Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category
Google Adwords Phone Number
April 16th, 2008
MatthewThe toll-free phone number for google Advertising is:
1-866-2-google
(466453)
Build critical mass on your website
February 27th, 2008
adminWith so many websites to join, users must decide where to invest significant time in adding their same connections over and over. For developers, this means it is difficult to build successful web applications that hinge upon a critical mass of users for content and interaction. With the Social Graph API, developers can now utilize public connections their users have already created in other web services. It makes information about public connections between people easily available and useful.
Only public data
The API returns web addresses of public pages and publicly declared connections between them. The API cannot access non-public information, such as private profile pages or websites accessible to a limited group of friends.
Based on open standards
We currently index the public Web for XHTML Friends Network (XFN), Friend of a Friend (FOAF) markup and other publicly declared connections. By supporting open Web standards for describing connections between people, web sites can add to the social infrastructure of the web.
Googles Headache
October 21st, 2007
MatthewGoogle Under Fire Over a Controversial Site from the Wall Street Journal has an outstanding summary of all the controversy, politics, legalities and moral issues Google has run into due to their Brazilian favored social networking site, Orkut.
The article covers how Google had to pull the ads on Orkut back in August due to them showing up next to “pictures of naked children and abused animals.” From the article:
The head of Google’s Brazilian operation is facing criminal contempt charges for refusing to turn Orkut users’ data over to police. And next month there is a hearing in a case brought by a São Paulo prosecutor threatening daily fines of $100,000 or the shuttering of Google’s Brazil office. “We have won,” says Thiago Tavares Nunes de Oliveira, a 28-year-old Brazilian law professor who wrote the graphic report and has crisscrossed Brazil making the case that Google allowed Orkut to become a redoubt of criminal activity, including child pornography and racist speech.
Free phone service from google
October 2nd, 2007
adminImagine your cell phone as a mini marketing machine. As you head into your car after dinner, a text alert pops onto the screen of your handset announcing the 9 p.m. lineup at a nearby cineplex. You choose the Jodi Foster flick “The Brave One,” and a promo video for the next Warner Bros. release, a George Clooney movie, starts running. Afterward, more text appears, prompting you to launch the phone’s Web browser so that you can click through to buy the movie’s ring tones and wallpaper.
That kind of 24/7 advertising engagement — on a phone, no less — may sound like a nightmare. But what if you could determine the kinds of products you get pitched? Or when your flight gets canceled in a faraway airport, text messages pop up for the best hotel deals in town? No random insurance ads or airline deals for trips to places you never visit.
Best of all: Watch or read the custom ads, and your phone minutes are free.
For big cell carriers, that’s the real nightmare. And it may be coming in the form of a Google phone.
Wireless-industry consultants and marketing executives with knowledge of Google’s plans say it has been showing prototypes of a new phone to handset manufacturers and network operators for a couple of months.
Its plans have been kept top-secret, but Google (GOOG, news, msgs) is expected to tap a company on the Pacific Rim that specializes in mobile design and manufacturing to build a handset to its specs. Google could then apply its expertise in operating software and user applications, says Paul Catalano, a partner at consultancy RelevantC Business.
Google officials won’t talk about phones, and industry sources don’t expect one before the second half of 2008.
Google & Microsoft Clash over Doubleclick
September 30th, 2007
MatthewLawyers from Google and Microsoft sparred in Congress today as the Senate Judiciary committee looked into antitrust concerns raised by Google’s proposed $3.1 billion DoubleClick acquisition.
Seeking to derail the purchase of the online ad firm, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in prepared oral testimony that if the government allowed the "GoogleClick" merger, "It will be bad for publishers, bad for advertisers, and most importantly, bad for consumers."
Microsoft itself had been eying a DoubleClick acquisition in March, according to reports published in the Wall Street Journal. In May, the Redmond, Wash., software giant offered to buy online ad firm aQuantive, a DoubleClick rival, for $6 billion in cash. That deal closed last month.
Despite that acquisition, Smith testified today that Google remains poised to dominate the overall online search market.
He said Google is already the leading company in search advertising, with 70 percent of global spending on search-based advertising going through its AdWords unit. Allowing Google to buy online display advertising firm DoubleClick would give the company nearly 80 percent of all spending on non-search ads as well, his testimony read.
It would also make Google the "overwhelmingly dominant pipeline for all forms of online advertising," Smith said in his testimony.
He also sought to raise privacy concerns over giving a single company control over what he called "the largest database of user information the world has ever known." Specifically, that suggests Google will establish a database tracking not just searches, but movement across sites serving DoubleClick ads.
"With this merger, Google seeks to record almost everything you see and do on the Internet and use that information to target ads," Smith said. "This merger will create a whole new meaning to the term ‘being googled.’"
Microsoft’s lawyer concluded his testimony by reminding the committee that since the passing of the Sherman Antitrust Act, "no one is permitted to buy success by purchasing its largest competitors."
It’s this point that Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond primarily addressed in his prepared rebuttal testimony.
"Our purchase of DoubleClick does not raise antitrust issues because of one simple fact: Google and DoubleClick are complementary businesses and do not compete with each other," Drummond said. "DoubleClick does not buy ads, sell ads, or buy or sell advertising space. All it does is provide the technology to enable advertisers and publishers to deliver ads once they have come to terms, and provide advertisers and publishers statistics relating to the ads."
Microsoft first protested Google’s acquisition in April. Since then, both have been able to rally third-party support to their cause. For its part, Google cited analysts and columnists quoted in the media.
Additionally, Thomas Leonard, a Senior Fellow at the deregulation-friendly Progress and Freedom Foundation, argued today that online advertising remains in a nascent state, and that "government interference with this evolving market, which is still in its infancy, could be quite harmful to consumers."
On the other side, Microsoft helped sponsor an AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies research project to show how display and search advertising dollars come from the same pool, thus enabling Google to dominate the entire ad market.
Also in the anti-GoogleClick camp, Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), testified before the committee to present the deleterious effects a Google/DoubleClick merger would have on consumer privacy.
"We believe that the commission should act to block the deal or to impose substantial privacy safeguards as a condition of the deal’s approval," Rotenberg’s testimony read.
In addition to the Senate Judiciary committee, which has yet to weigh in on the proposed acquisition, the DoubleClick deal also remains under Federal Trade Commission regulatory review.
Earlier this year, EPIC, along with the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), filed complaints with the FTC over privacy implications in the merger.
Google Adds Texting Tech
September 30th, 2007
MatthewText messages sponsored by Google ads? That scenario, and others like it, look increasingly likely after Google today announced it acquired Zingku’s mobile messaging and social networking service.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Zingku’s service enables mobile users to establish groups of contacts and share text and picture messages with them, as well as to store photos and schedule reminders on personalized sites. The company also offers marketing services, enabling online merchants to print codes in their real-world or online ads. When entered into a Zingku user’s phone, these codes download a coupon or advertising material, which can then be shared with other users.
Despite some of the obvious marketing implications for the service, the search advertising giant did not say how exactly how it aims to integrate Zingku’s technology into its own plans.
"We believe these assets can help build products and features that will benefit our users, advertisers and publishers," a Google spokesperson told InternetNews.com.
Google has become increasingly active in the mobile space during the past several years, evidently seeking to map out an advertising strategy for an increasingly hot platform.
At this year’s Search Engine Strategies (SES) convention in San Diego, Google’s Marissa Meyer characterized mobile as the next great application opportunity. Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at the company, noted that despite the summer slow-down, Google had seen an increase in the number mobile users getting online this season.
Google is even rumored to be building its own mobile device. At SES, Meyer played down the possibility of a "GooglePhone," but the topic remains popular speculation among Google-watchers.
Prior to the acquisition, Zingku’s operated in a private beta. Since then, the company has closed the gates to new members. A notice on the Zingku’s site indicates that user accounts will be transferred over to Google beginning in October.
Googles Free Ad Creation Tool
September 28th, 2007
MatthewIf you could use some help spreading the word about your small business, let Google lend a helping hand. Google’s now offering an ad creation tool to help advertisers develop newspaper ads using pre-designed templates. The tool itself is free, though it’s only available to AdWords advertisers. Marketers can also search through Google’s inventory of 450 newspapers and chat directly with Print Ads account representatives.
SEO Definitions
September 24th, 2007
MatthewThis is a líst of twelve SEO-related definitions in alphabetical order (with notes) serves as a great companion for your initial SEO reading. Read alone it will get you up to speed on some key terminology that you’ll need to know to intelligently engage the ever-changing world of SEO.
• Algorithms. A search algorithm is, in short, the incredibly complex mathematical formula that a search engine uses to “rank” web sites for keywords. Based on a huge number of variables and calculations, algorithms are among the most closely-guarded secrets on the internet. Why? Imagine if they were leaked - suddenly the less-than-honest would have a very specific guideline to follow in climbing to the top of search results in a less-than-organic way, ruining the quality of Google’s search results and their entire competitive advantage with it.
• Bot or Bots. See also “crawlers”
• Crawlers. Googlebot, for example, is a search engine crawler. Googlebot periodically traverses the web in record time, indexing content, links - everything contained in page source code - and storing it in Google’s search index. Then, when a user visits Google and enters a search phrase, the index, filtered by the algorithm, is what the user gets. Please note: there is some delay in this process since the results you’re getting are from the index and not the live web.
• Directories. When webmasters realized just how much power inbound links have in determining search rankings they quickly set out to do two things: 1) get inbound links and 2) set up web sites where other webmasters could achieve inbound links (meaning big traffíc revenues for the site). Hence the directory farms you’ll find today. Link building has been a priority on the líst of any SEO-savvy webmaster for years, and as a result “quick fix” directories that allow streamlined listing submissions get a ton of traffíc. However, Google and the other major search engines are on to this tactic, and the word among SEO “experts” is that the benefits of listing your site at directories are diminished if not gone.
• Frames. Frames are a way of laying out a website with multiple documents in one browser window. Essentially, there is one main document which contains the frameset tag - this document specifies the dimensions/placement of the frames and also the documents that will “populate” those frames. From an SEO standpoint the use of frames for your layout is not recommended. Since frames do not use links in the same way, and since links may point to one frame from another, they may cause serious problems for crawlers. Additionally, there are almost no uses for frames that can’t either be 1) duplicated with other methods or 2) thrown away without much fuss. If your site was built with frames and you’re thinking you don’t want to rebuild - it might be tough luck if you’re interested in optimizing for search. Consider it a learning experience - build yourself a CSS-based layout.
• Gateway Pages. Also “doorway pages.” Although there isn’t a real consensus about what these pages are, their function is always cited as their definition. In other words, these pages are created to “rank well in search engines” by playing to the algorithms. Often viewed as “spammy,” “gray hat” or even “black hat.” However, any page written with search in mind, and geared towards search, can be construed to be a “gateway page.” The difference between a page well-optimized for search and a “gateway page?” No clear lines there, but quality of content is probably the determining factor.
• HTML. Okay, most of you probably know this one, but there are probably some of you who don’t. HTML stands for Hyper-Text Mark-up Language, and it is the core building block that has made the web the greatest modern tool for business, social, informational, political and any other causes. Search engines look exclusively at a web page’s HTML code to determine its relevance. Therefore, it’s a good idea to pay attention to HTML and familiarize yourself with proper tagging techniques if you’re hoping to get a good handle on SEO.
• Link Popularity. Inbound links are probably the most important optimization point for web pages. Number, quality, trust - these are all factors that affect the value of an inbound link. Going back to the HTML root of search, link popularity (in terms of quantity) measures how many pages point to your site using anchor text.
• Link Building. In short, the process of gaining links at other web sites pointing in to pages on your own.
• Link Baiting. The process of generating high-quality content on your pages that users will appreciate and link to voluntarily.
• Meta Tags. Meta tags are found at the top of a page’s source code. They are used to specify certain things that might not be found in the page content. They also allow webmasters to put up certain “flags” that search engine crawlers can react to. There are many Meta tags available for use, and many of them can help with SEO to a great extent and for a variety of purposes. However, Meta tags are no longer used in the way they originally were - as a place to stuff keywords to drive your site up in rankings. Some webmasters out there are still doing this, but they are decidedly behind the times and unaware of the impending, or already cast-down, penalties.
• Robots. See also “crawlers.”
• Search Engines. If you don’t know what a search engine is congratulations on finally making it out from under that rock. Search engines are essentially programs that scan an existing index of the web based on a query of search terms, or keywords, that a user enters. However, the word more commonly refers to companies as a whole - Google, for example, controls a search engine, while Googlebot is the crawler that gathers content for its index, but most users and webmasters think of a search engine as the whole package.
• Search Engine Marketing. Most often this refers to Pay-Per-Click marketing in which an advertiser bids on chosen keywords and writes several ads to be displayed should their bid achieve placement. These ads are displayed in the “sponsored” section of search engine result pages (SERPS). However, in some circles this term is used to refer to any action taken to gain rankings both paid and organic.
• Search Engine Optimization. This one is open to interpretation. It is quite often used to encapsulate a huge amount of different tactics. On-site optimization, off-site optimization (link building, etc) and many other techniques all feasibly fall under the SEO blanket. However, there is an obvious difference between optimizing a page’s code to be clean and search friendly and writing link bait that will be popular and get linked to.
• Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The pages resulting from a search engine query run by a user. Webmasters review these pages to determine where their pages are ranking for certain search terms.
• Sp@mming. Basically, any unnatural effort to bring a page higher in search results. What constitutes sp@m is open to some interpretation, but the only interpretation you need to worry about is that of the major search engines. If Google, for example, considers a technique “spammy” you’d be wise to cease at once.
• Spiders. See also “crawlers.”
• Submission. For SEO this has traditionally meant submitting a web site to search engines so they’ll know about and crawl it. SEO firms offered submission services as a big selling point to bring in clients. However, for a long time now submitting your site to search engines hasn’t done jack. They’re all much smarter now - just focus on gaining quality inbound links and your site will be indexed in no time.
This is just a sample of the core vocabulary associated with SEO. Is this all you need to know? Absolutely not. But in my experience these are the words and phrases that newcomers have the most trouble with. If these definitions help one person have a better understanding of SEO, then I will be satisfied.
Find a good domain name
September 18th, 2007
MatthewGood domain names are out there, but they can be hard to find. Here are some tools to help you in your search.
1. Dislexicon - Takes common words and adds suffixes and prefixes. It even gives you the meaning. This site is great for finding short domain names that look like they could be real words.
2. JustDropped - This site lets you search for domain names that have recently expired. You get a few searches for free with limited results. I’ve found that the free searches are usually adequate for my needs.
3. Word Mixer - This one lets you enter up to five words which are mixed up into new, semi-pronouncable words. The same website also has a couple other tools that are useful such as the random words tool which is hit or miss, and the mixer seeds page.
4. WordFinder - This is actually a tool for crossword puzzles, but it can also be very useful for finding a domain name.
5. DomainsBot - This search engine is geared specifically towards finding a domain name. It works best if you’re looking for a compound-word domain rather than an invented word.
6. Online Generators - If all else fails, sometimes you’ll find a gem using one of these online generators. This is usually a last resort for me though, they tend to suck up your time without out producing much.
Google Sketch Up
September 18th, 2007
MatthewWhat is Google SketchUp 6?
Google SketchUp is a deceptively simple, amazingly powerful tool for creating, viewing, and modifying 3D ideas quickly and easily. Google SketchUp was developed to combine the elegance and spontaneity of pencil sketching with the speed and flexibility of today’s digital media.
Developed for the conceptual stages of design, this powerful yet easy-to-learn software allows for quick and easy 3D form creation, the result is an interface that supports a dynamic, creative exploration of 3D form, material and light.
Google SketchUp combines a compact yet robust tool-set with an intelligent guidance system that streamlines the 3D drawing process.
3D for Everyone
Design software has been around for decades and is clearly here to stay. But we think something has been missing—the freedom, flexibility and fun that should go hand-in-hand with the design process. It’s our view that while traditional CAD software is necessary for developing detailed drawings, it’s simply too complex for most conceptual design work.
Google SketchUp bridges the divide between design utility and fun. As designers ourselves, we created Google SketchUp as much to satisfy our own wishes as those of our users.
We know you’ve heard it all before: what company doesn’t claim that its software is ‘a piece of cake to use’ or ‘the best around?’ We’re guilty of saying this too. But you don’t have to take our word for it—you can try it yourself. Just download Google SketchUp 6 fire it up and give it a spin. Most people say they’re off and running in a few hours.
But nevermind what we think, here’s what customers have told us Google SketchUp is to them: