Category: Google

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Google is Picking Up Facebook Reviews

I wanted to give you an update from my blog post this past week on what is happening with Google indexing reviews on Facebook. Today, I found one of my test pages in the Google.com search results but not the other.

In just a few days I have found that Google has picked up the page with my hreview HTML tags hand coded and inserted into an FBML page, but not the page that has Facebook reader reviews. Although this may not be a definitive answer yet, as it is still pretty early in the test, the results are interesting.

I’ll keep you posted on my results as I do further testing. In the meantime if you want to read the full blog post and be a part of my test check out this blog.

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Google Update Their Algorithm to Benefit Information Rich Sites

Google just did a massive update on their search algorithm which impacted what sites get pushed to the topic of organic results this past week. The bottom line is that the change will benefit information rich sites but hurt those without original content.

This is what Google said exactly: “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

For our own site and those of our customers, this is very good news. When you build content that is more than just focused on your own business and services you enrich your own readers’ experience and now improve your own chances of placing higher organically on Google.

Of particular note is the comment “with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” This is good news for clients that we have worked with to create in-depth articles and mini white papers which we have then in turn additionally used as link bait articles and have archived back on their website as HTML pages and PDF files.

This is also be good news for blogging clients where blogs are informative and information dense content but only if the blog resides on the same website server as the website files and is found in a directory in the root of the parent website.

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Google Should Look to the Microsoft Model

Remember when Microsoft owned the Web and for that matter computers as well as the Internet? Remember when there was only Internet Explorer and no Firefox? Remember when the only computing platform was Microsoft Office? Not so long ago was it, but now things are very different. Firefox has a distinct growing percentage of the browsing market, Macs are more common place, Open Office and Cloud computing are starting to become mainstream.

Now take a look at Google. Google used to, and for that matter is for right now, the dominant search engine and pay per click platform, but that will change. You have to look no farther than the model of Microsoft’s dominance and what is happening now in the news to know that Google is losing it’s grip on owning the world of search.

Some of Google’s thorns are Facebook, Bing, and the lack of true innovation within its own kingdom. When was the last time you saw one of Google’s new products hit the market make a big splash and be widely embraced? It’s been a while! Remember the flops: Friend Connect, Orkut, Google Wave, Google Buzz? Their last big hit was GMail and they drove traffic there by requiring everyone to set up a GMail account to use any Google products including AdWords when it first came out thereby pushing up initial membership.

Now let’s look at Microsoft. As this giant has aged, it has mellowed. It has grudgingly embraced, but embraced never the less, change. It has adapted and ended up creating better products with greater inclusion and transparency. Google is in a stat of flux, right now it is trying to grasp on to its glory days but may want to look at the Microsoft model to see how it may be able to stay vital yet play more as a partner and not as a desperate bully.

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Google Accuses Bing of Stealing Search Results

The search engine wars just started up again this past week as Google accused Bing of stealing its search results. So let’s dig into this and see if that was really the case.

First, I want to say that I feel that Google is running scared. There was the quick switch of Google CEOs recently and not just to any person but to one of the original Google founders. Then there was the bad news of Facebook overtaking Google in terms of popularity. Right on the coat tails of all of this news Google stated that they had inserted code into their search results and had found their bait in the Bing results.

Bing responded with a resounding “NO” and the conflict ramped up considerably between the two search engines with key engineers appearing on the Web in videos discussing the situation and the blogosphere dissecting both responses.

What happened in a nutshell is that Google inserted in their results a set of characters (that don’t even spell a word) and then found that same set of characters in Bing results. I don’t think this admits Bing is stealing Google’s results, as Bing states that their search results reflect a historical pattern of searchers use and click through rates as well a their own patented algorithm, but Google just does not see it this way.

With Google losing placement and retention of its stranglehold on popularity brace yourself for more paranoid statements and litigation as the two search engines start to reveal exactly what information they are collecting on us and how they integrate this information into their search results.