Google’s New Indexing Infrastructure ‘Caffeine’ Now Live
What you need to know about Google's indexing system.
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Vanessa Fox's latest articles
Google Confirms “Mayday” Update Impacts Long Tail Traffic
Google made between 350 and 550 changes in its organic search algorithms in 2009. This is one of the reasons I recommend that site owners not get too fixated on specific ranking factors. If you tie construction of your site to any one perceived algorithm signal, you’re at the mercy of Google’s constant tweaks. These frequent […]
Google Webmaster Central Adds Even More Query Data
I love data. Part of what’s so great about the web is that the data available brings amazing insights about our audience and how they are engaging with our organizations to enable us to improve that experience. In mid-April, Google Webmaster Tools significantly expanded the information they provide about the search queries that lead to […]
How Do Americans Access Government Data? Search Engines.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has issued a new report about how Americans access government information. They found that 82% of online adults in the United States have been to a government website within the last 12 months, and that 44% started at a major search engine. While social media has become increasingly […]
Google Expands Rich Snippet Support Internationally
Nearly a year ago, Google announced that they had begun extracting metadata from microformat and RDFa markup on pages to display “rich snippets” in search results. They recently expanded this support to include HTML5 microdata. They now use this markup to enhance results for people profiles, reviews, videos, events, and recipes. Rich snippets provide additional information […]
Google Out To Hurt Companies That Issue Press Releases, At Least According to Reuters
Last week, Google made a bold move that some worry may block audiences from information and harm individuals. This move sent controversial shockwaves through the investment community and mainstream media! It was unorthodox and raised many questions! Or maybe not. The bold move? It issued its first quarter 2010 financial results on investor.google.com and said that […]
Yahoo! Launches Search-Based iPhone Apps, Including Sketch-A-Search
When Yahoo and Microsoft announced their partnership to replace Yahoo organic search index with Bing’s, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said that while Yahoo would no longer crawl and index the web, they would own the search experience and continue to innovate there. I was skeptical. There’s only so much innovation a search engine can do […]
It’s Official: Google’s Proposal For Crawling AJAX URLs is Live
Today at SMX West, Maile Ohye from Google confirmed that Google is indeed now crawling AJAX pages that use the standard proposed last Fall. The documentation is live on Google Code and you can also take a look at my recent article about how to implement the standard and its pros and cons. Maile mentioned […]
The Future Of The Internet: Search Looks Bright
The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently undertook a massive task (for the fourth time): predicting the future of the internet. They surveyed hundreds of technology experts, who not unsurprisingly, had varied opinions about what the future might hold. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that any of these perspectives is the exact future of […]
Scoring Super Bowl 2010 Commercials: How’s the Search Visibility?
After the 2009 Super Bowl, I monitored how the commercials drove searches and reported back on how well the brands did at ensuring visibility in organic search results. It didn’t go so well. The primary problems were: Microsites – Microsites aren’t inherently a bad idea, but too many of them can cause brand confusion, external […]
Searching for the Superbowl Start Time: How Are The Engines, the NFL, and CBS Doing?
Last year, I took a look at the spiking searches leading up to the Superbowl to see how the search engines, and those who want to be found in them, satisfied those queries. This morning, I took another look, and while things are a bit better from a searcher satisfaction perspective (primarily due to increased blended results […]
The Latest On Google News Sitemaps
Back in November 2009, Google News announced they were “in the midst of an exciting transition period” that included a change to the News Sitemap Protocol. News publishers have through April 2010 to modify their News Sitemap to accommodate the new format. What’s so exciting and transitional? I asked Google, thinking that they were changing […]
Google May Be Crawling AJAX Now – How To Best Take Advantage Of It
In October 2009, Google proposed a new standard for implementing AJAX on web sites that would help search engines extract the content. Now, there’s evidence this proposal is either live or is about to be. Read on for more details on the proposal, how it works, and why it might be past the proposal stage. […]
Can Google Tell Us What Men and Women Are REALLY Thinking?
Last week, a post on the Predictably Irrational blog described the differences in what boyfriends and girlfriends were looking for their beloveds to do based on Google Suggest. Google Suggest can provide hours of fun. Just spend some time at Autocomplete Me or QuestionSuggestions. But can it provide useful audience analysis for understanding our customers, […]
Latinos Online: How Changing Demographics Of Those Online Impacts Search
The PEW Internet and American Life Project just released new information about use of the internet by Latino adults in the United States. How does this relate to search engine optimization? Understanding who’s online and how they search is core to success in search acquisition beyond simply ranking well. Over a billion people are now […]
Google’s Additional Discovery Method: RSS and Atom Feeds
For years, Google’s discovery of web pages was solely based on links. If a page had no links to it, Googlebot had no way of knowing about it and therefore, would never index it. Along the way, Google provided an option for submitting individual pages, but that wasn’t really a viable option for site owners […]
See What Googlebot Sees On Your Site
Google Webmaster Tools has just launched a “labs” section, where you’ll find new features that may be early in the development cycle and not quite as robust as the rest of the tools. The features available so far are Fetch as Googlebot, which lets you see exactly what Googlebot is served when it requests a […]
All Of Your Technical SEO Questions Answered And Bonus Free Developer Summit: Technical SMX East Dream Agenda
Search engine optimization involves a lot of moving parts. Audience analysis, content optimization, rankings factors — it can be hard to pinpoint concrete, actionable data. But technical SEO is a little different. It’s certainly not any easier than the other components, but at least the data can be a bit more straightforward. You can check […]
Google Lets You Tell Them Which URL Parameters To Ignore
A new feature has appeared in the Site Configuration Settings Sections of Google Webmaster Tools. The setting, called Parameter Handling, enables site owners to specify up to 15 parameters that Google should ignore when crawling and indexing the site. Google lists the parameters they’ve found in the URLs on your site, and indicates whether or […]
Google Logo Remembers Michael Jackson’s Birthday
Google’s August 29th logo notes Michael Jackson’s birthday. Google has commemorated birthdays of many famous people and events, such as Luciano Pavarotti, Lego, and Dr. Seuss.
Google Caffeine: Google’s New Search Engine Index
Google has just unveiled a “secret project” of “next-generation architecture for Google’s web search“. This new architecture appears to include crawling, indexing, and ranking changes. For the first time, Google isn’t simply incorporating these changes into their existing infrastructure or replacing it. Instead, they’re providing a developer preview and are asking webmasters and power searchers […]
Dear Senator (and Texas Gubernatorial Candidate) Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Here’s A Free Crash Course On SEO
The “Kay Bailey Hutchinson for Governor Official Website” put up by “Texans for Kay Bailey Hutchison, Allan Shivers, Jr., Treasurer” over the weekend in support of Kay Bailey Hutchinson for Texas governor was briefly in Google but now appears to be completely missing. Huh. Odd since Bing seems to have indexed it just fine, although […]
What Site Owners, Web Developers & SEOs Should Know About The Yahoo Microsoft Deal
By now, everyone has read all about the news that Yahoo is replacing its search index with Microsoft’s Bing. In a way, it’s a great story of complete reversal, as in 2002, Microsoft didn’t have its own index and instead used Inktomi. Late that year, Yahoo! acquired Inktomi, which spurred Microsoft to start building its […]
Yahoo Supports Even More Structured Data In SearchMonkey
Yahoo started the push to structure the web when it launched SearchMonkey. With SearchMonkey, a web developer could add semantic markup to a page and then build an enhanced listing for Yahoo search results. Not long after, they made things even easier by using this data to enhance listings even without a SearchMonkey application. Google […]
Microsoft’s Search Engine Optimization Advice for Bing
Microsoft recently published a PDF about Search Engine Optimization called Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. This is the second SEO-related offering in as many weeks. During SMX Advanced, Microsoft launched the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit. I’m working on a review of that as well, but it requires Vista or Windows 7 and IIS […]
Yahoo! Announces Common Tag: Like The Meta Keywords Tag, But Even Better
Yahoo! recently announced their role in creating and supporting Common Tag, a new semantic tagging format. Yahoo! says that Common Tag makes “web content more discoverable” and enables the community to “create more useful applications for aggregating, searching, and browsing the web.” Their blog post mentions that they want to accelerate the structuring of the […]
Google I/O: New Advances In The Searchability of JavaScript and Flash, But Is It Enough?
This week at Google I/O, Google talked a lot about the evolution of the technological capabilities of the web. HTML 5 is ushering in new era of browser-based development and applications. Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, kicked things off with, “My message to you is that this is the beginning of the real win of cloud […]
Google Search Now Supports Microformats and Adds “Rich Snippets” to Search Results
Today at Searchology, Google has launched a search results enhancement called “rich snippets” that uses meta data from web pages (from microformats such as hCard, hCalendar, and RDF) to display additional details (both content and meaning) about pages in the results. This initial launch supports reviews (with sites such as Yelp) and people (with sites […]
Google’s Searchology Event: An “Insider’s Perspective On Search”
Tomorrow from 10am – 11:30am PDT, Google will live stream their latest Searchology event. We will be live blogging at the event, so if you can’t watch the Google webcast, check here for all the news as it unfolds. In 2007, Google held their first Searchology event, where they announced universal search. Universal search, of […]
Microsoft Announces 3,000 New Layoffs
Today, Microsoft announced that it had delivered layoff notices to 3,000 employees across several divisions (1,200 in Washington state). This comes just months after an initial round of 1,400 who were let go when Microsft announced second quarter earnings. At that time, Microsoft said it planned to eliminate 5,000 jobs this year, and Microsoft’s CEO […]
Microsoft Live Search Tests: Best Match And Categorized Listings
The latest SEO talk this week has been all about Google’s algorithm changes that presumably favor big brands, but Microsoft Live Search has been experimenting with changes of its own that seemingly would help big brands the most (although ironically, big brands may not like it all that much). Today, I came across some interesting […]
What France Can Teach Us About Search Success
If you needed evidence that we’re living in the age of Google, look no farther than France. Ville d’Eu (more commonly known as simply “EU”) is thinking of changing its name in order to rank more easily in Google. Search for [EU], says the mayor, and information about the town is drowned out by results […]
Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Unite On “Canonical Tag” To Reduce Duplicate Content Clutter
The web is full of duplicate content. Search engines try to index and display the original or “canonical” version. Searchers only want to see one version in results. And site owners worry that if search engines find multiple versions of a page, their link credit will be diluted and they’ll lose ranking. Today, Google, Yahoo […]
Yahoo! BOSS Expands Feature Set; Adds Usage Fees
Today, Yahoo! has announced several new features to their Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS) platform as well as usage fees. When BOSS launched in July 2008, the stated goal was to spur innovation and disrupt the search market. Will the additional of usage fees hinder that goal and become a barrier to entry for […]
Scoring The Superbowl Ads & Search: Do Broadcast Marketers Get Online Acquisition?
Way back in 2007, an iProspect/Jupiter Research study found that two-thirds of those online are motivated to search online due to an offline channel such as a TV ad. Since 2007 was an eternity ago in internet time and search continues to grow, that number has surely only gone up. That TV ads cause viewers […]
Can Searchers Find The Superbowl?
Google Hot Trends can be a fascinating look at what has suddenly peaked the interest of Americans, and today everyone wants to know about the Superbowl. 35 of the 100 spiking searches have the word [superbowl] in them, and another 27 are Superbowl-related (including game-food recipes and team details). So how do searchers fare in […]
Google Webmaster Help Group: Version 2
Today, Google relaunched several of their help forums, moving them from Google Groups to a new help-specific platform. The English and Polish Google Webmaster Help group have made the move to this new format, with the other languages soon to follow. Below, more details about how this change will benefit site owners and a bit […]
Has Microsoft Live Search Detected Malware On Your Site?
Recently, Microsoft Live Search added malware warnings to their search results. If a searcher clicks a result that Microsoft has detected contains malware, a popup warns then not to proceed to the site. As Matt noted yesterday, Google and Yahoo! also provide malware warnings to searchers. How can you find out if Microsoft has flagged […]
Yahoo! BOSS Adds Key Terms Feature
In July Yahoo! launched their BOSS API, which enables you to “build your own search service”. Today, they’ve expanded the functionality of that API by adding a Key Terms feature. The technology used in Key Terms is the same used for Search Assist, which provides search suggestions and enables searchers to explore concepts related to […]
Google Webmaster Tools Now Provide Source Data For Broken Links
Ever since Google Webmaster Tools started reporting on broken links to a site, webmasters have been asking for the sources of those links. Today, Google has delivered. From Webmaster Tools you can now see the page that each broken link is coming from. This information should be of great help for webmasters in ensuring the […]