08 Feb 2010 11:52 am
Daniel Lew's post search engine result display made me think about the vertical search engines. Vertical search engines are entirely different from the general search engine's like Google,Yahoo and Bing. Vertical search engines know their visitor and they are made based upon the visitor's interest. You can easly find a lot of travel based vertical search engines like Kayak. There are search engine which go beyond the general search engine feature to provide results based upon word relation in context to search query. Truevert is one such search engine which provides true vertical results beyond general search engine niche intention based result. Another interesting search engine I came across was Bossy which provides single answer to visitor queries.
An example is
Question:: When did germany invade poland ? Answer:: Month: Sept Year: 1939
The latest computational knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha was intended to provide visitors with systematic knowledge on their queries.
Where is the search heading towards?. The search engine future might go beyond general search engines as new signals of relavance becomes important. Certain factors like user behaviour, speed of providing search results etc will play a much more dominant role in the coming years and this will make general search engines to start taking measures to understand about the user query signals to stay on top of the search industry.
08 Feb 2010 10:50 am
I have recently been playing with thoughts and thinking of ways that perhaps in the future could be possible. Let's think about this for a moment in the way of Google how it displays it's results.
First of all it shows the top 10 results before you click next and then next again to the 2nd ten. Now what if it was possible that they could give you the option to view 100 results per page, without having to click next and next every time. Would this be better in your opinion for SEO companies? Would we then be able to tell our clients we can get them on the 1st page. Perhaps we would need to propose to them a slightly different scenario. But if the results were displayed differently like this could this effect the services we are offering?
Quite simply it would not necessarily effect anything, we would just have to approach our angle differently when offering placements to companies. Anyway like I said this has not happened, and perhaps it will never happen. I mean if it didn't happen before why would it happen now?
Well Google has always tried to make things complicated for us SEO companies and will always do what they can to change the way they display data to move with the times. It's just part of nature and the internet game, don't get frightened as this has not yet happened but you never know what the future lies ahead. I always like to think one step forward.
Another thought that came to mind and something that you never know could happen is what if it was possible to display results all on one page without having to click next and next. Perhaps one day there might be such a thing. You never know, so again would this effect us? Perhaps it would, but again we would have to adjust our market and what we offer.
No matter the case the way results will be displayed their will always be someone on top of someone else, so for us SEO companies it is not a case of what page you are on, it is more a case of who is ahead or on top of you, as everyone looks from top to bottom anyway, it's just natural. I don't know anyone that searches and looks from bottom to top? Do you?
In my real opinion, what has worked well already will continue to work well, now that Google have introduced other data displays such as Twitter results products and videos in the results, you never know what could happen one day good or bad. We just have to be prepared and always be one step ahead!
07 Feb 2010 08:56 pm
A lot of rumours are being displayed in real time search results due to the real time search integration to search engine results. The false information are being promoted virally through twitter and other real time social media. How search engines would prevent this type of false information being displayed on their real time search results is not yet clear.
Search Engine's should come up with a new technology like Page Rank which I do like to call as Social Rank. The tweets that come online at real time in search engines should be based on the Social Rank. The social rank of each profile must be based on the credibility of the users social presence and interaction.
I hope that this way we can really get the correct news at the right time. Real time search should provide the correct news not just the real time data which might be false information.
In the morning on feburary 3rd, 2010 TV channels created a flutter airing incorrect information about the death of popular movie star in malaylam and it was tweeted virally. The real time search started showing the false information. At 1pm the channels said they regretted airing the false news but within this time the news had virally reached to thousands of people around the world.
The TCS hack was in the real time search results today. The website was hacked by a french hacker according to relevant sources and the domain was put to sale.
Real time search have its own merits as well as demerits like any other technology. Search Engines needs to ensure that they start measuring the Social Rank of each profile rather than the Page Rank which seems to be an irrelevant source to measure credibility.
Do you think Search Engines should measure Social Rank? Tell us what you think
30 Jan 2010 11:56 am
For the knowledge of all RDFa is nothing but Resource Description Framework attribute. RDFa is a W3C recommendation which adds attribute level extensions to XHTML. Google uses RDFa for reviews. It displays the date of the review, the star rating, the author and the price range of the reviewed product. Some of the review sites which used RDFa seemed to have improved ranking and increased traffic for their review pages.
So here is the biggest question Are You Working The RDFa Framework Into Your SEO Campaigns?. It is time that SEO's should start working on RDFa and microformats. Using RDFa in contact page can be really helpful for the search engine to verify certain information like contact information. RDFa helps us to show author information as well as manufacture information. Owner of particular images can use RDFa to provide license information about the images they own. I will like you all to come up with your opnions about RDFa. RDFa in SEO is surely going to be the hottest topic that will be discussed in 2010. I would suggest the readers to start using important RDFa tags as it would really help in improving your website credibility.
29 Jan 2010 09:46 am
If you think you want your site to be loved by search engines like Google, is it really possible? We'll, study shows that Web 2.0 sites are now being loved by Google because they made them prove that their Web 2.0 site is SEO friendly. SEO friendly sites like Web 2.0, web directories, social media and social bookmarks are being loved by Google for a long time.
So how can our site be loved by Google?
* Blogs and eCommerce sites are not really loved by Google. They can be spammed around the other do-follow sites and other Web 2.0 properties, with suspicious keywords to promote and compete in the Google search results. We use Web 2.0 sites as a start since on the search results, Web 2.0 sites are mostly on the top of the mountain.
* Create unique content and show Google that you are the original author of the content.
* Make your website or blog look attractive. Wordpress, Blogger, Joomla or Drupal are the best portals for you to make it attractive by installing widgets, ads, etc.
* Do SEO in a white hat way. For Web 2.0 sites, they can be applied both white hat and black hat way because they are just feeders. But in order to be safe from being suspicious, make use of white hat techniques.
* Be original to yourself. If you think you know what it means, you know what to do than just being a copy cat.
So I think you already learned on how Google loves our website. Just make them proud that you deserved to be a real legitimate SEO specialist like anybody else. As for me, I want Google to be forever loved for my own blog.
21 Jan 2010 11:05 pm
Google has started showing location breadcrumbs in search results by the mid of November. The breadcrumbs offers multiple hierarchical links that you just don't get with regular search results. The big question is "Does we need to use any kind of delimiters that matter breadcrumbs shown through search results ?". Matt Cutts the head of Google's Webspam team came up with the answer "You should have a set of delimited links on your site that accurately reflect your site's hierarchy".
Breadcrumbs are in its early days and there will be lot of changes happening with breadcrumbs just like the changes that happened with Google Sitelinks. Now webmasters can remove a sitelink that looks bad or you feel is not worth having. Webmasters can just log into their Google webmaster tools account and remove the same. If you have set up the exact delimited on your site that accurately reflect your site's hierarchy then you have a better chance of getting your breadcrumbs shown in Google search results. The delimiter I have seen in breadcrumbs that are shown in Google search results are ">". I do prefer the same with my website hierarchy. I hope that this post will help you all to get your location breadcrumbs in Google search results.
20 Jan 2010 10:54 pm
Why do you think about Bing? How can we say that Bing will dominate the internet? Do you think they're doing this because they give you outstanding tools, results and updates? Or their services are not amusing at all? Bing! Bing! Bing! Here comes the Bing! They totally want to dominate the internet, but there's a problem anyway.
Google is on the top and they're way too far than Yahoo and Bing. Bing is trying to make a plan in order to dominate Google and Yahoo in the internet. But they will do it in an idiot way. On these past few months, there are some controversies that Bing will crush Google.
WHAT? Are you kidding me? We'll their words are completely harsh for Google, which they are making alternative plans for it. They are making a deal with the big time webmasters who uses Google for SEO, to de-index themselves in exchange of big cash.
Oh really? Big cash, huh? How much is it? Huge money just to get out of Google? Are you kidding me for being such a Bing out there? I can say you're a total piece of crap! Don't you know that search engines are very useful no matter where you are independently like Altavista, Dogpile, Baidu, etc.? De-index with Google is a huge mistake for you.
Don't try to be tempted with Bing. Google is already big and most webmasters need it for their own business and earning revenue through their tools like Adsense, Adwords, Analytics, etc. Bing also has their MSN adCenter but I think getting backlinks to Bing is very difficult than Google and Yahoo.
So I will tell this straight to you Bing, you will never win against Google! If you do this in a blackhat or evil way, you're already filling up the heat. Just do your own business there and not jeopardizing others to de-index with Google.
18 Jan 2010 10:53 am
Matt Cutts have given the answer on how Google will rate the links from Facebook and Twitter. Here is the question that was asked to Matt Cutts "Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a website. How do you rate links from new platforms like Twitter, FB to a website?". Matt says that Google will treat the links in the same manner whether it is from Facebook or Twitter, as if they were from any other site. The PageRank formula applies to all. The most important factor that is taken into PageRank is the reputation of the backlinks rather than the number of backlinks. Yes, quality really matters not the quantity. You must get your backlinks from relavant resources which have high reputation. Google will use a similar method to rank the tweets.
The links might still take time to pass PageRank as facebook has lot of private profile and links from this profiles will not get crawled by the search engines. The links from twitter are nofollow as of now. This doesn't mean that search engines will not consider the links at all. All the tweets are getting crawled and some tweets are even getting ranked. There are chances that the microlinks will pass relavant information to the search engines. The response of Matt Cutts is what most of the SEO's and Webmasters were expecting but now it is straight from the expert's mouth and we do have to take it into our strategy. We need to think whether to use a uncrawled platform or a nofollow platform.
Facebook has now come up with a feature similar to retweet. The feature is called "share". This seems to be Facebook's answer to Twitter's "retweet". This will help facebook to emerge as a platform where content can be shared and viral marketing can be made use of just like Twitter. Twitter feature of lists as well as upcoming feature of Contributors will make twitter a strong platform to market content on the web through social media. Google have already started ranking twitter lists just like tweets.There will be more improved features coming in the social media as the competition between Facebook and Twitter grows.
15 Jan 2010 12:02 am
The are lot of speculations going on in the SEO world. There have been a lot of predictions for 2010. The big question now is will the microlinks gain importance in the eyes of Search Engines ?. Blogging has changed from Megablogging to Microblogging. Twitter and Plurk are the most famous microblogging sites. While twitter has build up a strong presence in the Internet social media world, plurk has build a strong presence among Asia social media users especially users from Taiwan. My answer to the question is that there is high chance that Google starts giving more weightage to twitter microlinks as Google has already started to track the real time mentions. They have started showing the title as well as homepage of the website that is tweeted as microlink using bit.ly or using URL's shortened by other microlinking websites.This is a great sign that the tweets might pass some significant data that might be taken into consideration while search engines compute SERP changes.
Now the most important question comes up as how Google will determine which tweets are more relavant and which are not that relavant?. I would have to say that Google will use a similar meterics which they have been using for website relavance. Google has been using a concept like a webpage becomes important as more and more external webpages links of which more authority webpages are giving the links which have more number of backlinks. The same principal might be applied in the case of twitter profile. A twitter profile will get more authority if a lot of twitter profiles link to the particular twitter profile of which some of them are most famous twitter who have lot of followers and who follow a few. This will really make search engine conisered the twitter profile as a priorirty one and the tweets will get more importance.
Here is supporting view.
"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". Read more here
14 Jan 2010 09:28 am
The battle between search engines and social media websites to dominate the most visited sector of Internet have started long back. The battle now seems to be more strong as Facebook have been the most visited website in US during three days in December. Facebook have overtaken search engine gaint Google and achieved this visitors stastics in US. Will this be a holiday trend or will this become a global trend ?. The days are Christmas day eve, Christmas day and New Years Eve. The information has been published on Hitwise US Twitter account. This trend of facebook trafficcould attract some US advertisers to facebook. The US visits to Twitter have increased 4% in December 2009 as compared to November 2009. This is a strong indication that Social Media websites are emerging as a competitor to Search Engine.
The top searched term in 2009 was "Facebook" as per Hitwise Information. This gives Facebook a competitive edge ahead of the other social media gaints to compete against the search engines. Facebook has moved 10 position as compared to previous year to gain the position of top searched word in 2009.
The growth of Facebook has made advertisers to think on moving their ads to Facebook as well. This will certainly make facebook to gain some dollars through the ad medium. Facebook offers lot of options for advertisers. Advertisers can target their audience based on age,sex as well as location. This will facebook a slight positive edge ahead of Google. Google is still the strongest search engine but they now have a strong competitor from the social media. Facebook can grow into a much powerful social media if they uses the strategy in the correct manner.Andy Atkins-Krüger CEO of WebCertain points out facts about facebook's chances of emerging as a real powerful social media website in the Global front in one of his latest post in Search Engine Land.
