tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89202432024-03-05T20:23:29.653+00:00Denial Design search engine & optimisation tipsTips, tricks, rants and raves about search engines and search engine optimisation.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comBlogger232125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-77334636230118301362013-10-25T11:43:00.000+00:002015-04-15T09:11:27.113+00:00How To Set Up Google Content Experiments in Magento 1.7I spent a lot of time looking around for a way to conduct Google Analytics Content Experiments in Magento with very little success. I did find this post in Finnish that detailed one approach and I adapted his findings (with the help of Google Translate) in to the following solution.<br />
<br />
<b>Step 1 - Set up your Content Experiment code block</b><br />
In CMS > Static Blocks add a new static block with an easy to identify name such as "Google Content Experiments Code" and an identifier such as "google_code_block". Paste the Content Experiments code in to the wysiwyg editor by pressing the HTML button and pasting the code in to the pop up window. Click "update" and the window will close but you won't see anything appear in the wysiwyg window. This is normal.Make sure you enable the code block and save it.<br />
<br />
<b>Step 2 - Alter your template to write the code block</b><br />
In your app\design\frontend\default\<i>yourtemplate</i>\template\page\html\head.phtml file add the following code right at the top after <code>meta charset="UTF-8"</code><br />
<br />
<code><br />
<?php $routeName = Mage::app()->getRequest()->getRouteName();<br />
$identifier = Mage::getSingleton('cms/page')->getIdentifier(); <br />
if($routeName == 'cms' && $identifier == 'home') { <br />
echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('google_code_block')->toHtml(); <br />
} else { <br />
<br />
}?> <br />
</code><br />
If you are performing an experiment on a page other the home page you will need to change the $identifier string to match your page identifier which is your URL key. You will also need to change the Block ID if you have called your code block something different.<br />
<br />
<b>Step 3 - Disable the code block on your variation pages</b><br />
Set up the variations of your CMS page and in the Layout Update XML part of the Design tab paste the following XML code:<br />
<code><reference name="head"><br />
<remove name="google_code_block" /><br />
</reference></code><br />
This will stop the code block from loading on the variation pages as per Google's instructions.<br />
<br />
<b>Step 4 - Verify it all works in Google Analytics!</b><br />
Check it all works in GA and start your experiment.<br />
<br />
I've yet to work out a way to perform experiments on category pages without creating a brand new category containing the same products.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-48313991566815510722012-11-20T15:47:00.000+00:002012-11-20T15:47:27.491+00:00Proof that Google Plus Helps RankingsA couple of months ago I re-developed a site for my Dad's knitting business, Tandy Knitting Wools, to complement his eBay shop. We'd launched a site a few years previously but were having problems keeping stock up to date between eBay and his own website and the bricks and mortar shop so we closed the e-commerce site for a while. We launched the new Magento-based site in September and I waited a while for Google to do it's thing and assign us some rankings. I built a few links, posted a few things on Facebook, Twitter, a Google Plus post, etc. and slowly the rankings climbed to around the 50s - 80s mark for most of the keyphrases I was keeping an eye on and settled there. Obviously the site was in need of a boost up the rankings but how? After Penguin and Panda the old ways of building links were no good to me and spending time writing and publishing articles wasn't really practical so I decided that social media was the best way to increase not only rankings but conversions and to draw new customers in. My first step had a dramatic effect on rankings... The site went from ranking in the 60 - 80 region to top 10 in just 6 days!<br />
<br />
So, what did I do that had such an effect? Well it's extremely simple, I set up <a href="https://plus.google.com/107880718000414881149/" target="_blank">a Google Plus page for the site</a>. All I added was the site's URL, the shop's physical address, phone, and email address and logo. Nothing else, no photos, no videos, no posts on the page. The page isn't even verified yet (waiting on the postcard) and the rankings went rocketing upwards.<br />
<br />
Cygnet DK Wool went from 40 to 8, Cygnet DK went from 15 to 4, King Cole Big Value Chunky from 82 to 14, Krystal Wool from 52 to 11, Wondersoft Wool from 70 to 18 and many more! All this just by spending 5 minutes signing up for a free Google Plus page. Today I've linked the site to the Google Plus page using the rel=author and rel=publisher attributes so we'll see what effect that has on rankings.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-58786903018102924232012-10-04T11:21:00.000+00:002013-10-25T11:10:50.604+00:00Quickly Add Open Graph tags to MagentoA clinet of mine recently shared the site report for her site from <a href="http://silktide.com/" target="_blank">Silktide</a> with me and it showed a few things needed improving, particularly the Open Graph integration. Her site is a new Magento store, built on Magento Community Edition 1.7.02 and whilst I'd added share buttons to the product pages via the ShareThis widget I hadn't added in any Open Graph tags to optimize the sharing process. The Silktide report spurred me in to action and I thought I'd share my code to quickly add the OG tags to your magento pages.<br />
<br />
First you'll need to edit your theme's head file at "app\design\frontend\YOURTHEME\default\template\page\html\head.phtml" and add the following lines of code:<br />
<code><br />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="<?php echo Mage::app()->getStore()->getGroup()->getName(); ?>" /><br />
<meta property="og:description" content="<?php echo strip_tags(htmlspecialchars($this->getDescription())) ?>" /><br />
</code><br />
<code><?php if (!in_array(Mage::app()->getFrontController()->getAction()->getFullActionName(), array('cms_index_noRoute', 'cms_index_defaultNoRoute'))) {<br />
$currentUrl = Mage::helper('core/url')->getCurrentUrl();<br />
}?> </code><br />
<code><meta property="og:url" content="<?php echo $currentUrl ?>" /><br />
</code><br />
<code><?php if (Mage::registry('current_product')) : ?><br />
<?php if (Mage::registry('current_product')->getMetaTitle() == "") {<br />
$ogTitle = Mage::registry('current_product')->getName();<br />
} else {<br />
$ogTitle = Mage::registry('current_product')->getMetaTitle();<br />
}<br />
?> </code><code><code> <meta property="og:title" content="<?php echo $ogTitle ?>" /> </code></code><br />
<br />
<code><meta property="og:image" content="<?php echo Mage::helper('catalog/image')->init(Mage::registry('current_product'), 'small_image')->resize(200,200);?>" /><br />
<?php endif;?> </code><br />
<code><br />
</code><br />
This code is mainly aimed at product pages and sharing them on Facebook so it renders the product's title, description and a thumbnail image of the product, resized to the recommended size of 200 pixels square. Any HTML in the description is stripped out leaving the plain text. The code also adds the current store view's name (you may need to edit this in Configuration > Manage Stores) and the URL of the current page. Finally the code checks if the product has a Meta Title set and if not it displays the name of the product instead. Upload the altered file, clear your Magento cache and away you go. You can check your integration with the <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug" target="_blank">Facebook debugger tool</a>.<br />
<br />
UPDATE<br />
The code below checks if we're on a product or category page and pulls the relevant image and sets the correct og:title for the category or product page.<br />
<code><br />
<?php if (Mage::registry('current_category')) : ?><br />
<?php $ogTitle = Mage::registry('current_category')->getName();?><br />
<?php <br />
$_category = Mage::registry('current_category');<br />
$cur_category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($_category->getId());<br />
$imageUrl = $cur_category->getImageUrl();<br />
?><br />
<meta property="og:image" content="<?php echo $imageUrl;?>" /><br />
<?php endif;?> <br />
<?php if (Mage::registry('current_product')) : ?><br />
<meta property="og:image" content="<?php echo Mage::helper('catalog/image')->init(Mage::registry('current_product'), 'small_image')->resize(200,200);?>" /> <br />
<?php endif;?><br />
<meta property="og:title" content="<?php echo $ogTitle ?>" /><br />
</code><br />
I still haven't found a way to get all the product images but it will be necessary to loop throught the product image array and write out an og:image tag for each image.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-69102475796228089822012-08-28T17:11:00.000+00:002012-08-28T17:14:48.610+00:005 Essential Magento extensions for UK shopping sites.I've been spreading my wings lately and offering low cost e-commerce solutions using Magento Community as the base for websites. Magento Community is a fine piece of software with a mind-boggling array of features and options but it does lack certain abilities that make it a truly great product. Thankfully due to the open-source nature of Magento there are plenty of extensions available to make Magento do what you want it to do.<br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/Yoast/extension/920/yoast-metarobots" target="_blank">Yoast MetaRobots</a></b><br />
This exension by the respected Yoast (known for his excellent WordPress SEO extension) allows you to control the Meta Robots tags quickly and easily on a variety of pages on your Magento site to help direct the flow of "link juice" around the site and prevent pages from being indexed. Yoast MetaRobots allows you to set pages such as Send to a Friend, Customer Account pages, Tags and Checkout as "noindex, follow" from a simple panel in the System > Configuration > Web section of Magento's administration area.<br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/msemantic-semantic-seo-for-rich-snippets-in-google-and-yahoo.html" target="_blank">MSemantic</a></b><br />
Now that Google (and Bing to a lesser extent) are <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/introducing-structured-data-dashboard.html" target="_blank">really pushing Rich Snippets as an important part of your site's content</a> it is imperative that your Magento site implements semantic markup for Rich Snippets for Google and Bing. The MSemantic extension takes away all the pain of marking up your site with a simple to install extension. Once installed your products and reviews contain the correct markup for Rich Snippets integration which will help with your rankings and visibility in Google, Google Shopping and of course Bing.<br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/google-content-api-for-shopping.html" target="_blank">Google Content API for Shopping</a></b><br />
The only way to get your products listed on Google Shopping if you use Magento. Simply install the extension, add your Account ID, Google Account Email Address and Password and then upload your selected products to Google. You can configure the extension to automatically update the product listing on Google if you change the product in any way and it's easy to see what products you have listed and what needs adding. The extension also supports custom attributes and the full range of Google Shopping taxonomies.<br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/meanbee-royal-mail-domestic-and-international-shipping.html" target="_blank">Meanbee Royal Mail Domestic and International Shipping</a></b><br />
This simple to use extension adds the current Royal Mail shipping costs to your Magento store and works out the correct postage cost based on location and weight. My 2 qualms with this extension are you can't add the cost of your packaging materials to the shipping rates so you would have to add a bit extra on to each product's cost or define a shopping cart rule to get a more accurate cost and the extension does not take the packet's dimensions in to account as it's based purely on weight. Otherwise this extension is fantastic and a really simple way to set up Shipping Table Rates in Magento for UK users.<br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/jreinke/extension/6090/clever_cms" target="_blank">Clever CMS</a></b><br />
Magento's Content Management System is a bit... well, basic to polite, but Magento is primarily an e-commerce solution not a fully featured CMS. Clever CMS extends the basic Magento CMS with some great additions that I feel are essential to any good CMS. Clever CMS allows you to assign permissions to your pages so you can decide who sees your pages (logged in customers, not logged in customers, etc.) and more importantly creates a tree structure for your pages similar to Magento's category tree structure so you can create sub pages and rearrange your menus at will and each store view can have it's own "tree". You can define your own URLs and if you change them at a later date then Clever CMS will set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-81329378384278611252012-05-16T14:54:00.000+00:002012-05-16T14:54:53.091+00:00Is Google removing free directories from it's index?This is my first post in a long time on my often neglected blog and I thought I should come back by answering a question a lot of people have been asking on the SEO forums and sites recently, "is Google removing free directories from it's index?" Barry Schwartz highlighted the issue over on <a href="http://www.seroundtable.com/google-directory-removal-15151.html" target="_blank">Search Engine Round Table</a> and claimed that over 50% of the directory sites he checked had been de-indexed. Search News Central followed that up with <a href="http://searchnewscentral.com/20120515299/Latest/google-de-indexing-free-directories-really.html" target="_blank">a test of over 400 directories</a> and found that just over 1% had been de-indexed. I used to use a lot of free directory submissions when I was starting out and built up quite a list of directories that I knew were good for a link, would show up on Google and were regularly crawled. I checked this list of just under 200 directories to see if any had been deindexed and the results were... underwhelming. Out of 191 sites 2 were no longer online so had been de-indexed, 4 were still active but had been de-indexed due to server errors or just plain crap coding or set up and 1 had only the home page indexed. The rest were fine. So in short the answer to the question above is... no.<br />
<br />
It may be that after the Penguin update that these free directories are no longer passing as much or any link juice as before, it may be that these sites are fine. As I said earlier this list is a hand-crafted list of free directories that have been proven to work pre-Penguin, post-Panda and long before that. So is Google removing quality free directories? No, but it might be removing the crap ones and about time too.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-43403832878704781462011-10-27T13:12:00.000+00:002011-10-27T13:12:18.493+00:00Removing Voltrank Increased My RankingsFollowing on from my recent post about <a href="http://denialdesign.blogspot.com/2011/10/free-link-exchange-programs-that-dont.html">Voltrank's ineffectiveness at increasing rankings</a> I thought you may be interested to know what effect that has had on rankings. A week on from deactivating and uninstalling Voltrank my rankings for my entire site have shot up considerably. I mentioned 2 target phrases in my original post and for the the first of these, "bra measuring guide," my site is not firmly in the top 10 of Google UK and for the second, "lingerie guide," the page is hovering around postion 15 or 16. Rankings across the site have improved immensely for many of the keywords I'm tracking for the site with a few top 10 and top 20 results just a week after being nowhere in the top 200! I am aware that some of this boost may be coming from the links I placed in my previous post but that wouldn't really explain the site wide jump. I mean this blog isn't exactly popular so there's very little link juice flowing around. I think this just reinforces that my experience with Voltrank was bad. To back this up, here's a screen shot from my Google Analytics account for this site:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4EniHVBS1hxZv0dF2DT1aDrE3MPPgP01r1yrYruTDBKLNgrfkfIxZ0kTKAS1gbA4pUiTurLku5nHCA2x3lVppViUseml27t92odnmhfPH4RxbQicY4d-YSNNMDh0hngRQ_a8Ddg/s1600/analytics.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4EniHVBS1hxZv0dF2DT1aDrE3MPPgP01r1yrYruTDBKLNgrfkfIxZ0kTKAS1gbA4pUiTurLku5nHCA2x3lVppViUseml27t92odnmhfPH4RxbQicY4d-YSNNMDh0hngRQ_a8Ddg/s1600/analytics.png" /></a></div><br />
Yep that's five fold increase in traffic after the site was re-ranked. Yes it's only 14 or 15 a day but it's a lot better than 2 a day!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-34279634954379771232011-10-21T11:46:00.061+00:002011-10-21T11:46:00.216+00:00Free Link Exchange Programs That Don't Work - LinkalizerIn the second post in my series of Free Link Exchange Programs That Don't Work I'm looking at Linkalizer. I'd like to start by pointing out that it's been a few years since I actively used Linkalizer as I realized a while ago that it was crap! I checked my records and I signed up in 2007. It may have changed in the last few years but by looking at the website I'd say it hasn't! One quick glance through the Link Exchange Directory on the site (where all sites that join Linkalizer are listed) shows us that there is very little care or attention put in to this system. Looking at the Arts section of the directory shows us that Linkalizer is full or spam and misfiled sites. There's a Nigerian Job Centre site, Google Classified Ads site, NTFS data recovery, college party tips, Warcraft sites, a technology new blog, corsets site, the obligatory Vietnam travel site and "Medical tourism in India" all on the first page of the Arts directory. This tells us the sites aren't being reviewed and anyone can join. I tested a handful of links from various pages in the directory on Yahoo! Site Explorer and none of them showed a backlink from Linkalizer's directory so it's not even worth joining for a free followed link from their directory as it will never be counted!<br />
<br />
Linkalizer is a simple link exchange system, you link to someone else's site and they will link back to you. Free members can send a limited number of link requests per day and respond to incoming requests. Members can search the directory and request links from any site in any category. Unfortunately this means you will be inundated with link requests from poor quality sites, unrelated sites and makes finding the good sites even harder. The directory lists the PageRank for each site (because that's <i>such</i> a reliable metric...) and a link to the Alexa data for the site so if you want to find any good sites you're going to have to do some serious digging with 3rd party tools. You can't search the directory, only browse the listings which makes finding link prospects even more time consuming.<br />
<br />
As I said before it's been a few years since I used Linkalizer and maybe if you were determined enough and did enough analysis of your link exchange prospects you could get some strong backlinks from this system but you would spend most of your time in the dashboard rejecting link requests from spammy sites. If you are looking for sites to exchange links with then avoid this system and stick to looking for link exchanges manually.<br />
<br />
Don;t forget to check out part one of this series, our <a href="http://denialdesign.blogspot.com/2011/10/free-link-exchange-programs-that-dont.html">review of Voltrank</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-41361613279336763142011-10-19T12:38:00.000+00:002011-10-19T12:38:50.469+00:00Free Link Exchange Programs That Don't Work - VoltrankFor the past several months, since May to be precise, I have been experimenting with a link exchange system called Voltrank. Voltrank promise "quality one-way links" on a system that's been "built by SEOs for SEOs" and best of all it's completely free. The set up procedure is simple, you sign up for Voltrank, install a widget on your Wordpress blog or a piece of code on any site capable of running PHP scripts, check your installation is working and then set up the links to the pages you want to promote. Voltrank then puts your link on other sites and gets different sites to link to your site. The widget displays up to 6 one-way text links from the Voltrank network and each link is different on each page of your site and each link is permanent so there's very little link churn. The links only change if the link's site leaves the network or changes the advert text. Your site earns "Volts" per page on your site. The more Volts you have, the more sites on the network your ads will appear on. Naturally this system benefits larger sites and sites that add a lot of new content like blogs. It all seems like the perfect link exchange system, one-way links, automated, nice and simple to use but... it doesn't make any difference to search engine rankings.<br />
<br />
As I said in the opening paragraph, I've been using Voltrank for 5 months now on an affiliate blog and had 2 ads running, one for a "<a href="http://www.lingerie-buyers-guide.com/?page_id=83">bra measuring guide</a>" and another for "<a href="http://www.lingerie-buyers-guide.com/?page_id=87">lingerie guide</a>". Voltrank's dashboard features some very comprehensive reports including a breakdown of every page your link appears on. The first link appeared on 71 sites and the second on 37. However out of the 71 sites that Voltrank reported my first link to be active on, 22 of the sites had no link on them. For the second link, 9 out of 37 sites had no active link and 2 were infected with malware. The rest of the linking sites low quality sites, foreign sites (even though you specify your language during the set up phase), 404 blog pages and all were of absolutely no relevance at all to my site's niche (fashion / lingerie). Many of the sites were advertising illegal downloads of TV shows or were so blatently spam domains and made for adsense sites that you wonder how they ever get through Voltrank's review process in the first place. After 5 months the "bra measuring guide" page has a whopping 3 inbound links from Voltrank sites according to Yahoo! Site Explorer and 4 according to Google Webmaster tools and the "lingerie guide" page has none, zero, zilch. The first page doesn't even show up in Google searches for it's target term according to Google Webmaster Tools and is not in the top 200 results whereas the second shows up in Google Webmaster Tools but not in the top 200 results. Both pages are indexed and cached in Google.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT460vG7hNgLS3tMvyQHwDyu600WUr9btLUsx3YFORQ_Gf0thCptKgpguVJb2qu7NPlp-U6o1o3iE3g5bEgkw2hqsxkbsIInyo3sv-eAT6xk4wlP7vG6OQA-7AOTpJdCkQRQoixw/s1600/yahoo-site-explorer.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="117" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT460vG7hNgLS3tMvyQHwDyu600WUr9btLUsx3YFORQ_Gf0thCptKgpguVJb2qu7NPlp-U6o1o3iE3g5bEgkw2hqsxkbsIInyo3sv-eAT6xk4wlP7vG6OQA-7AOTpJdCkQRQoixw/s400/yahoo-site-explorer.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
I will admit that my test pages were not optimized beyond adding a heading tag and a title tag but this was an experiment to see if Voltrank could power my pages to the top on link juice alone. Unfortunately it seems that in this case Voltrank's batteries are flat.<br />
<br />
I did try to add another Wordpress blog to the Voltrank system to double check my findings but even though the blog was on the same server with the same set up and same plug-ins the Voltrank script would not validate the set up.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-3339873116131528762011-08-03T16:27:00.000+00:002011-08-03T16:27:39.378+00:00Bye bye Yahoo! UKWell it's finally happened, Yahoo UK search is no more. Yahoo UK (and European properties) are now powered by Bing. Just over 2 years after <a href="http://www.seobook.com/why-buy-milk-when-you-can-get-cow-free">Microsoft bought Yahoo for (apparently $0!)</a> and about a year after the US and Canadian Yahoo portals, the once great search giant has finally abandoned the fight against the mighty Google and going the same way as Altavista, Inktomi and AllTheWeb (all bought by Yahoo! ironically in an attempt to use their search engine know how to bolster Yahoo's search algorithms). Officially Bing will power Yahoo! search for 10 years but the deal also gives Bing access to Yahoo's search technology and the right to integrate it within Bing search. Yahoo is rumoured to have laid off as much as 20% of it's workforce so I can see no going back from this. I predict Yahoo! will be wholly owned by Bing in the next few years. Yahoo's much loved <a href="https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/">site explorer tool</a> will close at the end of the year and Bing are working on a replacement within the Bing Webmaster Toolbox. With Google properties now accounting for a massive 92% share of the UK market and Yahoo and Bing combined on 5.84% the future seems bleak for any competing search engines against the behemoth that is Google.<br />
<br />
The browser wars look to be going the same way as well with Google's Chrome browser now the <a href="http://gs.statcounter.com/press/chrome-overtakes-firefox-for-uk-number-two-browser-spot-in-july">second most used browser in the UK</a> with a 22.1% market share and Firefox at 22%. Internet Explorer dropped a massive 15% to 41% in July.<br />
<br />
So where did Yahoo go wrong and why hasn't Bing made any in roads against Google in the UK? Personally I think the answer lies in Google's focus on search as it's main product. Yahoo's CEO Carol Bartz (the head honcho, the big cheese) said in a 2009 interview:<br />
<blockquote>"The priority was to get the fog away from the company. Yahoo got pegged as a search company and we’re not a search company. Search is only one aspect of what our customers do."</blockquote>Yet Yahoo! Search was where the majority of their visitors came from and losing focus on their main source of traffic (and therefore money) shows how little respect and knowledge the company's top brass had of their own business. If you can't draw visitors to your "portal" with the promise that they'll find what they want then you won't have any visitors to sign up for Yahoo mail or a small business listing or Yahoo shopping listings (the latter 2 are powered by a third party). Basically Yahoo just aggregates stuff that you can find quicker and easier in other places (e.g: Google). When was the last time you saw an advert for Yahoo in the uk? Yep it was probably this truly forgettable and overly long ad from 2009:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/FGC6hVwv9Eg?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Doesn't exactly get the pulse racing does it?<br />
<br />
How about this one:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/F409mFP1CkU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Better isn't it? That advert was for the launch of Bing (formerly MSN Live Search) and does everything the Yahoo ad doesn't, it tells you how to solve a problem.<br />
<br />
Finally a Google advert from 2010 showcasing (almost) everything Google can do in one simple, effective advert:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/fJVsBcx2Nhc?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Simple and effective, just like Google really.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-19919074324188931492011-07-05T21:49:00.000+00:002011-07-05T21:49:52.444+00:00Links, links and more links...Recently I've been overly obsessed with getting ultra-focused, one-way, followed links to my client's sites. And after a while of course it starts to get harder and harder to find these links. Then I noticed that some link exchanges I'd set up on a test site were really starting to bear fruit. The sites with the links back to my test site were barely related (think "shopping" rather than "wine") and the test site was climbing the rankings for all the specified anchor texts I'd set up in the link exchange. Now this is early days and the effect may wear off as quickly as it began but I'll keep you posted.<br />
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I also noticed that reciprocal links were starting to bear fruit as well. Higher rankings every time a link was added to the linking domains report in Google Webmaster Tools across the board for all keywords. Now these links are all from related sites (travel oriented) but the difference is quite marked. For years we've been told that link exchanges are dead or harmful to your site's rankings but since the Panda update I've noticed that reciprocal links definitely help... at the moment.<br />
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So what about those ultra-targetted, one way, followed links... they've not really had an impact on rankings. Strangely I've had more results from adding a few nofollowed links from related blog posts with no real targetted anchor text. The site-wide boost these links have given has helped. Maybe my <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-wikipedia-model">link model</a> was too unnatural as it contained no nofollowed links at all and now that it does Google thinks more highly of the site, maybe it is just the pure number of links that matter. I'll keep you updated with what's working!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-86231163313595725362011-06-06T12:18:00.000+00:002011-06-06T12:18:54.685+00:00One Schema to rule them all...The official <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-schemaorg-search-engines.html">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.ysearchblog.com/2011/06/02/introducing-schema-org-a-collaboration-on-structured-data/">Yahoo!</a> and <a href="http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2011/06/02/bing-google-and-yahoo-unite-to-build-the-web-of-objects.aspx">Bing</a> blogs have all published news of a new joint schema that these search engines have developed to enable content publishers and webmasters to mark up their content in a way that is readable to all these search engines without adding 3, 4 or 5 different types of markup or just choosing the one that Google wants. This joint markup, called <a href="http://schema.org/">Schema.org</a>, uses microdata to allow webmasters to markup specific types of content such as reviews, movie information, tv series, people profiles and more that can be easily extracted from the page and displayed in the search engine results page. Google have already been experimenting with this type of thing with "rich snippets" for places, recipes, reviews, events and products. The problem was Bing and Yahoo weren't using this data and it was hard to get Google to correctly display the data so it was often seen as an extravagance and an unneccessary use of a programmer or web designer's time to implement it. With the introduction of Schema.org this all changes and sites with any of the content that the schema can handle should implement it as soon as possible. Early adopters will benefit from the increased exposure in the search engine results as their content is indexed quicker and correctly and the search engines promote their new shiny features. <a href="http://www.denialdesign.co.uk/contact.asp">Contact Denial Design</a> today to find out how we can help your site get the benefits of this new search engine friendly code!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-37592817924165126202011-04-14T10:26:00.000+00:002011-04-14T10:26:20.207+00:00Google Panda Update Hits The UKIt's been very quiet on this blog for far too long so it's time to rectify that. I can't promise regular updates but I'll try and post something at least monthly! The big news of the last month or so is the latest Google algorithm update nicknamed "Panda" officially by Google after an engineer on their team or "Farmer" as the algorithm attempts to weed out so-called "content farms" that scrape content from the web and wrap it in adsense adverts.<br />
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There have been hundreds of posts on various SEO forums and news sites describing the "pandapocalypse" as sites in the US were hit by Panda and tumbled down the Google rankings and lost traffic and income as a result. On Monday 11th April the update was rolled out to Google's other English properties such as Google UK and UK-based SEOs were braced for a similar drop. I'm pleased to say that absolutely none of the sites I perform <a href="http://www.denialdesign.co.uk/searchengine.asp">search engine optimization</a> on have been affected by Panda in an adverse way and have even benefitted from some of the lower quality sites have dropped. So forgive me for blowing my own trumpet but it speaks volumes about the quality of content that our clients have produced and the work I have done on my clients' sites to help them up the rankings.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-49289349670762856382010-10-08T14:01:00.004+00:002010-10-08T14:18:57.308+00:00Google celebrates Lennon's 70th Birthday with first movie Doodle<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dx-fwlho8NYUAW8R5uzky-9r5wLEMnnThrQwVCLOM0v1NQ07B783J3l2vSATRfVaB9tIgKDHDZqKZE' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br />Google celebrates John Lennon's 70th birthday today with this fantastic animated Doodle on the Google UK home page which I believe is the first movie Doodle ever. In other Lennon news, the <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/10/08/john-lennon-s-fingerprints-confiscated-by-fbi-115875-22617385/">FBI have confiscated a set of John Lennon's fingerprints</a> today. Google Argentina has a doodle for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_Milstein">César Milstein</a>, a biochemist.<br /><br />In other Google news, the search giant has launched <a href="http://www.google.com/instant/">Google Instant</a>, a new look for Google Images, celebrated the<a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/yabba-dabba-doodle.html"> 50th Anniversary of the Flintstones</a>, added Latin the list of languages available in Google Translate, and for those of you looking for some SEO help the <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/seo-starter-guide-updated.html">Google Starter Guide</a> has been updated. The Starter Guide is recommended reading for anyone running any kind of business on the Internet in my opinion and covers the basics of SEO and how Google works.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-55947033952568633622010-09-08T07:47:00.005+00:002010-09-08T08:12:13.779+00:00Ch-ch-changes at GoogleToday marks an important event for Google as they switch their results to the new HTML standard, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_5">HTML 5</a>. HTML 5 allows more interactivity whislt using less additional languages like JavaScript, ActiveX plugins and so on. This will allow Google to embed videos and other interactive features straight into the results set without the need to worry about if a user has JavaScript turned on or has the right plugins installed to view a video. From tomorrow (or possibly sometime later today in the UK), Google's search results pages will be AJAX powered meaning that as you switch pages of Google results they will load almost instantly, like the new Google Image search results. Google tested <a href="http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019319.html">AJAX results in February</a> this year and it seems this will be included in this latest update. It is anticipated that the results will also show 30 results per page rather than the standard 10 blue links.<br /><br />Google showcased some HTML 5 capability yesterday with it's floating balls logo that was controlled by your mouse (but wasn't fully HTML 5 driven, it used some JavaScript).<br /><object height="265" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cuNNcdD6G9A&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cuNNcdD6G9A&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="265" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br />Today's logo is even funkier in my opinion, a plain grey Google that colours in as you type!<br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VkHj93jLs_w?fs=1&hl=en_GB"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VkHj93jLs_w?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-3795520470847620612010-08-17T09:25:00.005+00:002010-08-17T10:19:54.781+00:005 surefire ways to build quality linksLink popularity has always been an inportant factor in ranking well in the search engines but over the years the emphasis has shifted from just quantity to quality and quantity. Now your links need to be finely crafted, super-targeted pointers to the part of your sites where they will do the most good. So how do you get both quality and quantity? Here's 5 surefire ways to build quality links in high volume.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1) Social Media</span><br />There is no denying that social media is here to stay and the current two "big daddies", Facebook and Twitter are excellent ways to gain links, interact with your audience and get your message out in front of millions of users for next to nothing. Of course that's easier said than done and leveraging these social media giants in the right way is a whole other story but suffice to say it can be done and can have a great effect on your rankings and more importantly, the number of visitors to your site. For certain searches Twitter "tweets" are even displayed mixed in with the search engine results.<br /><br />Of course social media doesn't begin and end with Facebook and Twitter. Depending on your niche there is a social media site out there for you. From <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/">travel</a> to <a href="http://www.mydogspace.com/">dog lovers</a>, almost all aspects of human interest are covered.<br /><br />Social bookmarking is a quick and easy way to gain links (although search engines often don't or can't index your list of bookmarks, this may depend on your privacy settings on the sites in question though) and news bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon are great ways to bring in large amounts of traffic in a short space of time.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2) Paid Directories</span><br />This is probably the oldest link tactic in the book that still applies today. Submitting to the major paid directories can gain you some serious link-juice but it doesn't come cheap (most of the time!) and there's no guarantee your site will be accepted. If you do make it in though you can expect to see a good boost in rankings. The major directories are:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.joeant.com/">JoeAnt</a> ($40)</li><li><a href="http://www.gimpsy.com/">Gimpsy</a> ($49)</li><li><a href="http://www.goguides.org/">GoGuides</a> ($70)</li><li><a href="http://botw.org/">Best Of The Web</a> (BOTW) ($69.95 per year)</li><li><a href="http://www.business.com/">Business.com</a> ($199 per year)</li><li><a href="http://dir.yahoo.com/">Yahoo</a> ($299 per year)</li></ul>An honourable mention must go to <a href="http://www.dmoz.org/">DMOZ</a> (aka the Open Directory Project) which although free was once considered an equal to the paid directories in terms of importance and influence on rankings. There's some debate as to whether DMOZ still has that influence but it's free so it doesn't hurt to submit your site there just in case.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3) Blog Comments / Forum Posts</span><br />Blog comments and forum posts have a 2-fold use, they create links to your sites and they increase your reputation as an expert in your field (if done correctly!) There are those that say you should only comment on blogs and forums that do not "<a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569">nofollow</a>" your links to your site whereas I'm of the opinion that for most sites all traffic is good traffic and visitors from a blog or forum that is relevant to your area of business are more likely to be interested in what you have on offer and therefore more likely to buy / sign up / convert.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4) Articles</span><br />Like social media and blogging, articles are a way to establish your expertise in a field. Writing about your area of interest and getting your name out there all build a perception of expertise that can pay huge dividends. There are 2 ways to use your articles to spread the word. First you can write your article, publish it on your site and spread the link to that article via social media outlets. Secondly you can distribute your article through article sharing sites like <a href="http://www.articlesbase.com/">ArticleBase</a> that allow you to list your article for anyone to use. Include a link to your site in the article and the person using your article must leave it in there.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5) Press Releases</span><br />Submit your press releases to sites such as <a href="http://www.prweb.com/">PRWeb</a> and include a link to your website in the press release. PRWeb and companies like them will spread your message across the world and every site that publishes your story also creates a quality, targeted back link to your site.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-23973951448745881082010-07-08T10:24:00.003+00:002010-07-08T11:16:08.874+00:00Let the search engines do the workThings have come a long way since the late 90's when I first started learning SEO. Back then you'd submit to Altavista or Lycos or Inktomi and wait and hope that the search engines would spider you. <br /><br />Nowadays it's so much easier. The major players, Google and Bing/Yahoo, have their own dedicated "Webmaster Toolboxes" where you simply verify your site, submit an XML sitemap and watch as they crawl your site and give highly detailed reports on it's progress. They'll even help you create the sitemap! These toolboxes will then tell you how many pages the search engine has indexed, how often your site is visited, your top keywords, the number of links to your site, broken links, malware infected pages and much more, free of charge! Google even tells you how fast your site loads and how to improve.<br /><br />Let's look at each one in a little more detail:<br /><h2>Google Webmaster Tools</h2><br />The daddy of the search engine world and probably the most useful of the lot. <a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/">Google Webmaster Tools</a> shows you your site's top queries, where the site ranks over time for each query and a click-through rate for each position and keyword. It shows any crawl errors, the most used keywords on your site, the number of links to your site and each page that has external links, the submission status of your sitemap, allows you to quickly and easily point Google to your new domain if you are moving your site, internal links, and subscribers to your rss feeds. There's also a section telling you how you can improve your site's ranking, from HTML considerations (duplicate or short title and description tags), site speed performance, malware infections, broken links, robots.txt checks and adding content to your site's <a href="http://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en_GB/index.html">sidewiki</a>. YOu can even request removal of a plage from Google's index here. You will need a Google account to access the tools.<br /><br /><h3>Bing Webmaster Center</h3><br />Bing's <a href="http://www.bing.com/webmaster">Webmaster Center</a> will become more important now that Bing owns Yahoo! and will soon be powering Yahoo! search, giving Bing a much larger share of the market. Of course you'll need a Windows Live account to access the toolbox. <br /><br />Once inside the toolbox you'll see a range of reports on your site, from the date it was last crawled by Bing to Bing's very own Domain Score. Bing ranks each page on your site out of 5, with 5 being the best. Now it's not hard to get a 5 out of 5 rating for each page with a little bit of thought but the rating system is a handy way of showing you what pages you need to improve. Unfortunately it only shows you the top 5 pages on your site. You'll also see the language of the page, it's last crawled date and if it's blocked by robots.txt or other factors. You'll also see a count of the total number of indexed pages.<br /><br />Like Google each site has a profile page where you fill in your sitemap address, manage verification settings and an optional email address where Bing can alert you to periodic news and updates, although I've yet to receive any mail from Bing and I've been using the toolbox for a long time!<br /><br />Again like Google, you can view crawl issues, malware, broken links, etc., view backlinks and outbound links by domain and subdomain. <br /><br />Where the Bing Webmaster Center fails to match Google is the Keywords area of the toolbox. Bing does not give you any reports on your top performing keywords at all and their keyword tool is shockingly bad. Basically you type in a keyword or phrase in to the tool and it returns a list of pages on your site that feature that word or phrase along with a domain rank score for each page. There is no data on click through rates, positions, the number of times your page appeared in the search results for that phrase, nothing useful in short.<br /><br /><h4>Yahoo Site Explorer</h4><br />The <a href="https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites">Yahoo! Site Explorer</a> is probably on it's way to the scrap heap now Bing are in charge yet Site Explorer can still provide some useful information in the meantime. You will need a Yahoo ID to access the full features of Site Explorer. Like the other two you can manage yor sitemap feed here, view the number of indexed pages and crawl errors. Site Explorer also shows you the number of domains that link to and from your site and like Google shows your top performing keywords although in far less detail than Google. Like Google you can request page deletions.<br /><br />Where Yahoo! surpasses the others is in it's reporting of backlinks. Yahoo seems to list every single link to your site and you can filter by domain, subdomain and page. Yahoo also lists every single page on your site that it has indexed.<br /><br /><h5>What about Ask?</h5><br />Ask is the only one of the big search engines that have yet to roll out a webmasters area but it does support xml sitemaps and allows you to ping the sitemap so they know of any changes.<br />http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml<br /><br />So take the hard work out of the basics, submit your site to these webmaster toolboxes, wait whilst they gather some information on your site and follow their suggestions and your search engine traffic will start to increase. The toolboxes take away some of the guesswork of improving your rankings allowing you to concentrate on writing quality content and gaining links.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-18491327517389676872010-06-22T13:04:00.007+00:002010-06-22T13:34:54.165+00:00Back to basicsWell I've been neglecting my blog for some time now and I've decided it's time to go back to basics. The blog is billed as "tips, tricks, rants and raves" so I'm going to start a semi-regular series of tips and tricks to help your site rank well.<br /><br />The first tip is:<br /><br /><h1>Semantic Markup</h1><br />What is semantic markup? Well it's basically using existing <abbr title="Hypertext Mark-up Language">HTML</abbr> elements to mark up or style your web pages in a way that makes sense to both users and search engines so that the meaning of the content is the same no matter what method the content is being accessed by (different browsers, mobile phones, interactive tv, games consoles, etc). Take the heading above for example (the bit that says "Semantic Markup" in big letters). In old fashioned print terms that's a "headline", so on the web you should use your headline elements (H1, H2, H3, etc). As it's our first headline in this item it's marked up with an H1 element. As you work your way down the page you would use the other headline elements to define the headings in descending order of significance. Search engines can read these elements and see what is the most important part of the page by it's corresponding tag. Similarly the use of other tags or elements such as <code><address>, <abbr> and <acronym></code> all give clues to search engines about the content contained within the tags, in this case an address, an abbreviation (such as <abbr title="Federal Bureau of Investigation">F.B.I.</abbr>) or an acronym (such as <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym>). Lists should be displayed using the Unordered List or Ordered List elements, for example:<br /><br />This list was created by simply typing in the numbers<br />1) This is a fake list item<br />2) This is also a fake list item<br /><br />This list was created using an <ol> element<br /><ol><li>This is a real list item</li><br /><li>This is also a real list item</li></ol><br /><br />No only is the second list easier for search engines to understand it's easier for humans too, not only to read but to create as the numbers appear automatically!<br /><br />So make it easy for the search engines and humans and use semantic markup.<br />For more information visit this page on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/futuremedia/technical/semantic_markup.shtml">Future Media Standards and Guidelines</a> from the BBC.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-6622165080949411462010-04-12T08:35:00.005+00:002010-04-12T09:00:30.924+00:00It's Official, Google Is Using Site Speed To Rank Your SiteThe Official Google Webmaster Blog announced on Friday that <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html">Google are using the loading time of your sites as a ranking factor</a>. It's been rumoured for some time, especially when Google announced Google <a href="http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/">Page Speed</a> and integrated their findings into Google Webmaster Tools, but now we have confirmation from the big G itself. Google are playing down it's impact saying:<br /><blockquote>Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point. We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing. If you haven't seen much change to your site rankings, then this site speed change possibly did not impact your site.</blockquote><br />Even so 1% of sites on a competitive query that returns 750,000,000 results is still 750,000 results. I'm sure everyone would like to rank 750,000 places higher and a few simple optimization tricks can help.<br /><br /><h2>5 simple tricks to speed up load times</h2><br /><br />1) Optimize your images for the web. Back when we were all on dial-up modems this practise was the norm but it has fallen by the wayside as we switched to big fat broadband connections. With the increase in mobile Internet use, optimised images are again in demand. Most image editing programs have a "save for web" feature that will walk you through the image optimisation process.<br /><br />2) Reduce code bloat. Cut out some of the bells and whistles on your site if they don't add to the user experience. Chances are they are just slowing your site down for no benefit. Compress javascript and CSS files where possible. <a href="http://www.denialdesign.co.uk/accessibility.asp">Valid, accessible, html code</a> loads far faster than bloated table-dependent code.<br /><br />3) Use a fast, reliable hosting company. At <a href="http://www.denialdesign.co.uk">Denial Design</a> we have optimised our hosting environment to give the fastest response times we can to user requests. We've enabled on the fly compression of various file types to improve loading speeds. Most sites we host have seen a 10 - 15% decrease in load times due to the optimisation of the servers, and all for just £65 a year per site.<br /><br />4) Avoid "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking">hotlinking</a>" to images. Not only does it earn you the wrath of the original host but it increases load times as extra DNS requests are needed to find the site you've linked the image from.<br /><br />5) Avoid dead links. Make sure every image, css file and javascript file you link to is present and correct. Load times suffer as the browser twiddles it thumbs waiting for the server to find a file you've linked to that doesn't actually exist. Use <a href="http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html">Xenu Link Sleuth</a> to check your site for dead links.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-32935346581108688012010-04-01T15:19:00.002+00:002010-04-01T15:22:20.836+00:00April Fools from GoogleGoogle has 2 April Fools Day jokes running today.<br />The first, visible on the Google home page, is a link to <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/translateforanimals/">Google Animal Translate</a>.<br /><blockquote>Making the world's information universally accessible is a key goal for Google. Language is one of our biggest challenges so we have targeted our efforts on removing language barriers between the species. We are excited to introduce Translate for Animals, an Android application which we hope will allow us to better understand our animal friends. We've always been a pet-friendly company at Google, and we hope that Translate for Animals encourages greater interaction and understanding between animal and human. </blockquote><br /><br />The second, from the Official Google Blog is that <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/different-kind-of-company-name.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FMKuf+%28Official+Google+Blog%29">Google has changed it's name to Topeka</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-9017469975176796122010-02-26T16:38:00.003+00:002010-02-26T16:53:17.377+00:00Google UK showing site country in SERPS<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1V3VbRnXYm2ljg_TWjCDFkCBetuidrRrL_zkEdADYZwW9bHXkaPJFFtiuOfThWmmzfgJz39lanDnfp1TUyFou-tLYM8Za7Jo98GO2jzTSRc2N7F215SRUrHOEV3anVXv_-tTgDw/s1600-h/google-countries.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 228px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1V3VbRnXYm2ljg_TWjCDFkCBetuidrRrL_zkEdADYZwW9bHXkaPJFFtiuOfThWmmzfgJz39lanDnfp1TUyFou-tLYM8Za7Jo98GO2jzTSRc2N7F215SRUrHOEV3anVXv_-tTgDw/s400/google-countries.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5442592720772897362" /></a><br />As you can see from the screen grab on the right, Google UK is now showing what country some sites are hosted in alongside the URL. You can see "United States" next to the mashable entry on the screen grab. What does it mean? Frankly I have no idea... AS far as I can tell it's not related to Caffeine as performing the same search on a Caffeine Powered (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Sciuto">Caf Pow</a>?) datacentre produces different results and no country codes.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-34487544696385029912010-02-02T16:06:00.004+00:002010-02-02T16:30:53.246+00:00Google tracking clicks againWhilst checking out the competition on Google for "web design prestwich" I clicked a few results and noticed Google has inserted a redirect page between the results and the target web page. You have to be quick to notice it but it's definitely there. The redirect URL is:<br /><br /><code>http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=12&ved=0CA8QFjABOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.qype.co.uk%2Fukd31-manchester-prestwich%2Fcategories%2F8-services&rct=j&q=web+design+prestwich&ei=UU5oS-i9G4v-0gS_k420CA&usg=AFQjCNHQWtA8GXpLqL0NhUciYRX7USHMnA</code><br /><br />As you can see, that result is for the site "Qype" <br /><br />If you mouseover the results when they first load you'll see the site's address in your browser status bar, but click on the link and then go back to Google and mouseover and you'll see the Google redirect URL instead. See the before and after screen grabs below:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0CmlYtqTXn0AFs3XHyZbJkzvMVmpbsCB370NJyDu-FvQHlLwtqJxLd_SJWUg4DGyEdBhTo5led1jVb83HWoNZGNHC-inHqeDBAiL4yBezs8Dxc3AUx-2ZmigY43dEwm0ChSoLFQ/s1600-h/before.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 297px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0CmlYtqTXn0AFs3XHyZbJkzvMVmpbsCB370NJyDu-FvQHlLwtqJxLd_SJWUg4DGyEdBhTo5led1jVb83HWoNZGNHC-inHqeDBAiL4yBezs8Dxc3AUx-2ZmigY43dEwm0ChSoLFQ/s400/before.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433681444011111938" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJtRzQfYf2mCZBjr95Ho0riMTIKNnHfmsCkREk61ndCtxYwTQauLhR8ynQDQsM0VUtHFPUhqUFFZnGwZG1SvqPk9elXPkCbMJ9v-85gdF2HGQzJJg1xM7E6alYnW8c_kqTpofLdQ/s1600-h/after.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 236px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJtRzQfYf2mCZBjr95Ho0riMTIKNnHfmsCkREk61ndCtxYwTQauLhR8ynQDQsM0VUtHFPUhqUFFZnGwZG1SvqPk9elXPkCbMJ9v-85gdF2HGQzJJg1xM7E6alYnW8c_kqTpofLdQ/s400/after.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433681548148232370" /></a><br /><br />Why are Google doing this? In December Google announced they were rolling out <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html">personalized results for everyone</a>, not just logged in users. Google are tracking what you click and using that data to change the results you see.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-37934876277062244972010-01-04T16:21:00.002+00:002010-01-04T16:23:05.755+00:00Google celebrates Sir Isacc Newton's Birthday<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzMvLQtyLuP6G9e8yBkPQ1BwcmZEyUnhLxr2NNmnf7O8UOXGZ3fqFC60pI_hkw2skG1HlEBp640_z6bsJGSgL5mkdKAsSU_nTDW2GdzHftIitzwtLF40N9Izhuh-djnLX7F1uEsA/s1600-h/newton10-tree.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 115px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzMvLQtyLuP6G9e8yBkPQ1BwcmZEyUnhLxr2NNmnf7O8UOXGZ3fqFC60pI_hkw2skG1HlEBp640_z6bsJGSgL5mkdKAsSU_nTDW2GdzHftIitzwtLF40N9Izhuh-djnLX7F1uEsA/s320/newton10-tree.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5422920795557857650" /></a><br />The <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/">Google</a> home page celebrates Sir Isacc Newton's birthday today with it's first ever animated Google Doodle, and it's all done with JavaScript which makes the first apple in the logo fall. Very nice.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-15050469072758156972009-12-09T21:37:00.003+00:002009-12-09T21:46:15.787+00:00Google integrates real time search.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXEqcSX2_vTvSxW7xLNm-PtglUJsU0NWzLAhOUPPuDD3DxE2EY8u07p7a9uGKIypSNeKJw1gtxMI-aDIil9rbQMT6NzO5hyphenhyphen-hTxh8MM9cgZSv2A1wXaMtdYeNouoSw0oUcXx0AMg/s1600-h/iphone.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXEqcSX2_vTvSxW7xLNm-PtglUJsU0NWzLAhOUPPuDD3DxE2EY8u07p7a9uGKIypSNeKJw1gtxMI-aDIil9rbQMT6NzO5hyphenhyphen-hTxh8MM9cgZSv2A1wXaMtdYeNouoSw0oUcXx0AMg/s320/iphone.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413354556210745794" /></a><br />Launched a few days ago in the US and now in the UK, Google has integrated real time search within their search engine results as this search for <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&q=iPhone&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_en-GBGB342GB342&ie=UTF-8">iPhone</a> demonstrates (see screenshot on the right!). Real time search integrates posts from blogs, news sources, twitter and facebook posts to bring up to the second results. The interface is a bit clunky which is surprising for Google who pride themselves on simple and clean as their new homepage shows. For those of you who haven't seen it the "new" Google homepage has a fade in effect for it's menu items when you move your mouse over the screen.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvtbaV1UOsiZ4YykMooEP9JPU4lAuGpe9g0-bQvx9hLbdTGrgFHsXqAvRVHrt07RRSSqvXb4_IKj55sSixV1UlSwfY7ygnzrRET8iY_20l25jAvKhFyy5d8C1CArBFFGoa7mmdTQ/s1600-h/popeye.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 264px; height: 145px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvtbaV1UOsiZ4YykMooEP9JPU4lAuGpe9g0-bQvx9hLbdTGrgFHsXqAvRVHrt07RRSSqvXb4_IKj55sSixV1UlSwfY7ygnzrRET8iY_20l25jAvKhFyy5d8C1CArBFFGoa7mmdTQ/s320/popeye.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413356002088112050" /></a><br />In other Google news, yesterday's Google doodle featured Popeye to celebrate his creator (E.C. Segar)'s birthday, 8th December 1894. Maybe next year we'll get a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimebag_Darrell">Dimebag Darrell</a> doodle?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-47409462598892274052009-11-30T13:30:00.002+00:002009-11-30T13:33:40.651+00:00Google celebrates St. Andrews day with doodle<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilCbjVG5xvPTQbo1WLkP3PpD5SQgnn_1lHaoA2wAYFMGyFrWpgETSiznQLghE_jqey_7WBqztwBpG5dBDHJCIBzZRUyt6SLszlCe-bgvxV9VOcLtO1PR_cszUN6IkWbEYSGBStBQ/s1600/standrewsday09-hp.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 101px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilCbjVG5xvPTQbo1WLkP3PpD5SQgnn_1lHaoA2wAYFMGyFrWpgETSiznQLghE_jqey_7WBqztwBpG5dBDHJCIBzZRUyt6SLszlCe-bgvxV9VOcLtO1PR_cszUN6IkWbEYSGBStBQ/s320/standrewsday09-hp.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409888594285180034" /></a><br />Google celebrates St. Andrews day today with a new Google Doodle (right). Yahoo and Ask haven't bothered whilst Bing has a lovely picture of the <a href="http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=hphot4&cp=57.50669~-6.18368&style=h&lvl=11&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&sp=Point.tkj034ggj6qm_The%20Storr____&encType=1">Old Man of Stor</a> and the same hidden links they used for Remembrance Day.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8920243.post-59936636129397433172009-11-12T12:19:00.008+00:002009-11-12T12:54:16.808+00:00New features from Bing and GoogleBing have rolled out more features as part of "Bing Wave 2". These include:<br /><br />Integration with Wolfram|Alpha in the diet and fitness category allowing you to work out your BMI and other useful things.<br /><br />Improved "hover preview" (where you hover your mouse over an icon and see a preview of a website without actually clicking through to the site) which adds customer service phone numbers, search within this site, a Google Site Links style list of deep links, a screenshot of the webpage and for Facebook accounts you'll see a picture of the account owner, who is in their Facebook network and send them a message or friend request.<br /><br />Weather / Event results which brings together news, events, xRank results, Twitter feeds, images, Best Match results and content from trusted sites for the Weather / Events results.<br /><br />Share Search Results on Facebook and Twitter, email to a friend or print results.<br /><br />The Travel tools have a makeover as well. If you hover over Travel on the homepage you'll see options to search airfares and hotels. Going into the travel category will bring up an Instant Answers box where you can enter your travel dates, starting point and destination and narrow your search to sites that can match this data. City results now include events listings.<br /><br />Health has received a makeover to make it more organized.<br /><br />Of course all these options are on the US version of Bing, looks like the UK users will have to wait.<br /><br />Google's new features include:<br /><br />World Bank public data such as <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&q=gdp+of+indonesia&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_en-GBGB342GB342&ie=UTF-8">GDP of Indonesia</a>, <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&q=internet+users+in+the+united+kingdom&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_en-GBGB342GB342&ie=UTF-8">internet users in the united kingdom</a> and more. This data is available on Google US and UK (and probably worldwide).<br /><br />Locking Safe Search in Google Images. Stop your young ones from seeing things they shouldn't by locking Safe Search on which includes a handy graphical clue so you can see from across the room is Safe Search is on. See the video below for more info.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZNbHGrGJu8Q&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZNbHGrGJu8Q&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />More images Universal search. For example search for <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=digital+cameras">digital cameras</a> in Google.com and you'll see a range of images of digital cameras so you can see the variety of makes and models on offer. <blockquote>"On broader queries, this helps you get a sense of the range of products available to you for the query."</blockquote> says the Official Google Blog. This feature is not currently active on Google UK.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/landing/music/">Google Music Search</a>. Again not available in the UK but I'm sure we'll get it soon. It's probably due to copyright and licensing issues. This feature lets you enter an artist's name, lyrics or song title into Google and you'll be able to preview the song from selected media partners of Google.<br /><br />There's also a whole host of updates to the Movies search feature, see the <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/googles-movie-showtimes-digitally.html">Official Google Blog</a> for more information. Again this doesn't work in the UK.<br /><br />Google have also updated the keywords tool in the Webmaster control panel. <br /><blockquote><br />"We'll now be updating the data daily, providing details on how often we found a specific keyword, and displaying a handful of URLs that contain a specific keyword. The significance column compares the frequency of a keyword to the frequency of the most popular keyword on your site. When you click on a keyword to view more details, you will get a list of up to 10 URLs which contain that keyword."</blockquote><br /><br />The World Bank data looks to me like Google missed out on a deal with Wolfram|Alpha to Bing so went for the next best thing. Safe Search locking seems like an excellent idea to me and will be very useful in schools and to parents. Personally I can't wait for Google music search to be available in the UK but I imagine the amount of paperwork and feet-dragging by the major labels may delay this for a long time until they can work out how to make a quick buck from it. The improvements to Bing show they're finally serious about search but until UK users get similar features then Google will remain number one in the UK.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02360614607105685519noreply@blogger.com