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Yahoo and Microsoft making the rounds with old lovers?

2008-07-02T23:28:00.000-07:00

Yahoo and Microsoft making the rounds with old lovers?

A bit of deja vu is creeping into recent media reports of Microsoft whispering into the right ear of News Corp. and Time Warner's AOL about potential partnerships, while Yahoo is whispering in their left.

According to a Reuters report, Yahoo and Time Warner have been chatting for months about a potential deal involving Time Warner's AOL and Yahoo. The report, however, notes that the parties don't appear any closer to inking a deal than they were when Microsoft had a buyout bid on the table for the Internet search pioneer.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo's talks with Time Warner have regained some traction, now that Microsoft's withdrawn offer of $33 a share for the Internet search pioneer appears to remain comatose. But as with Reuters, the Journal also notes that the discussions don't appear to be serious. For one thing, the Journal notes such a combination had put an approximate $10 billion valuation on AOL, but that was before Yahoo's stock had plummeted back to trading levels near the pre-Microsoft offer watermark.

In the end, Yahoo is looking for ways to bring its value back to the $33 a share that Microsoft had offered before merger talks broke off in early May, and Microsoft is looking for ways to bring scale to its online advertising search business, which may one day ultimately pay for any free business applications the Redmond giant gives out to compete with those currently offered by Google, like its Google Docs and Google Calendar.

So, Yahoo and Microsoft can continue to hit the replay button with Time Warner and News Corp., or switch to a new channel. I hear a new season with potentially a new cast of characters is gearing up for an August 1 debut.

Founder makes largest Dell insider purchase

2008-07-02T23:04:00.000-07:00

Founder makes largest Dell insider purchase

Dell shares rose as high as 4.5 percent Wednesday, following reports that founder Michael Dell acquired nearly $100 million in shares in the computer maker.

Dell climbed as high as $23.18 a share in intraday trading, before closing out the session at $22.70 a share, up 2.34 percent.

Dell's founder, according to a report in MarketWatch, purchased 4.5 million shares between June 27 and July 1 at an average price of $22.14 a share.

Dell's buying spree comes after the company reported respectable first-quarter results, which came off a challenging 2007 when it was feeling the effects of missing out on some big industry trends.

During the first quarter, Dell told analysts, the company's unit shipments grew 22 percent, while the industry rose by 14 percent. And Dell's notebook revenue climbed 22 percent over the past year.

Michael Dell's stock purchase not only marked the largest he's ever made of the computer maker's shares, but also puts him at the top of conducting the largest purchase ever at the company by an insider, according to MarketWatch's report.

Google wins source code ruling against Viacom

2008-07-02T22:37:00.000-07:00

Google wins source code ruling against Viacom

Google won a legal ruling that allows it to keep secret from Viacom the source code central to search functions on YouTube.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the search giant doesn't have to turn over the code to Viacom, which filed a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google in 2007. In granting Google's motion for a protective order, U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton in Manhattan agreed with Google's characterization of the source code as a trade secret that can't be disclosed without risking the loss of business.

"YouTube and Google should not be made to place this vital asset in hazard merely to allay speculation," the judge said. "A plausible showing that YouTube and Google's denials are false, and that the search function can and has been used to discriminate in favor of infringing content, should be required before disclosure of so valuable and vulnerable an asset is compelled."

The judge also denied Viacom's motion for Google to produce source code for its Video Identification Tool, which helps copyright notify Google of copyright infringement.

At stake in the legal battle is a key part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the 1998 law that shields Web site owners from copyright infringement involving material published by users. The "safe harbor" provision in the law can protect against infringement claims as long as copyrighted material is removed upon notification.

After the suit, YouTube launched an antipiracy tool that checks uploaded videos against the original content in an effort to flag piracy.

The Great Return of Ajax

2008-06-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

Some relatively new Google applications have prompted renewed interest in a programming technique that is years old.

Google Suggest and Google Maps gave Web users the sense they were using a desktop application instead of an Internet-based tool.

Google Suggest fills in words for suggested search terms, and typing an address into Google Maps returns a detailed map of the immediate area with the ability to pan out to state or national boundaries.

The apps were created using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), which calls from the server only the information you need for the Web browser. Rather than querying the Web server directly every time a request is made from the browser, AJAX sticks a JavaScript (define) element between the two. This allows the browser to maintain its state while the script runs the data request to the Web server and back.

Bret Taylor, product manager of Google Maps, said the buzz created around the company's applications happened because of how they differ from most of today's Web pages.

"It's definitely a new awareness of older technologies, but I also think it's fairly typical that technologies mature to the point where they become widely accepted."

The Promise of AJAX

Given the excitement AJAX has caused so far, you'd think it was the latest whiz-bang technology to emerge from a research laboratory. That's not the case.

Before Google and Amazon, with its A9 search engine, used the technology, Microsoft was already onboard with Outlook Web Access.

The programming style incorporates a number of open Web standards, including XHTML (define), XML (define), CSS (define), XMLHttpRequest, XSLT (define) and DOM (define).

The promise AJAX programming brings to Web development, with its speedy and powerful processing times, has led some to speculate whether the medium could replace the need for desktop applications altogether. If a Web application can do what a desktop application does on the PC, why bother with software installs?

That's a huge leap in logic to make, said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst with research firm ZapThink. He points to the claims made by Sun Microsystems in the late 1990s with its "network as a computer" concept of putting software on the server.

"Just because you can run application functionality remotely doesn't mean it's appropriate for everything, like when you're offline," he said. "Basically, anything that requires productivity over distribution, there's no reason to have a remote word processor because what's the benefit of having it over the Web versus having it on your desktop?"

What's Holding AJAX Back?

Two things have kept AJAX in the backseat of Web application development. First, Microsoft's adoption of Web standards in Internet Explorer (IE) has been tepid. And second, it's hard to pull off.

Microsoft used XMLHTTP (define) to get information from the server to the browser, without having to refresh. But there has been little major incorporation of Web standards into IE for Web application developers to manipulate. So developers have little choice but to limit their applications, or else much of the Web-surfing public would be unable to view the page.

Developers have Firefox and other alternative browsers, with their native XML support, to thank for the recent change by Microsoft to incorporate more Web standards, Schmelzer said.

Microsoft has had robust XML since IE 6, he said, but the company was pushing ActiveX (define) over using XML and JavaScript as the method of choice. Firefox's growing popularity, however, has shifted opinion that XML is the way to go for data, rather than the Windows-centric ActiveX.

"There's no such thing as ActiveX on the Mac platform or Linux platform, so when you're building a Web site and say, 'I'm using ActiveX,' you are going to by necessity cut out some of your audience," he said.

Another reason for the relative dearth of AJAX-powered applications is its complexity, though software developers are beginning to step forward with solutions.

AJAX requires developers to have a firm grasp on not only the Web standards being used but also the server-side knowledge to extract information from a database or other repository.

"Doing AJAX is rocket science, it's so hard," said Brian Goldfarb, product manager of Microsoft's Web platform and tools group. "You look at the stuff Google did with Google Maps and Amazon with A9; they're some of the brightest minds in the industry building lots and lots of code to enable those types of sites."

That makes it a difficult proposition for the mass of developers in the industry today, he said. Microsoft, of course, has an answer to that complexity in the form of an upcoming client-side framework code-named Atlas.

Atlas eases the code complexity with drag-and-drop boxes and other objects to take the manual labor out of code development. Goldfarb said that with Atlas, what took Google hundreds of lines of code to do with Google Suggest will take 10 or 15 lines in Atlas.

A developer's preview version of Atlas will be available in September at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Goldfarb said. The final version is expected about the same time as Windows Vista.

Microsoft sees a potential in AJAX-style programming and asynchronous data retrieval. The company will look at ways to tie this technology into the Microsoft product line, so that customers will be able to take an eBay auction and drag it into their Outlook calendars.

AJAX Platforms

ZapThink's Schmelzer sees Web development coalescing around two interactive development platforms: AJAX and Macromedia's Flash.

"The person who builds a Flash application is not exactly the same kind of person who would build an AJAX application, but at some point I think those are going to be the two dominant, rich Internet solutions out there," he said.

Macromedia officials, for their part, are happy to hear about the excitement building in the developer world over rich interactive Internet applications.

Jeff Whatcott, the company's vice president of product management, said that fundamentally the two technologies work well together. Flash, like AJAX, uses XML for the server-side information asynchronously and ActionScript, which is a cousin to JavaScript, to grab the information.

While the buzz generated by AJAX is a good thing, he said, developers looking to create rich interactive Web sites are going to find that the programming technique falls short.

AJAX improvements, Whatcott said, are dependent on the Web standards implemented in browsers; Flash development, on the other hand, relies on the 480KB-sized Flash plug-in found on 98 percent of the world's PCs.

He noted it took four years for IE 6, the version with the added XML support, to reach 80 percent of Windows desktops. It takes 12 months for a new Flash plug-in version to reach that same penetration rate.

"The distribution dynamics of Flash versus browsers -- this lowest common denominator problem you have when you rely on features that are shared across browsers -- is a fundamental issue that is going to leave a lot of people dissatisfied with how far they can go with the AJAX technique."

That doesn't mean that he thinks AJAX will go away any time soon; in fact he thinks it will be around forever, which is good because it raises awareness about what both camps are trying to achieve.

My Favorite Firefox 3.0 Upgrade

2008-06-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

My Favorite Firefox 3.0 Upgrade

Around last week I made the switch to Firefox 3.0 RC 2. I wanted to get my feet wet in the browser before it came out and once Foxmarks was released there was no more reasons for delay.

I have to admit the browser is stunning. The list of improvements seems endless, but there is one that I think shine above the rest.

This was in my opinion the new address bar. The new address bar is possibly the most noticeable yet functioning addition to Firefox 3. For me it is because I have over 1500 bookmarks and sorting through them was a pain. Finding them in my jungle of folders and sub folders was about impossible and I am not fond of using social bookmarks as my default. The new address bar makes it really easy to find your bookmarks and traffic history by only inserting part of the URL or a description. So if I want to find Blogiseverything, I could just type in, “everything,” and sure enough the site would be on the list. Also they have integrated the tagging system in to the bookmark manager. You can tag your favorite site for quick reference. One more bonus to the address bar was the little star on the right hand corner. It gives you the functionality to bookmark a page with only one click. For there you can find it in the new folder titled, “Unsorted Bookmarks.” As you can see the address bar is a big upgrade.

Google, the New Microsoft?

2008-06-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

Google, the New Microsoft?

"Google is the new Microsoft. (...) I look at Google as a far more threatening company than Microsoft is today," said Joe Kraus in an interview with Robert Scoble, reiterating what he said for New York Times last year:

To place Google in context, Mr. Kraus offered a brief history lesson. In the 1990's, he said, I.B.M. was widely perceived in Silicon Valley as a "gentle giant" that was easy to partner with while Microsoft was perceived as an "extraordinarily fearsome, competitive company wanting to be in as many businesses as possible and with the engineering talent capable of implementing effectively anything."

Now, in the view of Mr. Kraus, "Microsoft is becoming I.B.M. and Google is becoming Microsoft." Mr. Kraus is the chief executive and a founder of JotSpot, a Silicon Valley start-up hoping to sell blogging and other self-publishing tools to corporations.

It's interesting to note that Joe Kraus is the co-founder of Excite, a search engine that lost the battle with Google many years ago. Now Joe Kraus joins Google to help it polish the web office suite.

10 Tips For Google Image Search

2008-06-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

10 Tips For Google Image Search

Google Image Search could be used in many ways.

1. If you want to know if a person is a man or a woman and the name doesn't help, do a search for the name.

2. If you don't know the meaning of a word, the pictures may help you.

3. A better search for Flickr. Google uses information from other sites that link to Flickr photos, so you may find Google search better.

4. Find what's interesting about a site, by looking at the pictures included. For example: wired.com.

5. Find a new wallpaper for your desktop by restricting your search to large images. You can automate this using an application.

6. Find random personal pictures, using standard file names from digital cameras.

7. Type the name of a painter and you can take an art class.

8. Install a Greasemonkey script so you can view the original version of the image directly by clicking on the thumbnail.

9. Find the color of a word. "Word Color is a windows program that uses Google Image Search to determine the color of a word or string of words. It goes out there, retrieves the top 9 images and loops through all pixels, calculating the average hue, which is later converted to a color."

10. If you want to grab search results, GoogleGrab is a tool that downloads images from Google Image Search. It even supports batch search.

Google Invests in a Better Web

2008-06-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

Google Invests in a Better Web

Google I/O's keynote, titled "Client, Connectivity, and the Cloud", discussed the latest Google developer-orientated initiatives and their significance. Vic Gundotra, vice-president at Google, explained that Google wants to make it easier to develop web applications by transforming browsers into powerful clients and by making "the cloud" more accessible.

Gears is an open source plug-in that adds offline storage, a local database, asynchronous threads, and other features which could be used to create web applications that are closer to their native counterparts.

In the fragmented mobile space, Google bets on Android, an open mobile platform that includes a powerful browser and APIs that enable developers to create applications which take advantage of the connectivity.

Google App Engine lets you build web applications without having to worry about infrastructure, setting up servers and databases. Anyone can create a web application for free and pay for more resources, once the applications becomes popular.

Google APIs could be used to enhance web applications by integrating them with Google's services: you can get data from Google's apps or from the content indexed by Google.

Web Toolkit lets you use Java to create the front end for AJAX applications and translates your code into optimized JavaScript.

OpenSocial is an effort to make the web more social by providing a standard for creating social web applications.

Most of Google's solutions are open source software (Gears, Web Toolkit, Android) and steps toward creating standards (Gears, OpenSocial) that should move the web forward. Google says that its only incentive for building these tools is that enabling the development of more web applications brings more Internet users and, indirectly, more Google revenue. Some of that revenue is invested in other initiatives that fuel Internet's growth and the cycle continues.
Here's the full 90-minute keynote. Don't miss the cool Android demo at min. 26.

Richer Local Search Results in Google Maps

2008-06-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

Richer Local Search Results in Google Maps

Google Maps shows enhanced local search results. Compared to the previous format, Google Maps lets you find more information about the local businesses without having to click on each result. You can see a thumbnail, an excerpt from the most recent review and a link that encourages to post your own review. This format was already used in the text view, but probably few people noticed it.

Excerpts from reviews are included in local search OneBoxes as well, but Google chooses different reviews. Judging from these changes, I think businesses will start to upload images to the Local Business Center and will encourage their customers to post reviews to Google Maps or other sites.

Public Transit Directions in Mobile Google Maps

2008-06-19T02:10:00.000-07:00

Public Transit Directions in Mobile Google Maps

The latest version of Google Maps for Mobile includes an option that was already available in Google Maps: directions for public transportation. Google's coverage has been continuously expanded in the past months to many US states, Japan, Austria, Switzerland, important cities from Canada, Italy, France, UK and Australia. Google Maps is one of the applications that is very useful when you are on the go and this new feature is a good alternative to the existing driving directions.

"This version of Google Maps for mobile even has a few tricks not yet available on the desktop version of Google Maps. For instance, you can find the last transit trips of the day (to figure out how late you can stay at the party) and more easily browse through earlier or later trips," suggests Google Mobile blog.

You can download the latest version of the mobile Google Maps for Blackberry and Java-enabled phones by visiting www.google.com/gmm on your mobile phone or by following the instructions from Google's site.

Google Trends with Numbers

2008-06-19T02:05:00.000-07:00

Google Trends with Numbers

Google Trends, the service that compares the volume of searches, has been updated to show numbers on the vertical axis. "These numbers don't refer to exact search-volume figures. Instead, in the same way that a map might scale to a certain size, Google Trends scales the first term you've entered so that its average search volume is 1.00 in the chosen time period," explains Google Blog.

Now that you can compare more accurately the popularity of up to five search terms, there's also an option to download the data as a CSV file: http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=QUERY&graph=all_csv. The file actually contains values separated by tabs, so change the extension to tsv before uploading it to Google Spreadsheets.

Google doesn't show absolute numbers for competitive reasons, but also because those numbers wouldn't be exact. "Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time."

The new features are available only if you sign in, probably to protect against automatic data download. If you try to download a CSV file without being logged in, you'll get a file that contains this message: "You must be signed in to export data from Google Trend". An API would've been a better idea.

Google-Yahoo Search Ads Deal

2008-06-19T02:03:00.000-07:00

Google-Yahoo Search Ads Deal

In June 2000, Google became the default search engine provider for Yahoo. The agreement lasted until 2004, when Yahoo launched its own search engine. Yahoo realized that you can actually make money from search, so it acquired Overture, a company specialized in pay-per-click advertising that also owned two search engines: AltaVista and AlltheWeb. Unfortunately for Yahoo, it moved too slowly and Google became the leader in both search and PPC advertising.

Yahoo's decision to temporarily outsource some of its search ads to Google was predictable, especially after the two-week test from April. Instead of being acquired by Microsoft, Yahoo chose to partner with a company that has a better search ads system.

"Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo! will select the search term queries for which - and the pages on which - Yahoo! may offer Google paid search results. (...) Yahoo! believes that this agreement will enable the Company to better monetize Yahoo!'s search inventory in the United States and Canada. At current monetization rates, this is an approximately $800 million annual revenue opportunity. In the first 12 months following implementation, Yahoo! expects the agreement to generate an estimated $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow. The agreement will enhance Yahoo!'s ability to achieve its goal to grow operating cash flow significantly, while at the same time providing flexibility to continue to invest in ongoing initiatives such as algorithmic search innovation and search and display advertising platforms. It gives Yahoo! complete flexibility to continue to use its Panama paid search results."

Yahoo gets a lot of value from this deal and is no longer pressured by investors to significantly improve the search ads. Even if the agreement has a term of up to ten years, I think this is a short-term deal and Yahoo is more motivated than ever to succeed on its own.

Google Blog is quick to announce that this isn't an anti-competitive move. "Yahoo! will remain in the business of search and content advertising, which gives the company a continued incentive to keep improving and innovating. Even during this agreement, Yahoo! can use our technology as much or as little as it chooses." Since the agreement is non-exclusive and Yahoo won't drop the search ads services, it's unlikely that the U.S. Department of Justice will block the deal.

In other related news, Google Talk users have a reason to rejoice. "Yahoo! and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users." Hopefully, this will actually happen, since the previous agreements with AOL and eBay didn't produce any visible effect and there's still no interoperability with AIM and Skype.

Related:
Search, ads, Yahoo and Microsoft
Could Google save Yahoo from Microsoft?
Yahoo tests Google's search ads

Update: Google Watch has some interesting quotes from the conference call. "We began by saying 'Is there a partnership that would make sense? Is there one that is strategic to both companies and in particular a partnership that would allow Yahoo to remain independent," said Eric Schmidt. "Then Schmidt turned cloak-and-dagger like, noting that the executives met in an empty building that Google owned in an unknown and unfindable location for most of us. Apparently, Yang, Schmidt, Yahoo's Sue Decker and others showed up, sometimes on bicycles."

New Google Mobile Homepage

2008-06-19T01:57:00.000-07:00

New Google Mobile Homepage

Google decided to remove the gadgets from the mobile homepage and place them in a separate iGoogle page. You still can't see all the gadgets from the desktop version of iGoogle, but your favorite feeds, the weather information and the Gmail summary no longer slow down the homepage.

Google Mobile Blog gives another reason why the mobile homepage will load faster: "when you navigate to google.com in your browser, we cache the homepage on your phone. If you bookmark this homepage, then returning to Google using the bookmark is almost instantaneous."

Since the homepage is now static and doesn't display personalized content, it can be cached indefinitely. Google chose to politely ask your browser to cache it for 1,209,600 seconds = 14 days.

But Google still wants to see how many people visit the mobile homepage and this is impossible if all the content is cached. That's why, the last element from the homepage is a tracking pixel, a 1x1 GIF image: http://www.google.com/m/ping?source=magmahome.

Better Terrain Representation in Google Maps

2008-06-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

Better Terrain Representation in Google Maps

Mehmet K. noticed an update of the terrain layer from Google Maps, a feature that lets you view physical features, such as mountains and vegetation, with elevation shading.

The fairly recent "terrain" feature in Google Maps now plots contours as well as hill shading. The only problem that I can see is that the contours are in feet in the UK whereas feet are only really used in the States. Even in the UK where we still use miles for our roads, looking at familiar hill heights in feet is very off putting. When I looked at other countries (Kenya) the heights there were in meters.

"Contour lines are lines drawn on a map connecting points of equal elevation. If you walk along a contour line you neither gain or lose elevation." The other method used for representing terrain, "hill shading is a computer based mapping technique that shades each area of the surface to proportional to the amount of light that would be reflected off the surface from a light source at a specified location, usually to the northwest of the area of interest. Hill shading produces a planimetrically correct map that looks like a three-dimensional view of the surface."

Back in April, Google's geo blog mentioned some practical uses for these features. "Now, at a glance you can see the height of the world's peaks, or plan your next camping trip. Contour lines can even help you find a flatter bike route for your daily commute, which is key if you live in a city like Seattle."

Froogle Integrates with Google Book Search

2008-06-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

Froogle Integrates with Google Book Search

After updating the listings for electronics, Google Product Search (previously known as Froogle) integrated the data from Google's book search engine. In addition to the list of stores where you can find a certain book, Google shows a summary of the book, the table of contents, references from the web and related books. There's also a link to Google Book Search, where you can preview and search inside the book.

In other book-related news, Panlibus points to Zoomii, a great visualization for Amazon's bookstore where books are placed in virtual shelves. If the products are more tangible, people are more likely to buy them, so Google should show more visual information: images, videos, trend charts, feature comparison etc.

How to Display Google Talk Presence

2008-05-12T02:00:00.000-07:00

If you wanted to post your Google Talk ID on a site and display an icon that shows your status, it's quite easy. Google offers a chatback feature for anonymous conversations with the visitors of a site and this feature has been recently updated with more ways to display the badge.

To get your presence icon, go to the badge generation page, select "Hyperlink and status icon (no frame)" from the list of styles, click on "Update badge" and copy the code in a text editor. You should identify a URL that looks like this (the bold part could be removed to simplify the address):

http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/Show?
tk=LIST_OF_CHARACTERS&w=9&h=9

This image could be displayed next to your Google Talk username to show whether you are available for chat. Obviously, if you like the chatback feature, you could add the entire code generated by Google.

How can we Increase Font Size in Google Reader

2008-05-12T01:57:00.000-07:00

Google Reader added an option to increase/decrease font size for all the posts: press = to magnify text and - to decrease its size. Unfortunately, Google Reader doesn't save your preference, so the next time you open it you'll see the original font size.

While most browsers include a zoom feature (Opera, IE7, Firefox 3) or an option to increase the font size, Google Reader applies the new font size only to the posts, not to the entire page.

There's also a new keyboard shortcut for sharing posts and adding notes: Shift+D. To see a list of all the shortcuts, press ? in Google Reader.

Oh, and one more thing: you can now delete notes, not just unshare them.

Explore Places in Google Maps

2008-05-12T01:54:00.000-07:00

Google Maps started to integrate some of the most popular mapplets and user-generated maps. When you search for a location (like Rome), you'll be able to see Panoramio photos, YouTube videos, places of interest, popular searches and maps so you can get a better sense of what to expect if you go there. As you zoom the map, the sidebar is updated to reflect your new location.

The feature is reminiscent of Flickr Places, but the map plays the role of placeholder for geotagged content.

Google Translate Becomes the Best Free Online Translator

2008-05-12T01:50:00.000-07:00

Google Translate's coverage has been expanded dramatically. It now supports the translation between any of the following languages: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish (the new languages are shown in bold). From 26 language pairs, Google Translate now supports 506 language pairs and becomes the most comprehensive online translation tool available for free.

Obviously, the translation is far from being perfect or even coherent, but it's a great way to understand the central ideas from a text. Now that Google Translate supports so many languages, it's not hard to imagine that you'll be able to read almost any web page in your language and maybe any application will be able to use Google Translate's APIs to speak your language.

"Most state-of-the-art, commercial machine-translation systems in use today have been developed using a rule-based approach, and require a lot of work to define vocabularies and grammars. Our system takes a different approach: we feed the computer billions of words of text, both monolingual text in the target language, and aligned text consisting of examples of human translations between the languages. We then apply statistical learning techniques to build a translation model. (...) Automatic translation is very difficult, as the meaning of words depends on the context in which they're used. While we are working on the problem, it may be some time before anyone can offer a quick and seamless translation experience," explains Google Translate's FAQ.

{ via Page2RSS }

Picasa's Hello Discontinued

2008-05-12T01:47:00.000-07:00

Hello, Picasa's obscure instant messenger, has been discontinued and will be completely shut down on May 15th. Hello's last major update was released in January 2005, six months after Picasa was acquired by Google.

According to its site, "Hello is a program that lets you connect directly with your friends to share your digital pictures. (...) With Hello, you just pick what pictures you want to show off, and click Send. That's it. Hello takes care of all the hard work. And you and your friends can download full resolution, print-quality pictures from each other, while you're doing more important things, like talking about your pictures. (...) With Hello's file sharing technology, [your friends] only have to download high quality versions of the [pictures] they really like. Everything else comes in at a smaller size, optimized for viewing on-screen."

"Hello enables users to instantly share images securely over a peer-to-peer network and chat about them. Hello currently has more than 250,000 users and can be used with or without Picasa, the company's flagship digital photo organizing software," mentioned Picasa in a press release from May 2004. It would be interesting to know the number of active users as of today, but it's probably much lower than 250,000.

The instant messenger was integrated with Picasa, so you could select the photos from Picasa and send them to Hello, but also view in Picasa the pictures you receive. Like Picasa, Hello was easy to use and shared the same clean interface. Despite its usefulness, Hello should have been a feature in a more powerful IM client, not a stand-alone application.

If you haven't tried Hello, you can still download the application from http://updates.picasa.com/hello/651/Hello651.exe. You and all your contacts need to have Picasa accounts. According to hello.com, you can still use the application one more week.

Here's Hello's goodbye:

"We originally embarked on a mission to make photo sharing easier and more fun with Hello. We plan to keep carrying that torch in new projects to come. We hope that you continue to enjoy the other sharing products Google offers including Picasa, Picasa Web Albums and Google Talk."

and here are some reactions:

"I live on Hello because it allows me as a designer to show my clients the screen I am working on real time. It also allows me to communicate with other designers who work for my business and mentor them through the design process, or get myself some mentoring!"

"i credit hello for leading to some very good friendships of mine all over the US, and i credit hello for my transition from crafter to artist. i do not want to lose this program."

"PLEASE reconsider the decision to shut down Hello. It is an invaluable tool for the digital scrapbook community, especially the designers. I can't imagine what I would do without the ease Hello provides to show off screen shots and get critique on my Designs."

"I use Hello daily in conversation and to share photos with family members out of state. It has also been very useful in learning and teaching applications by using real time screen shots. There just isn't anything else that compares that is so easy to use!"

"My mother who has no idea what IM even stands for, uses Hello everyday. We send her pictures of her grandkids, she shows us pictures she's taken, its awesome! She only uses it because it is simple and user friendly. IM programs like Google Talk, Yahoo, MSN or Goober are way too complex for her to figure out and I doubt she is the only one in this situation."

{ via Google Blogoscoped }

Using Google's N-Gram Corpus

2008-05-12T01:44:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, Google released a collection of n-grams from web pages and made it available on Linguistic Data Consortium's website. "We processed 1,024,908,267,229 words of running text and are publishing the counts for all 1,176,470,663 five-word sequences that appear at least 40 times. There are 13,588,391 unique words, after discarding words that appear less than 200 times." Here are some examples of 3-grams, followed by their frequencies:

ceramics collectables collectibles 55
ceramics collectables fine 130
ceramics collected by 52

While this huge corpora is useful to build linguistic models, there are other ways to use it. Chris Harrison created some visualizations for bigrams and trigrams that start with pronouns. "These visual comparisons allow us to see differences in how the two subjects are used - both where they are similar and diverge. For example, among the top 120 trigrams, 'He' and 'She' have many common second words. However, they differ on some interesting ones, for example, only 'he' connects to 'argues', while only 'she' connects to 'love'."

Chris DiBona from Google works on IsolWrite, a word processing program that will include a text prediction option. "I gotta get my greasy hands on an open version of our published n-gram data (which is ranked) and incorporate that, if it makes sense."

Do you know Reorder iGoogle Tabs

2008-05-12T01:41:00.000-07:00

iGoogle finally offers a way to reorder tabs: just go to google.com/ig/settings and use the arrows displayed next to each tab name in the Content section. This solution is not very elegant, compared to other services like Netvibes, where you can reorder the tabs using drag and drop.

If you're wondering how to access the settings page from iGoogle, click on the small arrow displayed next to the name of the current tab and select "Edit this tab". The settings page is also the place where you can select your location, choose to automatically open links in a new tab, change the name and the layout of a tab or backup the iGoogle page. Oh, and don't forget to click on the barely noticeable Save button every time you change the settings of a tab.

It's amazing to see how simple and intuitive Netvibes' interface can be: the tabs can be reordered using drag and drop, tab names can be changed using a simple click and switching between different tabs doesn't reload the page. iGoogle still has a lot to learn from Netvibes in terms of user friendliness.

What is Yahoo Search's Differential Features

2008-05-12T01:37:00.000-07:00

Yahoo's strategy to increase the search market share is to add features that can't be found at Google or somewhere else. The problem is that these features need to be distinctive and useful enough to attract the attention and make people switch to Yahoo or at least use it a secondary search engine.

The first innovative feature added by Yahoo was Search Assistant, an integrated pane that combined autocomplete and related searches. Search Assistant was heavily inspired by Ask.com's left sidebar, but it included a distinctive feature that made it less obtrusive: the pane is only displayed if you stop typing for a couple of seconds or when your typing slows.

Google also tests a query suggestion feature and places a list of related searches at the top of the page, but Yahoo's implementation is more interesting.

This week, Yahoo started to add SiteAdvisor's warnings next to search results. "Safety ratings from McAfee SiteAdvisor are based on automated safety tests of Web sites and are enhanced by feedback from volunteer reviewers". Yahoo only shows warnings next to sites that use browser exploits, offer malicious software or send spam. Google also shows warnings next to web pages that may install malicious software, but McAfee SiteAdvisor seems to offer a more comprehensive protection and more information about the potential threats (you can also install a plug-in for IE or Firefox that works with the most popular search engines or manually find the testing results for a site).

Probably the most impressive new feature in Yahoo Search and the only one that's not yet live is SearchMonkey (an unfortunate play on GreaseMonkey), a way for site owners to enrich the snippets with structured information. "Site owners will be able to provide all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites -- ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data -- directly on the Yahoo! Search results page."

Yahoo uses semantic web standards to retrieve structured information from web sites, but users are the ones who decide if they want richer search results from a site. Yahoo will support a small number of microformats (hCard, hCalendar, hReview, hAtom, XFN), "some of the vocabulary of Dublin Core, Creative Commons, FOAF, GeoRSS, and MediaRSS, as well as RDFa, eRDF, and the OpenSearch specification".

Google chose a different approach - plus boxes that show additional information automatically detected: addresses, stock symbols, products etc. Google also lets you add subscribed links to search results pages, but very few sites took advantage of this feature.

If Yahoo manages to promote these features and site owners build interesting applications for SearchMonkey, people might discover that Yahoo has a pretty good search engine and search is not synonymous with Google. Exploring different ways to present search results will lead to a better user experience and to an improvement for all search engines, since the best features are usually copied by all of them. Yahoo Search hopes to become a serious alternative to Google by having a distinctive voice, but the history of Ask.com or Opera shows that being innovative is not the only necessary ingredient for becoming popular.

What are the Tips for Linking to Google Presentations

2008-05-12T01:34:00.000-07:00

If you publish a presentation at Google Docs, you'll receive a simple URL that can be used to view the presentation online. Unfortunately, if you go to that URL without being logged in to a Google Account, Google will ask you to log in:

The explanation is that Google Presentations offers some advanced features that require authentication: chatting with other people that view the presentation and joining a presentation that's already in progress. To view the presentation without logging in, click on the small link from the bottom of the page: "View published presentation in a new window".

If you want to link directly to the presentation and skip the authentication page, just add "&skipauth=true" to the URL provided by Google and replace "Presentation" with "Present". Here's an example.

URL provided by Google:
http://docs.google.com/Presentation?docid=ID

Modified URL:
http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=ID&skipauth=true
(replace ID with the presentation's ID)

Most people will also want to download the presentation, but Google doesn't offer this feature in the view-only interface. You can link to the PPT file by using this format:

http://docs.google.com/MiscCommands?command=saveasdoc&exportFormat=ppt&docid=ID

Customize Google Docs Forms

2008-05-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

Customize Google Docs Forms

Adding forms as a way to include information in a Google Spreadsheet was one of the best decisions made by Google lately as it increased the adoption of the product. Unfortunately, Google doesn't offer options to customize the forms or validate the input. But just because Google hosts the forms for you doesn't mean you can't copy the code on your web pages and edit it.

After copying the code, you can edit the CSS rules to customize the form, remove the references to external files or the links to Google's terms of use. This article has a list of pretty forms customized only using CSS. If some of the fields need to have a certain format (for example: dates, email addresses etc.), you may include some JavaScript code that validates the input before submitting the form or after a certain field loses the focus. This JavaScript library includes the code for some common validations, so you can use it without too much programming effort. LiveValidation requires to write some code, but it validates the input as you type.

Here's a simple styled form that validates the first field using an annoying alert (you can submit the form only if JavaScript is enabled):

And here's the code:

<style type="text/css" media="screen">.ss-form-container{width: 380px;background-color: #FFF;border: 1px solid #CCC;padding: 0.5em 1em;font-size: 0.9em;}.ss-q-title{font-weight: bold;padding-left:7px;display: block;}.ss-q-submit{color: #000;}.ss-form-entry{margin-bottom: 1.5em;} .ss-q-short, .ss-q-submit{background:#f7f7f7;border:solid gray 1px;margin:8px;padding:0px 3px; color:#666666; }</style><script type="text/javascript">function custommsg() {document.getElementById("form-message").style.display=""; document.getElementById("form-message").innerHTML="Thanks for your answers!"; document.getElementById("form-container").style.display="none";} function validate(f){var year =parseInt(f.elements[0].value);if (isNaN(year)|| year<1996> (new Date()).getFullYear()){alert("Invalid year");return false; } return true;}</script> <div class="ss-form-container" style="display:none;" id="form-message"> </div> <div class="ss-form-container" id="form-container"><form action="" method="POST" target="fake-target" onsubmit="this.action='http://spreadsheets.google.com/formResponse?key=pLaE9tsVLp_1lGkqPo-vdfw'; if (validate(this)) {custommsg(); return true;} else return false;"><div class="ss-form-entry"><span class="ss-q-title">In what year did you first use Google?</span><input type="text" class="ss-q-short" name="single:0"></div><div class="ss-form-entry"><span class="ss-q-title">What search engines did you use before Google?</span><input type="text" class="ss-q-short" name="single:1"></div><p></p><input type="submit" class="ss-q-submit" value="Submit"></form></div><br />

Validation only works when JavaScript is enabled in your browser. Note that if you edit the form using Google Docs, you need to change the code from your web page.

A Conversation About Google, Microsoft and Yahoo

2008-05-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

A Conversation About Google, Microsoft and Yahoo

The following video, created by Andrew Filippone Jr. and titled 'Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett, analyzes the hostility between the three companies and Microsoft's absurd strategy to buy Yahoo. "The erudite conversations and sober intellectualism have been replaced by an absurd world where illogic, inane dialogues, and open hostility rule. The one-on-one interview between Charlie [Rose] and his guest begins as usual but quickly goes awry, so much so that Charlie is warned that, somewhere, a man named Steve is not happy."

The "dialog" reminds me of the repetitive and nonsensical phrases from Eugene Ionesco's plays and it's much more interesting than all the news about Microsoft and Yahoo.

Here's the transcript for those who want to understand the text better:

CR1: Welcome to the broadcast. Tonight, a conversation about the future of technology and the internet and mobile devices and all that. We talk to Charlie Rose for the first time. Welcome. The future of technology... coming up.

What will the web do to content in terms of high cost, expensive, time-consuming content?

CR2: My perception is... but... you would know this much more than I do. OK, tell me four or five of those that we are to take a look at that are start-ups that have a brilliant idea.

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Microsoft... Yahoo.

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Microsoft... Yahoo.

CR1: Microsoft

CR2: Microsoft

CR1: Yahoo

CR2: Yahoo

CR1: Microsoft

CR2: Yahoo

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Microsoft... Yahoo.

CR1: Why wasn't Yahoo...?

CR2: Yahoo... Steve is not happy with the process so far.

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Don't do that! Google... Google... Google...

CR1: No, we're not gonna do that. I can never get Craig to talk to me about his economic model.

CR2: Google...

CR1: No

CR2: Google

CR1: No

CR2: Google

CR1: No, we're not gonna do that.

CR2: Google

CR1: Radiohead

CR2: Blogs

CR1: Google

CR2: Google... Google... Google...

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Google.

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Google.

CR1: Microsoft...

CR2: Google

CR1: Yahoo...

CR2: Google

CR1: Google... Yahoo...

CR2: Yahoo

CR1: We're making all this money and now the stock's price is going through the roof. And how can we use this advantage to enter new markets, to expand our market share, to beat the hell out of everybody?

CR2: Steve is not happy.

CR1: What's gonna happen?

Update: And the answer for "what's gonna happen" is... "Microsoft officially pulled its offer for Yahoo". "After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal," said a certain Steve Ballmer.

Google for iPhone, Widely Available

2008-05-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

Google for iPhone, Widely Available

Google's unified interface for iPhone is now available internationally and for Google Apps users. Launched in December 2007, "Grand Prix" integrates the most popular Google services in a fluid interface that loads fast and is customizable.

Google Mobile Blog announces that the interface is available "in 33 new markets and 16 new languages, from Argentina to New Zealand, from Swedish to Chinese". If you have an iPhone, a simple visit to google.com should direct you to the special interface, while allowing you to go back to the "classic" interface. For Google Apps users, the address is a little bit complicated: http://www.google.com/m/a/DOMAIN (for example: http://www.google.com/m/a/google.com).

Google for iPhone packages rich mobile interfaces for Google Search, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader, Picasa Web, Google Notebook and now Google News. Unlike the mobile interfaces offered for other devices, Google shows search suggestions, auto-complete for Gmail contacts, slideshows in Picasa Web and includes a presentation viewer in Google Docs.

I'm sure the plan is to extend the availability of this mobile offering to other high-end phones.

Update: an older iPhone interface is still available at http://www.google.com/m/i and there's also a classic Google homepage at http://www.google.com/m/classic. iGoogle for iPhone can be found at http://www.google.com/ig/i.

Monitor Google's Homepage with Page2RSS

2008-05-06T07:46:00.000-07:00

Monitor Google's Homepage with Page2RSS

Page2RSS is a very nice service that creates feeds from any web page, by including the new content and linking to a page that highlights the differences.

A simple example of web page that could be monitored using Page2RSS is google.com: a homepage that rarely changes only to celebrate important events or to announce new Google features. You could subscribe to the automatically-generated feed by visiting: http://page2rss.com/page?url=www.google.com/. This also works for international sites like Google Japan, Google Italy etc. Unfortunately, you'll also receive an update when Google puts the classic logo back.

Of course, the service is useful for any web page that doesn't offer feeds, but it's better suited for web pages that don't change very frequently since Page2RSS checks to see if there's new content every 4 hours. You could use it to generate feeds for changelogs, privacy policies, news sites, Google Labs or to find new features in Google's services, like Hindi support added to Google Translate on April 29. Can you find other interesting web pages that could be monitored using Page2RSS?

Share and Annotate Web Pages in Google Reader

2008-05-06T07:36:00.000-07:00

Share and Annotate Web Pages in Google Reader

Google Reader's sharing feature was barely noticed when it was added, then it got more exposure when the shared items started to be broadcasted to Google Talk contacts and some sites aggregated shared posts. As Google Reader became more social, people discovered that it has some important limitations. "Have you ever wanted to share something that you were reading, but you didn't want to go through the hassle of subscribing to a whole feed for a single interesting article? And what about sharing content from sites with no feeds?, " asks Google Reader Blog.

Google Reader finally added an option to share any web page and to add notes for each shared item. Next to each post, there's a new action: share with note that can be used to explain why you found the post interesting or to add your comments. You can also go to the new Notes section to add a note or drag a bookmarklet to your browser's link bar so you can share any web pages, even if it doesn't have feeds.

Another improvement is that Google Reader shows small avatars next to each shared item and you can customize your public page by selecting a theme. But don't get to excited as the three themes that are available (ice cream, ninjas, sea) fail to impress and look terrible in Internet Explorer 7.

The new features are useful, but Google Reader didn't find a way to integrate discussions in the annotating feature, so you can reply to a comment. Even if it's not a feed reader, FriendFeed is a better place for sharing web pages and discussing them with the people you know or care about.

{ Thank you, Josh, Myo, Pascal. }

[Promo: If you want to receive some of my favorite posts about Google and technology, subscribe to my shared items. ]

Google Maps Facelift

2008-05-06T04:20:00.000-07:00

Google Maps Facelift

Google Maps added a lot of features in the past three years since it was launched without major interface changes. The application started to look cluttered with too many links, buttons and options, so a redesign was more than necessary.

Today Google Maps got a small facelift (compare to some screenshots from 2007) and I'm sure we'll see more changes in the next months. The search box is powerful enough to handle all kinds of queries, so it's not necessary to choose between finding locations and searching for local businesses. The option to get directions is still available and now supports address autocomplete based on your saved locations.

Google Maps homepage replaced the examples of searches with popular custom maps, showing that the application reached a new stage of development.

Google Earth, a Personal Journey

2007-08-15T09:30:00.001-07:00

When you open Google Earth, there's no guide that suggests you where to go. You only have a search box and an entire planet to discover.
In an interesting paper titled "Google's Geospatial Organizing Principle" [PDF], Michael Jones from Google describes the philosophy behind Google Earth and Google Maps, two products that try to find the answer to an important question: "where?".

Whitehead saw education as a cyclical process of stages - romance, precision, and generalization - with a reverent emphasis on romance, the emotional involvement on the part of the learner that initiates rewarding educational experiences. Just as children play with building blocks in simple wonder for years before noting patterns in their gravity- and friction-driven behavior and decades before learning an engineers appreciation for stress and strain, Whiteheads romance is the play and wonder in our initial steps toward precisions deeper understanding and generalizations broader insights.
Leveraging the role in learning played by interest and curiosity, our user experience is meant to enhance the romance of unguided personal exploration, thereby enticing users toward a journey of understanding.
Our ultimate expression of the roles of romance and context in answering where? is Google Earth, a network-based browser for searching and displaying information in situ. It lets users navigate a geospatial Web of places in a planetary application metaphor with where and when as the organizing principles.
The vision for Google Earth inverts the roles of Web browser as application and map as content, resulting in an experience where the planet itself is the browser. Three-dimensional navigation lets users fly and swoop down to the Earth, where they search by looking, clicking, and typing. (...)
Our geospatial products create an information landscape spanning global and human scales using visual context, direct manipulation, and Alfred North Whitehead's insights to advance Google's mission. We trust the sense of place to entice romance, facilitate precision, and encourage generalization as users search and explore our maps and globes.

Message Center: Let us communicate with you about your site

2007-08-15T09:26:00.001-07:00

Today we're launching our Message Center, a new way for webmasters to receive personalized information from Google in our webmaster console. Should we need to contact you, you'll see a notification in your Webmaster Tools dashboard.

Initially the messages will refer to search quality issues, but over time we'll use the Message Center as a communication channel for more types of information. Here's an example: informing the site owner about hidden text, a violation in our webmaster guidelines.

For our webmasters outside the U.S., we’re also pleased to tell you that Message Center is capable of providing information in all supported Webmaster Tools languages (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Chinese-Simplified, Chinese-Traditional, Korean, Japanese, etc.), across all countries.
Right now the number of sites we’re contacting is small, but we hope to expand this program over time. We’re also really happy that the Message Center lets us communicate with webmasters in an authenticated way. As time goes on, we’ll keep looking for even more ways to improve communication with site owners, but right now, why not claim your site in our webmaster tools so that we can give you a heads-up of any issues that we see?

Posted by Maile Ohye

Source:google webmaster central

Embedding Google Maps

2007-08-15T09:18:00.001-07:00

While made online mapping more accessible and easy to integrate with your data, it's still not trivial to include a simple map in your site. You could make a screenshot, but your map wouldn't be interactive, or you could use Google Maps API, but that's too complicated if you don't know JavaScript.

Fortunately, there are sites that solve this problem and provide you some code you can paste in your site. Map Generator is very easy to use: enter the address, the type of map (street-level, satellite or hybrid), its dimensions and you could build a map like this:

My Maps Plus lets you embed personalized Google Maps by entering the address of the KML file generated by Google Maps. This way, you can showcase more than one location.
According to APCMAG, Google Maps will launch next week an option to easily embed maps. "First up, if you know how to embed a YouTube video in your blog, you'll be able to embed Google Maps in your website, Google promises. It'll be as simple as cutting and pasting a bit of HTML code into your website, just like a YouTube video. The embedded maps have the full functionality of Google Maps -- they provide satellite view, map view or hybrid view, and users can click and drag the maps around." They'll probably look the iframe included above and you'll see them in a lot of pages that provide contact information.
{ via Mashable }

Labels: Google Maps

Source:google system

How to create valuable startpages

2007-08-15T09:10:00.001-07:00

In the Dutch market, the concept of so-called 'startpages' is hugely popular. In this article we will give some background information on them, and give those of you who may be startpage webmasters a few tips on how to create unique and informative startpages.

What's a startpage?

Basically, it's a webpage with a lot of links about a specific topic. The startpages are hosted on a startpage domain and each separate startpage is maintained by an individual webmaster. The links on startpages are usually ordered by categories related to the topic of the page. Besides hyperlinks, startpages often contain text, animations and pictures. Startpages are quite unique to the Dutch market, and offer a simple interface for novice users to create their own web portals, with a unique approach to user-generated content.

The whole startpage concept began in September 1998 with the launch of Startpagina.nl, which was set up to be an online linkbook for the inexperienced Internet user. Since then, Startpagina.nl has become a huge success, mainly because an enormous number of volunteers created and maintained the different startpages covering lots of interesting and diverse topics. Since Startpagina.nl emerged, lots of other startpage domains have been created, and are still being created today. The fact that there are still new startpage domains appearing and that the number of individual startpages on these domains is still increasing shows the continued popularity of startpages in the Dutch market.

Creating useful startpages

As a search engine, we love to have useful and diverse pages showing up in the search results we present to our users. We thought it would be a good idea to highlight some of the best practices we've seen in creating value-added startpages.

Create your startpage for users, and not for search engines. This involves making sure that all your text on the page is visible to users, and writing full sentences as descriptions instead of just keywords.
Try to deliver unique, informative and on-topic content. The structure of startpages is pretty straightforward and does not leave much room for variation. However, you can make a difference. Try to find a topic you know a lot about that has not been fully covered yet. Create good categories that are related to your topic and give a relevant title to every category. Then, find links that are related to the categories on your page and label every link with an anchor text that is relevant. For example, instead of naming your links 'link1', 'link2' et cetera, you can choose names that make clear where the link is pointing to. And you can write a short description for every category.
Don't create startpages out of commercial intent or for the sole purpose of exchanging links. Of course there is nothing wrong with trying to monetize your startpage, but a page with only banners and affiliate links is not the best user experience and therefore not recommended. The same goes for startpages that are created as part of a link network. For example, pages that have all links pointing to a particular website and to other startpages that are also pointing to that same website. These kind of link schemes have no added value for the user and go against the Google webmaster guidelines.

With this post, we hope to have provided potential startpage webmasters with some helpful guidelines that will help to create the type of startpages the Dutch speaking people love!

On a final note, we would like to encourage you to fill in a paid links form if you come across a startpage that is involved in buying and selling links for the purpose of search engine manipulation. To report other forms of bad behavior, you can send a spam report. We'll review each report we get and use this feedback to enhance our algorithms and improve our search results. As always, we really appreciate your feedback and your help to provide the best search experience.

Startpagina's

Gepost door Selina en Jos, Search Quality Team, Dublin

Op de Nederlandstalige markt zijn de zogenaamde startpagina's bijzonder populair. In dit artikel willen we, naast het geven van wat achtergrondinformatie over startpagina's, toekomstige startpaginabeheerders een aantal tips geven voor het creëren van unieke en informatieve startpagina's.

Wat is een startpagina?

Een startpagina is een webpagina met een verzameling links gerelateerd aan een specifiek onderwerp. De startpagina's worden gehost op een startpagina domein en elke individuele startpagina wordt beheerd door een webmaster. De links op een startpagina zijn meestal opgedeeld in verschillende categorieën die relevant zijn voor het specifieke onderwerp van de startpagina. Naast een indeling in hyperlinks vind je op een startpagina vaak tekst, animaties en plaatjes. Het concept van startpagina's is redelijk specifiek voor de Nederlandstalige markt en komt nauwelijks voor in andere markten. Startpagina's hebben een simpele interface die het, ook voor de onervaren internetgebruikers, eenvoudig maakt om een eigen webpagina te creëren.

Het startpagina concept kwam tot stand in september 1998 met de lancering van Startpagina.nl, dat werd opgezet als een soort van linkboek voor de onervaren internet gebruiker. Startpagina.nl bleek al gauw een enorm succes. Dit succes was vooral te danken aan het enorme aantal vrijwilligers dat meehielp om startpagina's te creëren en beheren. Dat er nu, bijna negen jaar later, nog steeds nieuwe startpagina domeinen verschijnen en dat het aantal individuele startpagina's op deze domeinen nog steeds groeit toont aan dat de startpagina's onverminderd populair zijn.

Een waardevolle startpagina creëren

Als zoekmachine vinden we het fantastisch om waardevolle pagina's met unieke content en diversiteit in onze zoekresultaten te hebben. Het leek ons daarom een goed idee om een aantal tips te geven die kunnen helpen bij het creëren van startpagina's met toegevoegde waarde.

Maak een startpagina voor internetgebruikers en niet voor zoekmachines. Zorg dat alle tekst zichtbaar is en gebruik volledige zinnen in plaats van enkel een aantal keywords.
Probeer unieke, informatieve en aan je onderwerp gerelateerde inhoud aan je bezoekers te presenteren. Hoewel de opzet van een standaard startpagina niet heel veel ruimte biedt voor variatie, kun jij als beheerder het verschil maken! Begin met het zoeken naar een onderwerp waar je veel over weet en waar naar jouw idee nog niet genoeg informatie over te vinden is. Maak vervolgens relevante categorieën aan die gerelateerd zijn aan het onderwerp en geef elke categorie een relevante naam. Zoek vervolgens de links die je op je startpagina wil plaatsen en geef elke link een anchor tekst die omschrijft waar de link je bezoeker naar toe stuurt. Noem je links niet link1, link2, en link3, maar geef ze een naam die relevant is voor de inhoud van de pagina waar de link naar verwijst. Als extra aanvulling kan voor iedere categorie een korte beschrijving worden toegevoegd.
Maak geen startpagina's vanuit een puur commercieel oogpunt. Er is niets mis met te proberen om wat te verdienen met je startpagina, maar vergeet niet dat je bezoekers niet zitten te wachten op een pagina met alleen reclamebanners en affiliate links. Hetzelfde geldt voor startpagina's die enkel worden aangemaakt als onderdeel van een linknetwerk. Een voorbeeld hiervan zijn startpagina's waarbij alle links verwijzen naar eenzelfde website en naar andere startpagina's die ook allemaal naar dezelfde website verwijzen. Dit soort startpagina's hebben geen enkele waarde voor je bezoekers en gaan bovendien in tegen de Google Richtlijnen voor Webmasters.

We hopen dat we met deze eerste Nederlandstalige post potentiële startpaginabeheerders hebben kunnen voorzien van een aantal nuttige tips die er voor zorgen dat zij het soort startpagina's kunnen gaan creëren waar onze Nederlandstalige gebruikers van houden!

Tot slot willen we iedereen aanmoedigen om een paid link formulier in te vullen, wanneer je een startpagina tegenkomt die links koopt en verkoopt om daarmee zoekmachines te manipuleren. Andere zaken die ingaan tegen de Google Richtlijnen voor Webmasters kun je melden door een spamrapport in te sturen. Wij bekijken elk rapport dat wordt ingestuurd en deze informatie wordt gebruikt om onze algoritmes en zoekresultaten verder te verbeteren. Zoals altijd wordt jullie feedback en hulp om onze gebruikers te voorzien van de meest relevante zoekresultaten enorm gewaardeerd!

Posted by Susan Moskwa

Source:Google webmastercentral

Big Brother Expands Video Network

2007-08-08T12:33:00.001-07:00

Google Inc. has turned on the cameras in Los Angeles.

The Internet company late Monday added street-level views of Los Angeles, Houston, Orlando, Fla., and San Diego to its worldwide mapping project.

The company first photographed places around the globe from satellites and airplanes, but now it's getting up close and personal.

Google's trucks have been cruising streets in a dozen urban areas in the United States capturing street scenes right out the window -- including people who happen to be in front of the cameras.

This has aroused privacy concerns. But privacy lawyers say the pictures are legal as long as they are being taken in public places.

The photos can be viewed at www.maps.google.com by clicking on Street View.

Mountain View-based Google says the pictures are useful. People shopping for real estate can look at homes and neighborhoods

Do you think Google will ban the “dofollow” blogs?

2007-08-08T12:25:00.001-07:00

The nofollow tags were suggested by google and were used by many bloggers and website administrators mainly to avoid spamming the webpages. But some bloggers intentionally have started avoiding this for a PR friendly blog network. Does google ban these sites?

Getting a page rank for your blog or a website is not only a tough task but time consuming. In the past years it was not so tough to do that. But with the development of internet and growing number of users the webpages and blogs have increased tremendously. Now the present scenario does not make it easy to get a valid backlinks which a search engine can consider for giving a page rank.

The bloggers found that commenting on other blogs is not only useful for marketing our blog but also is a useful way to rank higher in search enginies. They have started posting comments wherever possible. Wherever an open space is left for the anonymous reader to post his comments or some text, the webmasters have started posting links even if they don’t have any relation with the website. This has become spamming and google decided to eliminate it by simply creating a new tag called nofollow and recommend bloggers to use it to avoid the links in comments to be considered as a backlink. Thus the backlinks with the nofollow tags have become useless in terms of search engines and people stopped posting unnecessary spam.

Even then the nofollow links help getting some visitors in the long run. What the most important thing is to get a pagerank as many advertisers want to advertise on ranked blogs or websites. Most of the blogging is for money. So there came a community or group of bloggers who decided to become friendly and post circular links have starting do follow blogging.

Dofollow bloggers do not use nofollow blogs. Thus the links posted in comments are valuable backlinks. This is very desirable for many bloggers. As it is very tough to find a site without a nofollow tag, these dofollow tags naturally attract a lot of traffic and comments. This makes them get updated regularly and also many bloggers link to those blogs. So in turn their pages rank higher and higher.

The only fear that I have with this is that whether google may consider these blogs to be spam done intentionally and may ban them from search engine. If this happens even then it is not a big problem as the links will get some traffic because dofollow these blogs are rare in the present scenario.

Source:makeitf.blogspot.com

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO

2007-08-07T02:27:00.001-07:00

When I joined Google in early 2000, we had a stretch where we didn’t update our index for 3-4 months or more. At the time, that wasn’t bad for a search engine; I remember one search engine around then that wasn’t updated for over a year. Starting in mid-2000, Google updated our index pretty much every month. People used to use the phase of the moon to predict timing of the next “Google Dance.”

Now raise your hand if you remember “Update Fritz” from summer 2003. That was the Google Dance where Google switched from a monthly batch update to an incremental update. That means that our crawl/indexing team updated a fraction of our index daily or near-daily. Back then we had not only the normal crawl but also a “fresh crawl,” and if documents were in the fresh crawl then Google would sometimes show a date in our snippet.

The Google crawl/indexing team has continued working hard, and several people have noticed Google’s index getting fresher and fresher. Now some documents can show up in minutes instead of hours or days.

I’ve noticed that as search engines have gotter better (fresher, bigger, more relevant), people keep adjusting their expectations upwards. I can’t imagine waiting over a month for search engines to update their index with news events any more, but just a few years ago that’s how things worked. And it only takes a few encounters with a fresh index until you ratchet up your expectations. My previous mental model was “normally it takes a day or so to show up in many search engines,” but I had my own “Zoiks! That’s fast!” experience tonight, which I’ll describe for you.

I was feed-grazing in Google Reader, as I am wont to do, when I saw a message that there was an update to Reader’s code for offline reading (Google Gears). In my experience, if I move on the the next feed, I lose that little message with the link to update the code (not sure why, but that’s a different post). So I click the link and update my code for offline reading.

In the process, I lost the post that I was currently reading, which was Rich Skrenta’s post about Persai. I wasn’t done reading the post, so what do I do? I go to Google and search for [skrenta blog] so that I can find Skrenta’s blog and finish reading the post.

And what did I see in my search results? The snippet from Skrenta’s blog was showing the post that he did at 7:54 p.m. Pacific time. It was about 8:44 p.m. Pacific time when I did the search. So from Rich hitting the “Post” button to me being able to see it in Google’s main search index was well under an hour.

source:www.mattcutts.com

Fake Google PageRank: How to Avoid the Trap

2007-08-07T02:24:00.001-07:00

We all know PageRank as the little green indicator that sits in our Google toolbar. PageRank is Google's system of counting link votes and determining which pages are most important based on them. These scores are then used along with many other factors to determine how well a page ranks in search results.
But did you know it was possible to fake this ranking? Webmasters using sneaky 301 redirects can inflate their PageRank to any value they like, giving an incorrect ranking of their site. A WebmasterWorld member explains:

"This seller builds up the backlinks and PR of his own site www.scam-domain-buyers-easily.org and then 301 redirects to the domain for sale: www.keywordwidget.com. At the next Google update(s) that domain is then showing as having all the backlinks and PR7 of his own site."

This issue has become a major problem on auction sites like eBay, where sellers try to sell domain names with an inflated PageRank. This tricks buyers into paying a 'premium' price for the domain because of its apparent great ranking.
If you want to check for fake page rank there a number of tools available online:
Fake PageRank Detection Tool: Seologs fake PR detection tool.
PageRank Verification: Another PR verification tool.
Live PageRank: Checks the PR of a website over multiple Google datacenters.
For buyers, it's important not to focus on PageRank when buying domains, and always ensure to check all listings thoroughly.

source:www.ineedhits.com

El español segundo idioma en Google: la otra cara de la moneda

2007-08-07T01:46:00.001-07:00

El servicio de alertas de Google propagaba la noticia por gmail esta madrugada, hora de España y tarde noche en Latinoamérica: el español es la segunda lengua más usada en Google.
La satisfacción cultural de los hispanohablantes es también una satisfacción comercial para dicha empresa que aumentará la venta de sus anuncios en español, en parte difundiendo esta noticia. Mejor noticia sería el aumento del volumen de contenidos en español, hay mucho material, indizados por Google, pero ese es otro tema.

Que el español sea la segunda lengua en Google es una moneda con dos caras. Esta mañana un anuncio sobre 'hotel barcelona' en Google Adwords podía costar tres euros por impacto, un precio que no tiene otra lógica que subir por el monopolio que Google ostenta como buscador en España. Google carece de competencia.
Sin embargo, el español no es la segunda lengua de Internet. Cierto que en enero de 2007 el español desplazó al japonés por número de usuarios conectados, el progreso de la población de habla hispana tiene aún más recorrido en Internet que el japonés. Sin embargo, la noticia de Google hay que cogerla con pinzas, el chino y el japonés no son lenguas Googlelizadas.

El chino es la segunda lengua en Internet, no es sin embargo, el segundo idioma de uso en Google por la debilidad de este buscador entre esos usuarios que prefieren consultar el buscador chino BAIDU .
Respecto del japonés, el buscador más utilizado no es Google sino Yahoo.co.jp el sistema mundial de buscadores está mucho más diversificado en otras lenguas que en español, lo que favorece la competencia de los precios de la publicidad contextual.
El monopolio que ostenta Google en España distorsiona nuestra percepción global. En Estados Unidos la cuota de mercado debe repartirla casi a partes iguales con Yahoo que no abandona sus posiciones conquistadas en la última década.
Que el monopolio de Google avance en el español sólo indica que la burbuja tecnológica de 2000, el estallido de las punto com, remató el crecimiento de tecnologías propias que siempre habían estado como Donde a principios de los años 90, OLE antes de 2000, tecnologías españolas que siguen estando actualmente con el buscador del 060.es.
Así pues, estas campanas de gloria para la lengua española también anuncian el incremento previsible de la presión de nuestro idioma sobre la publicidad contextual. El sistema de precios por subasta entre los anunciantes aumentará los beneficios de este cuasi monopolio de los buscadores en español.

La noticia montevideo.com de Uruguay es un eco del propio servicio de noticias de Google que no está disponible en su portal, como es habitual, a través de Google Zeitgeist. La noticia en El País se ha visto más de 5.000 veces en tres horas.

source:/chimosoler.blogspot.com

Is Google's gPhone a threat or a promise?

2007-08-07T01:24:00.001-07:00

Imagine for minute -- just imagine -- that all the Google phone rumours are true and the search giant is about to bring out its own mobile device. What can Google give us that the existing handset makers can't?

This latest spin of the rumour mill has been given to us by the Wall Street Journal, which says the search behemoth is working on specs for Google-orientated mobiles and already has a working prototype which it has been spruiking to the US and European networks.

Google hasn't actually got plans to bring out its own handsets, the WSJ suggests, rather it will work with the existing players to optimise their devices for the mobile versions of Google's software offerings.

It's not the first time a 'gPhone' has been whispered about. Rumours have sprung up before -- one example being HTC is working on producing a Google-branded Linux device -- but they seem less credible than the WSJ's reports of Google's mobile vision.

After all, Google has traditionally made its way in mobile by partnering with device makers, LG, for example, is working on a YouTube-friendly mobile. Shutting out those partners now would be a very bad move, potentially prompting a backlash that could see it left out in the cold by the big names in mobile.

So, back to what we can expect: according to the WSJ: "The Google phone project goes far beyond Google's existing deals to include its search engine or applications such as Maps on select handsets, say the people familiar with the matter."

Some of the speculation over Google's plans suggest that the search giant might consider offering its users a free subscription on the condition that they accept advertising from the company.

Mobile adverts, given they reach users through a very personal medium, are apparently worth more to sponsors than the Internet-based ones we're more familiar with -- not only can you deliver an ad relating to a search query, you can make it location specific and deliver it to the palm of the user's hand.

So would you be prepared to trade your monthly cap for the obligation to receive whatever cobblers adverts the sponsors saw fit to send you? If Google went down that route, it wouldn't be the first. A European start-up called Blyk plans to launch a network based on the premise users who accept ads can get free voice minutes and text messages.

With the WSJ reporting the gPhone could come packing GPS, a step up in location-based ad services wouldn't exactly be unrealistic. The phone knows you're at home, reminds you to watch a certain show. It knows you're on the way to work, maybe it places your coffee order with the barista before you even reach the shop. It's lunchtime, you get reminded there's a deal on half price sangers down the road.

At the end of the day, your phone knows you haven't been to your local and suggests the bartender might be missing you. With a wink and a nudge, it reports three of your friends are within two minutes' walk and don't you just bet they've got a hankering for a schooner. For every time you step into the café, the pub, the sandwich shop, your phone tells Google and the ad sponsors, and Google picks up a fee for the transaction.

As we are so often reminded, the greatest potential threat to the privacy of the individual is the mobile phone. We give away our locations, our contacts, our financial details to our provider, should they choose to pry. Are we now ready to make even greater trade offs, giving providers even greater swathes of information about our lives and interests in return for a few bucks off our phone bills?

I would gamble, yes. Not everyone has the extra few bucks to spend to safeguard their privacy and Google's history in that area has not exactly been sterling. Fingers crossed that getting a phone for free doesn’t mean getting gypped on freedom.

source:www.zdnet.com.

Google Cheat Sheet

2007-08-07T01:13:00.001-07:00

De Google Cheat Sheet! Er zijn er behoorlijk wat maar deze wil ik jullie toch niet onthouden. Vandaar dat ik hem ter download beschikbaar heb gesteld voor iedereen op SEO-guru.nl. Een handig PDF-document met een talrijke bron aan informatie waaronder;

Een lijst met alle Google domeinen
Google bedrijfsinformatie
Pagerank informatie en een lijst met pagerank 10 sites
Google services
Voorbeelden van geavanceerde zoek queries
15 officiele Google blogs
en nog veel meer..

Alle credit voor dit document gaat uiteraard uit naar de originele makers, en ik stel hem dan ook alleen beschikbaar als extra download.

source:www.seo-guru.nl

Google Maps Adds Support for the hCard Microformat

2007-08-06T06:34:00.001-07:00

Microformats "are simple conventions for embedding semantics in HTML". Microformats let you publish contact cards, events, addresses using a standard so that any software that implements the standard understands them. If publishers used microformats for contact cards and your browser could parse them, it would be easy to save that information and export it to another application.
Unfortunately, not many web sites use them (the most important sites that use them are owned by Yahoo: Flickr, Upcoming, Yahoo Local) and browsers need special plug-ins to understand them. But things are about to change since Firefox 3 will handle microformats natively and Google Maps started to support microformats for local search results. "Why should you care about some invisible changes to our HTML? By marking up our results with the hCard microformat, your browser can easily recognize the address and contact information in the page, and help you transfer it to an addressbook or phone more easily." Google Maps API supports this microformat as well, but developers have to change a few lines of code.
To export the results from Google Maps, you should install the Operator Firefox extension. For other browsers minus Internet Explorer, try this hCard bookmarklet. (If you know a cross-browser bookmarklet or an hCard parser that works in IE, post the URL in the comments.) These tools convert hCard to vCard, a file format that can be imported into many applications, like Outlook or the built-in Address Book from Windows and Mac. In fact, hCard is just an HTML representation of the vCard format that can be obtained by simply adding some standard class names.

<div class="vcard"> Googleplex 1300 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, <abbr class="region" title="California">CA</abbr> 94043 </div>

Google could add support for microformats in its popular toolbar, which already tries to detect addresses and link them to Google Maps. Besides, if more people use microformats, Google has to do less guesswork to extract useful information and to make it searchable.
Jeremy Keith writes: "This is a huge leap in the number of published hCards on the Web. It would be interesting to get exact numbers but I'd guess that the amount of places returned in Google Maps searches runs into the millions. The beautiful thing about all this is that I suspect the change was trivially easy: just adding a few extra class names into a template."

Source:Googlesystem

Google Search Bug !!

2007-08-06T06:24:00.001-07:00

Try searching for "100000000..10000000000" (without quotes) into Google or

click here - > The Google Search Bug, this should display the usual did not match message:

Your search - 100000000..10000000000 - did not match any documents.
Suggestions:
* Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
* Try different keywords.
* Try more general keywords.

BUT, it dispalys the page not found error as show below:

Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Says He Refuses To Bow To Chinese Officials Like Google & Yahoo.

2007-08-06T05:11:00.001-07:00

Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales has indicated that he will try to talk with China about their decision to block his user-updated online encyclopedia. Although Wikipedia’s content is currently blocked in China, Chinese search engine Baidu has been offering some of the website’s content…claiming it as its own copyrighted material.

Wales said he would travel to China in September to meet with high-level officials to address the issue of blockage. But he said he refuses to censor his site’s content to gain official approval the way Google and Yahoo have done.

Regarding the decision to censor its site for Chinese users, Google says it can play a more useful role in China by participating than by boycotting it, despite the compromises involved. In an official statement Google said that “While removing search results is inconsistent with Google’s mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission.”

With an estimated 110 million web surfers, China’s internet community is second only to the U.S.

The country’s Internet control system reportedly employs 30,000-50-000 people. According to a 2002 Harvard University report, China’s government blocked at least 19,000 sites during a six month period and may have blocked as man as 50,000 Internet sites.

It looks like Jimmy Wales may be fighting a losing battle.

Google in future

2007-08-05T10:12:00.001-07:00

Google has made some changes in its search page! Nice changes for web freaks like us! Nevertheless, I doubt how much it would help the general users!

Is this the future!

Source:/moredoubts.wordpress.com

People power takes on Google

2007-08-04T14:38:00.001-07:00

Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, has transformed the way we find information on the internet. Now its founder, Jimmy Wales, is hoping to do the same for search engines, says Barry Mansfield

It was France's outgoing president, Jacques Chirac, who unofficially launched the campaign to challenge the online stranglehold of Google in April 2005, when he first announced his plans to develop a European rival to the American search engine. Since then, the Franco-German effort, given the working title of Quaero, has been quietly shelved. Although €90 million of state funding had been pledged towards its development, critics believed that this would not be enough and that the search engine would be out of date by the time it was launched.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales aims to bring the site's collaborative approach to search engines

And yet Google's continued dominance is no longer a foregone conclusion. It looks to be on course for a prolonged assault from a number of startups - including a project from the British firm InfoSpace, called WebFetch - determined to wrest away a generation of internet surfers who grew up with Google as their homepage. Although the movement to draw users away from the dominant search engines may be small, it is also beginning to gather momentum from those with more solid radical credentials.

The most prominent is the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, who plans a "people-powered" search engine. The idea is that humans should decide openly how to rank and organise information.

Wales has labelled his project "Search Wikia" and has strong ambitions for it to be "the search engine that changes everything". Search Wikia aims to take on Google by offering an open search platform that anyone can look at and contribute to. Most search engines keep their algorithms (the calculations that determine how web pages are ranked) secret and continually tweak them. "Those are things that I think should be done openly," says Wales.

Just as Wales's Wikipedia lets anyone contribute to an encyclopedia, Search Wikia will let anyone contribute to the search process. "We'll have a community of people giving truly editorial feedback, where they can make a judgment that this group of search results seems wrong or add weight to this or that site depending on what they're seeing," he explains. Indeed, Wikia has just this week acquired an open-source web-crawling platform called Grub; it is powered by volunteers, who download the software on to their computers and leave it running in the background. The benefit for Wales's organisation is that Wikia will not have to develop its own platform, nor shell out on a bank of computers to run the software, as it will all be done at the users' end.

The goal is to achieve five per cent of the search market, for far less than the €90 million committed to Quaero. Even as he embarks on this new project, Wales admits that by their very nature, community-driven sites face challenges. "Just take a look at Wikipedia," he says, pointing out how the encyclopedia has come under fire in situations where inaccurate information was posted on the site or companies tried to influence the information posted there.

Wales is assuming that Search Wikia will face the same difficulties, so he aims to build flexibility into the system in order to handle them. By working together on search, he says, users will also be able to reduce the effects of spam.

The latest addition to the team at Wikia Search is the creator of Jabber, an open protocol that lets users of different instant messaging applications talk to each other. Jeremie Miller will be technical lead of the open-source search project. This is significant because Miller is already working on a standard protocol that could be used by search engines, or organisations with search projects, to collaborate and exchange data. Wales wants this incorporated into the project.

At present, it is unusual for search engines to work with each other in this way, but Wales is confident that they are likely to realise the benefits of doing so. If one search engine specialises in a certain type of search (of academic papers, or video clips), it could partner with others to offer a more wide-ranging service. They don't have to give their technology away, either. Wales believes a standard for sharing data could pave the way for "a virtual economy of search players collaborating and sharing revenue".

Given that searching is internet users' top activity, it is perhaps strange that most people are content with just one search engine. Google's early popularity was partly due to its clean, uncluttered homepage, which won many admirers. It's now seeking to keep hold of its loyal user base with additional tools and features, such as downloadable toolbars, its Googlemail email service, and Google Earth. This is paying dividends. Partnerships with internet service providers, portals and social networks are cementing the Google brand in consumers' minds. Google's dominance of the UK search market currently stands at around 75 per cent.

"There have been no in-depth studies to prove that Google has more accurate results, but so far people believe that the results are better," says Nate Elliot, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "Google is perceived as innovative and they do an excellent job of portraying themselves as innovators. That could be a matter for debate but in the consumer's mind it isn't."

However, the impact of social networking, with millions having subscribed to "news recommendation" websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us, provides some insight into what Search Wikia could achieve. Digg recently gave in to pressure from its own subscribers after they discovered it was censoring articles on the site. With projects such as Search Wikia, it may become harder for governments and big business to control what appears in search results.

If Search Wikia is well designed, it should have no problem taking search traffic away from Google. Whether this will affect Google's momentum as a business is another question. It is likely that Google will pick up most of the ad revenue from Search Wikia or any other site that establishes a popular search capability, thanks to its Google AdSense scheme, in which websites earn money by carrying click-through advertising links from Google.

Wales expects to have an "extremely alpha" version of Search Wikia available by the end of the year, mainly for developers to work on. He will not give a full launch date.

He describes himself as "pathologically optimistic", but the logic behind Wikia Search is sound and all the ingredients needed for success are there. If Wales can avoid confusing the site's users and drowning them in too many options, then the Wikia project gives him a strong chance of fulfilling his ambition and changing the search landscape for good.

source:/www.telegraph.co.uk

Google; “You can put 50 words in your title tag, we’ll read it”

2007-08-04T14:33:00.001-07:00

We recently tested “how many keywords will Google read in the title tag / element?” using our simple seo mythbuster test (number 2 in the series). And here’s the results, which are quite surprising.

First - here’s the test title tag we tried to get Google to swallow. And it did. All of it. Even though it was a bit spammy;

<title>HoboA HoboB HoboC HoboD HoboE HoboF HoboG HoboH HoboI HoboJ HoboK HoboL HoboM HoboN HoboO HoboP HoboQ HoboR HoboS HoboT HoboU HoboV HoboW HoboX HoboY Hob10 Hob20 Hob30 Hob40 Hob50 Hob60 Hob70 Hob80 Hob90 Hob11 Hob12 Hob13 Hob14 Hob15 Hob16 Hob17 Hob18 Hob19 Hob1a Hob1b Hob1c Hob1d Hob1e Hob1f Hob1g Hob1h</title>

Using a keyword search - hoboA Hob1h - we were surprised to see Google returned our page. We also tested it using - Hob1g Hob1h - the keywords right at the end of the title - and again our page was returned.

So that’s 51 words, and 255 characters without spaces, 305 characters with spaces, at least! It seems clear Google will read just about anything these days!

We’re obvously not sure what benefit a title tag with this many keywords in it has for your page, in terms of keyword density / dilution, and “clickability” in the search engine results pages (serps). 50+ words is certainly not best practice!

When creating your title tag bear in mind Google only shows you the first 65 characters (about 8 words) in serps and many think you need to get a well formed understandable call to action in this space.

But from this simple experiment, it’s clear Google reads much more to factor your page in the serps. A lot more.

SEO Myth Buster #1 - Google Prefers Valid HTML & CSS?
SEO Myth Buster #2 - How Many Words In Your Title Tag For Google?

But what about Yahoo and MSN? Well so far, neither of these engines have indexed the page, even when it was created with a title tag of 26 words. They are obviously a bit choosier than Google at the time of writing.

source:www.hobo-web.co.uk

Google holds its line as mobile rumours increase

2007-08-04T14:24:00.001-07:00

After Apple's iPhone, what about the Googlephone?
The search engine company has been secretly developing prototype mobile phones and testing a host of new software and mobile services, with some estimates putting its investment in the project at hundreds of millions of dollars.
Google is being increasingly open about its desire to crack the market for mobile phones, but speculation still swirls about whether it will develop its own handsets or just work to have its search software pre-installed in other phones. It is also mulling a bid for parts of the radio spectrum in the US, which could turn it into a mobile phone operator in its own right.
The company has shown prototype phones to several wireless carriers in the US to try to persuade them that they should be offering new Google services, such as maps and Yellow Pages-style local business searches - all of which it can sell adverts on. The company brings in more than $40m (£20m) a day from adverts next to search queries on personal computers, but it believes it would get access to a whole new set of local advertisers on more mobile devices.
Rumours of a Googlephone have been rife on the internet for months, but the company is stonewalling detailed questions. "At Google we are dedicated to providing access to the world's information, with an ultimate goal of helping users access the information they want, no matter when or where they want it," a spokesman said yesterday. "What our users and partners are telling us is that they want Google search and Google applications on mobile, and we are working hard to deliver that."
A Wall Street Journal report yesterday quoted sources involved in the project as saying that hundreds of millions of dollars have been set aside for the push into the mobile market.
The latest rumours come days after Google said it may bid for a slice of the US radio spectrum which is going up for auction in the autumn. The company, with other technology firms, won a partial victory in its campaign for new open access rules, so that the spectrum cannot be used by wireless operators to lock customers in to particular handsets.
Google has had some success in integrating its search software with European phones, including some used by Vodafone, but the market is more rigid in the US and its partnership discussions with carriers here are at an earlier stage.

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source:mytopnews.blogspot.com

What Are We Searching For?

2007-08-04T14:16:00.001-07:00

Posted Friday, Aug. 3, 2007, at 6:08 PM ET

Searching for stuff on the Web is typically a one-man job. Punch in your query, hit enter, and your computer hands over a list of the most relevant results. But searching doesn't have to be solitary. As we're typing away in our little vacuums, Google is collecting and storing what we write. Want to see what other people are curious about? Download the Google Toolbar, start typing, and you'll see a list of suggested queries: similar terms that other users often search for. For tech researchers, this is an incomparable tool for figuring out how and why we use search engines. For me, it's the makings of an endlessly fun parlor game that offers answers to mankind's enduring mysteries. What do we think about when we think about Tom Cruise? What are the most frequently mispronounced words in the English language? And when people write "my balls," what word usually comes next?

The idea of search suggestions has been around since at least 2004, when a software engineer named Kevin Gibbs built a simple application called Google Suggest as a personal project. Two years ago, the company integrated Suggest into the Google Toolbar. This year, the idea has gone mainstream: Search for something at Ask.com or Yahoo.com and you'll be greeted by a dropdown suggestion window.

How does Suggest work? Type the letter "p" into the Google Toolbar (or the Google Suggest homepage) and a small box billows down. In the top half is your search history—up to 10 recent search terms that start with "p." Below that is a list of 10 "p" phrases that Google thinks you might want to search for. The toolbar's 10 proposed searches: paris hilton, photobucket, paypal, pc world, pokemon, pizza hut, people search, post office, passport, people. Add an "i" and the list instantly changes: pizza hut, piczo, pirate bay, picasa, pictures, pink, pirates, pimp my profile, pirates of the caribbean.

source:/www.slate.com

Google Phone to Be Supported by Advertisements?

2007-08-04T14:03:00.001-07:00

We’ve all known within the industry that Google has been working on a phone to compete with the iPhone and others for some time now. In fact, I’ve seen and heard bits and pieces relating to this in the rumor mill for well over a year now. It turns out, that such rumors are true (confirmed by my sources) and Google has apparently been shopping around looking for providers worthy of carrying the coveted Google product.

No one knows the exact specifications of the phone, but I have been hearing that it will waive traditional monthly fees and instead be advertisement supported. What this actually means and how many advertisements we will be subjected to is purely speculation at this point.

If anyone has any other information, please post a comment. Thanks!

Wikipedia 3.0: The End of Google?

2007-08-04T13:56:00.001-07:00

The Semantic Web (or Web 3.0) promises to “organize the world’s information” in a dramatically more logical way than Google can ever achieve with their current engine design. This is specially true from the point of view of machine comprehension as opposed to human comprehension.The Semantic Web requires the use of a declarative ontological language like OWL to produce domain-specific ontologies that machines can use to reason about information and make new conclusions, not simply match keywords.

However, the Semantic Web, which is still in a development phase where researchers are trying to define the best and most usable design models, would require the participation of thousands of knowledgeable people over time to produce those domain-specific ontologies necessary for its functioning.

Machines (or machine-based reasoning, aka AI software or ‘info agents’) would then be able to use those laboriously –but not entirely manually– constructed ontologies to build a view (or formal model) of how the individual terms within the information relate to each other. Those relationships can be thought of as the axioms (basic assumptions), which together with the rules governing the inference process both enable as well as constrain the interpretation (and well-formed use) of those terms by the info agents to reason new conclusions based on existing information, i.e. to think. In other words, theorems (formal deductive propositions that are provable based on the axioms and the rules of inference) may be generated by the software, thus allowing formal deductive reasoning at the machine level. And given that an ontology, as described here, is a statement of Logic Theory, two or more independent info agents processing the same domain-specific ontology will be able to collaborate and deduce an answer to a query, without being driven by the same software.

Thus, and as stated, in the Semantic Web individual machine-based agents (or a collaborating group of agents) will be able to understand and use information by translating concepts and deducing new information rather than just matching keywords.

Once machines can understand and use information, using a standard ontology language, the world will never be the same. It will be possible to have an info agent (or many info agents) among your virtual AI-enhanced workforce each having access to different domain specific comprehension space and all communicating with each other to build a collective consciousness.

You’ll be able to ask your info agent or agents to find you the nearest restaurant that serves Italian cuisine, even if the restaurant nearest you advertises itself as a Pizza joint as opposed to an Italian restaurant. But that is just a very simple example of the deductive reasoning machines will be able to perform on information they have.

Far more awesome implications can be seen when you consider that every area of human knowledge will be automatically within the comprehension space of your info agents. That is because each info agent can communicate with other info agents who are specialized in different domains of knowledge to produce a collective consciousness (using the Borg metaphor) that encompasses all human knowledge. The collective “mind” of those agents-as-the-Borg will be the Ultimate Answer Machine, easily displacing Google from this position, which it does not truly fulfill.

The problem with the Semantic Web, besides that researchers are still debating which design and implementation of the ontology language model (and associated technologies) is the best and most usable, is that it would take thousands or tens of thousands of knowledgeable people many years to boil down human knowledge to domain specific ontologies.

However, if we were at some point to take the Wikipedia community and give them the right tools and standards to work with (whether existing or to be developed in the future), which would make it possible for reasonably skilled individuals to help reduce human knowledge to domain-specific ontologies, then that time can be shortened to just a few years, and possibly to as little as two years.

The emergence of a Wikipedia 3.0 (as in Web 3.0, aka Semantic Web) that is built on the Semantic Web model will herald the end of Google as the Ultimate Answer Machine. It will be replaced with “WikiMind” which will not be a mere search engine like Google is but a true Global Brain: a powerful pan-domain inference engine, with a vast set of ontologies (a la Wikipedia 3.0) covering all domains of human knowledge, that can reason and deduce answers instead of just throwing raw information at you using the outdated concept of a search engine.

Notes

After writing the original post I found out that the Wikipedia application, also known as MediaWiki and not to be confused with Wikipedia.org, has already been used to implement ontologies. The name that they’ve chosen is Ontoworld. I think WikiMind or WikiBorg would have been a cooler name, but I like ontoworld, too, as in “and it descended onto the world,” since that may be a reference to the global mind a Semantic-Web-enabled OntoWorld would lead to.

In just a few years Google’s search engine technology, which provides almost all of their revenue, could be made obsolete… That is unless they have a deal with Ontoworld where they will tap into their database of ontologies and add an inference engine capability to Google search.

But so can Ask.com and MSN and Yahoo.

I would really love to see more competition in this arena, not to see Google or any one company establish a huge lead over others.

The question, to rephrase in Churchillian terms, is wether the combination of the Semantic Web and Wikipedia signals the beginning of the end for Google or the end of the beginning. Obviously, with tens of billions of dollars at stake in investors’ money, I would think that it is the latter. No one wants to see Google fail. There’s too much vested interest. However, I do want to see somebody out maneuver them (which can be done in my opinion.)

Clarification

Please note that Ontoworld, which currently implements the ontologies, is based on the “Wikipedia” application (also known as MediaWiki), but it is not the same as Wikipedia.org.

Likewise, I expect Wikipedia.org will use their volunteer workforce to reduce the sum of human knowledge that has been entered into their database to domain-specific ontologies for the Semantic Web (aka Web 3.0) Hence, “Wikipedia 3.0.”

Response to Readers’ Comments

The argument I’ve made here is that Wikipedia has the volunteer resources to produce the needed Semantic Web ontologies for the domains of knowledge that it currently covers, while Google does not have those volunteer resources, which will make it reliant on Wikipedia.

Those ontologies together with all the information on the Web, can be accessed by Google and others but Wikipedia will be in charge of the ontologies for the large set of knowledge domains they currently cover, and that is where I see the power shift.

Google and other companies do not have the resources in man power (i.e. the thousands of volunteers Wikipedia has) who would help create those ontologies for the large set of knowledge domains that Wikipedia covers. Wikipedia does, and is positioned to do that better and more effectively than anyone else. Its hard to see how Google would be able create the ontologies for all domains of human knowledge (which are continuously growing in size and number) given how much work that would require. Wikipedia can cover more ground faster with their massive, dedicated force of knowledgeable volunteers.

I believe that the party that will control the creation of the ontologies (i.e. Wikipedia) for the largest number of domains of human knowledge, and not the organization that simply accesses those ontologies (i.e. Google), will have a competitive advantage.

There are many knowledge domains that Wikipedia does not cover. Google will have the edge there but only if people and organizations that produce the information would also produce the ontologies on their own, so that Google can access them from its future Semantic Web engine. My belief is that it would happen but very slowly, and that Wikipedia can have the ontologies done for all the domain of knowledge that it currently covers much faster, and then they would have leverage by the fact that they would be in charge of those ontologies (aka the basic layer for AI enablement.)

It still remains unclear, of course, whether the combination of Wikipedia and the Semantic Web herald the beginning of the end for Google or the end of the beginning. As I said in the original part of the post, I believe that it is the latter, and the question I pose in the title of this post, in this context, is not more than rhetorical. However, I could be wrong in my judgment and Google could fall behind Wikipedia as the world’s ultimate answer machine.

After all, Wikipedia makes “us” count. Google doesn’t. Wikipedia derives its power from “us.” Google derives its power from its technology and inflated stock price. Who would you count on to change the world?

source;evolvingtrends.wordpress.com

Google To Tap Ubuntu Mobile or Embedded for Google Phone?

2007-08-04T13:53:00.001-07:00

Written by Christopher Price

Friday, 03 August 2007

The media has been abuzz over the past 24 hours as the Wall Street Journal has reported that Google has begun presenting their phone strategy to carriers. While much of this information is not new, the fact that mass media is covering it, has caused new focus on the initiative.

Google's plans appear to focus around making a new platform, marketed to manufacturers and carriers at the same time, to be branded by the carriers themselves. This is similar to Danger's strategy with the T-Mobile Sidekick. Using a central platform, the hardware is farmed out to other manufacturers, and the carrier promotes the device as their own.

It appears that Google is poised to do this using Mobile Linux, specifically the Ubuntu Mobile platform. This software would finally run full-circle with Google's strategy. The company is fueled on advertising and ideas, but Linux has yet to turn a dime for the company, beyond token gestures in internal software and their search appliances. Neither have dented Google's profit margin significantly. Despite that, the company has touted their developer's contributions to the Linux platform, as well as some tacit support for Ubuntu.

Both the Ubuntu Embedded and Mobile platforms are designed and marketed by Canonical, which itself is trying to generate revenue from its own success in Linux. Canonical has won massive followings in the desktop Linux arena, by promoting a Mac-like version of Linux that cuts the fat, while maintaining extreme ease-of-use. Unlike other Linux distributions, Ubuntu still fits on a single CD-ROM. Canonical has entered the mobile computing arena with the intent to profit through embedded versions of Linux that keep their ideals at its core. Google appears to be ready to back this initiative as well.

With Ubuntu on its side, Google appears to be beginning to develop both a mobile, and a potential future desktop strategy. Like Apple's iPhone, maintaining a shared code base can come in handy should the company plan to launch a desktop operating system in the future. Utilizing shared code in the interface and core application code, much like Apple, Google can maintain platform independence offering consumers devices on a whole host of platforms. Now, Google appears to finally be ready to leverage its technical assets on technology that it can actually profit from, namely, royalties on inexpensive cell phones. Cell phones that can still be marketed for free-after-rebate, and Google's services (not to mention their keep-it-free-to-the-consumer... ethics). Also, Ubuntu Mobile or Embedded, according to sources, is one of the few candidates of platforms that can handle AJAX at full speeds. AJAX drives much of Google's web presence, from Google Maps to Gmail.

Ubuntu Mobile is targeted at advanced devices, and is targeting a mid-2008 release. Nearly every report and source points to a similar timeframe for Google's first phone.

source:.phonenews.com

Open Letter: Eight Changes I’d Like to See from Google Reader

2007-08-03T01:55:00.000-07:00

After being a devoted (and paying) NewsGator user, I switched over to Google Reader earlier this summer. The service is really very good, though I don’t use the doodads like an automatically generated blog of shared items or graphed trends of my reading habits. But it’s not at all perfect.

I’ve been keeping a list of product requests meant to be emailed to the folks at the Googleplex. Instead, we figured it would be better as an open letter, and you can all submit your suggestions for improving Google Reader as well.

Hi Google Reader team,

Thanks for making a cool service that I use every day. I’d like to humbly suggest a few improvements that would make me even more beholden to you.

Refresh feeds more often: My biggest request would just be better performance. It frequently takes half an hour for a new item to be included. This would be the main reason I would switch back to NetNewsWire. Please, please make this better.
Accurate timeline: I’d rather have posts be dated when they were published than when they come in. It’s interesting to see how a conversation develops, in the order it actually happened. I’d rather have the time come from the sender than the receiver.
Author info: I’d like to see who the author of an item is in the at-a-glance information shown in the compressed view. I read a lot of multi-author outlets.
Video section: I think there’s a really great opportunity to be a web-based video aggregator, since you already do a much better job playing embedded video than anyone else I’ve seen. I’d like a dedicated section for video feeds with TV-like controls. Maybe I’m more interested in web video than your average user, but better tools for subscribing to (and also finding and being recommended, while you’re at it) online shows and clips would probably make more people watch them. And when I’m watching a clip and wander off to flip through other items, please don’t stop the video.
Folders or tags, pick one: I feel like you haven’t really figured out if you like tags or folders better. That’s not a big deal on a regular basis, but, for instance, I haven’t been able to find a way to rename a folder. Being able to drag and drop feeds into folders would be nice, too, though you don’t have to get too AJAXy for AJAX’s sake.
Select, mark read: I do use a set of core folders pretty heavily. I’d like to be able to select a chunk of posts and mark them as read, rather than having to either mark a whole folder or feed as read, or tick each item off one at a time.
Better counters: I’m not into this “100+” maximum number of posts in any folder. Can’t you just calculate the actual number? I like to know what I’m up against.
Gmail integration: Why aren’t you more tightly integrated with Gmail? An inbox of feeds is really not that different from an inbox of email.

Update: Search. How could I forget! Following performance, this would be my highest-priority feature addition. Like the commenters are saying, how can Google, of all companies, leave out search?

Thanks!

sourve:/gigaom.com

Google phone

2007-08-03T01:53:00.000-07:00

Soon daylight will see the second big beachhead in the mobile phone world. The first off course is Apple Iphone. But the second will be Google phone. The most important its feature is Google’ s OS and software. But phone will make other producers.

And what there is so special for this gPhone? Mostly the all Google products in one. Starting with Internet searcher and ending with maps and navigation. And besides phone will work in VOIP mode using Google Talk (Skype alternative). Off course there will be Internet browser made by google. Gmail, pictures services and other things. It is rumored that in the new phone will bu much space allocated for advertisements. But i don’t know how these advertisements will work but it must get phone’ s price lower.

source:www.myitbyte.com

Google Phone coming soon!

2007-08-03T01:49:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Google Inc has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its cell phone project and is courting U.S. and European mobile operators, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Anian, a Reuters company that tracks industry trends for institutional investors, reported last month that Google had engaged Taiwan's High Tech Computer Corp to design a Linux software-based phone for launch in the first quarter of 2008.

The Anian report cited industry sources as saying T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom , would likely be Google's U.S. partner with France Telecom's Orange selling the phones in other markets.

The Journal said on Thursday Google had also approached the two biggest U.S. wireless services, AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless, in recent months to ask them to sell phones with Google service.

It cited a Verizon Wireless executive saying the company had decided not to integrate Google's Web search tightly into its phones because of Google's advertising revenue-sharing demands. The newspaper said the executive had not commented on a Google phone.

source:/snapvoip.blogspot.com

Cool things you can do with google

2007-08-03T01:45:00.000-07:00

Google is Everything these days.
Firstly on the browser page try "Populatuion of USA" or "Mass of Earth minus Mass of Sun" also pretty cool is "define:blog"

Secondly, try docs.google.com
Online Spreadsheets and Word Documents

Open Letter: Eight Changes I’d Like to See from Google Reader

2007-08-03T01:25:00.001-07:00

Hi Google Reader team,

Thanks for making a cool service that I use every day. I’d like to humbly suggest a few improvements that would make me even more beholden to you.

Refresh feeds more often: My biggest request would just be better performance. It frequently takes half an hour for a new item to be included. This would be the main reason I would switch back to NetNewsWire. Please, please make this better.
Accurate timeline: I’d rather have posts be dated when they were published than when they come in. It’s interesting to see how a conversation develops, in the order it actually happened. I’d rather have the time come from the sender than the receiver.
Author info: I’d like to see who the author of an item is in the at-a-glance information shown in the compressed view. I read a lot of multi-author outlets.
Video section: I think there’s a really great opportunity to be a web-based video aggregator, since you already do a much better job playing embedded video than anyone else I’ve seen. I’d like a dedicated section for video feeds with TV-like controls. Maybe I’m more interested in web video than your average user, but better tools for subscribing to (and also finding and being recommended, while you’re at it) online shows and clips would probably make more people watch them. And when I’m watching a clip and wander off to flip through other items, please don’t stop the video.
Folders or tags, pick one: I feel like you haven’t really figured out if you like tags or folders better. That’s not a big deal on a regular basis, but, for instance, I haven’t been able to find a way to rename a folder. Being able to drag and drop feeds into folders would be nice, too, though you don’t have to get too AJAXy for AJAX’s sake.
Select, mark read: I do use a set of core folders pretty heavily. I’d like to be able to select a chunk of posts and mark them as read, rather than having to either mark a whole folder or feed as read, or tick each item off one at a time.
Better counters: I’m not into this “100+” maximum number of posts in any folder. Can’t you just calculate the actual number? I like to know what I’m up against.
Gmail integration: Why aren’t you more tightly integrated with Gmail? An inbox of feeds is really not that different from an inbox of email.

Thanks!

source:by Liz Gannes from gigaom.com

Blackle - Save Energy When Google Surfing!

2007-08-03T00:16:00.001-07:00

Did you know a white background on a lcd screen uses more power than a black background?

This search engine has the answer to saving the world from greenhouse gases. If everyone used Google with a black background we would save so much power its not funny!

Visit this site and use it as your search engine. Click ‘about us’ at the bottom of that page to find out more about the site.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Changes I’d Like to See from Google Reader

2007-08-02T23:34:00.001-07:00

Google Reader

Written by Liz Gannes
Thursday, August 2, 2007 at 9:46 PM PT | 7 comments

Hi Google Reader team,

Thanks for making a cool service that I use every day. I’d like to humbly suggest a few improvements that would make me even more beholden to you.

Refresh feeds more often: My biggest request would just be better performance. It frequently takes half an hour for a new item to be included. This would be the main reason I would switch back to NetNewsWire. Please, please make this better.
Accurate timeline: I’d rather have posts be dated when they were published than when they come in. It’s interesting to see how a conversation develops, in the order it actually happened. I’d rather have the time come from the sender than the receiver.
Author info: I’d like to see who the author of an item is in the at-a-glance information shown in the compressed view. I read a lot of multi-author outlets.
Video section: I think there’s a really great opportunity to be a web-based video aggregator, since you already do a much better job playing embedded video than anyone else I’ve seen. I’d like a dedicated section for video feeds with TV-like controls. Maybe I’m more interested in web video than your average user, but better tools for subscribing to (and also finding and being recommended, while you’re at it) online shows and clips would probably make more people watch them. And when I’m watching a clip and wander off to flip through other items, please don’t stop the video.
Folders or tags, pick one: I feel like you haven’t really figured out if you like tags or folders better. That’s not a big deal on a regular basis, but, for instance, I haven’t been able to find a way to rename a folder. Being able to drag and drop feeds into folders would be nice, too, though you don’t have to get too AJAXy for AJAX’s sake.
Select, mark read: I do use a set of core folders pretty heavily. I’d like to be able to select a chunk of posts and mark them as read, rather than having to either mark a whole folder or feed as read, or tick each item off one at a time.
Better counters: I’m not into this “100+” maximum number of posts in any folder. Can’t you just calculate the actual number? I like to know what I’m up against.
Gmail integration: Why aren’t you more tightly integrated with Gmail? An inbox of feeds is really not that different from an inbox of email
SOURCE:GIGAOM.COM

What's going on with Google Sitemaps?

2007-08-02T23:14:00.001-07:00

I don't know you but since last week, I've been waiting for several days to see Google upload my Google Sitemap. If you are also experiencing this problem, don't panic, it might be technical problem from my good old friend Google and I hope they fix it very soon.
At first, I thought it was a problem from my SiteMap generator, but later, I searched into the "Google WebMaster Help " newsgroup and I found one post where Google tells that currently they are having "technical difficulties". Here is the link to the original discussion group for Google Sitemaps, in case you want to see it and follow up on the progress of the solution to this directly from the source.
Per Google's comment, this is not affecting the way Google indexes your Website so as long you are still receiving the visit of Googlebot, you are fine.
What is a Google SiteMap?
It's a special XML file that tells Google what are the pages that your website has. Whenever you add a new page, this file gets updated and tells Google " I have a new web page and here it is". It is a great tool to help Google index all your pages and not wait until GoogleBot finds them.

It is important to note that the Sitemap operates independently of how Google crawls and indexes your site so even if the Site Map process seems to be not working well at this time, Google should be crawling and indexing your site as usual without any problem. In my personal case, if it wasn't for this, Google wouldn't have been able to index many of my website pages, so that's why I consider it a very good tool.

How can I submit my SiteMap to Google?

All you have to do is go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/ click on the link "Webmaster Tools (Including SiteMaps)". Next, if you don't see your site name, add your site on the box you see there and click "Add Site". Once your site is updated, make click on it and then you will be taken to the dashboard. Once you are there, click ton the tab called "Sitemaps". All you have to do is click on "Add a Sitemap" and follow the instructions, and that's it.

Is there a SiteMap Generator for Joomla Websites?
If you have a website like this, that is made with the Joomla Platform, then I can recommend two free extensions that will help you make your Google Sitemap.

The one I currently use is called "SEF Service Map " and I like it a lot because it creates a very nice SiteMap for my site (one for each language) and a good XML file that I can submit to Google.

The other I used to use and it's also good enough is "Joomap ", this is actually the Editor's Pick. I stop using it because I was getting a lot of errors from Google, so I decided to change to SEF Service Map.

Server location, cross-linking, and Web 2.0 technology thoughts

2007-08-02T11:22:00.001-07:00

Thursday, August 02, 2007 at 10:46 AM

Written by Greg Grothaus and Shashi Thakur, Search Quality Team
Held on June 27th, Searchnomics 2007 gave us (Greg Grothaus and Shashi Thakur) a chance to meet webmasters and answer some of their questions. As we're both engineers focused on improving search quality, the feedback was extremely valuable. Here's our take on the conference and a recap of some of what we talked about there.

Shashi: While I've worked at Google for over a year, this was my first time speaking at a conference. I spoke on the "Search Engine Friendly Design" panel. The exchanges were hugely valuable, helping me grasp some of the concerns of webmasters. Greg and I thought it would be valuable to share our responses to a few questions:

Does location of server matter? I use a .com domain but my content is for customers in the UK.

In our understanding of web content, Google considers both the IP address and the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .co.uk). Because we attempt to serve geographically relevant content, we factor domains that have a regional significance. For example, ".co.uk " domains are likely very relevant for user queries originating from the UK. In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server's IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content.

I have many different sites. Can I cross-link between them?

Before you begin cross-linking sites, consider the user's perspective and whether the crosslinks provide value. If the sites are related in business -- e.g., an auto manual site linking to an auto parts retail site, then it could make sense -- the links are organic and useful. Cross-linking between dozens or hundreds of sites, however, probably doesn't provide value, and I would not recommend it.

Greg: Like Shashi, this was also my first opportunity to speak at a conference as a Googler. It was refreshing to hear feedback from the people who use the software we work every day to perfect. The session also underscored the argument that we're just at the beginning of search and have a long way to go. I spoke on the subject of Web 2.0 technologies. It was clear that many people are intimidated by the challenges of building a Web 2.0 site with respect to search engines. We understand these concerns. You should expect see more feedback from us on this subject, both at conferences and through our blog.

Any special guidance for DHTML/AJAX/Flash documents?
It's important to make sure that content and navigation can be rendered/negotiated using only HTML. So long as the content and navigation are the same for search crawlers and end users, you're more than welcome to use advanced technologies such as Flash and/or Javascript to improve the user experience using a richer presentation. In "Best uses of Flash," we wrote in more detail about this, and are working on a post about AJAX technology.

Posted by Adam Lasnik

Source: googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

Google vs. Microsoft: Beyond PPC

2007-08-02T11:14:00.001-07:00

Today, Kevin Lee will look at the broader interactive marketing ecosystem, the competition between Google and Microsoft, and how this competition may affect the future of targeted PPC (and CPM or CPA) advertising. Someday soon, the SERP will be the smallest part of your digitally targeted media buy. That's why the broader battle between Microsoft and Google matters.
Microsoft still leads in productivity software for consumers and information workers, as well as in desktop operating systems. Recently, there's been lots of buzz in the press about Google and its foray into Google Apps, which provides free Web-based apps (they eventually may be ad supported) that compete with the Microsoft Office suite. While Google's applications are usable, they won't be a significant threat to Microsoft unless Google also starts delivering the functionality in downloadable client-side software, due to the limitations of SAAS.
However, Google could decide to emulate the alternative desktop office suite providers, such as Corel, with its Office Suite, or private-label a free version of the open-source OpenOffice. Then it would indeed be going head-to-head with Microsoft's software-plus-services strategy, which envisions a world of software where you can be equally productive running applications and accessing data on desktop software or via Web services and the "cloud" (meaning the Internet).
The software-plus-services program is application and file interoperability and a set of applications that are agnostic as to whether you're working on your desktop or via a Web browser. The name, though, is an unfortunate selection because many sophisticated techies don't assume it describes Web services but professional services. This holds true even within the Microsoft partner community, which I had a chance to interact with at a recent Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC). Even some Microsoft employees don't seem to know what the Web services are and are therefore confused as well.
To minimize this confusion, Microsoft should consider coining -- and therefore owning -- a completely new phrase for applications delivered seamlessly, locally, and across networks while being device-agnostic (i.e., working seamlessly with PC, mobile, game console, and set-top box platforms). Trademark and rights issues aside (money solves these), I suggest the following terms (listed in order of personal preference) to communicate Microsoft's flexible vision of the future, along with their current trademark/domain owners:
*Anyware (owned by Secuware in Madrid)
*Flexware (unused domain; the company may be dead)
*Flexiware (owned by a domain speculator)
Microsoft won't likely choose a clearer descriptor to illustrate this evolution in software to a multidevice, multilocation paradigm but will instead spend billions in media to educate the masses and its partners about software plus services. Kevin found WPC to be quite instructive. It reminded me that while I might be considered geeky in the media world, there's a whole other world of technologists that keep the computers humming, the software stable, and the data flowing behind the scenes in every kind of business you can imagine. Those Microsoft partners help determine what business data is available within their client organizations and how it's stored.
My key takeaway from the conference was there's a massive shift in the way consumers interact with software, content, entertainment, and information, as well as how they communicate with each other. In this new ecosystem, data are the key that enables marketers to target consumers as they use their many devices. With data comes complexity, and success in the marketing arena will be earned by those who best manage complexity and are able to focus on proper execution over the next several years.
Thomas Edison once said, "Vision without execution is hallucination." Microsoft COO Kevin Turner modified this slightly: "Strategy without execution is hallucination" (and not for the first time). This reminder of what might seem obvious is very relevant to search engine marketers, as well as to the portals. There are lots of great ideas, tactics, and strategies out there, but prioritizing the ones that make a difference then executing them is critical for success.
Source: clickz.com by Kevin Lee

Review of Google by searchengineshowdown.com

2007-08-02T00:57:00.001-07:00

Review of

Last updated Oct. 10, 2006.
by Greg R. Notess

Google has become for many the pre-eminent Web search engine. In Feb. 1999 it moved from Alpha test version to Beta and officially launched Sept. 21, 1999.

For More on Google
See News & Blog Posts
Google Database Components 3/02
Google's Unindexed URLs 3/02
Boolean Searching on Google 11/00
Excite vs. Google: Contradictory Directions 6/00

Since that time it has made its mark with its relevance ranking based on link analysis, cached pages, and aggressive growth. Since its beta release, it has had phrase searching and the - for NOT, but it did not add an OR operation until Oct. 2000. In Dec. 2000, it added title searching. In June 2000 it announced a database of over 560 million pages, which grew to over 600 million by the end of 2000 and then 1.5 billion in Dec. 2001. The 2+ billion reported on their home page as of April 2002 includes indexed pages, unindexed URLs, and other file formats. By Nov. 2002, they moved their claim up to 3 billion, and in Feb. 2004 it went to 4 billion. While no official claim is given, 20+ billion is once current estimate. Use the table of contents on the left to navigate this review.

Databases:

Web: Indexed Web pages (also includes URLs that it has not fully indexed) and additional file types in the Web database include PDF, .ps, .doc, .xls, .txt, .ppt, .rtf, .asp, .wpd, and more. See Google Database Components for more details.
Ads: Paid advertisements usually shown on the right side (or top) under a "Sponsored Links" heading
Images: Picture database
Groups: Usenet news database
News: Past 30 days of Web-based news sites
Book Search: Full text books with only limited viewing of in-copyright books
Google Scholar: Academic papers, articles, reports, and citations
Directory: A version of the Open Directory with entries ranked in Google's PageRank order
Froogle: Shopping and product search
Catalog Search: Scanned product catalogs

Google also has many other databases and services. Above their regular Web results, hits may be displayed from these other databases in what Google calls OneBox results. In addition it offers several specialized subsets: a government database of the .gov and .mil sites; University searches; a Linux search; an Apple/Macintosh search; and a Microsoft search.

The Google database is used by AOL and several other sites. Yahoo! dropped Google in Feb. 2004 in favor of its own database, after it had switching from Inktomi to Google in July 2000 and then reaffirmed and more closely integrated Google results in Oct. 2002.

Strengths:
  * Size and scope: It is one of the largest, and includes PDF, DOC, PS, and many other file types
  * Relevance based on sites' linkages and authority
  * Cached archive of Web pages as they looked when they were indexed
  * Additional databases: Google Groups, News, Directory, Books, Scholar, etc. (see above).

Weaknesses: See also the Google Inconsistencies Page
  * Limited search features: no nesting, no truncation, does not support full Boolean
  * Link searches must be exact and are incomplete
  * Only indexes first 101 KB of a Web page and about 120 KB of PDFs
  * May search for plural/singular, synonyms, and grammatical variants without telling you
  * Not as comprehensive as legend has it

Default Operation:
Multiple search terms are processed as an AND operation by default. Phrase matches are ranked higher

Boolean Searching:
Google uses an automatic Boolean AND between terms and has slowly been moving towards more Boolean support; however, it does not yet support the AND operator, NOT operator, or full Boolean searching with the ability to nest operators. In Feb. 1999, Google added the - symbol to perform a NOT function. In Oct. 2000, they added the ability to use an OR (which must be in upper case) to do some Boolean OR operations. See the Boolean Searching on Google page for more details on how to get Google to do certain kinds of Boolean searches.

The + used to be able to be used to require a term, but since the default operation was AND, the + was never really needed and for a while caused the following message to appear:

Google always searches for pages containing all the words in your query, so you do not need to use + in front of words.

However, the + can be used for forcing a search on stop words and for requiring Google to search for only that exact term without any possible plural/singular, synonyms, and grammatical variants.

Proximity Searching:
In Feb. 1999, Google added phrase searching designated in the usual manner by enclosing the phrase in "double quotes." Google also detects phrase matches even when the quotes are not used and usually ranks phrase matches higher. No other proximity searching is directly available. However, using the wildcard word within a phrase trick described below, the unofficial Google API Proximity Search (GAPS) tool can reproduce proximity searching up to a distance of 3 words. Unfortunately, GAPS stopped working in the Spring of 2006.

Truncation:
No truncation is available. Some automatic plural searching and word stemming occurs for English words and can be turned off by using the plus sign in front of each term that should not be stemmed. However, within phrases, there is a trick which can be used for a wildcard word. Use an asterisk * within a phrase search to match any word in that position. So, for example, to find "a little neglect may breed mischief" when you are not sure of the second to last word, search "a little neglect may * mischief". Multiple asterisks can be used as in "a little * * * mischief". However, Google changed the processing in Aug. 2005 so that a single asterisk will sometimes represent more than just a single word. This is the only way Google supports a wildcard symbol.

While not exactly truncation, the synonym operator of a tilde ~ before a search term, with no space, to tell Google to look for synonyms. So a search on yosemite ~trails will find pages that have terms like 'hiking,' 'rides,' and 'maps.' This synonym finder will sometimes include plural, singular, or other grammatical variants as well. So the earlier search also found matches with 'trail' and 'trailer.' So the ~ can be used to get something a bit closer to truncation but not very. Bear in mind that the ~ only works in Google's Web database and only for English language terms.

Case Sensitivity:
Google has no case sensitive searching. Using either lower or upper case results in the same hits.

Field Searching:
Google offers several field searches connected with entering URLs. In the December 2000 revision of its advanced search form, it add several title and URL field searches.

Note that some field searching cannot be combined with other query words. In others words, a search entered such as uniqueword link:name.com will only be processed as if only the field search was present as in link:name.com. The uniqueword is ignored. The intitle: and inurl: fields can be combined with other search terms but allintitle: and allinurl: cannot.

Field
Explanation

intitle:
Finds pages that have the term(s) in the HTML title element. Can be combined with other search terms. intitle:search engines. This should find 'search' in the title and 'engines' anywhere in the page.

inurl:
Finds pages that have the term(s) somewhere in the URL (host name, path, or filename). Can be combined with other search terms. inurl:searchenginewatch.

allintitle:
Finds pages that have the term(s) in the HTML title element. allintitle:search engines.

link:
Finds pages which contain hypertext links to the exact specified URL. link:searchengineshowdown.com/search finds pages with links to this site. Unfortunately, on Google, link: searches are incomplete and do not retrieve all pages that Google has indexes that link to the specified URL

allinurl:
Finds pages that have the term(s) somewhere in the URL (host name, path, or filename). allinurl:searchenginewatch.

site:
Finds pages from the designated Web site. Path and file names can be included. site:notess.com/write

allinanchor:
Finds pages that have the term(s) somewhere in the links to the page. .

related:
Invokes GoogleScout to find other pages similar in linkage patterns to the given URL and at a similar hierarchical level. The URL must be exact. In other works related:notess.com and related:www.notess.com find different results.

numrange:
Finds a range of numbers. Either 5..11 or numrange:5-11 works. See number searching section below.

pricerange:
Finds a range of numbers prefixed by the $ sign. Either $5..11 or pricerange:5-11 works. See number searching section below.

flink:
Used to find pages linked from the given URL. No longer working as of Oct. 30, 1999. flink:notess.com

Before the official release in Sept. 1999, clicking the small bar graph at the beginning of a displayed hit would automatically run a link: search, but that graphic disappeared with the official launch. Another field search which can be used is related:[URL] which invokes GoogleScout to find other pages similar in linkage patterns to the given URL.

Limits:
Google has language, domain, date, filetype, and adult content limits. The date limit, added in July 2001, is only available on the Advanced Search page. Only three options are available: Past 3 Months, Past 6 Months, or Past Year.

The file type limit, added along with the addition of other file types to the Google index, was added to the Advanced Search page in Nov. 2001. The Advanced Search page only offers file type limits under the label of File Formats for PDF, Word (.doc), Excel (.xls), PowerPoint (.ppt), and Rich Text Format (.rtf). Using the filetype: prefix, the file type limit can also be used for PostScript (.ps), Text (.txt), .htm, WordPerfect (.wpd), and other file extensions. To use the prefix command, just put the extension immediately after filetype: as in differentials filetype:ps.

Google introduced the language limit in April 2000 with eleven languages which was expanded as of Aug. 2000 to 24. As of July 2001, Russian was added. In Nov. 2001, Arabic and Turkish and then in early 2002 Catalan, Croatian, Indonesian, Serbian, Slovak, and Slovenian joined the group for the following 34 language limit options. These are available on the Advanced Search page and their Language Tools page.

Arabic
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese (Simplified & Traditional)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Estonian
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Latvian
Lithuanian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish

To choose more than one at a time use the preferences page, which also offers a choice for which of 14 languages the surrounding text will be displayed in.

In May 2000, a family filter was added which tries to exclude adult Web pages. Turn it on from the preferences page or in the Advanced Search. By default, "Moderate Filtering" is turned on which is supposed to "Filter explicit images only." In other words, the Web (or text) search is not filtered, but the image results are. The Strict Filtering option which will "filter both explicit text and explicit images" will turn on the filter for the Web and Images databases (and the Directory) but not Groups, News, and Froogle. Some ads will be filtered. Also, the Strict Filtering option will block all results for certain words. However, none of the filters, even the Strict Filtering, blocks all explicit content.

The Advanced Search offers a domain limit, which can be used to limit results to those from the specified domain or it can be used to exclude results from a specified domain.

Stop Words:
Google searches almost all words except for operators like AND and OR if they are not in a phrase. These can be searched by putting + in front of them. As of March 2000, 'the' was a stop word that could not be searched even with the + sign. But by 2002, 'the' could be searched with the plus. As of Nov. 2001, stop words within a phrase no longer require a + sign and will automatically be searched. Also, if only stop words are entered even without phrase markings, they will be searched. In the early years, you had to be sure to only place the + in front of stop words. If a + wais placed in front of a non-stop word in the same query, all + signs would be ignored.

Sorting:
Results are sorted by relevance which is determined by Google's PageRank analysis, determined by links from other pages with a greater weight given to authoritative sites. Pages are also clustered by site. Only two pages per site will be displayed, with the second indented. Others are available via the [ More results from . . . ] link. If the search finds less than 1,000 results when clustered with two pages per site and if you page forward to the last page, after the last record the following message will appear:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 63 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Clicking the "repeat the search" option will bring up more pages, some of which are near or exact duplicates of pages already found while others are pages that were clusted under a site listing. However, clicking on that link will not necessarily retrieve all results that have been clustered under a site. You can also just add &filter=0 to the end of a search results URL. To see all results available on Google, you need to check under each site cluster as well as using the "repeat this search" option.

Display:
The display includes the title, URL, a brief extract showing text near the search terms, the file size, and for many hits, a link to a cached copy of the page. This cached copy is from Google's index and may be older than the version currently available on the Web. The cached copy will display highlighted search terms. If more than one search term is used, each has a different color highlighting. The default output is 10 hits per screen, but the searcher can also choose 20, 30, 50, or 100 hits at a time on the preferences page. In June 1999, numeric relevance scores and "phase match" or "partial phrase match" indicators were removed. In Sept. 1999, the graphic relevancy bar with its link to a link: search was removed. At the same time, a GoogleScout link was added. GoogleScout is now just labeled as "Similar pages" and find other pages similar in linkage patterns to the displayed hit. In April 2000, Google started clustering results by site. Formerly, hits from the same site would be listed indented under the first. As of April 2000, only the first two hits are displayed (with the second one indented) and the rest available under a
[ More results from hostname ]
link.

With the addition of non-HTML files in 2001, Google added two notes to the display to identify those files. Before the title in the first line of the display, [PDF] or [PS] or [XLS] is used to denote the different file format. On some, a second line of the display lists
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as Text.

Around Aug. 2001, Google started refreshing the indexing of certain pages (those with daily updates) more frequently than the rest of the database. These were marked with "Fresh!" after the URL and size. In Dec. 2001, this tag was changed to list the indexing date. As of Feb. 2002, 3 million pages were being refreshed on an almost daily basis. Google no longer reports such numbers.

Special Search Features:
Cached Pages: Google was the first general search engine that provides access to pages at the time they were indexed, designated as "cached" pages. For an alternative sources for cached pages see the archives page.

Character Searching: Google is also the only search engine that searches for some characters. As of Sept. 2003, it would search for the ampersand & and the underscore _ characters by themselves or as part of a character string. In other words, a search on adv_search gets different results than "adv search" and &tc differs from tc. While it would not search # or + in most cases, it does differentiate c#, c++, c+, and c. It does not, however, differentiate c*, c+@, or c+-, interpreting c* as c and both c+- and c+@ as c+. (These c+ type strings are all various programming languages.) In March 2004, it started searching for the $ when it precedes a number (see more details on number searching below). Other punctuation marks may change the sorting of results. Tomi Häsä reports that searching for I/O works as does searching for sharped musical pitches as in a#, c#, f#, and g#. The &, + and _ also can be used one or more times in the middle or at the end of a character or a word or between characters and words as in a+, a_, C++, page_count, a&b&c, and i&&.

Number Searching: (New, March 2004) Google handles numbers in some special ways and can search for a range of numbers. When it searches for numbers, it also finds numbers with and without commas. The number range search finds decimal numbers within the range as well. In other words, a search like chennai 565011 finds pages with 565,011 while the number range of 5..11 will match numbers such as 5, 7, 9, 11, and 7.23. Both plain number searches and number range searches can be combined with other terms and can be included in phrase searching.

Number Range Searching Syntax:

Smaller number, two periods, larger number, as in 5..11 or 987.6..1001.34
Use the prefix of numrange, a colon, and then the smaller number, a dash, larger number. numrange:5-11 or numrange:987.6-1001.34
For open ended ranges, just leave off one of the numbers. For example, to search for all numbers equal to or larger than 534, use either 534.. or numrange:534-. To find only numbers smaller than 16, use either ..16 or numrange:-16 (and 0..16 or numrange:0-16also works).
A variant of the number search is the price range search. Currently, it recognize the dollar ($) sign when it is placed immediately in front of the number with no space, but it does not yet recognize the pound (�), Yen (�), or Euro (�) characters yet. Either use the $ sign with the .. syntax as in $5..11 (the second number could also have the $ sign, but it is not required while the first number must have it to work), or use pricerange:5-11 without the $ sign.

Number Searching Syntax Notes:

Be sure to put the smaller number first or the range operation won't work
Must be positive numbers (although you may find negatives, the - sign is not searched and is interpreted as a NOT operator)
Numbers and number ranges can be used within a phrase search
A plain number search also will match a number with a comma. In other words, 2001 finds pages with 2001 but not pages with 2,001 while 2001..2001
A number range search, like most other Google searches, will also find pages that do not contain the number but are linked from other pages that contain the number in the linking anchor text. Check the cached copy of the page for a header saying "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page."

Source:searchengineshowdown.com

Google requests removal of Google Maps support from MGMaps (July 31st, 2007)

2007-08-02T00:44:00.001-07:00

I have recently received a letter from Google asking me to remove support for Google maps from MGMaps (copy of the letter below).

I deeply regret this decision by Google and I believe that it is only going to result in making people use Google's competitors, but... that's their decision. So what other options are available to you? Well, plenty of them: MGMaps includes support for maps from Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com and OpenStreetMap.org (who all offer great maps by the way). I am also adding a configurable URL to MGMaps v1.36 where you can enter any map server of your choice.

I am still hoping that Google will change their minds and return to the innovative spirit that brought us great products like the Google Maps API. But apparently this spirit is slowly going away.

In the mean time, I am truly sorry for the inconvenience this may cause you. I will disable support for Google Maps and will update all current versions of MGMaps later this week.

Source:http://www.mgmaps.com/news.php?item=136

4 Great Reasons to use Google Analytics

2007-08-02T00:31:00.001-07:00

Having used a large number of web site visitor trackers over the years, I first approached Google Analytics some time ago, with the somewhat jaded attitude of someone who's 'seen it all' or at least 'seen most of it'. What could possibly make this particular utility stand out in such a large crowd of competitors?
But first... What is Google Analytics?
Analytics is Google's very own visitor tracking utility, allowing webmasters to keep tabs on traffic to their site, including visitor numbers, traffic sources, visitor behaviour & trends, times spent on the site and a host of other information gathered via two pieces of JavaScript embedded in the source-code.
Unlike other free visitor trackers, which insist on displaying annoying and often amateurish badges or buttons when they are being used, Google Analytics simply runs quietly in the background, gathering the necessary information without any visible signs of its presence.
Which brings me quite neatly to Analytics' first major plus-point; the price. What webmasters are effectively getting, is a fully fledged visitor tracking utility without all the irritations and limitations normally associated with free products of this type.
Ok, so its free; but is it any good?
In a word; yes.
The sheer depth of information gathered, really leaves very little to be desired. From search engine analysis to page views, bounce-rates and more, the available data is presented so as to give users an easy overview of the most essential elements, with the ability to 'drill down' to less commonly accessed or more in-depth statistics and figures.
Additionally, on the 18th of July 2007, the Google Analytics old user interface was discontinued, making way for a newer, more ergonomic look which makes reports more accessible and the interface itself more intuitive for the user.
The new Dashboard provides 'at a glance' visitor statistics for the previous month, as well as a graphical breakdown of your visitor's geographical locations in the form of a world map. A pie chart clearly shows what proportion of visitors reached the site through search engines, by referral or through direct access, whereas the 'Content Overview' provides a list of the most commonly accessed pages.
What makes Google Analytics special though?
Although Analytics boasts all the features and statistical data to be expected from a top-class keyword analysis and statistics tracker, it also features a number of additional tools which put it ahead of the most of the pack where ease-of-use and depth-of-information is concerned.
1. The Map Overlay
Essentially, this feature brings up a map of the world, highlighting the countries a site's visitors stem from. Clicking on a country produces a close-up view, along with a geographical breakdown according to the region and/or city from which visitors accessed the site. This tool in itself is invaluable for all those webmasters with geo-specific sites, concentrating on a particular catchment area.
2. The Site Overlay
This is conceivably Google Analytics' single most important feature from a webmaster's or online business owner's perspective, as it provides a hands-on view of visitor behaviour. When clicked, 'Site Overlay' opens the tracked web site in a new window and, after a moment's loading time, overlays each link on the screen with a bar, containing information about clicks to the target page and goal values reached [more about goal values in a moment]. Since it allows the webmaster or site owner to navigate his or her site and see exactly how visitors flow through it, it is difficult to imagine a more effective tool than this as far as raising a site's conversion rates is concerned.
3. Goals and Funnels
Unless the site being tracked is an information site which does not rely on generating sales or enquiries, conversion rates are as important as sheer visitor numbers. The 'Goals & Funnels' feature allows users to set up specific goals for their site, such as tracking a visitor to the 'Thank you for your enquiry' page for instance. It also allows the user to set up specific monetary values for each goal, and thus track the site's financial performance and profitability during any given period of time.
The term 'Funnels' refers to the specific path a visitor takes to reach the goal's target page. Since most web sites sell a number of different product ranges or feature a number of ways to enquire, all of which lead to a single 'Thank You' page, the funnel allows for the tracking of each individual path with a minimum of fuss.
4. Graphical Representations
A great many visitor trackers out there will present the collected information in a certain way, be it a list, graph, pie chart, flow-chart or whatever. Whilst all these methods of presentation are of course valid, it is nevertheless a fact that most users are different, and a pie-chart is not necessarily ideal for those users preferring to work with graphs or vice versa. Google Analytics however, allows users to choose between views on many of its reports. Although this may seem like a relatively minor point, it nevertheless makes things easier, as it allows the user to work with the view he or she is most comfortable with.
In Conclusion:
Google Analytics provides webmasters and site owners with a highly effective means of tracking visitors and analysing statistical data, easily the equal of most subscription based services in the industry.
Although some concerns have been voiced amongst more paranoid internet users, that Google puts everyone's collective data to its own evil demographic uses, there really are precious few reasons not to recommend this fantastic tool as one of the best means to boost any web promotion and marketing campaign.

Source:www.tarad.com

Cookies: expiring sooner to improve privacy

2007-08-01T23:57:00.001-07:00

We are committed to an ongoing process to improve our privacy practices, and have recently taken a closer look at the question of cookie privacy. How long should a web site "remember" cookie information in its logs after a user's visit? And when should a cookie expire on your computer? Cookie privacy is both a server and a client issue.
On the server side, we recently announced that we will anonymize our search server logs — including IP addresses and cookie ID numbers — after 18 months.
Now, we're asking the question about cookie lifetime: when should a cookie expire on your computer? For background: a cookie is a very small file which gets stored on your computer All search engines and most websites use cookies. Why? Cookies remind us of your preferences from the last time you visited our site. For example, Google uses our so-called "PREF cookie" to remember our users’ basic preferences, such as the fact that a user wants search results in English, no more than 10 results on a given page, or a SafeSearch setting to filter out explicit sexual content. When we originally designed the PREF cookie, we set the expiration far into the future — in 2038, to be exact — because the primary purpose of the cookie was to preserve preferences, not to let them be forgotten. We were mindful of the fact that users can always go to their browsers to change their cookie management settings, e.g. to delete all cookies, delete specific cookies, or accept certain types of cookies (like first-party cookies) but reject others (like third-party cookies).
After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies — as long as we could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time. And this is why we’re announcing a new cookie policy.
In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the cookies of active users during this time period. In other words, users who do not return to Google will have their cookies auto-expire after 2 years. Regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that their preferences are not lost. And, as always, all users will still be able to control their cookies at any time via their browsers.
Together, these steps — logs anonymization and cookie lifetime reduction — are part of our ongoing plan to continue innovating in the area of privacy to protect our users.
by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel - Source: The Official Google Blog

Google Not Always Disclosing Ads

2007-08-01T23:41:00.001-07:00

Google has stopped to always disclose their ads served to websites via the AdSense program. Previously, all ads would carry a disclaimer reading something along the lines of “ads by Google”. These days however, more and more image ads are missing this disclaimer.
Since webmasters are used to Google delivering the disclosure, they may omit a disclosure of their own (two disclosures readings “ads” can look silly), which then suddenly means their website carries undisclosed advertisements. If the advertisement is included in the content area, it becomes even harder to tell apart from actual content, and Google in the past often urged webmaster to increase click-thru rates by making ads look more like normal content (by default, Google also removes borders around ads these days).
5 days ago, I wrote to the Google AdSense report in regards to this, but no human got back to me. Webmasters who always want to disclose their ads are left with three choices: 1) Remove AdSense or switch to competing ad platforms, 2) Add a disclosure, which will then always show (and mostly be redundant), or 3) restrict their AdSense ads to text-only (so far, it seems to be image ads which omit the disclosure). Google in the meantime should make up their mind and either always add their AdSense disclaimer, or never; either way would enable webmasters to adjust their templates.
Source: blogoscoped.com

Yahoo! Enters Pay-Per-Click Advertising Market in India with Tyroo

2007-08-01T23:31:00.001-07:00

While little is known about the launch of Yahoo! Panama in India, Yahoo! today joined hands with Tyroo Ads - an internet advertising company focused on Indian websites.
Yahoo! India has picked up a 35% stake in Tyroo and this could mean some good news for thousands of bloggers and site owners in India who are looking for alternatives to Google Adsense - Yahoo! could leverage it’s existing sales and marketing resources to bring more publishers and advertisers into the Tyroo program.
Tyroo, based in Gurgaon, offers a pay-per-click advertising program targeted toward Indian publishers but unlike Google Adsense, Tyroo is non-contextual. Their 4-line text ads appear quite similar to that of Adsense / Adwords.
Tyroo is currently used by around 1200 web publishers but that number is likely to grow up soon now that Yahoo! is associated with the company. Tyroo expects to set up sales offices across the country and triple the team size by the end of this year.
Tyroo’s prominent publishers include Indiatimes, Naukri, Oneindia, Santabanta and Shaadi.com. Microsoft, Google, Tata AIG, HSBC, SimplyMarry are some of the bigger advertisers using the Tyroo advertising network currently.

Source: labnol.org

I Got To No. 1 on Google At No Cost

2007-07-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

After many years of buying into everything in sight I finally got the message. For years I have been told, get a list, well I tried and failed miserably. Seemed I got a few and as fast as I got them they disappeared. Many of you know what I mean. Then someone did me a favor I was told to write articles and get sites linking to mine. I didn’t think much of that idea as I thought I had no talent for writing. However after 3 years or so with no results I was desperate. Well, 10 weeks ago I decided I would give it a go. Didn't think I could do it, but I wrote one article about Toxins, then I wrote another and another, to date I have 20. Even though I say it myself, they are not too bad. I next sent the Articles to 150 directories manually. I know there is software out there that works great, unfortunately it never worked for me. Anyway, as can imagine it was a lot of work. I kept at it, and I found most of the directories linked back to my site and I began to get hits. By the way I did this without spending one red cent. I had made a decision that no money would be spent for anything. During the years I had spent enough. I wanted to prove it could be done without spending. I guess I could have put this together as an ebook and charged the usual $47.00 for it, that seems to be the regular number. I decided against that, as I had made a vow I would not spend any more money, and I didn’t want others to spend. It is quite an achievement to get to No 1 on Google and spending nothing. Oh, that’s a lie, I did spend $1.50 on a Article submitter on eBay, unfortunately it didn’t work. That is something I should mention here, these Article submitters are available for $47.00 (there’s that number again) all over the internet, however you can get them for $1.50 on eBay. The guy told me the one I bought from him worked on his computer, so it could be a good deal. You really need a submitter for it is a lot of work, believe me. After you have sent all your articles to the directories, you receive links back to your site, as you well know linking is one of the most important factors to get your site listed high on the search engines. The 100 or so links coming back to my site from the articles were not enough to do the full job, so I had to come up with a software to do the job for me. Free of course…. I found http://www.linkshighway.net/main/ This did a great job for me, easy to use, it got 70 extra links in the matter of a couple of hours. Really it is easy as pie. I get more than that, I had 14 requests to link to me, yesterday so it continually builds. Then I saw somewhere, the more links to your site the better, these guys were talking in thousands. Iv’e still some work to do. As I said, about 4 weeks ago I started to get hits to my site and I have kept records of them, as I wanted to see how they grew. Once again it was easy going, simple. I now had 20 articles out there to 150 directories and had 200 sites linking back to my site. Now the next thing was to have a web site that was friendly to the search engines. I will continue with this posting in a couple of days as I have something that really is pressing. Before I leave I have to show you this, here are the results of the last few keywords that are truly working, I will give you the reason in a couple days why they work. ISAGENIX home business... 4th out of 366,000 Hong Kong 3rd out of 24,600 are you sure it works 1st out of 42,800 Natural Cleanse 1st out of 86,500 facts 2nd out of 29,200 join our team 1st out of 43,900 liver cleanse 3rd out of 15,900 Leader 3rd out of 38,700 proof 1st out of 16,900 cleanse 6th out of 104,000 Colon Cleanse 5th out of 37,900 Natural colon cleanse 4th out of 22,600 Work at home 4th out of 218,000 Isagenix 29th out of 695,000 How to use the 9 day plan 2nd out of 37,000

SEO Tools

2007-07-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

Web Tools

Link Popularity
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META Tag Generator
Fast track creating your META tags with our advanced META tag generator. Just select the META tags you would like and let our META tag generator spit out the code for you. Takes under 30 seconds and you'll have a complete set of META tags without needing to know anything about them. META Tag Generator >>

META Tag Scanner
Before firing off your site to search engines, make sure you verify your META tags are formatted correctly and optimized properly. Let our META Tag Scanner analyze your tags and make suggestions on how you can improve the common elements of your page(s). META Tag Scanner >>

Robots Generator
Control the level of spidering, searching and indexing a search engine can do on your pages through a set of rules as defined by a Robots file or Robots META Tag. Let our Robots tool take the hassle out of creating robot rules through this easy to use wizard. Robots Generator >>

Submit Engine
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boost the traffic to your website

2007-07-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

Are you running an Internet business and looking for a way to boost the traffic to your website? Would you like to increase your opt-in subscribers, get more referrals, quality leads and receive valuable feedback? Well you can, through the fastest growing marketing tool available - referral links. Referral links may cause traffic jams on your website, but in a good way. Internet businesses need website traffic in order to be successful. The more referral links to your website, the more visitors stop in to look around. The math is simple. Referral links plus visitors equal purchase and profits.
According to a recent online study, over 50% of Internet users have visited websites through referral links. Referral links can bring the best website traffic jams when the referral is coming from a reliable source and can mean a world of difference when it comes to converting a website visitor to a customer. The whole purpose to having referral links is to drive visitors to your website and encourage them to stay long enough to see what products or services you have to offer them. Then it is up to you to convert that visitor into a valued customer. Most business owners greatly depend on their website to generate a substantial part of their income. Some website business owners depend on the success of their website to supplement their income while some depend on their website for their entire income, whether it is making direct sales or by generating leads to spread interest in your website?s services or products. As with many website businesses, visitors are more likely to zip through your website without reading your site or making any purchases. This happens most often when the website has no eye-catching images or information. This is a common problem among website business owners and can be very frustrating. So, the million-dollar question is this - How do you turn your visitors into customers? The answer to this question can have a tremendous affect on the success of your business website. Turning your website visitors into customers is a ?Conversion.? When someone visits your website and does not provide any real benefit, such as making a purchase, inquiry, or subscribing to your newsletter or any other effects that may become a sales lead. You must convert these visitors into customers by offering them exceptional deals or incentives. Simply put, you must make them an offer they cannot refuse. After all, you have invested a great deal of time and money into getting your website up and running. Now you must invest the time and effort into getting your target audience to visit your website and opt-in to receive future specials and updates. You must think of every visitor as being a potential customer, it?s up to you to convert them, drive them in, and keep them coming back. Website business owners often measure their success in terms of conversions, not just increased website traffic. Converting a visitor into a customer that makes a purchase of products or services will create a profit. Businesses need to create profits in order to survive or else there would be no business. More customers are more relevant to business websites than mere visitors are, although visitors may eventually become a customer. Not only should you, as a website owner, focus on driving more people to your website, but also you need to focus on getting the right people in there. You need to find your target audience and go after them with everything you have. Lure them to your website by showing them that you have what they are looking for, what they need. You want those potential customers who will likely become sales leads and create a profit so you can have a great Return on Investment (ROI) for all your money, time and effort you have invested into creating your website. This is why providing referral links on your website is so important. As a business website owner, you need to generate your own traffic and promote your website business to the best of your ability. Although referral links may only account for a small portion of website traffic, they do have a big conversion rate and they are a very wise investment of your time.

web sitemap - xml sitemap generator

2007-07-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

Google Sitemap

The Google Sitemap Generator is a Python script that creates a Sitemap for your site using the Sitemap Protocol. This script can create Sitemaps from URL lists, web server directories, or from access logs. In order to use this script:

You must be able to connect to and run scripts on your web server.
Your web server must have Python 2.2 or later installed.
You must know the command that launches Python. (Generally, this is python, but may vary by installation. For instance, if the web server has two versions of Python installed, the earlier version may be invoked by the command python and the later version may be invoked by the command python2.)
You must know the directory path to your site. If your web server hosts one site, this may be a path such as var/www/html. If you have a virtual server that hosts multiple sites, this may be a path such as home/virtual/site1/fst/var/www/html.
You must be able to upload files to your web server (for instance, using FTP).
If you will be generating a list of URLs based on access logs, you must know the encoding used for those logs and the complete path to them.

If you aren't sure about any of this, you can check with your web hosting company.

Now you’re ready to get started. Here’s an overview of what you’ll need to do.

Download the Sitemap Generator program files. Extract the files to a local directory.
Create a configuration file for your site using the provided example_config.xml file as a template. Modify this file as needed for your site and save it.
Upload the necessary files to your web server.
Run sitemap_gen.py.
Add the generated Sitemap to your Google webmaster tools account.
Set up a recurring script. (optional)

If you are unable to use the Sitemap Generator, you can add a Sitemap to your Google webmaster tools account in another format, such as a simple text file.You can also find links to third-party programs that support Google Sitemaps here.

For News Sitemaps: The Sitemap Generator is not recommended for use in creating Google News Sitemaps at this time, due to the special requirements of News Sitemaps. News Sitemaps are intended to be dynamic lists of only the most recently published news articles (rather than the entire website), and they are updated frequently.

1. Downloading the Sitemap Generator program files

The Sitemap Generator files are available in ZIP and GZ archive formats from the following location:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=137793&package_id=153422

Once you download the archive, extract it into a local directory. Locate the following files:

README —contains the latest information about this tool
sitemap_gen.py —the python script that generates your Sitemap
example_config.xml —the template configuration file you’ll use to specify the configuration for your site
example_urllist.txt —the template URL list you can use if you wish to create a Sitemap based on a set of URLs that you specify

2a. Creating a configuration file

This section provides step-by-step instructions for creating a configuration file. It also provides a complete reference of the options available. If you are creating Mobile Sitemaps, see the additional mobile guidelines.

In order to create a configuration file for your site, you must have the following information:

The base URL for your site (such as http://www.example.com/). Only URLs that begin with this base URL can be included in the Sitemap. Ensure that you include the protocol (such as http://). For instance, http://www.google.com is a valid base url, but www.google.com is not.
The web server path to the location where you want to store the Sitemap. Generally, this is the path to the base URL as the Sitemap cannot contain URLs that are in a higher-level directory from the location of the Sitemap. When you run the Google Sitemap Generator, it creates the Sitemap and places it in the location you specify.
The methods you want the Sitemap Generator to use to create your Sitemap. You can use any combination of methods. The following methods are available:

URL —list individual URLs in this section of the configuration file, along with information about each URL. You would generally use this method in conjunction with another method to manually include additional URLs that other methods wouldn't pick up.
URL list —point the configuration file to a text file that contains a list of URLs. You might want to use this method if this text file already exists or if you use a script to generate a list of URLs.
Directory paths —specify the directory paths for your site and corresponding URLs to those paths. The Sitemap Generator will create a list of URLs based on the contents of those directories. You might want to use this method if your site consists of static HTML files.
Access logs —point to the path to your log files. The Sitemap Generator will create a list of URLs based on the URLs included in the logs. You might want to use this method if your site consists of dynamic pages.
Sitemap —point to existing Sitemaps that you have created with the Sitemap Generator. The Sitemap Generator will create a single Sitemap that includes the URLs contained in each Sitemap. You could use this method if you have already created several smaller Sitemaps that you want to combine into one larger Sitemap.

Create the configuration file as follows:

Open the example_config.xml file in a text editor. Save it as a new file (such as config.xml or mysite_config.xml).

Locate the site definition section:

Change the base_url value to the URL for your site.

Change the store_into value to the path on your web server where you want to store the Sitemap and the filename you want to use for the Sitemap. Generally, this is the path to the base URL since Google can only accept URLs that are at the same level as or subdirectories of the directory that holds the Sitemap. You can specify a relative path from the directory where you upload the script or a complete path from the root of your web server. If you upload the script to your base URL directory, you can simply specify the filename.

Locate the generation method sections that begin with ** MODIFY or DELETE **. Each of these sections corresponds to a method for generating a Sitemap.

Delete the sections for the methods you aren’t going to use.

Follow the instructions below for the methods you are going to use.

URL

Locate the following section:

This section gives two examples: the first includes only the required attribute and the second includes the required attribute as well as the optional attributes.

Use this format for each of the URLs you want to include. The changefreq attribute gives Google a general idea of how often the URL is updated. This helps Google know how often to visit the page for new content. The priority attribute gives Google information about the relative importance of this page compared to the other pages of your site. This attribute has no effect on how Google compares your page to pages on other sites, it just helps Google know which pages of your site that you think are most important.

URL list

Locate the following section:

Use this format to point to the path and name of the text file that contains your list of URLs. You can use the provided example_urllist.txt file as a template for that text file. You can specify either a relative or complete path to your web server. For instance, if the Sitemap Generator and urlist.txt file are located in the same directory, you can simply specify the filename of the .txt file, If you create a text file with an encoding other than UTF-8, you can use the encoding attribute to indicate this encoding. If you have multiple .txt files, you can use wildcards. For instance:

For each URL you include in the text file, you can specify the last modification date, change frequency, and priority. See the URLlist text file reference section for complete information about the structure of this file.

Directory paths

Locate the following section:

This section gives two examples. If all of your pages are contained in subdirectories of one path, then you only need to include one entry. However, if you have multiple paths to pages on your site, include an entry for each.

Remember that each URL must begin with the base URL you specified in step 3. For instance, the examples given in the example_config.xml file both have URLs that begin with http://www.example.com/. Therefore, both URLs are valid.

Replace the example entries with entries for your site. Many sites will only have one entry that points to the base URL. Ensure that path value is the complete path to the directory on your web server. Ensure that the url value is the complete URL, including the protocol (such as http) and a trailing slash, if required.

You can use the default_file parameter to specify the filename that your server uses as the default page for a directory. In the above example, /var/www/docroot resolves to http://www.example.com/index.html. You are not required to specify this. However, if you do, the Sitemap Generator will include the page that maps to each subdirectory only once (rather than list both the directory URL and filename URL) and will use the last modified date of the file (rather than the directory) to extract the lastmod attribute for that page.

Access logs

Locate the following section:

This section gives three examples. You should replace these entries and include an entry for each log file. Ensure that the path value is the complete path and filename on your web server. If the log files are not encoded as US-ASCII or UTF-8, then use the optional encoding attribute to specify the encoding. Rather than list each log file, you can use wildcards. For instance, in the above example, you could include the following entry that would include all three log files:

The Sitemap Generator assigns priority to URLs it finds in the logs based on how often each URL is accessed. For instance, a URL that has been accessed 100 times will be given a higher priority than a URL that has been accessed twice. The actual priority assignment is relative and depends on each URL as compared to other URLs in the site.

sitemap

Locate the following section:

This section gives one example. You should replace this entry and include an entry for each Sitemap you want to include. Ensure that the path value is the complete path and filename on your web server. You can list gzipped Sitemaps as well, as long as they have a .gz extension. Rather than list each Sitemap, you can use wildcards. For instance, the following entry would include any Sitemaps that begin with the word "sitemap" and have an .xml extension:

The Sitemap Generator extracts all URLs and the optional data listed for each URL for every Sitemap you list and creates one Sitemap with this information. At this time, we can't guarantee that this method will work Sitemaps created with tools other than the Sitemap Generator.

Locate the filter definition section:

You can use filtering to exclude specific URLs from the generated Sitemap. You might want to do this to create a cleaner list, to reduce redundant listings, or to keep certain URLs from being indexed. Note that if you use a robots.txt file to keep URLs from being indexed, then even if the URLs are included in your Sitemap, Google will not search or index them.

You can use any or all of the filtering methods. You can delete the entries you don’t need and can create additional entries, if desired. Below are sample usages.

This filter excludes URLs that end in .jpg. You might want to include a similar filter if all of your site’s images are embedded within HTML pages and should not be accessed as standalone URLs.

This filter includes all .htm* files but excludes everything else.

Once you have made all the changes for your site, save the file.

Config File Syntax Reference

A complete explanation of the config file syntax is below. Each tag begins with a code sample, followed by a description of the attributes.

site
Required tag at the beginning of each config file.

base_url	required	The HTTP path of the base of your website - only URLs that begin with this base can be included in the Sitemap
store_into	required	The web server path to the desired output file. The script will create this file - there's no need to create the file before running the script.
verbose	optional	Enter a number from 0-3, with higher numbers corresponding to increased debug information
suppress_search_engine_notify	optional	Disable search engine notification by entering "1" for testing purposes
default_encoding	optional	Specify a character encoding to be applied to file system paths and URLs

url
Optional tag that you can use to list each URL in your site.

href	required	The HTTP path of the base of your website - only URLs that begin with this base can be included in the Sitemap
lastmod	optional	The time the URL was last modified in W3C Datetime format (YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss+00:00). You may omit the time portion. Examples: "2005-02-21T18:00:15+00:00" "2005-02-21"
changefreq	optional	The frequency with which the URL is likely to change. This is considered a hint and not a command. The value must be one of "always", "hourly", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly", or "never".
priority	optional	The priority of this page relative to other pages on the same site. The value is a number between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 is the lowest priority and 1.0 is the highest priority. The priority can affect the order that search engines select URLs to explore on your site. Since the priority is relative, it is only used to select between URLs within your own site; the priority of your pages will not be compared to the priority of pages on other sites.

urllist
Optional tag that you can use to point to a text file that contains a list of the URLs in your site.

path	required	The path and filename of the .txt file. You can specify either a relative or complete path.
encoding	optional	The encoding of the file, if not UTF-8.

The urllist.txt file is a simple text file containing a list of URLs to map. You can also include optional attributes for each URL. Attributes are entered on the same line as the URL and are separated by a single space. For example:

http://www.example.com/abc/something
http://www.example.com/abc/xyy.pdf lastmod=2001-12-31T14:05:06+00:00
http://www.example.com/abc/def?x=12&y=23 changefreq=weekly priority=0.3

lastmod	optional	The time the URL was last modified in W3C Datetime format (YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss+00:00). You may omit the time portion. Examples: "2005-02-21T18:00:15+00:00" "2005-02-21"
changefreq	optional	The frequency with which the URL is likely to change. This is considered a hint and not a command. The value must be one of "always", "hourly", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly", or "never".
priority	optional	The priority of this page relative to other pages on the same site. The value is a number between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 is the lowest priority and 1.0 is the highest priority. The priority can affect the order that search engines select URLs to explore on your site. Since the priority is relative, it is only used to select between URLs within your own site; the priority of your pages will not be compared to the priority of pages on other sites.

directory
Optional tag that you can use to specify directories in your site so the Sitemap Generator can create a list of URLs from the files found in those directories.

-->

path	required	States the initial path. Sitemap Generator will traverse this directory and all subdirectories.
url	required	Specifies the URL equivalent of the path value.
default_file	optional	Specifies the default file for a directory on the server.

accesslog
Optional tag that you can use to specify the path and filename of IIS and Apache-style access logs so the Sitemap Generator can automatically pick up URLs from them.

path	required	States the path to the file.
encoding	optional	Specifies encoding of the file, if not UTF-8.

sitemap
Optional tag that you can use to specify the path and filename of existing Sitemaps that you have created with the Sitemap Generator. The Sitemap Generator will create a single Sitemap that includes the URLs contained in each Sitemap.

path

required

States the path to the Sitemap file.

filter
Optional tag that you can use to build rules that include or exclude specific files. Filters are obeyed in the order in which they appear in the config.xml file. However, intermixing filter entries and input entries (url, urllist, directory, or accesslog) has no additional effect - every URL the Sitemap Generator adds to the Sitemap is first compared against every filter. If no filter matches a URL, the default is to include the URL in the Sitemap.

action	optional	The action the filter should take. Valid values are: drop - excludes matching URLs. This is the default action, so if no action is specified, the generator assumes "drop". pass - includes matching URLs.
type	optional	The type of filtering. Valid values are: wildcard - standard path wildcards (? and *) are used to compare against URLs. This is the default type, so if no type is specified, the generator assumes "wildcard". regexp - regular expressions are used.
pattern	required	Specifies the pattern to match against.

Encodings

Files referenced by your configuration file, either URL lists or web server logs, can use encodings other than the default UTF-8. You can specify alternate encodings in config.xml to affect how the Sitemap Generator reads your files. Some common encodings are:

encoding="utf-8" is the assumed default
encoding="ascii" is a subset of UTF-8 so you don't have to specify it
encoding="iso-8859-1" is common for many west European languages

2b. Additional information for creating a mobile configuration file

You create a configuration file for a Mobile Sitemap in the same way as for a non-mobile Sitemap. However, you must create a separate config file for each markup language and run the Sitemap Generator with each config file separately so that you create a separate Sitemap for each.

Each config file must:

Specify a different filename for the store_into value.
Use filters to specify the URLs to exclude and include for the markup language. Remember that each Sitemap should include URLs for only one markup language. This means that the same URL may be included in multiple Sitemaps, if those URLs serve multiple markup languages.

Examples of filtering

Below are some examples of how you can use extension-based filters to generate Mobile Sitemaps for different markup languages. The specific filtering you use should be based on the types of markup languages used in your site, and how you specify each type. If you have implemented the details of your site differently (for instance, you may organize URLs with different markup languages in separate folders), you should filter based on the specifics of your site implementation. Remember that filters are applied in the order you list them in the config file. So, the first filter you should list is a "pass" action that specifies the URLs you want to include in the Sitemap.

To create a Sitemap for WML (WAP 1.2) content:

To create a Sitemap for XHTML mobile profile (WAP 2.0) content:

3. Uploading the files to your web server

You should upload the following files to your web server in a location you can access from a command line:

config.xml —this is the configuration file you just created using example_config.xml.
sitemap_gen.py —this is the Python script that generates your Sitemap.
urllist.txt —this file is optional; you only need to include it if you used the text file method of generating a Sitemap.

The method you use to upload these files depends on your environment. Common methods include FTP and SCP. For more information, contact your web host.

4. Running the Sitemap Generator script (sitemap_gen.py)

In order to run the Sitemap Generator, you’ll need to connect to your web server. The method you use to connect depends on your environment. For instance, you can generally access a UNIX-based server using SSH. For more information on connecting to your web server and running scripts, talk to your web host.

Once you have copied the files to your web server, you'll need to run the Sitemap Generator script. Connect to your web server and run the following command (replace with the path to and filename of your configuration file; if you have uploaded this file to the same location as the Python script, you can exclude the path):

python sitemap_gen.py --config=

For instance, a UNIX-based command line might look similar to this:

A MS-DOS-based command shell might look similar to this:

Tip: If you're testing your configuration and are not ready to submit your Sitemap, the following syntax will prevent Sitemap Generator from contacting Google:


$ python sitemap_gen.py --config=config.xml --testing

You'll see the status of your request in the command prompt:


Reading configuration file: /path/config.xml
Opened URLLIST "/path/urllist.txt"
Walking DIRECTORY "/var/www/html/dir"
Walking DIRECTORY "/var/www/html/dir2"
Opened ACCESSLOG "/etc/httpd/logs/access-0.log"
Sorting and normalizing collected URLs.
Writing Sitemap file "/path/sitemap.xml.gz" with 1092 URLs
Notifying search engines.
Notifying www.google.com
Count of file extensions on URLs:
 208  .html
 574  .jpg
 ...
 Number of errors: 0
 Number of warnings: 0

If you don't see very much output like this, remember that the verbose setting in your configuration file affects how much information is printed on the screen. This example is representative of setting verbose to "1".

Any errors in the file will also be returned. For instance, if you leave the url= attribute off a directory entry, the script will output the following:


[ERROR] Directory entries must have both "path" and "url" attributes
Number of errors: 1

Correct any errors in your config.xml file and re-run the script. If no errors are present, the Sitemap Generator will create a new sitemap.xml.gz file in the location you specified in the config file.

5. Submitting your Sitemap to Google

The Sitemap Generator creates a sitemap.xml.gz file in the location you specified in the config file. Once this file is successfully created, make sure it is accessible through a web browser. Then, add it to your Google Sitemaps account. This enables Google to provide you with useful status and statistical information. If Google reports problems with your Sitemap, you can correct the problems and resubmit it. You only have to add the Sitemap manually once. After that, you can use an HTTP request to notify Google about changes to your Sitemap (although you can also resubmit it through your Google webmaster tools account).

6. Setting up a recurring script

We suggest setting up Sitemap Generator to run as often as your content is changed, to a maximum frequency of once per hour.

Webmasters with a UNIX web server may consider setting this up as a cron job.

Webmasters using other platforms should contact their system administrator for help in configuring recurring scripts. You may also benefit from peer advice in the Google Sitemaps Group on Google Groups.

You can use an HTTP request to let Google know about changes to your Sitemap. However, please make sure that you log in to Google webmaster tools with your Google Account once to manually add your Sitemap to your Google webmaster tools account.

Troubleshooting

In this section we talk about some common questions or issues that some people run into while using Sitemap Generator, and what you can do if you come across one of these.

Web-accessible

Issue: Sitemap Generator returns the following error and warning:


[ERROR] When attempting to access your generated Sitemap at the following URL:
http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.gz
we failed to read it.  Please verify the store_into path you specified in
your configuration file is web-accessible.  Consult the FAQ for more
information.
[WARNING] Proceeding to notify with an unverifiable URL.

What just happened? Sitemap Generator created the file where you specified, then attempted to retrieve it using HTTP just as a search engine would, and failed. It went ahead and notified search engines anyway, but it's outputting the error and warning to let you know that your Sitemap may be not readable by search engines.

Sitemap Generator creates your Sitemap file at the path specified in the store_into attribute of your config.xml file. Sitemap Generator then builds a URL to that file using the base_url attribute, and reports the URL to search engines. For instance, if you set the configuration to:

Sitemap Generator will notify search engines to look for your Sitemap at:

 http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.gz

The file must be accessible through this URL. If the file can not be retrieved using this URL, search engines have no way of finding your Sitemap.

What can you do? You need to verify that your config.xml is specifying the correct base_url and store_into paths for your Sitemap. You also need to confirm that web browsers can retrieve the Sitemap file off of the base_url. If you find errors in the path or URL, you may need to re-run Sitemap Generator, or just move the Sitemap file to the correct place and notify search engines manually through their web sites.

Support for XML

Issue: Sitemap Generator gives the following error:


Some installs of Python 2.2 do not include complete support for XML.
Please try upgrading your version of Python and re-running the script.

What just happened? As the message says, some platforms have a version of Python (the language the Sitemap Generator script is written in) that is missing support libraries needed for processing XML files. This script requires full XML support in order to run.

What can you do? Try upgrading your installed version of Python to a newer version. You will probably need to contact your system administrator to do this.

Note that this just affects the Sitemap Generator, not Sitemaps overall. If you have another method or tool for creating Sitemaps, you can certainly use it and submit your Sitemaps to search engines.

What are all the extra files in the .gz or .zip?

When you extract the sitemap_gen.py script, you'll probably see quite a few more files than we refer to above. The full file list looks closer to this:


AUTHORS
ChangeLog
COPYING
example_config.xml
example_urllist.txt
PKG-INFO
README
setup.py
sitemap_gen.py
test_sitemap_gen.py

The extra files tend to be information on the package and licensing terms. You are encouraged to look through these files.

The one exception is test_sitemap_gen.py, which is a unit-test script that other developers may find useful if they wish to contribute to this open source project. If you intend to use Sitemap Generator without modifying any of the source code - this is the expected case for nearly everyone - you probably don't need this test script.

If you are interested in helping with this project, please visit http://sourceforge.net/projects/goog-sitemapgen. You can also find links to some third party programs that support Google Sitemaps here.

Non-ASCII characters

Issue: Your site domain name or URLs within it contain non-ASCII characters.

Generally, non-ASCII URLs should be encoded using UTF-8 before being percent-escaped. However, some webservers only respond correctly if URLs are encoded using an encoding other than UTF-8. All URLs within your Sitemap, as well as the URL of the Sitemap itself must be encoded for readability by the web server on which they are located. Within the site definition section, use the optional default_encoding attribute to specify the encoding used by your webserver. If you don't use this tag and your webserver uses an encoding other than UTF-8, we can't know which encoding to use.

If your URLs contain non-ASCII characters, we recommend that you run the Sitemap Generator script using Python 2.3 or higher. This version of Python has increased non-ASCII support. If your domain name contains non-ASCII characters, you must use Python 2.3 or later, as Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) support wasn't added until this version. Without IDNA support, the Sitemap Generator can't correctly encode a non-ASCII domain name.

psp rss

2007-07-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

The PlayStation Portable (プレイステーション・ポータブル - , Pureisutēshon Pōtaburu^?, officially abbreviated as PSP) is a handheld game console released and manufactured by Sony Computer Entertainment. Its development was first announced during E3 2003, and it was officially unveiled on May 11, 2004 at a Sony press conference before E3 2004. The system was released in Japan on December 12, 2004, the United States and Canada on March 24, 2005 and in Europe and Australia

on September 1, 2005.

RSS feeds

The RSS

features allow the user to download video web feeds or listen to podcasts from websites. RSS or podcast content can be saved to the Memory Stick Duo. Audio (and more recently video,) content can be streamed and played "live." After the release of firmware 3.50, there is now a RSS Guide function.

What you'll need for this how-to:

Sony play station Portable
Wipeout Pure PSP game
A free bloglines account. We won't go over setting up this account — just head over to Bloglines if you don't have an account already; it's self-explanatory.

Let's go!

Fire up your PSP and head on down to Settings, all the way to the left in the main menu. Go all the way down and select Network settings area:

Select Infrastructure mode:

Choose "New Connection" to, um, set up a new connection:

Give a name to your connection. You can store up to 10 different network connections on the PSP, so as other portals spring up and/or if you set up your own, you can store them all and point to whichever one you fancy, plus keep your regular network settings stored. If one portal is down, you can head on over to another (share the bandwidth, share the love). We'll call ours, cryptically, "Engadget portal":

Hit Enter to save the name for this connection, then press the right arrow button to continue. You'll be prompted for your local network's SSID. If you know the name of your network you can enter it, but in most cases you can just have the PSP scan for available networks and select the correct SSID. We'll scan:

We have two wireless networks in our vicinity, and the PSP finds them both. Being of sound mind, we choose the one with the strongest signal strength, hit X to select it, then the right arrow button to continue.

Here's where we'll make the all-important DNS setting change that unchains the poor Wipeout Pure browser from endlessly phoning home to ingame.scea.com. In the Address Settings window, choose Custom.

First you'll see the "IP Address Setting" pane — this can remain set on the default choice: Automatic. Hit the right arrow button to move to the "DNS Setting" pane. Here you'll select Manual:

Hit X to select and modify the Primary DNS server address. The address of our portal server is 208.42.28.174 — make your changes in each of the four IP segments by using the up and down arrow keys to scroll through the list of numbers. You can leave Secondary DNS as is. Hit X to save the settings when you're done. Big thanks to Hackaday editor Jason Striegel for setting up the DNS proxy!

Hit the right arrow key again and you'll see the "Proxy Server" settings pane, which can stay set on the default choice, "Do Not Use." Hit the right arrow to continue. You'll see a summary of the settings you chose under the "Setting List" header. Press the right arrow button again, then press X to save these settings. When the save is completed, you'll have the option to test the connection. Go ahead and give yourself some piece of mind and do this.

Following a successful connection test, the Network Settings pane will spit back your settings. The PSP has automagically detected the settings you didn't fill in from your wireless router, which doles out IP address via DHCP like Hare Krishnas hand out pamphlets at airports, except much more useful. You'll see the "Succeeded" flag next to "Internet Connection" and ye shall do the dance of joy. Still dancing? We'll wait.

Finished there, hotfoot? Hit the O key to back out of the Network Settings menu subtree and back out into the main plaza of the main menu. Throw in the Wipeout Pure game, stored on that bastion of standards — the UMD disc. Fire it up.

From the main menu, scroll down to the Download option and select it. Once you do, you'll be prompted to select which of your saved network connections you want to use to connect. Select whatever you've named our portal and hit X:

You should see something approximating the view below (sans the Gmail link, which we tried to get going but the browser definitely balked at trying to enter a secure site). Ultimately, as other folks experimenting with this have mentioned, we found the browser to be a bit wonky. Sometimes connections were solid and relatively fast, whereas other times we could have written a short novella in the time it took to load even a simple page (luckily we had the good sense to spare the world from our literary onslaught). One persistent error consistently cropped up, which was that all elements of the page would seem to load except the background color, which would remain black, black, none more black, making plain text impossible to read. We don't know why. Has anyone else seen this? Still, links left unstyled show up despite this wonky rendering, so the portal should remain usable regardless. The text box at the bottom of the page will take a standard URL as input so you can go anywhere from here. Below this (off the screen) is a textbox that will perform a Google search on whatever text you enter there.

Hie on down to the Bloglines link by using the down key to traverse the links (you'll see them highlight as you walk through them). Select it with the X key.

Hit the down arrow again to bring focus to the "Email:" login text box. When you hit X, the PSP keyboard entry API will open, allowing you to enter data into the text box. Enter your bloglines email login, then hit Enter. Hit the down key to select the password textbox; enter your password using the keyboard entry again and hit Enter. Arrow down to the Log In button and hit X to activate the button.

This will log you into the Bloglines mobile site, which is specially formatted for portable devices. It suits the PSP screen rather well. You'll see your list of feeds displayed; just use the up and down arrow keys to scroll through the list, and the X key to select whicever feed you'd like to view.

The feed you selected should load in the PSP browser; pretty simple! Just use the arrow keys to scroll up and down and read your feed. At the top of the page is a handy set of navigation links; use the "Subscriptions" link to hike back out to your main list of feeds.

To get back out to the portal home to access other links and/or use the URL bar to input any destination of your choice, just hit the "Start" button on the PSP. You'll get a prompt to Continue, Goto Home Page, or Quit. Quit will exit the Wipeout Pure game (funny that we're still technically inside a game, no?), and Goto Home Page will take you back to the Engadget portal. Should our portal ever be bandwidth throttled, you can set up other portals as network connections for redundancy when you need it.

Given the wonkiness of this method, we're not recommending anyone run their small business off their PSP browser connection or anything. Your mileage may vary — but it does expand the possibilities of the device, and can be useful as an extra portable newsreader or Flickr client. In a perfect world we wouldn't have to jump through these hoops just to squeeze out a bit of functionality that's already present but locked down in the device, but we don't have to tell you that, do we?

Update

: There's a way to vastly improve the performance of the PSP browser over what we saw above, which is simply to turn off the WLAN Power Save setting that ships On by default. Go to Settings > Power Save Settings and switch the WLAN Power Save to Off. You'll ideally want to have your PSP plugged in the AC power for surfing sessions because this will eat the battery up much faster without the Power Save On, but we're actually browsing relatively speedily now!

We added a link to del.icio.us/popular in the portal because the del.icio.us site works great on the PSP. If anyone wants to post up in the comments if they find sites that work particularly well in the PSP browser (well-formatted, e.g.), we'll collate them into a separate del.icio.us account and post that to the portal, as well. Also, leaving comments on Flickr photos is a snap. Wheeee!

Search engine optimization leeds

2007-07-09T22:25:00.000-07:00

search engine optimization leeds

So, just what is linking? Well, put simply, it's the online equivalent of getting "votes" for your website, and getting those links is a lot easier than you might think.

Right, if I seem to digress a little here, trust me, it is relevant. To understand linking you need to know a little bit about "spiders" and their purpose. Spiders are programs that "crawl" sites and report back to their search engine what their findings are. Their purpose is to make it easy for sites to get listed in their search engine.

Spiders work by finding links (see, I told you it was relevant) to websites, visiting those websites, going through the content, and then reporting the findings back to the site for which they are working. I.E. Google spiders crawl sites and report back to the main database. From there the information is added to the search engine, and the site shows up in Google search results. The same happens with pretty much any search engine.

OK, that's the basic nuts and bolts. So what does it mean to you and how can you use it to increase your rankings? Well, essentally, by having good quality and relevant content on your website (your optimised articles) you'll be pleasing the spiders. Now if you have links from other sites related to your content as well then, you're way ahead of the game. Spiders love links.

Now here's the good bit. All you need to do in order to get links back to your website is submit articles to article directories, or write a press release related to your niche market. You link back to your site from the resource box at the bottom of your article or press release.

Other website owners in your niche will be on the lookout for content to add to their own site, and will visit article directories to do so. They'll pick up on your article, add it to their site ( they legally have to keep the resource box with your link intact) so now you have other sites linking to yours all over the place. This will really impress the spiders and your rankings will start to shoot up.

To find article directories simply go to your favourite search engine and type in "article directories" you will find loads. They are the life blood of the net.

As I mentioned before, press releases are another great way to get links back to your site. Not only that, they are a brilliant way to get free publicity for your ebook or site. It's easy, just go to prweb.com and submit your press release to them. It will cost a small amount to have them blast it all over the internet, but it will mean that you get dozens, hundreds, or even thousands, of one way links back to you site. What do you think that will do to your rankings?

OK, there you have it, all that remains is for you to go out and do it. Trust me, it's not only easy, it's fun, and it does work. Enjoy.

My website traffic

2007-07-09T01:02:00.000-07:00

You probably would like to have the maximum amount of traffic to your website, and you may be looking at your website statistics to see how many people are visiting your site each day. But before you jump for joy over an increase in traffic, you should consider whether you are getting targeted traffic or not. Targeted traffic means that you getting visitors who are in interested in your product. If it is not targeted traffic, then you will not see any corresponding rise in orders, inquiries and sales and when you consider it, these are the most important statistics for your website.

If you want to get the kind of traffic that can be converted into some tangible results then there are two steps to take: Optimize your site for the right search engine keyword or keywords and promote this site in places where your target audience frequents.

Who is your site speaking to and who is it attracting? You can find out by looking at your website statistics and seeing what kind of searches people are finding your site with. If you are selling used cars, then you want your site to be found by people looking for a used car, not a new car. Whatever your site is about you have to be careful that your unique selling proposition is clearly identified and emphasized clearly. Your copywriters have to make sure that the search engine keyword that people use to search for products such as yours is prominent in headlines and in the body text as well as in the link text on the page.

If you are not sure how the usual Internet surfer does his or her surfing, then go to the www.overture.com site and use the search term suggestion tool, and you will see approximately how many people searched for a particular term and what variations they used during the past month. If you get your search engine keyword or keywords right, and if your site is properly optimized for that keyword, then the people who visit your site will be more likely to follow through and buy your product or sign up for your newsletter, or take the actions which you most desire them to take.

Also, once you have your proper keyword or keywords selected and properly blended into your site you can get highly targeted traffic via pay per click advertising. This can be expensive, but if your site can really convert visitors to buyers then it is the fastest way to get results.

Another way to get targeted traffic is to actively promote your site in places where your target audience is located. Imagine what your average customer looks like, how old she or he may be, what they wear, where they live, and most importantly, where they hang out on the web. What kind of websites do they visit? When this is clear in your mind, then you have to bring your site to the notice of this target audience.

Maybe you will have to advertise on sites where they visit, or place your link on such sites or in such directories. Do they visit certain forums? If so, then you should make some postings on those forums. Do they read electronic newsletters? if so then you should advertise in those newsletters or write articles that are published in newsletters and the websites where these people “hang out.” A well directed promotion campaign will bring the kind of traffic that is useful for you.

To sum up, targeted traffic combined with a persuasive website equals Internet success.

A Statistical Approach To Increasing Your Website Visitors

By now your website is listed in the search engines and you are looking at bringing more targetted traffic into your website. People who are specifically interested in what you have to offer. By understanding estimated click percentages on search engine pages, and by targetting the correct keywords, which we will also look at, we can set a strategy to target a certain number of visitors per month.

The estimated click percentage is the percentage of people who click on your website when they see it on the search engine listing after they have typed in a specific keyword or keyword phrase. If you type in a keyword, and your website appears on page one , above the fold (what is visible on the screen without scrolling down) then we would expect approximately 3.5% of people to click on your link. This figure is based on my own calculations, Using your statistics and reporting packages, you may get a more accurate figure.

We are going to use Yahoo as our search engine of choice since we can then use their keyword suggestion tool to give us a good idea of number of searches. If you use google then multiply the figures by two and if you want to use MSN then divide the figures by two. As a rough estimate!

Use the Yahoo keyword tool to provide a list of targetted keywords which will bring people into your website. Now, an important point to note here. Be realistic. If you are in the web design business for example, you will probably not be able to get on page one of yahoo for the keyword phrase web design. But, you may be able to get on page one for a more targetted keyword such as using your location e.g. 'web design milton keynes' or 'affordable website design uk'.

So what do we do now? We build our website page, knowing all we know about search engine optimisation and put some unique content on that page relevant to your business and relevant to 'afforable website design uk'. 250 or so words should suffice, may be an image also. Add this into your sitemap using the the keyword phrase as the anchor text and you are ready to go. One of the most common complaints I get about website content is that nobody has time to do it. The reality is that if you want your website to succeed you have to ensure that your website has enough content. Plan it in, and make it a regular exercise. You can also pay other people to do it if you like, but I would put money on it that somewhere in your cupboards you have loads of literature you can use which is copyrighted to you. When you are distributing article content or exchanging links, we now have another keyword to target.

So this is where the statistics come in. That keyword phrase 'affordable website design uk' was searched 432 times in Yahoo UK, in the month I looked. So I can predict that it will take a small while to get that site in the first page using our other search engine optimisation techniques (you should realise by now that getting into the first page takes more than just one article, there are lots of things your webmaster must do, the point is it is a lot easier with lower searched traffic, particularly in Yahoo and MSN). I can also predict that it will bring 15 people a month into my site for that page, based on my calculation of 3.5% of people clicking on our website if it is on the first page of 432 searches.

Now put your strategic planning cap on. In a one years time, if you do on average two articles a week, which should take you no longer than half an hour each, that is 100 articles. And for each article we get approximately 15 people coming into our site specifically targetting our keywords, we have 1500 targetted visitors per month. Yahoo! indeed.

Now what has happened here. We have to be determined, we have to be consistent and we have to understand that as you add each article and maybe also use it for article distribution, your website will be growing full of content related to your products. Keyword rich and search engine and visitor friendly.

This article is aimed at you the website owner, and you need to understand that this is possible and the figures mentioned are estimates, but I would suggest underestimated, if you use this method consistently, alongside your other Internet marketing strategies, your traffic will grow exponentially.

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