SEO Blog

Google, as a search engine, is never far to be contemplated as the competitor of other major search engines as MSN and Yahoo, and it is predictable that all those figures will try to keep each other out of the focus, at least in their own pages. But surprisingly enough, you can have some Yahoo feelings by a Google search. I don’t know much about whether the other names have got something to swank of as well, but this advent of Google really amused me at my first search to a selected destination.

When you use a Google search meaning, you go to www.google.com and the results that are given are inevitably for a Google show. But if you hit the words “therapy products” in the Google search then a box also appears for Yahoo. The box says SEE RESULTS FOR YAHOO.

The search results show different products also with the section with Yahoo results including Yahoo.com, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Search. After that the normal related search result continues. It is awkward to find this kind of results in the Google search. Well, somebody may take this as a degradation of search capability or showdown option by Yahoo; it is not less than a soar by Google to allow Yahoo in their own page. Some users suspect that Google is testing out something new, but it is clear that it is not working out. Everyone is hoping that Google will notice the fact and fix the problem not wasting much time.

With the increase of blogging, Open-source & cheap content management systems also comes the increase of content publications and the need for content syndication. Yahoo News is by far the most popular online news aggregator and search engine in terms of daily traffic & usage.

The main articles and stories on the Yahoo News front page are powered by content partners, and internal search content are served via the Yahoo News search index. Similarly, Google News serves front page results from sites it deems news authorities, and internal results are based upon search relevancy and story update timing.

Now the thing is, how can one list his own news site in such a valued source as Yahoo News? Any clue?

How to Submit Your News Site to Yahoo News
Submitting your news site to Yahoo News is a little more old school than one may think. Yahoo! News uses a News Source Submission Form which asks for some simple information like what are your news topic, RSS feed and your geographic location.

So if you run a news site, don’t forget to submit your site to Yahoo News, as it may bring you a healthy traffic. Good Luck.

Google Inc. has officially launched Hot Trends, a brand new feature on the Google Trends report. Hot Trends enables users to see a list of the current top 100 fastest rising keywords or Google search queries in the U.S. Users of Hot trends can also select specific dates to see what the top rising searches were at a given point in time.

For years, Google has produced a manually compiled list of popular searches called the Google Zeitgeist. Hot Trends takes this list to the next level, providing an up-to-date snapshot of what’s on everyone’s collective mind from current events to daily crossword puzzle clues to the latest celebrity gossip. For each Hot Trends result, the associated Google News, blog searches and Google web search results appear, giving users greater context for each result. For example, the #2 Hot Trends result of today; May 23rd is a search phrase: “American Idol Winner“, the associated news articles and blog results comes up in the Google Hot Trends report. However the only downside is, Google still couldn’t group the related search phrases well. For example the number #3 in hot trend result of today is: “Who won American Idol“; which is very similar to the number #2 phrase, but hasn’t been grouped together as one.

In addition to Hot Trends, there are a few other new changes to Google Trends to make it more informative and user friendly. Now, in addition to viewing the top countries and cities that searched for a term, users can view the top “sub regions” (i.e. states within the U.S.) across more than 70 countries. Users can now compare the leading presidential candidates around the country, for instance, or find out what region in France is crazy about cognac. Hot Trends is Google’s newest tool for users who want to keep their finger on the pulse of what the world is searching for.

Just the other day I came across to this article written by Gord Hotchkiss titled - An Intimate View Of The World Through Google’s Eyes, which provided some brilliant judgments on how Google’s constrain towards personalization and universal search will interlock. Although a good number of the search engines have accepted the vertical search custom as their methodology, Google has proven to be more effective with their universal search procedures; as constituted by Gord.

One of Gord’s comments may come in good highlight for the topic saying, “Google will be able to be more confident in offering a much richer and more diverse set of universal results when you can tap into previous search and Web history”. Although there might be other web crawling insights coming along for the vertical search as there is a huge number of searches being performed everyday in the B2B space. Unlike the universal search, vertical search can impact a lot of the B2B search queries that has brought the stat in their favor that the vertical search market will earn a revenue of as much as $ 1.0 Billion in 2009, which is not very far away.

Well, the thing that is expected after this conflict between split crawling methods in the same web is that none of them be affected by each other. Stirred by the fact that there are even more search methods that are rampant in today’s browsing history, each of them must ground it its own place to attract its own users and create its individual market.

To promote discussion on trends, interesting findings, and other efforts related to web security, check out Google’s Online Security Blog. For its first post, the blog discusses the issue of Malware:

Malware - surreptitious software capable of stealing sensitive information from your computer is increasingly spreading over the web.

Users who have unsecured web browsers and plug-ins installed on their system are more vulnerable to attacks by this malware. And if not properly looked into, the user’s system will be seriously damaged.

The blogger also shown a study by Google to identify distribution host of Malware that it has identified and cut off. Based on the study, China, U.S. German and Russia tops the list of countries where malwares come from.

Recognizing the significance of this problem, Google recommends enabling the automatic updates for OS, web browsers and web browser plug-in to make sure that the latest security patches are installed in users’ systems. This would make it really difficult for malwares to attack and destroy critical system operations.

Kudos to Google for their effort for making users more aware of different online security issues via their new blog.

Well I’m not sure whether this news is true or not, but according to a source Google is reportedly acquiring Feedburner for $100 Million, in order to gain access to their RSS ad Network.

If the rumor is true, then Feedburner will improve not only Google Analytics & Google Reader, but also Google’s relationship with bloggers.

Yahoo made a smart move earlier with its purchase of MyBlogLog, a social network for bloggers built on the back of a simple analytics platform, but Feedburner is also a very established RSS feed consolidation & tracking service which also brings a monetization factor to the table in its RSS feed ads program.

Today many of us widely read blogs via our RSS readers and thus never in fact visit the original blog source and/or see the sites behind adverts. So RSS has successfully eliminated the potential value of AdSense and DoubleClick because the majority of people never view them. This is already hurting publishers who rely heavily on the income generated by people watching or clicking on adverts.

Even though Feedburner and its competitors like Pheedo (which Yahoo may go after if Google does buy Feedburner) can help some publishers earn some extra income, Google’s AdSense (contextual, image & video) and DoubleClick properties may ultimately find a permanent home in the world of RSS aggregation.

Vanessa Fox recently posted in the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog the 5 simple tips on making the Google Universal Search work for SEO webmasters and their web sites.

Google News results - News content sites can submit their websites for inclusion on Google News and submit news that can be easily crawled in by Google’s meta search crawlers.

News Archive results - For sites with historical news content, submit the site for inclusion to the News Archive Search.

Image results - Webmasters must make sure that their images are embedded with sufficient metadata to be properly crawled by the search engine.

Local results - For business sites in particular local areas, webmasters must submit their sites to the Local Business Center to be included in web search and Google Maps.

Video results - Webmasters must take advantage of Google Video and YouTube for video contents. Hosting your videos on these sites ensures proper crawling, referencing and displaying of video results.

Certainly the SEO experts would come up with news ways and means to further take advantage of Google’s Universal Search. If your website’s SEO ranking gets affected by the universal search, I think it’s about time to make some changes and adopt to the changes brought about by Google’s Universal Search. Bottom line still is, to create relevant and unique contents which will be searched and utilized by the users.

Google Inc. announced its critical first steps toward a universal search model that will offer users a more integrated and comprehensive way to search for and view information online. It also introduced an updated homepage design and several new navigation features that make it faster and easier for users to find the information they are looking for.

“Our focus has always been making our users’ search experience as simple and straightforward as possible,” said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. “The ultimate goal of universal search is to break down the silos of information that exist on the web and provide the very best answer every time a user enters a query. While we still have a long way to go, today’s announcements are a big step in that direction.”

For example, a user searching for information on the Star Wars character Darth Vader is likely interested in all the information which are directly related to the character and the actor not just web pages that mention the movie. Google will now deliver a single set of blended search results that include a humorous parody of the movie, images of the Darth Vader character, news reports on the latest Lucas film, as well as websites focused on the actor James Earl Jones all ranked in order of relevance to the query. Users no longer have to visit several different Google search properties to find such a wide array of information on the topic.

“Google has continued to concentrate on improving the quality of search,” said Udi Manber, vice president of engineering at Google. “The level and speed of search innovation at Google has increased. Most of this innovation addresses basic ranking algorithms and is often not obvious to users. Users just see more accurate results, more often, in more languages, which is our primary goal.”

This is quite amazing! Google is basically telling its users - and its competitors - that it has figured out how to identify the type of search entered and provide a single set of results that it is confident will include all the information you could possibly want. While we’ve seen Google dip its toe in the water of predictive search - showing us images or stock prices - this overhaul of the search results page completely changes the way everyone interacts with Google.

Users will benefit, as they’ll likely find Google’s search results to be much more relevant, meanwhile SEO experts will find that their job has become a lot more complex. Now, instead of focusing on web search and battling others for one of the coveted Top 10 spots for a particular search term, they’re going to find the Top 10 now includes results drawn from other indexes such as images, news and video. SEO’s will be faced with two choices. Stick with just web search, and be content that they may only have 5-6 opportunities to be in the Top 10 on Google, or, look at ways to optimize content such as photos, videos, news items, and use a broader approach to gaining page one exposure.

Either way, it’s far too early to know for sure, just how much of an impact Google’s universal search will have on the search optimization space. But as Yoda of Star Wars would say, “on SEO, an impact it will have.”

Google’s New Navigation Feature

New dynamically generated navigation links have been added above the search results to suggest additional information that is relevant to a user’s query. For example, a search for “python” will now generate links to Google Blog Search™, Google Book Search™, Google Groups™, and Google Code Search, to let the user know there is additional information on his or her query in each of those areas. As a result, users can find a wider array of information on their topic, including data types they might not have initially considered.

Google’s homepage and a number of applications have also been updated with a new navigation bar to provide easier access to popular Google products. Now, instead of having links above the Google.com homepage search box, users will see a navigation bar on the top left side of the page with various Google search properties and popular products including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and Picasa Web Albums.

Microsoft plans to acquire the online advertising powerhouse aQuantive, parent company of Internet & Search Marketing firm Avenue A/Razorfish,for somewhere around $6 billion in cash; which would probably be the largest transaction in the history of Microsoft. I believe this acquisition is taking place to expand Microsoft’s role in the Internet advertising market and keep up with recent moves by Google and Yahoo.

The acquisition puts Microsoft in a similar position as Google with its DoubleClick acquisition.
Last month Google Inc. agreed to DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion, and Yahoo Inc. struck a deal to buy the privately-held online ad exchange Right Media Inc. for $680 million.

“Today’s announcement represents the next step in the evolution of our ad network from our initial investment in MSN, to the broader Microsoft network including Xbox Live, Windows Live and Office Live, and now to the full capacity of the Internet,” said Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer in a statement.

The deal is expected to be completed in the first half of Microsoft’s fiscal year 2008. The acquisition is not expected to significantly impact the company’s prior financial guidance.

With over 2,600 employees, aQuantive will continue to operate from its Seattle headquarters as part of Microsoft’s online services business.

You can find all the coverage on Techmeme.

The head of Google’s Webspam Team, Matt Cutts, has taken time out of his vacation to add some further clarification to his post about Google’s action on paid links. The original post has been widely discussed, with search engine optimizers and webmasters coming down strongly on both sides – either happy that Google is trying to reduce Web spam, or angry that Google is dictating how they do business on the web.

In order to clarify this issue, Matt Cutts’ is asking webmasters to report cases of paid links that flow PageRank, meaning they are direct links to a site, without “nofollow” attributes. Cutts’ said:

“As someone working on quality and relevance at Google, my bottom-line concern is clean and relevant search results on Google. As such, I care about paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings. I’m not worried about links that are paid but don’t affect search engines. So when I say “paid links” it’s pretty safe to add in your head “paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings.”

He also clarified how Google may use the reports of paid links it gets from users:

1. Measure and improve accuracy of Google’s current algorithms

2. Build datasets that will help guide Google’s upcoming algorithms

3. Test new detection tools and methods for detecting paid links

4. Examine and take direct action on those reports

Cutts’ stressed that the reports are not going directly into Google’s algorithm, so it’s not likely a competitor can buy links to another’s site and report them to damage their ranking in Google’s search results.

He also mentioned that he is not lumping directories into this paid links discussion, but he does offer some questions to consider buy a link in a directory. If you’re hoping that the link you plan to buy will pass PageRank, then ask the following question to yourself:

- “Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.”

- “What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.”

- “If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.”

- “If you put on your user hat and ask ‘Does this seem like a high-quality directory to me?’ you can usually get a pretty good sense as well, or ask a few friends for their take on a particular directory.”

He also suggests putting on a “user hat” when considering the kind of user experience paid, irrelevant links would create. As Google’s quality guidelines suggest, sites should be made for users, not search engines, so he is not talking about buying links that are relevant to a site to drive traffic.