Archive for the ‘Search Engines News’ Category
Saturday, December 1st, 2007 |
Two months ago, one of my content sites got completely flushed from the Live index. This was a clean content site, with enough content and incoming links. Due to the fact that even though I had a lot of #1 keywords on Live the traffic was insignificant I didn’t pay attention to this.
Once the Live webmaster tools were announced, I decided to give it a try. The tools that they are currently providing are not enough not raise my interest so I decided to test drive it with the banned (?) site.
Today, I saw that the site got back, more pages indexed and with more keywords in the SERPs (the traffic still sucks though).
Now I am going to submit a few more websites to see if the pattern repeats.
Posted in Microsoft, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 |
When the new Gmail version was made available, lots of new features were announced and than people started to point to new ones. But behind the great fireworks some other small changes with deep impact were made.
Here is an example on how some small changes can lead to feature awarness.
A few nights ago, my girlfriend called me that she saw that Google added, to the compose screen, the option to create invites for Gcal. While I knew that this was an pretty old feature, I knew that something has changed but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Happily, you can switch between the old and new interface and than I saw it:
Gmail old interface:
Gmail new interface:
(click on thumbnails for the bigger pictures)
What really changed so that feature become more vizible to the “regular” user:
- In the old version, the link to create new event was placed on the far right of the screen. Most people don’t move their eyes so far so is practically invisible even though it’s in front of your eyes.
- Labeling. In the original version, the feature was labeled “” Add event info”. That basically doesn’t say anything to “regular” users. What event? It’s an freakin email. What info should I add?(those questions appeared in the rare case they spotted it). In the new version, the label says “Add event invitation”. This label is more clear and in plain view.
Those 2 small changes might appear as insignificant to most of the people. But I am willing to bet a lot that the spike in usage after the roll out was pretty huge.
So, summing it up. Just because you use the internet on a daily basis and develop web apps that doesn’t mean that those are going to be user friendly. Not even if you are a huge, popular company. Hiring a team or an usability company, might not also guarantee your success but at least you have more chances than your competitors
Posted in Google, Information Architecture, Usability, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Sunday, November 18th, 2007 |
When I woke up this morning, I saw on Techcrunch that Google’s hunting season has moved toward Pay Per Post publishers. Since I have been denied becuase of my theme, I’ve just took another sip of coffee and moved over. Later I saw that John Chow has approached the subject too and I checked my PR.
Well, after the first flush (hunting those selling links) when I got from 5 to 2, now I am at very fresh ZERO :))). Well it looks that this one was an algorithmic one, flushing all the sites that had a Pay Per Post badge.
Is funny and is funny a lot. I really don’t care about how this site behaves in SERPs or in terms of PR, because this is a testing ground and not a traffic/money machine. But Google movements tend to have the opposite effect on the market. Instead of wiping out an entire industry that has a symbiotic nature, Google is in fact growing it stronger. At the end of the day, the winners are going to be the publishers and the looser will be Google.
And it will be the looser because it will be facing thousands of new stealth techniques.
Regarding my new shiny PR 0, I am very curious how this site will behave on the nex, regular PR update because I’ve removed all my link exchange scripts and the PPP badge.
Posted in Google, Search Engines News | No Comments »
Thursday, November 1st, 2007 |
I just received my first Adsense payment through Western Union. It went pretty smooth from 4 weeks (with checks) to 30 minutes.
The procedure is as follows:
- Once you pass 100usd you’ll get around 23-24 of the month a “Payment in progress” status in your Payment History tab
- Once the status changes to “Payment issued”, you can go to any Western Union office to get the money
- You will only need:
- Sender’s address (is on the details page of the payment)
- MTCN code (is on the details page of the payment)
- A valid government ID
- The other good news is that beside being fast you pay no fees. What you have earned, that’s what you get
Thanks Google 
Posted in Google | No Comments »
Saturday, September 1st, 2007 |
Well today I was looking for some Rammstein videos on Yahoo! search, when I saw the new video shortcut they provide.
Keeping the model from the images queries, they present an enhanced area that contains:
- Generic image with the band in the query
- 3 videos below the picture
- Link to band’s official homepage
- Links to albums, videos and lyrics (all point to Yahoo! Music)
- Small playlist of music samples
All in one a pretty nice widget that gives you a lot of information about a band and in the same time keeps you on the Yahoo domain.
The nice trick is the part where you click to see a video. Initially I have expected to open a new page or best case scenario an inline player like Google does. What happened was that a new layer was opened and the player was above the natural results.
Conclusions:
- At least in this area, Yahoo’s approach is far more useful than Google’s (they provide all the info that you’d might need in a small area)
- Yahoo is promoting their own domain and services without screwing with the natiral results. Is obvious for everybody that afterYouTube aquisition andthe universal search approach, Google’s alghoritm has been “optimized” to promote YouTube as natural relevant results
Posted in Yahoo | 2 Comments »
Friday, August 3rd, 2007 |
It looks that Google has updated the backlinks cout for a few of my sites. As usual incoming PR update in ~7-10 days
Posted in Google, Search Engines News | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 |
As reported on Google Blogoscoped, Google Analytics just got (for some users) a facelift. Previous users of Measuremap will recognize some familiar elements, and that’s so because the new version is a joint effort of teams from Google, Urchin and Measuremap.
More details about this release you’ll find here:
Beside the official announcements, there is also a great post by Avinash Kaushik that guides you through five levels of exploration of the new Google Analaytics:
- Notice the awesome new data interaction model.
- Take the enhanced “data discoverability” for a spin.
- Context is king! Find your context quickly.
- Ahh…. Segmentation is just a step away.
- Upgraded goodies: Schedule and email any report or dashboards, Better site overlay, Much nicer page level reporting and more.
Posted in Google | 2 Comments »
Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 |
After the somehow succesfull integration of the Yahoo! Messenger in the email client, Yahoo! goes a step forward and launches a standalone web based messenger. More details and a demo video can be seen here.
Google has also done similar steps in this direction, and their simple approach is more appealing to the geek crowd, while the Yahoo!’s colorful version seems to be more targeted to younger people
Posted in Yahoo | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 29th, 2007 |
If you are using the Google CSE, by now you already know that they are providing statistics about the usage. And also by now you must be a litlle confused about the reports.
Well, if you need more accurate data about the searches here is how to do it:
- Associate your Adsense Publisher ID with the CSE
- Login to Adsense and Reports -> Advanced Reports -> Choose product: AdSense for Search -> Top queries data -> Display report
- Now we are talking real data. And now you can specify any date range you want for your reports
Post inspired by Google Blogoscoped
Posted in Google | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 |
It seems like Google considers the refferals a relative success and they plan to go beyond their products and add new advertisers:
Many of you already use referrals to direct users to your favorite Google products. Now, with our new referrals beta, you can select products and services from our base of AdWords advertisers. This is good news for those of you who have wanted to use referrals in the past, but couldn’t find a product to match your site’s content. With the referrals beta, you can search for products that match up directly with your site’s content. And you can customize your referral units to match the look and feel of your site, making it easier than ever to find a referral ad that fits in seamlessly with your site’s design and content. (source)
If you are interested you can apply to be a beta tester for this program
Posted in Google | No Comments »
