A few days ago, Google officially announced they can crawl flash files. Here’s is what they said,
“Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.
In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.
Now that we’ve launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets. There’s more info on the Webmaster Central blog about the Searchable SWF integration.”
Now this revelation is something I already posted about back in may (see post), but I suspect the general public wasn’t catching on. So Google now makes an official announcement. I guess the days of “flash web sites can’t be crawled” are gone. I guess that’s a good thing. Now be prepared for spammy .SWF’s in the results pages for a while.
I’m making a prediction. I’m predicting that Google has developed their “Friends Connect” service with the intention of using social media to change the search engine results pages (SERPS) as we know it!
I’m seeing at least two major changes.
1) Universal Search meets Social Media
The idea of universal search (the inclusion of different forms of media to Google’s search engine results pages) will soon include product recommendations based on what your friends think of the product. For example, say you’re searching for “coffee pots”, and a friend on Facebook purchased a coffee pot recently and wrote a review on telling how much they loved it. This review shows up in the SERPS with a little blurb like, “See what your friends had to say about ‘coffee pots’” and right there on the results page is your friends review.
2) Personalized Search will change.
Google is already tracking most peoples web history. It influences the way results are displayed for individuals based on past searching/surfing habits. Now image that your searching on a search term like, “king”… Google doesn’t know if you’re looking for a definition of the word, a list of past kings, the king of the jungle, “king of queens” television show, etc. Now if you’ve never searched for a term like this, Google can’t use your web history to help determine results. BUT what if Google knew who your friends were? What if Google could use social data to determine that you have 8 friends who are major Elvis lovers? Google would then assume that when you search for “king”, you might actually be looking for information about Elvis, and tailor your search results accordingly.
So there you have it. Two ways I predict social media will change the face of search results and in term search engine marketing.
Sometimes I feel that Google is doing everything they can to fill their SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) with everything BUT natural search results.
I’ve been watching with concern as Google’ s Universal Search Results continues to bury the natural listings under paid listings, news clips, images, YouTube video’s, local listings, product listings, sitelinks, internal site search and now today I find yet another “feature” sneak out into the wild - Read more…
I’m sad to say that all the excitement I had built up around Friday’s “Friend Connect” post is pretty much gone. I learned today that Facebook is refusing to let Google access their data for the future Friend Connect service.
“We’re disappointed that Facebook disabled their users’ ability to use Friend Connect with their Facebook friends,” a Google spokesman told Wired.com.
Facebook is citing privacy concerns, but from what I understand it’s simply that Facebook doesn’t want to build the privacy controls into their API. Therefore Google has no way of meeting the privacy “standards” that Facebook requires.
Read the full story on Wired.
I’ve removed the No-Follow tags from comment links for the time being. The site is new enough, and small enough, to fly under the radar from spammers.
So from now on we’ll be giving a little ’search engine love’ kick back to the growing community here.
I think Google is stretching their logo creativity when trying to honor the, “invention of the first laser”. Looks more like a Captcha to me.
If you’re in the search marketing industry, and you’re looking for work, there’s one thing that you MUST DO before you start sending out your resume, and that is… Rank for your own name on Google.
Every hiring manager who knows what they’re doing is going to do a Google search for their job candidates name before the interview. If you’re looking to get a job doing anything with SEO, you better make sure you can at least rank for your own name. Why do you think www.dancristo.com exists?
Since this is a blog about advanced SEM techniques, I’m not going to insult you by explaining how to rank for your own name. I will however stress the importance of it, and give a few ideas of the types of web sites that might work well for this type of thing. Read more…
I was really impressed to learn about Google’s new Friend Connect product!
In short, friend connect is taking some cool things people do on social networks (upload photos, message friends, leave reviews, ratings, comments, etc) and is making them available for use on any web site. Now you might be thinking, “yeah, but I can already add that functionality through site add-on’s and widgets”. But what you can’t easily add is your FRIENDS! See, the exciting part is this, social networks like Facebook and MySpace are making their data accessible, so your friends can use your site as a social networking site, without having to recreate a new profile. Read more…
I was surprised to find out that Google has no problem indexing, reading text and following links in flash files.
Now I’m sure this isn’t new information to some of you, but others may require a bit more proof.
For the proof, go to google and type in: seo” filetype:swf
What this is doing is searching for the term, “seo” and restricting the results to only .swf file types.
Notice the term [FLASH] next to the results page listing indicating it’s a flash document.
Notice how Google pulls the first few words out of the flash file to generate the title.
Now I haven’t really seen flash files rank well in the SERP when thrown in with web pages, but it is proof that Google can read text and follow links in flash files.
Go ahead and do some testing. Let me know how well your flash files are getting indexed.
Overview:
I wanted to write up a quick post about Google’s adwords Professional Certification program.
Let me start off by giving a quick overview of what the program is. Basically Google has a ton of helpful information online about how to use their Adwords Pay Per Click marketing platform. The information explains the fundamentals of the system, terminology, rules, etc. - view the Adwords Learning Center information for free here.
You read through (or watch a presentation if that suits your learning style) and take a test at the end of the course. The test is a timed test, Read more…
