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+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ OPTIMIZING VISIBLE RESULTS IN SEARCH MARKETING ********************* Catch and cache past installments of SearchWrite SearchNews in the http://www.searchwrite.com/Pages/searchnews.htm **********************
Microsoft is preparing to take its most ambitious step yet in transforming its personal computer business into one tied more closely to software running in remote data centers. The software giant announced on Tuesday a data storage and Web software system, called Live Mesh, that is intended to blur the distinction between software running on the Windows operating system and an elaborate array of services that will be delivered to a growing collection of electronic gadgets. Live Mesh is Microsoft’s late entry into the rapidly growing market known as Cloud Computing. The term refers to the movement of software applications and services from PCs to centralized data centers, where they are made available via the Internet. Companies like Amazon.com, Google, Salesforce and dozens of others are building computing centers that will effectively outsource data processing and make it a commodity that companies purchase as they would electricity. The introduction of Live Mesh is a significant strategic shift for Microsoft, whose operating system helped popularize personal computers. Ray Ozzie, one of the Microsoft’s two chief technology officers, set the stage: “The Web is the hub of our social mesh and our device mesh,” he wrote. That statement is the first of a set of three “guiding principles” that Mr. Ozzie outlined. 15 components of the new Live Mesh service have been debuted, including a notification feature, a news feature and an information window displayed by the service, but only two are user-oriented applications. One synchronizes files on multiple computers. The other, Live Mesh Remote Desktop, is a free software service that will permit users to control computers and other devices over the Internet. The private beta preview and waiting list line forms here: <https://www.mesh.com/Welcome/Welcome.aspx>
IndexTools has long been one of the Search marketing industry's best kept secrets -- a powerful Web analytics application that, as one observer put it, packs 80% of the functionality of Omniture at no charge. Now, Yahoo intends to provide the service FREE of charge to clients and partners presenting real competition to Google Analytics and Microsoft Gatineau. The timing couldn't be better. Prior to the acquisition, IndexTools was poised to release their own ad hoc segmentation and analysis engine, dubbed Rubix, that directly competes with the likes of Omniture Discover and similar high-end offerings. Yahoo! will almost certainly be able to take advantage of the good work that Google has done establishing their Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC) network,giving Yahoo! an immediate deployment network As Analytics Demystified pundit, Eric Peterson, put it, "One of the things that people really like about Microsoft Gatineau is the inclusion of a small amount of demographic data available for segmentation. I suspect that A) Yahoo! has access to very much the same data (only a whole lot more of it) and B) the existing segmentation capabilities in IndexTools, not to mention Rubix, will make that data a whole lot more useful to marketers. "Imagine if you deployed IndexTools having real-time access to age, gender, income, and behavioral demographic data to apply to all the reports in your system, collected via Yahoo’s huge network, obfuscated, and presented properly showing sample sizes and statistical correlations. That would be a permanent game changer!"
Microsoft has introduced an adCenter Add-in for Excel that offers some truly outstanding features and marks the first time a functional SEO tool has been fully integrated into the MS Office suite of products. Using Excel 2007, you can quickly and easily build out or expand your keyword lists and plan your keyword strategy based on a range of attributes including relevance, historical cost, volume and more. The adCenter Add-in provides the ability to research keywords to help you reach the right audience, and capture and convert the right customer. The adCenter Add-in with Ad Intelligence offers a number of powerful features: • Easily extract keywords from any website just by inputting the URL. You don’t have to be an expert in Excel, Search Engine Marketing or online advertising to effectively use the adCenter Add-in. Presently, the Add-inBeta is only compatible with Microsoft Excel 2007. Get crunching! Excel Add-In Page <http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/adcenter_addin>
Travel search site Farecast had long been rumored to be a takeover target and CEO Hugh Crean has now confirmed that the site has indeed been acquired by Microsoft. John Cook at the Seattle PI says the deal is worth something in the $100-$115 million range. Microsoft has a long history in travel, having started Expedia in the mid-1990s (it was sold to IAC's predecessor USANetworks in 1999). Farecast's claim to differentiation was that it could predict whether air fares or hotel prices were going up or down to help travelers know when to buy. The site has been around for about two years. The capabilities are already present on MSN travel and we'll likely see it affect travel-related search results on Live Search.
Previews is a Firefox add on that provides you with instant previews of links while you browse. Once it is installed and Firefox is restarted, whenever you rest your mouse over a link, a little blue icon appears. Rest your mouse over this icon and the preview pops up. It works so quickly as to be virtually painless. There is also a built-in search feature: Highlight word(s) then right-click and select Cooliris Search. You'll get the option to search Google, Google Images, Wikipedia or The Free Dictionary. And you'll get an instant preview of the search results. The preview window contains a toolbar with a lot of handy features and more functionality: * A tiny arrow lets you move to the next link on the page without closing the preview, another arrow takes you back to the previous link. * You can save the previewed page as a temporary bookmark in case you want to have a look at it later. Previews stacks these thumbnails in a vertical tab on the right hand side of the browser window. The bookmarks disappear when you restart the browser. * With a click of your mouse you can email a link to your friends. * A button lets you open the link in a new tab. Previews by cooliris: <http://cooliris.com/site/firefox/>
iGoogle is the fastest growing of Google's offerings, a personal start page or dashboard with the potential to evolve into something more. Yesterday, Google announced "a sandbox for developers that helps them build richer gadgets for iGoogle, which will offer users more powerful and interactive features. The announcement touts that "iGoogle's new features will include left navigation, a maximized or "canvas view" option for gadgets, and social features for gadgets using the OpenSocial APIs. These social features for gadgets will include a friends list and activities displayed through a special updates gadget." <http://code.google.com/apis/igoogle/>
Vanessa Fox is a dynamo. I have had the opportunity to do up-close interviews with the former head of Google Webmaster Central on several occasions. Our first face-to-face for Seattle24x7.com was at SES San Jose, our second at Google Webmaster Central in Kirkland, Wa. (as her guest), and then at various Search conferences afterwards. I am now working with Vanessa on a special Developer Day track for the upcoming Search Marketing Expo (SMX) Advanced conference taking place in Seattle this June 2-3. To be filed under "Diagnosing Site Infrastructure Issues: The Big List of the Best Firefox Plugins according to Vanessa," the following short list answers the questions "Which browser should I be using to gather relevant SEO information, and which plug-ins should I select?" Notes by Vanessa. * Live HTTP Headers: View the HTTP response of a page. For instance, is the page returning a 200 response when it should be returning a 404? Is the redirect a 301 or 302? And speaking of redirects, how many hops does the server take you on before you land on the destination? And that’s just the kinds of things you can get from the status code. There’s all kinds of value to be found in header information. Is the page setting a cookie? Is it sending data compressed? What really is being downloaded? *Header Spy: Similar to Live HTTP Headers. I haven’t used this plugin, since Live HTTP Headers works pretty well for me. * Yslow: indeed, why slow? This is a great example of a tool that not only provides data, but shows you how to make that data actionable. * Flashblock: Replaces Flash with a play icon. I think this is great because the page loads without Flash, but you can view it if you want to. * Aardvark: View page elements, remove elements from pages, do lots of analysis. * ColorZilla: Easily grab any color that you see on a page, as well as lots of other little things. * HTML Validator: exactly as it sounds. * SEO For Firefox * SEO Quake: also has a toolbar and search results parameters that are customizable. * Search Status: this plugin provides a lot of the same information as SEO for Firefox, as well as things like robots.txt and keyword density. * SEO Link Analysis: provides lots of things beyond links including anchor text (helpful) and PageRank (perhaps not as helpful). I’m having trouble getting it installed though. * View Dependencies: shows you a list of all the dependent files and lets you open them to take a closer look. * Meta Info Sidebar: shows a lot of seo-related and meta data in a sidebar. * SEOpen: I haven’t used this, but it looks like it provides many of the same details as some of the other plugins. This list was in part recommended by Twitterers, which means that they all had preferences about which SEO tool to use. I think it’s all about finding the one that you like best. * View Rendered Source: A much easier-to-read version of view source. Since I use Firebug for viewing the source of a page, I haven’t found a need for this, although it looks like a pretty readable way to look at page source code. * ShowIP: See the IP of a page, and query info such as Whois. * Advanced Dork: Easy access to Google’s advanced operators.
Udi Manber, vice president in charge of search quality for Google, is at the top of the totem when it comes to Google search quality and ranking results. If there was a "Buck Stops Here" sign for the Google SERP's, it would likely be stationed on Udi's desk. Whenever Udi reveals something of substance about the Google algorithm, like he did in a recent sit-down with the granddaddy of all tech publications, Popular Mechanics, it's news. Q: What if Google makes a mistake? Can Udi change it? A: At Google we do not manually change results. For example, if we find for a particular query that result No. 4 should be result No. 1, we do not have the capability to manually change it. We made that decision not to put that capability in the algorithm—we have to go and actually change the algorithm. That is, we have to find what weakness in the algorithm caused that result and find a general solution to that, evaluate whether a general solution really works and if it’s better, and then launch a general solution. That makes the process slower, but it puts a lot more discipline on us and makes it more unbiased.
"With all the brains, talent, and creativity that make up the SEO world, it surprised us that no one had risen up and given the industry some t-shirt love. Maybe everyone is too busy watching results pages, gaming the engines, or generating serious online funds. All we know is sometimes an industry just needs some t-shirts." So begins the raison de' etre of SEOShirts.com where, just in time for short-sleeve season, you can invest in T-shirts that say it all in a few choice keywords: * PPC: The Lazy Man's SEO * My Mom ...Caught me stuffing my keywords * Will Blog for Food * Give ASK a Chance * Link Love Not War * Local Search: Mapped (in long sleeves) * I'll Show You My Keywords If You Show Me Yours * Stop the Senseless Outing of Paid Links
Is your Website's lexicon, er, text, too complicated for your visitors? Are you sure that site visitors understand the language on your Web pages? Now read this: The readability of your Web pages has a direct influence on sales. Many websites use technical language that is very difficult to understand for the average page surfer. The more complicated the text on your web pages, the more likely it is that a web surfer will leave the premises. Web surfers are impatient people. If they have to labor to understand your message, they will opt out of your site and into an easier place to land. Checking the readability of your web pages is not hard. We've included some online testing sites below. The Flesch Reading Ease test is a United States governmental standard to determine how easy a text is to read. It measures the approximate level of education necessary to understand the web page content. Higher scores indicate that the text is easier to read, and lower numbers mark harder-to-read texts. A high Reading Easy Score means that a text is easy to understand. The Grade Level shows the number of years of education that are required to understand the text. Here are the links: Juicy Studio Readabilty test: <http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php> Flesh cross-platform, open source readability calculator: <http://flesh.sourceforge.net/> Readability Calculators: <http://www.editcentral.com/gwt/com.editcentral.EC/EC.html> Now that was easy, wasn't it? ****************************************** Catch past installments of SearchWrite SearchNews in the |
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