SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 4, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Topic: HTML
WTF! US Court Declares You Have No Privacy On YouTube
You have no privacy on YouTube. So effectively declared a US judge yesterday. And now somebody in the US government better stop grandstanding about search and privacy protection and actually get some laws enacted. Yesterday’s move might be the ultimate incentive, as US politicians realize that what they’ve watched on YouTube may now be open […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 2, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
The Long Road To The Debate Over “White Hat Cloaking”
I really hate arguments over cloaking. Like really hate them. But Rand Fishkin recently did a chart outlining the degrees of "safeness" to cloaking that in turn riled up Google’s Matt Cutts in comments there. No doubt others at search engines also dislike the idea that any cloaking is "white hat." So I wanted to […]
Google Now Crawling And Indexing Flash Content
Historically, search engines have been unable to extract content, such as text and links, from Flash (SWF) files. Subsequently, much of the Flash-based content on the web has been unavailable in search results. This situation has been frustrating for web developers, who have tried to come up with workarounds to help get search engines to […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 11, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 30, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google’s CEO Talks Up Mobile Ad Opportunity, Skyfire Browser Pushes For “The Real Internet” On Mobile Devices
Google very clearly recognizes how strategic the mobile internet is both for revenue growth and the company’s future. Hence the Android mobile platform, the bidding in the 700MHz auction and all the effort Google is directing toward mobile generally. CEO Eric Schmidt repeatedly emphasizes mobile as the next big frontier and opportunity. He also points […]
WWW2008: Search Research Paper Roundup
A variety of interesting research papers on search have come out of WWW2008, the 17th International World Wide Web Conference. Some I’ve blogged already. Below is a rundown on those and some other papers that may be of interest. For the attention-challenged, I’ve also included my now patented "Twitter" summary for some of the interesting […]
Google Now Fills Out Forms & Crawls Results
One of the biggest search challenges has long been that the major search engines like Google cannot crawl material that can only be retrieved through the use of forms. Now Google is filling out those form to obtain the information previously hidden, the company has announced.
How Flash Can Be Search Engine Friendly
For a long time there has been a tug of war between developers and designers who love to use Flash and SEOs who know how bad Flash can be from a search engine crawler perspective. The designer wants the beauty of an all Flash site. The SEO wants to bring the site traffic. It’s a […]
Yahoo onePlace: Think Of It As MyYahoo For Mobile
This morning Yahoo announced a new mobile application called “onePlace.” The application isn’t yet available but appears to be an elegant mobile bookmarking system that is highly customizable and features an RSS reader. It can accommodate any type of content: news feeds, web sites, videos, images, search queries. A shorthand way to think about it […]
SEO & SEM Outside The U.S.—Tips & Advice
As many SEO/SEM professionals already know, marketing to people outside of the United States presents many challenges. Search usability is quite different due to language nuances, variations in color psychology, and allocation of screen real estate, among other things. Where are the best places for a search engine optimizer or a Web developer to place […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 23, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 22, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google’s Webmaster Tools Adds More Diagnostic Features & Video Sitemaps
Today, Google’s Webmaster Tools have been updated with new diagnostic features that alert site owners to problems Google may have extracting content from pages. In addition, they’ve added Video Sitemaps. They’ve also added Hungarian and Czech to the 20 languages already supported. Below more about these features and how best to use them.
Google Answers More Questions On Paid Links
Information about buying and selling links that pass PageRank from the Google Webmaster Central blog answers more questions about the recent paid link regulations Google has set forth for their index. The main reason Google is going after paid links is because of “inaccuracies” in results and “inequities” in ranking those results. Google says that […]
Search 3.0: The Blended & Vertical Search Revolution
This has been a remarkable year. After years of no real dramatic evolution in search, the third generation finally arrived. Google calls it Universal Search, and I’ve been tending to say “blended search” as a generic name for the change that’s now hit all the major search engines. But in doing the agenda for our upcoming SMX West conference, a […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 26, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
How Feedburner Adds Up Subscriber Numbers
Last Saturday, there was a gasp of collective horror in the blogosphere as FeedBurner subscriber stats plunged for many sites. Today, it’s happened again. Don’t panic! Your subscribers are probably all still there, with Google Reader to blame for the missing numbers. Below, our comprehensive guide to how FeedBurner compiles subscriber stats explains all, today’s […]
Google Offers SEO Advice On AJAX Coding
The Google Webmaster Central Blog posted advice on how to make your site crawlable if you make use of common Web 2.0 design features, such as AJAX.
OpenSocial: Led By Google, Social Networks Band To Take On Facebook
As expected, the much-discussed Google social play turns out to be an alliance with other companies to open up social networks and their data to developers. TechCrunch and the New York Times both have early news of an expected announcement tomorrow on how Google, along with partners like Ning, Linked In, Friendster, and others, will […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 25, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google’s Tips On How To Write A Good Meta Description
The Google Webmaster Central Blog described what makes for a good meta description versus what makes for a bad meta description. Meta descriptions are a special tag that you place within the source code of your html page. They can be used by search engines for ranking purposes as well as for being displayed within […]
The Million iPhone Question
Let me preface this by saying that I am pretty tired of talking about the iPhone. But given that Apple recently sold the one-millionth unit, it’s generating more buzz around the office than ever and I have no choice. I’ve spoken more about the iPhone to clients and colleagues alike in the past two months […]
Google Expands Google Gadget Ads For Advertisers Beta
Google has announced they are expanding Gadget Ads Beta to AdWords advertisers worldwide. Before now, Gadget Ads was a very limited beta, but now, Google is expanding this program to more advertisers. Google Gadget Ads are interactive ads that contain rich media capabilities. Gadget Ads can contain data feeds, images, and videos, plus they can […]
Meta Keywords Tag 101: How To “Legally” Hide Words On Your Pages For Search Engines
If there’s anything I particularly hate when it comes to SEO, it’s the meta keywords tag. I so wish it had never been invented. It’s practically useless, yet people still obsess over it. In this article, I’ll explain more about why you shouldn’t worry about it except perhaps for misspellings, as well as which search […]
The Promise & Reality Of Mixing The Social Graph With Search Engines
I’m having a bad day. Aside from my desktop crashing, we get another spate of “let’s blame SEO” to start my morning off. Robert Scoble uses that theme as a launching pad for a series of videos on how Facebook potentially could be a killer search engine — regardless of the fact he seems to […]
Google Maps Adds Embed Map Feature
As expected, Google Lat Long Blog has announced that you can now embed your Google Maps easily into your web pages. Just go to the map you like, click on “link to this page” at the top right corner of the map and select the code within the “Paste HTML to embed in website” box. […]
Google AdSense Launches Site Authentication Feature
The Inside AdSense blog announced that they have launched a new feature named “Site Authentication.” The Site Authentication feature enables you to give the AdSense crawler access to your password protected pages. All you need to do is provide AdSense with a username and password. Then the AdSense crawler will gain access to those protected […]
More Info On Google’s Unavailable After Meta Tag & New X-Robots-Tag In Header Support
Last week we reported that Google was to add an “Unavailable After” META Tag. Since then, we’ve spoke to Dan Crow of Google, who provided more information on how to use it, as well information on a new way to send robots blocking info within HTTP headers.
Google “Three Times Larger” Than Nearest Rival & More Q&A With Google’s Marissa Mayer
As part of today’s Google Press Day 2007, Marissa Mayer, Google vice president of search products and user experience, covered the "Past, Present & Future Of Search." Much of this is known to Search Engine Land readers and also already covered by Google during its Searchology day last month. But, there was a size tidbit […]
SEO Is Easy? Let’s Look At The Hard 5 Percent
The SEO world has always had its supporters and its detractors, and it’s never made a great deal of difference. The bigger battles often waged within the community between the whitehats and blackhats. The whitehats would rant and rave about how the blackhats could get clients in trouble and how blackhat tactics generally junked up […]
Ranking The SEO Ranking Factors
Back in 2005, SEOmoz tried to assemble a list of all the possible search engine ranking factors out there and get various experts to rate them. I say tried to because while they had a list, and ratings, no one knows all the factors or exactly how each individual search engine chooses to use them. […]
Don’t Expect A Magic Flash Solution For Search Engines
Call me Mr. Rain On The Parade, but after reading an interview in The Guardian with Google product manager of crawl services Dan Crow, I can’t help but feel people are going to come away with the mistaken idea that Google will magically make their Flash content suddenly more accessible to Google’s crawlers. That ain’t […]
Video Search Challenge Isn’t Speech Recognition, It’s Content Owner Management
Millions of Videos, and Now a Way to Search Inside Them from the New York Times is a big giant love story to video search firm Blinkx, suggesting that the idea of finding video content will take a leap through new idea of speech recognition. In reality, it’s not a new idea. It’s been in […]
Term Highlighting and Search Engine Optimization
One of the reasons I tend to focus on “organic” search engine optimization (SEO), as an online marketing strategy is that the majority of search results come from the natural spidering process. Admittedly, searchers tend to look at and click on the top results from both the paid and unpaid listings. However, after carefully evaluating […]
Of Disappearing Sex Blogs & Google Updates
Last week, Barry Schwartz reported there seemed to be a Google update going, based on forum activity he was seeing. Google’s Matt Cutts quickly followed up with a short refresher on the difference between algorithm updates, data refreshes and index updates. The purpose was to explain that any changes some people were seeing were likely […]
Yes Virginia, SEO Is Rocket Science – Defending Search Engine Optimization Once Again
Like Greg Boser, I saw the articles and counter-articles emerge from Did-It’s swing at search engine optimization back in October, rolled my eyes and moved on. The argument’s been done before, done to death. But Greg’s got his back up now, and he provides an excellent read in The Half-Truths of Talking Frogs. I’ll highlight […]
Search Patents Filings from 12-20-06 – Reranking on Information Redundancy and on Searcher Affinities
Some processes covered in patents granted last week by the US Patent and Trademark Office: Microsoft reranking results based upon redundancy of information, Ask reranking pages based upon affinities between searchers, Hewlett-Packard creating queries for searchers to investigate from scanned documents, and; Exalead forming dynamic query refinements from words found in documents located within search […]