The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday (Dec 4, 2009) afternoon Yahoo and Microsoft (Bing) announced they have come to an agreement on a deal that would allow Microsoft (Bing) and Yahoo to partner in providing Search Engine Advertising. The partnership will now be reviewed by anti trust regulators with the US Dept of Justice.
Archive for the ‘Google’ Category
Yahoo and Microsoft Finalize Search Advertising Agreement
Friday, December 4th, 2009
New Google Ranking Factor is About Site Speed
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009Should how fast your site loads be a search engine ranking factor… Google thinks so!
The hot topic in the SEO circle is Google’s recent announcement that their algorithm is going to adjust rankings for speed. Some people think it may be only be a minimal factor. In comparison to relevancy and other algorithm factors this logic seems true because what really matters is not if a user gets the info in 1 second or 2 seconds, but that they get the best information.
Still, Google firmed up their commitment to site speed yesterday by adding an experimental feature in Webmaster Tools. This feature shows you information pertaining to the speed of your site. Through out this entire process, Google’s main argument for adding page speed as a ranking factor is that studies have proven that speeding up a site leads to increased user retention and activity.
Below is a preview our www.SweetSpotMarketing.com performance review:
As you can see Webmaster Tools is promoting the Page Speed Extension for FireFox.
The load time data is derived from aggregated information sent by users of your site who have installed the Google Toolbar and opted-in to its enhanced features. The data currently represents a global average; a specific user may experience your site faster or slower than the average depending on their location and network conditions.
The beta version of this tool is a strong indication that Google is serious about speeding up the web. By adding site speed as a ranking factor, Google is now holding web designers all over the world accountable to reduce file sizes and improve superfluous HTML code. Now when their is a better/faster way to display the same information you better do it – for Google sake!
Google gives sneak peak to new Chrome OS
Monday, November 23rd, 2009Last week Google gave a sneak peak of their new Operating System. Like their new browser, the new OS will be named Chrome as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/technology/companies/20chrome.htm
It seems that Chrome will be a game changer. No longer will you need to install software on individual PCs but instead you will be able to access documents and programs via the web. It wont be long and we will all be living in the Clouds.
What is the Content Network
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009The Google Content Network has been around a few years now but many advertisers still do not quite know what it is. Well, that is what I am here for.
The Google Content Network is an advertising network. An advertising network facilitates the purchasing of ad space between an advertiser and website publishers. It is difficult for one advertiser to work with thousands of websites, so instead you work with one vendor, the network. Millions of website publishers put their ad space for sale on the ad network and an advertiser can easily advertise across them all from one source.
The Google Content Network can efficiently and effectively meet your advertising needs. Not only is it the largest global advertising network, but it has a huge range of solutions—from contextual targeting to real-time reporting—that help businesses create, launch and optimize campaigns that deliver results.
First introduced by Google, contextual targeting matches the content of your ad to the content of a Web page. For example, if you’re advertising a retirement community, we’ll show your ads to a user viewing a Web page about senior living tips.
Not only can you target relevant content but you can do so in a creative way. The Google Content Network accepts text ads, banner ads and video ads.
The Google Content Network is a great way to achieve your online marketing goals. As always, Sweet Spot is available to help develop an effective Content Network program for your business.
How Is Google Caffeine Going To Change Search Results?
Monday, September 7th, 2009Background Information:
A few weeks ago Google published a post on the webmaster central blog that a next-generation infrastructure update effecting how the Google Search Engine displays results is going to take place soon. Internally it is being called “Google Caffeine”.
An interview with Matt Cutts from SES San Jose was published a few days after the announcement and is available on WebProNews.com In this interview, and subsequent posts, Matt down-plays the change as less to do with algorithmic ranking changes, and focused on the coding enhancements this update will give Google.
The purpose of this update is for Google to crawl, index, and return search results on the rapidly expanding web. This means that results changes will inherently happen without direct intent.
To give webmasters a preview of what Google Caffeine will do they setup a sandbox for testing. Facesaerch’s Caffeine Compare is a handy new tool that directly compares the search results side-by-side.
1. Video Results More Prevalent With Google Caffeine:
After conducting several searches on celebrities and well known people you can see immediate change in the results for media types other than standard web pages.
For example, if you do a search for “Michael Jordan” in Google today the 4th listing is image results and the last results are book results about Jordan. With Google Caffeine search results we get no results for images or books, but get more video options!
If you have videos that are not published on YouTube.com then now is the time to upload them, because Caffeine is going to give them higher rankings than before.
2. Keywords in URL are more important than ever:
If you sell a single product or service and that word is not in your URL, consider re-branding your domain on the web to something that does. Even before Google Caffeine was tested we say Google search results trending to rank URL’s higher based heavily on the domain name.
We recommend you keep your brand or acronym URL if you got one, but if you are considering purchasing a new URL or re-branding, then consider your main keyword in the URL for better search results in Google.
3. Social Sites & Immediacy Results Enter SERP’s (sort of):
When news breaks who do you go to on the web? If you are like most people, you likely answered CNN, FOX, TWITTER, Facebook, YAHOO, etc – anything but Google right?
Google wants to curb this online behavior through some of their search results in Caffeine. This is so they can become not just the best everyday search engine, but also your online destination source for hot topics and current events too. Google has gone so far to develop a tool that does this called hot trends.
The death of Michael Jackson is the best case study for online search facilitating breaking news. Danny Dover at SEOMOZ had a great post on Michael Jackson’s death traveling the web. In this post he time-lines out how major websites were handling the information and displaying in search results.
I’m sure Google hated to see thousands of visitors flock to TMZ’s site for the latest info on Michael Jackson, but this is something Google is not good at. In fact, Google is susceptible to false claims, and if they are not more careful, they could end up losing credibility by having a “Jeff Goldblum episode”. If you have not seen the Colbert Report on “Jeff Goldblum Will Be Missed” it is hilarious.
When it comes to satisfying immediacy while remaining reputable for everyday search, no one has accomplished this – not even Google. The challenge with real-time search is to keep credibility by filtering out bad and keeping the good. Not and easy job when you consider how massive and rapidly expanding the web grows every day.