Search Engines || Information Architecture
A litlle off topic:
Adobe bought Macromedia. Couldn’t believe that and I thought it was a late April Fool’s prank
Here is the official press release
I think it’s almost one of the biggest aquisition as relevance I have ever seen.
This seems like Adobe is out on killing competition. What next? Corel?
Now….I really don’t wanna see prices on the next Adobe products
Design Tutorials just launched today with some very promising articles. At this moment you can find the following categories:
This morning found on RSS some talk about the next Yahoo News. A few moments ago Rusty Brick pointed out to the beta url. Here you have it:
As for the comments…here are my 2 cents:
>>There’s something very sissy-looking about the tabs on that page.
Oh c’mon…they are cute 
>>Those tabs suck.
Why? Very useful. Lot of info in a small place. Like them
>>They should be purple and yellow.
Again…why? I addmit the contrast is not so good
>> That’s a drastic change for yahoo…too drastic…
Drastic is a neutral term. I think the new sleak design fits them. The only problem …is a big one. They should keep the same lines or at least in part through all their services
My favourite option at first glance? IM this story. Of course only on Yahoo Messenger
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Google fails again. If you use more than 1 keyword Google’s spellchecker gives you no results and no spelling suggestions, while Yahoo does a pretty good job.
Try for example:
Google: mambo cms show page totle
Yahoo: mambo cms show page totle
A year ago I have decided to switch one of my pro bono sites from simple HTML to a Content Management System. The first and almost single choice was Mambo CMS.
Now the site has almost 150 pages and almost all are doubled by PDF versions (Mambo option).
What was interesting was the behaviour with search engines. Googlebot, Slurp and MSN come almost on a daily basis but the results show up the following numbers:
Google: 118 pages
Yahoo: 4 pages
MSN: 7 pages
From the early beginings, Google has gradually increased the number of pages giving a greater relevance to the PDF versions. BUT. On Yahoo and MSN those pages have been from the beginings and stayed like that.
The ideea is that the site had the URLs nonSEF and I think this was the reason for the low numbers. Today I have activated the SEF URLs and I’ll monitor if anything will change.
The site has very good incoming links and a lot of relevant content so this could be the only factor that prevents deep indexing.
To be continued…
I have installed it for testing and among the things I want ported to Yahoo are:
I couldn’t test the interaction features because…none of my MSN contacts use it anymore. That says a lot about the MSNFobia
What is ROR?
ROR (Resources of a Resource) is an exciting new website content description tool and format. It makes it very easy to describe the content, objects, and structure of your website so search engines and other web applications can better find and understand your information.
For example if you are selling products, ROR enables you to document your product names, descriptions, prices, images, availability, affiliate programs, etc. Or if your site or blog provides information on a given topic, it allows you to describe how this information is organized (sitemap, topics, categories, new information, archive, blogroll, etc). ROR also provides terms for documenting objects such as contacts, articles, newsletter, feeds, images, audio, links, reviews, privacy policy, copyrights, and more.
ROR information can be easily added to your website by adding a ROR File called ror.xml. To create the file ROR provides templates and examples. It also provide a ROR File Editor, which will extract information from your website and allow you to describe it further. Larger websites can also generate ROR files from their databases.
Why Describe?
But why is it important to describe your website? Well, consider this phrase: “We offer a 10% discount on all our products until Mother’s Day”. While these words mean a lot to your visitors, they unfortunately won’t mean much to a search engine or shopping search engine. Language is extremely complex and it will take time even for Google to elevate search to such levels of sophistication. And that’s just one language, English.
So for now, to communicate your product information to shopping search engines you typically need to provide a feed (a machine-readable description of your products), and re-submit that feed to each engine each time the information changes. And to make matters worse, none of these feeds have the same format, so you also have to learn each format.
Another Approach
ROR suggests a better approach. Since search engines already come to your site to read text information about your products, it makes sense to also read additional information like prices, image URLs, discounts, etc. This way, you only change the information once, in your ROR file, and that’s it. Product information is just one example but it illustrates this issue rather well.
ROR information can also be displayed on your website in a generic fashion so visitors can quickly and easily find information, without the need to re-learn or remember the structure and navigation of each website they visit. For that purpose, ROR provides an Info Button. The button reads the information directly from your ROR file.
ROR simply makes a lot of sense! It’s powerful, easy, and very flexible.
ROR your Website, Spread the Word
You can get your ROR file at http://www.rorweb.com, it only takes a few minutes for a basic file. You can always add more information later. You can also help spread the word by adding this article on your website, or a link to it.
Happy RORing!
The ROR Team
http://www.rorweb.com
[You may reprint this article on your website, blog, newsletter, or magazine as long as you don't modify its content or author information.]
Saturday evening will be the time for the weekly analysis of Yahoo’s 360 indexability.
On the first post things weren’t so good but that was quite normal due to the fact that was immediately after launch. What was curious then was the domination of MSN search in the number of the indexed pages.
Let’s see scores for today:
Google: 3860 pages
Yahoo: 9370 pages (WOW)
MSN: 130 pages
What is interesting today is the clear supremacy of Yahoo over Google. In a previous post I was dissapointed of Yahoo on not indexing properly their services. In a way is logical to do that. Who wants to search within their profiles should use their search. But that’s not a reason enough though. Now they learnt something and even better they applied it.
Now. What those number tell us:
1. Already there is a large number of active users
2. 360 is findable and in the next period we will see it more on results
3. Being visible, quality content will get feedback and will motivate the users on being active
Edit: While writing this post I was thinking when this serial analysis will stop. Well 2 Kents later (damn there is no Kent page…makes u wonder) I figured it out. I will stop it when the number will be double than those:
Google: 8.110.000
Yahoo: 35,700,000 (hey I wasn’t expecting this one. Are they taking steroids or something else???)
MSN: 26,657 (yeah yeah great job Microsoft. Hope that Longhorn will not be as “good”)
Anybody feeling lucky to figure out what I am speaking about?
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Good examples of marketing:
1. Keeping 360 alive. On the friends list, the order is given by the content shared. K. What means that. Let’s say you are on a public person friend list. By sharing content you will always be on his homepage among the visible friends. By the rule of association you become tied with his image. Vanity is Al Pacino’s favourite sin….and apparently of Yahoo’s also.
2. Gmail had 1G. Yahoo will have 1G. Apparently the size does matter and not the quality. Gmail is better because of its free pop3 and they could have stayed at 1G without problems. But the crowd wants size and not quality. It was logic that they will raise at 2G BUT doing it without some trick would have been just a lame reaction to Yahoo’s move. The result? Instead of poping-up in your face 2G they showed you a gradually filling of the amount. On the front page they show you a fast moving counter with megs flowing into the users accounts. Result? A nice trick. More attention. The impression of fluidity. The felling of a dynamic company (which they lack lately with their use of long beta periods)
Good jobs PR guys 
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K. First was 360 . Than they tried catching up with Gmail…but the main battle between Yahoo and Google is taking place in fact on search engine users. And tonight is the first big offensive
We’re releasing a new index tonight. You should see a lot of new content in the index as well as fluctuations in the rankings of results from previous searches. If you have any feedback for us about the new index please email: ystfeedback@yahoo.com.
Now, grab a beer, popcorn and let the games begin
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