Google Now Indexing Audio Files
Google announced Wednesday the 17th that their Audio Indexing service, “GAudi” is now available for public beta in Google labs. As of now the results are limited to political speeches on YouTube, but soon their results set will be expanded.For such a long time video itself has been considered outside the bounds of search engine optimization, but now Google is attempting to break through this ceiling.
This presents an entire new landscape of opportunities for search engine marketers.
Get the entire scoop straight from Google.
Google Steals Chrome Logo From Pokemon
As I live and breath, Google stole the idea for the Chrome logo right from Pokemon! Ok, maybe I don’t have my facts straight, but you can’t deny there are some major similarities.
Actually, I jk about the Pokemon inspiration, but in all honesty, the Google Chrome logo is taken from an open source browser project called “Chromium”. It even says on the Chromium website, “Google Chrome is built with open source code from Chromium.”
Now Google took more then just Chromium’s source code, they snagged their logo as well. They just added their wack Google colors. Below is Chromium’s logo.
Chromium
Link Building for New Sites
I’m come up with a new website that I’d like the build links for. First let me share the concept of the site, then I’ll share the link building strategy.
A few weeks ago my fiance wanted help remembering to do a task at a certain time each day. I told her I’d send her a text message to remind her. However, now the responsiblity of remembering fell on me. So I searched the web for a service to setup text message reminders. Well, I found a few free ones, but none of them were very good. So I decided to put on my programming hat and build my own.
After a week of building the core functionality, I decided to add in some social media features - friends, status updates, direct messaging, etc. With that new social media face in mind, I wanted to choose a domain that was fun and catch. However, at the same time I wanted a domain that had some keywords in there for linking building ease.
My result is this. I registered the domain www.textreminders.net. I figured that having the words “text” and “reminders” was probably a good thing for link building. But I didn’t like the fact that it wasn’t .com and it wasn’t very catchy or easy to remember. Then the thought occured to me, “What if I build link with this domain, then later on register a catch one and 301 this one!”And there is my strategy. Register 1 or 2 .net, .info, .edu, or .us domains with nice keywords and build your incoming links to those domains. Then down the road redirect them to your branded vanity domain.
In theory it should work well. However it’ll be a few weeks before my own test results come in.
Enjoy.
Can a Flash .SWF outrank a .HTML file?
I’m running a small test to determine if .swf files can achieve higher rankings then .html files. Why is this important? Well, historically full flash web sites have been difficult to rank well, but in the past few months, the major search engines have greatly improved their indexing of flash based files.
So, have we reached a day where full flash web sites and html sites can be ranked equally? Probably not. But what happens if we throw some major link love towards the flash sites?
Test:
1. Create two similar files - one flash, one html.
2. Optimize both for a non-existent search term “sirchingine“.
3. Link to both through this post using the anchor text “sirchingine“.
4. Track which file ranks better for the search term - I hypothesize the HTML file will.
5. Add additional backlinks to flash file - monitor change in rankings.
What can we learn?
My hope is to show that full flash web pages can indeed outrank well optimized HTML pages if enough backlinks fuel the flash page.
Google Knols - Open to the Public
Today Google opened to the public a Wikipedia like service called Google Knols.
Google Knols is an online, collaborative authoriship platform (much like Wikipedia), but with a social side. The idea is to encourage people to write authoriative articles about topics they know about, while the Knols community comments, rates, reviews and in come cases, adds to the article.
The Difference Between Knolls and Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is setup like an encyclopedia. The content is trustworth, and tries to rely on facts - not opinions or viewpoints. Google Knols is exactly the opposite. Knols encourages multiple articles on the same topic, and embraces different viewpoints and opinions. Therefore the structure of these two web sites is remarkably different. Wikipedia collects and consolidates the authority of the Read the rest of this entry »
Google Adwords - Keywords and placements — together!
Here’s a new feature in adwords:
Keywords and placements — together!
- As of today, both keywords and placements can be targeted in all AdWords campaigns. Use both to get better control and pricing power on the content network.What can you do with keywords plus placements?
- Bid more or less for specific placements. Let contextual targeting with keywords place your ads across the content network, while you set placement bids for sites that have a special value for you.Selling soccer shoes? You might bid $1.00 for clicks from any content network pages that match your keywords, but $2.00 when those clicks come from a soccer fan site that’s converted well for you in the past.
- Show your ad only when both keywords and placements match. You’ll get the benefits of keyword targeting while also limiting the places where your ad can appear.For instance, set your campaign to appear only on your favorite soccer fan site, and only when the site content matches the keyword soccer shoes. You may see less traffic, but AdWords contextual matching will help make sure your placement pages are highly targeted.
Placements are always optional. They’re an advanced feature with no impact on your search network advertising. You can add keywords or placements to existing ad groups, or you can leave those campaigns as they are and create new ones with keywords plus placements. Learn more
Search volume statistics in the Keyword Tool
- You can now see statistics on the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords. This data allows you to better plan your budget and pick keywords most likely to return quality leads, which in turn can help improve your ROI. Learn more
Google Announces they Crawl Flash
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.
Social Media in SERPS Thanks to Universal Search?
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.
Local Results Search Forms in SERPS
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 the rest of this entry »
Facebook Shoots Down Google
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.
