Posts Tagged ‘google’

Sitemaps

October 7th, 2009

The Sitemaps protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently. Sitemaps are a URL inclusion protocol and complement robots.txt, a URL exclusion protocol.

Sitemaps are particularly beneficial on websites where:

  • some areas of the website are not available through the browsable interface, or
  • webmasters use rich Ajax or Flash content that is not normally processed by search engines.

The webmaster can generate a Sitemap containing all accessible URLs on the site and submit it to search engines. Since Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask use the same protocol now, having a Sitemap would let the biggest search engines have the updated pages information.

Sitemaps supplement and do not replace the existing crawl-based mechanisms that search engines already use to discover URLs. By submitting Sitemaps to a search engine, a webmaster is only helping that engine’s crawlers to do a better job of crawling their site(s). Using this protocol does not guarantee that web pages will be included in search indexes, nor does it influence the way that pages are ranked in search results

Google as Social Media Company?!

October 5th, 2009

Perhaps Google’s stiffest competition in the immediate future isn’t Bing and Yahoo, but rather it’s the likes of Wikipedia, Twitter, and Facebook. Just as we no longer search for the news (24 of the top 25 newspapers have shown record declines in circulation), in the future we will no longer search for products and services; rather they will find us via social media.

Google has made billions by being the masters of the search world. As these new social media players look for potential revenue streams, monetizing search will certainly bubble to the forefront for the executives.

This will occur on two main fronts:

  • Consumers searching for products and services.
  • Companies searching within the millions of conversations and meta data to garner relevant and real-time customer feedback as well as potential leads and sales.

One of the most powerful things about Twitter is the ability for companies to go to search.twitter.com and put in relevant brand or product terms to gain insight into what is being said about their product or service. This is one of the main drivers behind why Facebook has been adjusting some of their platform to be more in sync with Twitter. Facebook understands there is “gold” in these conversations.

Speaking of adjustments, Google has made advancements in their search algorithm over the years as well as adjustments to other products. However, for the past few years they haven’t been pushed hard by any major competitor and they haven’t made many major adjustments to their core business.

You can’t blame them. Why fix something that isn’t broken? As a result, they’ve also supplied several free tools that we use in our daily lives. However, search hasn’t advanced as much as it could have if there was a more competitive environment.

Also, people care more about what their friends think than what an algorithm does. That is where social media has a potential advantage on Google in the future. But Google is looking to close that gap, as evidenced by some of their adjustments:

Google Wave: This is Google’s collaboration tool to combat Twitter and Facebook. Some have dubbed it “21st century e-mail.” “This represents a displacement threat for everybody,” said Rob Enderle. “Everybody in this space — Twitter, Facebook and MySpace — is nervous at the moment. If they’re not nervous, then they’re missing the memo. The market hasn’t settled and when it’s not settled, then something like Wave could come in and make headway.”

My take: The biggest hurdle here is that it may be too bleeding-edge for the masses. If they make it easy enough for moms and dads to use, then they have a home run on their hands. Mass adoption by older generations has been one of Facebook’s biggest successes.

Google SearchWiki: In Google’s words, SearchWiki is a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click, you can move results you like to the top, or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong.

My take: Too much burden placed on the user to supply relevant input that can easily be leveraged by other searches. You also need a Gmail account for this to show up. Also, hardly anyone knows this exists. The beauty of a tool like Facebook Connect is that it easily resolves a problem (people don’t want to have to enter logins/personal information for various sites) with limited effort on the user’s part.

Google Hot Trends: Similar in concept to top trending topics on Twitter, this functionality or box shows up whenever you type in a search term that is being searched by many other users in the past few hours. “Trends is all based on a different kind of tweet. Instead of the 140-character tweet, it’s the 20- to 25-character tweet, the keyword search. And those come in much faster than tweets do. In our view, that’s the highest fidelity information for trending topics,” said R.J. Pittman, director of product management for consumer search properties at Google.

My take: Yahoo had a similar, less robust concept with Yahoo Buzz several years ago. It’s interesting that Google is perceived (whether it is true or false — I’d argue false) by the public as following Twitter with this offering.

Google Sidewiki: In Google’s Words, “Google Sidewiki allows you to contribute helpful information next to any Web page. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. Instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed.”

My take: This is a game changer. Other companies have tried to tackle these “layers” on sites, but with Google now in the game, it signals that Google is really getting series about social. Web sites aren’t going to like this loss of control, but it should be a big win for the user if done properly. To make it truly social it should allow the user to highlight or bring to the front specific individuals that they trust.

Basic Tips and Tricks about Google Operators and Commands

September 27th, 2009

This article is very helpful for beginners in webmastering but also it will improve knowledgebase of common user and help them work with GOOGLE.

These are the commands that you can use to find out more information about where your website is placed in the Google search engine. You can find out where how many pages of your site have been included in their index or even how many other websites are linking to your site.

site:
If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. For instance, [help site:www.google.com] will find pages about help within www.google.com. [help site:com] will find pages about help within .com URLs. Note there can be no space between the “site:” and the domain.

allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title. For instance, [allintitle: google search] will return only documents that have both “google” and “search” in the title.

intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title. For instance, [intitle:google search] will return documents that mention the word “google” in their title, and mention the word “search” anywhere in the document (title or no). Note there can be no space between the “intitle:” and the following word. Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query: [intitle:google intitle:search] is the same as [allintitle: google search].

allinURL:
If you start a query with [allinURL:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the URL. For instance, [allinURL: google search] will return only documents that have both “google” and “search” in the URL. Note that [allinURL:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinURL: foo/bar] will restrict the results to page with the words “foo” and “bar” in the URL, but won’t require that they be separated by a slash within that URL, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.

inURL:
If you include [inURL:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the URL. For instance, [inURL:google search] will return documents that mention the word “google” in their URL, and mention the word “search” anywhere in the document (URL or no). Note there can be no space between the “inURL:” and the following word.

cache:
The query [cache:] will show the version of the web page that Google has in its cache. For instance, [cache:www.google.com] will show Google’s cache of the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the “cache:” and the web page URL. If you include other words in the query, Google will highlight those words within the cached document. For instance, [cache:www.google.com web] will show the cached content with the word “web” highlighted.

link:
The query [link:] will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list webpages that have links pointing to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the “link:” and the web page URL.

related:
The query [related:] will list web pages that are “similar” to a specified web page. For instance, [related:www.google.com] will list web pages that are similar to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the “related:” and the web page URL.

info:
The query [info:] will present some information that Google has about that web page. For instance, [info:www.google.com] will show information about the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the “info:” and the web page URL.

define:
By using the Google command, define: and then a word or phrase such as “hospital”, for instance [define: hospital], will return a definition or a group of definitions from various online websites, portals and online encyclopedias.

quotation marks
You maybe searching for a web page where an exact phrase is mentioned. By using quotation marks such as, ["search engines"], will bring back pages that only mention the phrase search engines in this exact form. The order of the results is still determined by the Google algorithm.

common words, letters or numbers
Google tends to ignore common words and characters such as “where” and “how”, as well as certain single digits and single letters. Google will inform you if a common word has been excluded.

If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a + sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the + sign.)

Negative words
If your search term has more than one meaning (bowl, for example, could refer to a cerial bowl or the bowling alley) you can focus your search by putting a minus sign (-) in front of words related to the meaning you want to avoid.

For example, bowl -cereal would take out mentions of cereal bowls in the results.

calculator
To use Google’s built-in calculator function, simply enter the full sum you’d like done into the search box and hit the enter key. The calculator can solve math problems involving basic arithmetic, more complicated math, units of measure and conversions, and physical constants. To use this feature there is no special command!

The Importance of Search Engines

June 21st, 2009

Let’s say that your website is finally done(order your host if you have not) and next step is very important - to bring in some quality traffic.  SEO consists of numerous elements but this article will focus on the first step - search engine submission.

The Importance of Search Engines

search-enginesA search engine is like the local Yellow Pages book.  Whereas the Yellow Pages only contains listings in your area, a search engine offers world wide reach.   Each uses robots or spiders that crawl the web in search of pages to index in their database.  Search engines are driven by keywords as this is what a user types in the box to find the content they are looking for.  While keyword implementation and link popularity play a major role in getting your site to rank well, manually submitting your site is equally important.

Google and Yahoo

Google and Yahoo are easily the two most significant search engines on the web.  Although Google is arguably the most popular, Yahoo is often deemed as the best.  When performing identical searches in both engines, you will find that Yahoo gives you a lot of results Google looks over.  Be that as it may, both should be at the top of your list for search engine submission.  If your site isn’t listed here, you are missing out on a great deal of traffic.

MSN

A relatively new option, MSN is a search engine developed by Microsoft.  Though not as popular as Google and Yahoo, getting your site listed in MSN is equally important as it has become the third highest ranked search engine on the market.  With this search engine, you can either submit your site via Live Search or Submit Express, both of which are trusted links through MSN.

Lycos

Lycos is a combination of a search engine and online directory, quite similar to Yahoo.  It normally takes about four weeks to have your site listed which all depends on when you made the submission.  The Lycos search engine spiders typically operate every four weeks, so if you submit just before the next scheduled crawl, there is a chance that your site could get listed fairly quickly.

Looksmart

Looksmart is a search engine that specializes in commercial advertising.  This search engine is quickly gaining ground as more webmasters realize the benefit of online advertising.  The downside to Looksmart is that submitting your site will cost you a pretty penny along with a lengthy waiting period.  There is also an express service but this of course, is priced much higher.  Non-profit organizations can submit their sites on Looksmart for free.

Northern Light

The Northern Light search engine is becoming increasingly popular as it indexes all new site submissions in about three to four weeks.  This search engine is extremely easy to use and submitting to it will cost you nothing.

When submitting to a search engine, make sure the description of your site is longer than 24 words.  Avoid using HTML tags as well as any descriptions that can be viewed as marketing terms.  A submission will not guarantee you top ranking on the front page of Google, but is that first critical step to getting some decent exposure for your site.