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New Google Update Algorithm Sets New Declaration Of War To Web Spammers

michelle — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:45:15 +0000

With small steps towards great achievements, Google announced yesterday, on 24^th of April, the implementation of a “webspam algorithm update” that Matt Cutts, leading Google Engineer, defined as “another step to reward high-quality sites”.

Numerous attempts and even more efforts of fighting against spamming techniques such as link schemes, keyword stuffing or cloaking known in the past, this one was long anticipated, particularly after the last major update, “Panda”, dating back from February last year.

This new algorithm is supposed to result into ranking changes to “provide a great user experience” and to reward webmasters relying on white hat SEO techniques, as opposed to those who artificially increase their page ranks with “black hat webspam”.

The initial prediction made by Matt Cutts, which referred to the need of blocking “over-optimization”, was yesterday corrected with the mention that it is not SEO the one that Google tries to put the bite on, but “bad” SEO or spamming SEO practices.

In order to avoid the disclosure of information that will allow interested parties gaming once again the search results and reduce the effectiveness of this new measure, Google refrained from providing details with regards to what websites will end in the grip or what specific spam filter adjustments were implemented. Nevertheless, an important mention was made in this direction: the algorithm should impact approximately 3% of the English, German, Arabic and Chinese queries and about 5% of those in Polish or other languages widely known for heavily spamming.

To all those still confused, there are four important things that should be kept in mind following the yesterday movement:

There is no actual strategic novelty as Google has been fighting against web spam techniques for a long time and webmasters were continuously advised to only rely on fair SEO tactics;
The real target are the manipulative optimization strategies;
The traditional SEO is, in fact, still encouraged with Matt Cutts himself stating that Google’s “advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods”;
The change is supposed to be even less obvious than “Panda” update, which affected four times more queries – 12% as opposed to only 3%.

With other words, as long as pages will no longer overuse keywords while reducing content quality, duplicate content, artificially increase the number of back link exchanges or JavaScript redirections, cloaking and doorway pages, the algorithm will have no negative effects on them.

However, within less than 24 hours from the announcement, there are already voices claiming that Google displays even poorer results for now. Considering that the same situation happened right after “Panda” implementation, like with any other change, it appears that we are all supposed to wait and see what will happen in the future and what other new adjustments Google will bring to light.

Google + In A Simpler, More Beautiful And More Effective Design

michelle — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 11:20:12 +0000

With over 170 million people who already upgraded their profiles to Google+, designing this social layer in a new light, one to measure up with the high aspirations of Google, became a necessity. And the much anticipated event took place Wednesday, on 11^th of April.

According to Vic Gundotra, one of the main players behind the ambitious project, the goal of this big redesign was for users to “find it easier to use and nicer to look at”. All the efforts have therefore been directed in four main directions: navigation, conversations, hanging out and exploring.

New options of personalizing your applications

Everyone already familiarized with Google+ remembers the static icons representing the applications, which were displayed on the top of the page. Now they are all included into a dynamic ribbon placed on the left side, allowing users to:

- drag and drop the icons in order to establish their own order and have easier access on the applications they use most often

- hide applications they no longer need by simply moving them on the “More” section

- access a number of quick actions available for those apps by simply moving the mouse on top of them

Google makes no secret from its intentions of coming up with a “Next Big Feature” to be included on that flexible ribbon.

New chatting experiences

Sharing information with friends from regardless what circles was just a first goal of Google+. The next step, which we are all currently witnessing, is about successfully combining utility and beauty. Users’ experiences should be significantly improved with:

-videos and photos in full bleed format

-“conversation cards” to provide an overview of the conversations developed by friends

-an “activity drawer” designed to keep you updated with reactions that community has regarding the content you posted

All these have the purpose of supporting and encouraging Google+ users to share regardless what type of information.

Hanging out gets a new statute

The Hangouts feature is even more highlighted by receiving its own dedicated page where you should be able to:

-access a constantly updating list with invitations from friends on the applications or activities they consider to be the most interesting

-try both “on air” and public hangouts which will allow you to watch numerous live broadcasts and make new connections with other Google+ users

-view a top of the most popular Google+ hangouts available on what is called a “rotating billboard”

Because of the positive perspectives in terms of content discoverability that this new option provides, predictions with regards to future integrations of YouTube content have already been made.

Improved exploring experiences

The Google+ redesign intended to cover more than the three above mentioned improvements. Users can now adjust their profiles to include photos of larger dimensions and change the way their chat list will be displayed by choosing to have their friends listed front and center. And every novelty of the network will potentially become viral by being promoted on a new special “Explore” page.

Features such as the cover photo are said to have been inspired from the Facebook Timeline, yet the navigation ribbon fully customizable represents a real novelty in terms of social media mainstreaming. Echoes of the reactions that worldwide Google+ users have on these upgrades did not hesitate to show.

Step by Step Guide: Make Your Business A Real Presence On Google Plus

michelle — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:14:58 +0000

Being updated with the latest trends in terms of online promotion strategies is one of the most important things when it comes to insuring the success of your business. And considering that social networking is an important part of the process, a page on Google+, which is a tool engineered specifically to serve business promotion on Google, represents, without a doubt, a must have.

Therefore, below presented would be the basic steps for you to create a Google+ page and start taking advantage of all its features:

1.Creating Your Business Page

In order to create a Google+ page, a Gmail account will be necessary. If you already have one or more than one, make sure you chose the address that would be most representative for your business, not a personal one, irrelevant for the content you are about to promote. If not, spend a few minutes to fill in a form and have your brand new account.

Consequently, go to http://plus.google.com/pages/create , where you will be greeted by a wizard that will guide you step by step and show you how to get things started.

Chose an option to represent your business’ activity field from the list you will be provided with, give your page a name, write the URL of your business’ website, chose a category representing the industry you activate in, the type of content you will post – so that potential age restrictions to be applied, and then click the “create” button.

2.Setting Up the Page:

Once the page is created, you will have to add some basic information on your profile by filling in the “Tagline” and the “Profile photo” – the tagline should summarize your business concept while the photo is advisable to represent your business logo.

3.Start Sharing :

With the real purpose of a Google+ page being the one of letting everyone know about your business, there is no point in promoting an empty page. Therefore, once the page is setup, make sure you make a couple of post entries so that users visiting it for the first time will not find a blank page!

Adding content is similar with posting on a Facebook Wall, only that there are more benefits as you get to:

a. type the text

b. add the hyperlinks you intend to promote

c. choose the circles or persons that will have access on your post

d. click on the ‘Share” button

Repeat these steps for as many posts as you intent to display.

4.Identify your page URL :

In order to later make references to your Google+ page on other internet pages, you will need to identify your page URL. Therefore, after logging in to your Google+ account, look at the left top corner and you will see a scrolling down option for displaying your business pages.

After selecting your page, look at the address bar and make sure you write down that address, which represents your business page URL. You can inspect ImYours.co.uk Website Google+ Page to see the correct URL syntax .

Bing Mobile Devices SEO URL Strategy – One url to rule then all

temi — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 21:00:00 +0000

Bing's one URL per content item

Microsoft search engine, Bing has a new approach to how it treat url of mobile websites, the approach can best be summed up by a sentence that sounds like something what you get when you cross Lord of the rings with a futuristic sci-fi : one url to rule them all!
Well, if you look at the rational behind this new approach, you will see that it makes perfect sense. At the moment, websites tends to have one url for their main site (usually designed for desktop computers) another url for the version of the site designed for mobile devices. A very good example is the site Im yours, their main website is www.imyours.co.uk , their mobile version url is http://m.imyours.co.uk/ , at the moment both urls are seen as separate urls but with the new Bing mobile url strategy, the second url will not be taken into account much.

In the blog where this was announced, the reason given for the new strategy includes the fact that having just one url for both mobile and desktop platform will reduce the crawl rated and even save you money as you will not need to build and maintain two websites, one or desktop and one for mobile devices. The reason webmasters do this at the moment is to ensue mobile platform browsers render web pages well as mobile version of website are usually a strip down version of the desktop computer version. Bing gave tips that help you implement their so call “one URL per content item” strategy in a document called Designing Web Sites for Phone Browsers

It is quite important that webmasters take note or this shift in mobile site optimisation strategy as its how things is set to go in the future. Apparently the mobile market was worth about £152 Billion in 2011, it is forecasted that it will be worth about £425 Billion by 2015, so you cannot ignore optimising you contents for mobile platform any more.

You can find out more info on how to make your site mobile compatible and find mobile phone friendly sites at mobile directory.