SEO Dubai » Google

New Google Algorithm to Detect and Fight Content Spam

Allan — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:18:11 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Head of Google’s Webspam team Matt Cutts announced last Friday the launch of a new algorithm that is intended to better detect and fight spam in Google’s search results. Google’s main objectives are those sites that copies content then republish them on another websites.

Cutts said the change was approved last Thursday and released earlier this week. Cutts announced its intention to combat spam in his blog post last Friday.

Matt also wrote on his blog:

This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.

Say Goodbye to Google Real Estate Search

Allan — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 06:18:38 +0000

The search giant Google will no longer support properties or real estate listings uploaded to its site on Google Maps and they are taking it off the market on February 10, 2011.

In part due to low usage, the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites, and the infrastructure challenge posed by the impending retirement of the Google Base API (used by listing providers to submit listings), we’ve decided to discontinue the real estate feature within Google Maps on February 10, 2011.

Real estate is a huge category and too big to ignore or to realize its full potential online and they will be back soon. Or maybe we can expect an acquisition by Google of one of the large real estate portals in the future.

What You Need To Know About Google Instant

Allan — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 10:12:32 +0000

Google released early this month a new feature called Google instant, a new technology from Google that allows faster results. The news got SEO’s talking about it. Though it will make search queries faster, not everyone became a fan of this new feature. Some, indeed, fear that it will kill SEO or worried about the effects the new feature will have on SEO.

Here’s what you need to know about Google Instant:

Google Instant is a feature that predicts what you’re searching for and shows results as you type.

Both the predicted queries and the search results change as you continue to typing in search box.

Now with Google Instant, you may notice an increase in impressions because your site will appear in search results as users type in a key.

Impressions are measured in three ways with Google Instant

1. Your site is displayed in search results as a response to a user’s completed query (e.g. by pressing “enter” or selecting a term from autocomplete). This is the traditional model.

2. The user begins to type a term on Google and clicks on a link on the page, such as a search result, ad, or a related search.

3. The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of 3 seconds.

If you don’t want to see results as you type, you can turn Google Instant off by clicking the link next to the search box on any search results page.

If you havn’t noticed. Google have dropped the second search box at the bottom of the result page. This means that if you are at the bottom of search results, you’ll now have to scroll all the way up to modify your search query.

Google won’t show results for searches it deems pornographic, violent, hateful unless you actually hit enter or click the search button like if you search for the word “naked”.

Benefits of Google Instant

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

What people are saying about Google Instant?

Matt Cutts’ answer to “Will Google Instant change search engine optimization?”

I think over time it might. The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time.

Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, a division of Edelman – the world’s largest independent PR firm says that “Google Instant makes SEO irrelevant“.

No two people will see the same web. Once a single search would do the trick – and everyone saw the same results. That’s what made search engine optimization work. Now, with this, everyone is going to start tweaking their searches in real-time. The reason this is a game changer is feedback. When you get feedback, you change your behaviors.”

Stefan Spencer founder of Netconcepts says…

Google is in business to build shareholder value. That’s done by maximizing profits and operating cash, both short term and long term. It’s all fine and good for Google to say it [Instant] was done to provide searchers with a better user experience. (Google’s official position is that Instant can save 2 to 3 seconds per search, which I have trouble buying, incidentally.) But I believe financial incentives are at the heart of it.

The bottom line is that Google Instant drives growth in ad revenues. That’s because it displays more ads to more users (5 to 7 times the number of results are displayed now via Google Instant than before). And it motivates AdWords advertisers to compete more vigorously for the top predictions coming out of Google Suggest. These terms are already expensive, and now they’re more so, thanks to Google Instant.

Read more on SEO experts view of Google Instant.

Related articles

How Will Google Instant Affect Search Marketing? (firstrate.co.nz)
10 Almost Instant Responses to Your Google Instant Questions (hubspot.com)
Will Your SEO Efforts Change Due To Google Instant? (seroundtable.com)

Google Launches Government Request Tool for User Data

Allan — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 06:51:36 +0000

Google launched a new Government Requests tool to give people information about the requests for user data or content removal they receive from government agencies around the world. On the map, you will see the number of request they received between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009 and they plan to update it every 6 months.

User are notified and are given a display messages by Google before content are remove in search results. See the FAQ for more information regarding Government Request.

Google Now Uses RSS/Atom Feeds to Discover New URLs

Allan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:02:21 +0000

Google Webmaster Central has blogged that they are now using RSS/Atom to discover new URLs or webpages. In short Google is now indexing and crawling not only contents found on websites and blogs but contents that are syndicated from them through RSS/Atom feeds. Whereas before, Google relies mainly on the links provided on website and blog contents, now your site can be found by Google through RSS/Atom feeds that are published on online RSS Feed reader, such as Google Reader.

To those who still don’t know what an RSS/Atom is.

RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication” but sometimes “Rich Site Summary“) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.

Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs.

The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed’s URI or by clicking an RSS icon in a web browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

So in order for Google to discover your webpages through RSS/Atom, it is important that you allow crawling of robots.txt

To find out if Googlebot can crawl your feeds and find your pages as fast as possible, check your Webmaster Tools account. The Test robots.txt tool will show you if your robots.txt file is blocking Googlebot from a file or directory on your site. The toolbox can be find on Crawler Access under Site Configuration.

Google Caffeine’s Pros and Cons

Allan — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:03:59 +0000

Google Caffeine is the new version of Google search. Google officially calls this the “next generation architecture for Google’s web search”.

Google caffeine as what Matt Cutts says, is a rewriting of their indexing system to be able to crawl, index and serve results faster.

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

I would love to hear what will be the Pro’s and Con’s of Google caffeine and what effects this might cause in terms of search engine optimization. I’ve heard that google caffeine will be favouring authority websites making them heard to beat. If this is true, companies and website owners should start thinking of getting their website optimize. As Aaron Wall says, “5 years ago was the perfect time to start building your empire. But starting today is far better than starting tomorrow”.

New tool from Google alarms sites

Allan — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:18:51 +0000

Retailers and publishers have fought hard to work their way up in the ranking of Google’s search results and refine the search features of their own websites to help users once they arrive. Now, Google is taking a greater role in helping users search within particular sites. And some of the same retailers and publishers are not happy about it.

In March, the company introduced a search-within-search feature that lets users stay on Google to find pages on popular sites like those of TheWashington Post, Wikipedia, The New York Times, Wal-Mart and others. The search box appears when someone enters the name of certain web addresses or company names — say, “Best Buy” — rather than entering a request like “cell phones”.

The results of the search are almost all individual company pages. Google tops those results with a link to the home page of the website in question, adds another search box, and offers users the chance to let Google search for certain things within that site.

The problem, for some in the industry, is that when someone enters a term into that secondary search box, Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells against the brand. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination website.

Analysts generally praise the feature as helping users save steps, but for web publishers and retailers, there are trade-offs. While the service could help increase traffic, some users could be siphoned away as Google uses the prominence of the brands to sell ads, typically to competing companies.

Aggressive

“Google is showing a level of aggressiveness with this that’s just not needed,” said Alan Rimm-Kaufman, a former executive with the electronics retailer Crutchfield who is now an internet consultant. Google’s aggressiveness, Rimm-Kaufman said, ignores a user’s desire to reach a specific destination, and it costs those websites visitors.

Take, for instance, a recent situation, when users of Google searched The Washington Post and were given a secondary search box. Those who typed “jobs” into that second box saw related results for The Post’s employment pages, but the results were bordered by ads for competing employment sites like CareerBuilder orMonster.com.

So even though users began the process by stating their intention to reach The Post, Google’s ads steered at least some of them to competitors. Similar situations arose when users relied on Google to search nytimes.com.

While executives of both The Times and The Post and Newsweek Interactive declined to comment, plenty of others assailed Google over what they saw as a heavy-handed approach.

Google said it had not received many complaints directly from companies, but some search-engine specialists were quick to pounce when the company announced its service. Ann Smarty, a search-engine marketing consultant who originated the SeoSmarty.com blog, speculated that the new feature “could mean bad news” for sites. Other search-marketing specialists echoed her sentiments, and brands began to follow.

“Eventually this could be a huge problem if Google starts throwing this out there to all brands,” said Pinny Gniwisch, vice-president for marketing of Ice.com, an online jeweller. Gniwisch, who is also on the board of Shop.org, an online retail industry group, said Google’s new feature did not appear when users searched for Ice.com, but he said he would object if it did. “This is essentially giving the customer a way to leave a search for your site,” he said.

Donna L Hoffman, co-director of the Sloan Centre for Internet Retailing, at the University of California, Riverside, predicted that internet users “will really like this because it’s probably a better way to search a site than going to the sites themselves”.

“But as consumers appreciate this more, there’ll be more and more outcry from companies,” Hoffman said. Consumers who see advertisements on Google when they search The Post’s or The Times’ content might view the ads as carrying the endorsement of those news publishers.

“Why would I advertise on those other sites when I could just advertise on Google and piggyback on the equity of the other brands?” Hoffman said.

Rimm-Kaufman said the new Google service also diminishes a web publisher’s role in helping users find potentially useful content. “You maywant to editorialise differently when someone searches, and maybe put a premium on certain reporters or content,” he said. “This moves you further out of the loop.”

Retailers, Rimm-Kaufman added, should be even more leery of this feature, and not because they will lose sales to competitors whose ads appear in Google’s refined search results. More sophisticated retail sites have search functions that take into account a customer’s past behaviour to suggest certain items, as well as more accurate data on which items are in stock.

“Some of our retail clients have pretty horrible site search,” he said. “So for them, this will be a benefit. For our larger clients, we’ll probably ask Google to turn this off.”

Amazon

That is the route that Amazon has apparently chosen. The retailer declined to comment for this article, but last week Google’s search-within-search function did not appear when users entered “ amazon.com” into the initial search box.

According to a Google spokeswoman, the company has honoured such requests from “a couple” of businesses. These companies, however, may not be able to reverse their decisions.

“So we ask them to try it out and see if they want it removed,” the spokeswoman said. “We think it could be a really useful feature.”

She added that the feature was currently available for an undisclosed, but relatively small, number of sites, and appeared when Google detected a high probability that a user wanted more refined search results within a specific site. While Google has not received much negative feedback on the service, she said, the company could change it in the future. Some online publishers see little wrong with the new service. James Spanfeller, chief executive of Forbes.com, said, “I think this is interesting, and my hat’s off to Google.”

Spanfeller said he suspected that Google was “seeing a huge amount of searches on their service fromfolks trying to find a piece of content written by a name-brand publisher”.

“Google is probably trying to get additional usage out of their product,” he added, “and monetise those page views.”

Web publishers, Spanfeller said, might not like that Google is selling ads against their brands. Nor, he said, would they like having to buy ads on the new search service to help ensure that users who were headed to their sites through Google actually got there.

But, Spanfeller said, they will not suffer much economic damage, overall, from the new service. “Not to be cavalier about it,” he said, “but sites like The Post and Forbes, which have strong enough brand names, won’t lose more than a very small percentage of people who will go to other sites.”

Pam Horan, president of the Online Publishers Association, an industry trade group, said online executives were growing accustomed to the idea that users often did not find their company’s content through the site’s own search box or its front page. More often than not, she said, users would find links to specific articles or products on blogs, search engines or other sites, and navigate to that page.

“So publishers are building their sites,” Horan said, “to make sure the experience is the same, whether users are coming in through the front door or the side.”

— NewYork TimesNews Service

How to get targeted Ads from Adsense

Allan — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:31:18 +0000

I'ts been a while since I started making money online with my blogs but there's still one problem that hinders me to increase my adsense revenue. My property in Dubai and real estate in Dubai blogs are actually doing pretty well but not my cheap airsoft gun blog which doesn't show me my targeted ads and that takes away my potential visitors.

A member of SEO Philippines sent me a link this morning while I was at work because I was asking him about my problem and he sent me this article Let me share it with you and maybe it will work. I will also try it with my blogs so I can increase more my adsense revenue.

Below is an article taken from http://www.w7b.org/how-to-get-targeted-ads-from-adsense.html

Adding Content : Yes, Content is the king. It not only helps in getting relevant ads but also helpful for SERP. Adding keyword rich contents regularly helps Adsense bot to deliver relevant ads (mind it, I told Keyword Rich content), which means you have to cleverly place the main keywords of your site in your content. For example, if your site is Health related, always insert keywords like “health”, “medicine”. That will do the trick.
For low content pages : For low content pages, its very difficult to get relevant ads. What you can to here is Section Targeting. It lets you tell adsense bot which section should be targeted for determining the keywords. Its a Adsense approved html code which should be added in your template. For lo content page, wrap your meta tags (only the meta keywords, and description) with this html code. For Example..

You can also tell adsense bot which areas shouldn’t be targeted for delevering ads in case you have a off topic section. Just add a (weight=ignore) after the start. It should look like this.

Your Page Content