trusted You Won't Get Indexed?
"PuSH wouldn't likely replace crawling, in fact a crawl would be needed to discover PuSH feeds to subscribe to, but the real-time format would be used to augment Google's existing index," says Marshall Kirkpatrick, who spoke in a session on the real-time web at SXSW, which also included Google's Brett Slatkin, one of the guys responsible for PuSH (he's in the following video explaining the technology in simple terms).
Lots of sites out there already have PuSH technology in place. For example, Wordpress and Typepad blogs have the ability to "PuSH" their content. That's a lot of content itself. A lot of user-generated content, and that means the potential for spam is huge, which is why the trust factor is so important.
If PuSh is to be heavily utilized by the search engines, and you want your content indexed as quickly as possible, you're going to want to do what you can to build community trust and a solid reputation. One more reason to engage in meticulous online reputation management, put out great content, and engage with the community.
Bradford Web Designs
Killerwebs Web Design Studio, Web, logo design and SEO
"Maybe some small site, you might only find a chance to crawl its pages once a week, but if that site is blogging like every 20 minutes, boom , you hit the submit button, and the search engines can find out about it," explained Cutts.
"Now the tension is that more spammers would use this as well, so you can't just say, 'I'm gonna index everything that everybody pushes to me.' So finding the right balance there is tricky, but the potential is really, really exciting," he said.
"You can definitely imagine the reputable blogs getting very fast updates - the ones that we think are trustworthy, and then over time, maybe ramping that up, so that more and more people have the ability to do...just like, instant indexing," he says.
And here we see another way Google may end up looking at the trust factor, with regards to ranking.
Can We Learn from How Google Does Real-Time Search?
Liz Gannes at GigaOm recapped a few things Google senior product manager Dylan Casey said at SMX last month:
Casey said perhaps the most complex project in real time is to determine when to trigger the appearance of real-time results in search results. "We have huge internal debates on: Is this a good answer to this question, or are we just creating a tool for low-quality content?" he said.
Casey spent some effort justifying Google paying to include Twitter’s real-time firehose of tweets, saying it was an intensive technical integration on both sides, and that tweets are a fundamentally different form of communication due to the restrictions of their form. For example, Google has developed a 'complex system' for removing users' public tweets that are later deleted or marked private.
Earlier this year, Amit Singhal, who has led development of real-time search at Google talked about how Google ranks tweets. According to him, Google ranks tweets by followers to an extent, but it's not just about how many followers you get. It's about how reputable those followers are.
Singhal likens the system to the well-known Google system of link popularity. Getting good links from reputable sources helps your content in Google, so having followers with that same kind of authority theoretically helps your tweets rank in Google's real-time search.
"One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation," Singhal says. "As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well."
Now Google's current real-time search product is separate from the whole PubSubHubbub-based system that isn't in place yet, but Matt's comments about blogs being trustworthy, indicates to me that trust is going to be key in being able to push content to Google's index in real-time. So, I wonder if a similar strategy to how Google ranks its current real-time and Twitter results will be employed in determining this kind of trust.
Does This Mean If You're Not Trusted You Won't Get Indexed?
"PuSH wouldn't likely replace crawling, in fact a crawl would be needed to discover PuSH feeds to subscribe to, but the real-time format would be used to augment Google's existing index," says Marshall Kirkpatrick, who spoke in a session on the real-time web at SXSW, which also included Google's Brett Slatkin, one of the guys responsible for PuSH (he's in the following video explaining the technology in simple terms).
Lots of sites out there already have PuSH technology in place. For example, Wordpress and Typepad blogs have the ability to "PuSH" their content. That's a lot of content itself. A lot of user-generated content, and that means the potential for spam is huge, which is why the trust factor is so important.
If PuSh is to be heavily utilized by the search engines, and you want your content indexed as quickly as possible, you're going to want to do what you can to build community trust and a solid reputation. One more reason to engage in meticulous online reputation management, put out great content, and engage with the community.
Bradford Web Designs
Killerwebs Web Design Studio, Web, logo design and SEO
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