Social Networking and Web 2.0

It's easy for laymen to develop the impression that Search Engine Optimization is about keywords and tag and such, but I came across o very interesting article the other day by David Snyder that looks at a more foundational concept: information architecture.

According to Snyder:

One of the most overlooked concepts in the construction of a website is how the information for that website will be structured. Too often the organization of this information is constructed without any usability or Search Engine Optimization in mind.

In other words, keywords and link exchanges only go so far in promoting a poorly designed website. And a website's design can in and of itself prevent it from getting more than a mediocre page rank.

People just don't use websites that aren't, well, usable. IN Snyder's words, poor information environment design will lead to user abandonment, due to poor or counter intuitive navigation. Think about how often you get fed up with a website's design and just click the red X…

You can read Snyder's piece here.

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About three weeks ago, Microsoft was granted a new patent with the name Web Spam Classification Using Query Dependent Data. Although this patent application was filed by Microsoft, all major search engines probably use similar methods to classify web pages. Do search engines think that your website is spam?

A number of news sources (paidContent.org, NY Times, WIRED News) are reporting that Founder and CEO Jerry Yang is stepping down as head of Yahoo - just as soon as the company can replace him.

Kara at All Things Digital has a copy of the memo from Jerry tendering his resignation.

We ran a piece earlier this month on the problems Yahoo has been facing. Jerry was on the spot at the Web 2.0 conference at the time. Deals to solve Yahoo's financial problems have fallen through with both Google and Microsoft in the recent past.

It will be interesting to see the direction Yahoo takes under new leadership…

© Nautical9

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SEOmoz Blog had an interesting piece today about ways to “buy” Links without getting slammed for it by Google.

We all know that traffic breeds traffic and the key to starting the process is coming up with some good external Links - people linking to your content from outside your site. Google has made it clear that simply buying those external Links is unacceptable. It makes the nice people at Google feel used and manipulated (and we all know how unreasonable they can be when they feel hurt).

So how do you get those first few Links? Randfish has some suggestions…

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Image# 5433732

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Do Links to other websites have a positive or a negative effect on their Google rankings of your website? Are there right and wrong links? Google has published an official statement.

It's been the Week from Hell for Yahoo CEO and Founder Jerry Yang.

First, from CNET: “Bowing to federal regulators' antitrust concerns, Google pulled the plug on a search-ad partnership with Yahoo that would have given the latter major new revenue.” According to CNET, that 10-year deal would have placed Google ads on some Yahoo search results, and the companies would have shared resulting revenue. Google made the announcement Wednesday.

Then Yang got tohad to speak to the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. In the words of one commentator, Yahoo has now been left at the alter twice this year - first by Microsoft back in February and now by Google. Getting up in front of the cameras the day after being dumped can't be fun. It's a lonely world…

Yahoo's biggest problem now is a lack of vision. Okay, its first biggest problem is a lack of money and the falling price of its stock. But its second biggest problem is a lack of vision. TechCrunch writer Michael Arrington said last week that six months ago when Yang “took the stage at the D Conference to talk about the state of his business… he painted a picture of a Yahoo that was spinning in circles with no clear future.” Today, nothing has changed. And in the 42 minute interview at the Web 2.0 Summit, Yang goes back and forth between describing Yahoo as a platform company and a destination site.

The question now for Yahoo is how much longer Yang will be CEO…

© Yodel Anecdotal

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If you want your website to be indexed by search engines, it is important that your site has a good link architecture. Here are five tips that will help you to improve your link architecture as well as your Search Engine rankings.

Submitedge published a good post last week on the basic necessity of learning Search Engine Optimization (SEO) even if you outsource the actual task of SEO to a consultant.

Even if you hire your SEO out to experts, knowing what is good and bad SEO is necessary to be sure you are receiving proper handling.

Original content, natural Links, good keywords - and the next thing you know you've got an acceptable page rank.

But it's not quite as simple as it sounds. And you have to work at it constantly.

Read the Submitedge piece: Why You Should Learn SEO.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Steve Wignall

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Google has reached a settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in a lawsuit that dates back to 2005, according to paidContent.org.

Google will pay $125 million into a fund for authors. The Money “will be used to set up a Book Rights Registry that will let U.S. copyright holders register their works so that they can get a cut of any resulting online retail and ad sales.” Google scans books and makes them available through its book search, http://books.google.com/.

Many observers expect that Google and the book industry will now start to work cooperatively to place copyrighted works online and charge for them.

“We're trying to create a new structure where there will be more access to out-of-print books, with benefits both to readers and researchers and to the rights holders of those books - authors and publishers,” Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the publishers association, said Tuesday in an interview with the Associated Press.

According to the Associated Press, Google will now to contribute $125 million to the fund, including about $34.5 million for “a nonprofit Book Rights Registry that will store copyright information and coordinate payments.” Google will also pay $60 per completed work for the millions of copyrighted books already scanned. It will also pay legal fees for the Authors Guild and publishing association. Finally, income from the scanned books will be divided up, with 63 percent going to the copyright holders and 37 percent going to Google.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Roel Smart

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The words that are used to link to your website improve your Search Engine rankings for these words on Google. But how long should the link text be? Which words will be considered? Is there an optimal length for text Links?

This month, the Google Webmaster blog published an article in which Google’s Maile Ohye officially explained what it takes to get high rankings in Google’s search result pages.

By adding the options for its advertisers to target users within cities and zip codes, Yahoo has provided more detailed advertising options to users of its Panama Platform

An excerpt from clickz

Yahoo's new Zip code targeting comes with an interactive mapping interface marketers can use to choose cities and Zip codes. The city menu includes about 3,500 municipalities in the U.S and Canada.

Both Google and Yahoo use IP targeting to identify audiences by region, and both offer disclaimers that mention the approach's imperfect accuracy. Yahoo's campaign targeting notes, “Geo-targeting accuracy is not guaranteed and may vary depending on the level of targeting selected, as well as other factors.”

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Google is making the Profiles of the users of its various services searchable and also a standard across many of its services. So far there were different profiles being created for Orkut, Maps etc. With a centralized profile, Google may be gearing up to provide a set of services based around easing the usage of their various services.

An excerpt from Google Operating System

The new Google profiles are already available in Shared Stuff, Google Maps, Google Reader and will be added to other web applications. For example, in Google Maps you'll find the link to your profile at the top of the page.

Profiles are public and contain basic information about yourself: a nickname (the real name is displayed only to your contacts), your occupation, your location, a list of Links, a photo and a short description. They are embedded as iframes in pages that showcase user-generated content (personalized maps, shared bookmarks).

Yahoo had announced earlier that part of its new strategy was to provide a social network encompassing all its services. It seems that in many ways Google is also looking to do a similar thing with its services.

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The Semantic Web is a grand initiative to make the whole of the Internet machine readable. At the Web 3.0 conference & Expo the discussions were more in tune with how Semantic web would be profitable

Advertising is the main source of income for services on the web and one aim of Semantic Web enthusiasts would be to make advertising more relevant and context based. Its no surprise that most users of the web find advertisements annoying and would love to have their services ad-free. The aim of the Semantic Web could be to bridge that gap between acceptance to annoyance.

Making content more understandable to machines makes it better to crunch more information that could ultimately help in pushing more relevant ads.

An Excerpt from InternetNews

Google is best known as the world's biggest Search Engine, but it wouldn't have achieved anywhere near it's level of success without its keyword advertising system that delivers relevant, contextual text ads next to search results, while providing a steady revenue stream. Amiad Solomon, CEO of Peer39, a developer of Semantic advertising services, said advertising will also be key to driving Web 3.0's growth.

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Many people will do anything do get on Google’s first result page. That’s why some webmasters regularly come up with new spam methods to get on Google’s first result page. Here are two new methods that people use to get high rankings on Google.

The concept of Wikipedia when applied to Search does make sense, but add in the fact that you have a whole business domain around search rankings and the results are difficult to guess. In its attempt to make the choice of community shape a Search Engine, Wikia announced the Wikia Intelligent Search Extensions.

An excerpt from BusinessWeek

How would WISEApps work? The Washington Post WISEApp, for instance, lets people who type in “Barack Obama” or “John McCain” get Post news stories directly on the Wikia Search results page. Or if you search “JFK to LAX,” the travel search service Kayak.com will provide a small search box near the top of the results that show a list of fares between New York City and Los Angeles. Other Web publisher partners include AccuWeather.com, the user-driven news aggregation site Digg, and news service Thomson Reuters, among others.

The concept is based on the fact that ultimately its the choice of users that would weigh in the rankings of results and spammers would not have a long term impact. The model has been successful across Wikipedia. But in search, there is little tolerance towards inapt results.

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Search Engine Optimization is not about getting as much traffic as possible. It’s about getting the right kind of website traffic. Sometimes, less traffic can be better. This week, we’re showing you that your sales can increase if your website gets less traffic. If you optimize your web pages correctly, you can multiply your revenue without working more.

Following APIs to embed media in a website, Google has released API that makes it possible to embed Books into webpages. The books are available via Google Book Search.

An excerpt from Google Operating System

“As on the Book Search site itself, you can search within the book, zoom in and out on the page, and browse up to 20% of the book,” explains Inside Google Book Search. The new widget is already used by online catalogs like WorldCat.org and social book sites like weRead to preview books.

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Couple weeks back Google's grand mobile plan got into motion with the release of the G1 handset by T-Mobile. With Android software stack at its core, G1 is the first of the handsets that will seek to make the web experience take a whole new meaning. With desktops, the internet was about information that was not exactly part of life. Of course you would have your social networks, blogs and media sites but they were not really there where ever you went. With mobiles, that bridge is being crossed. A constant companion to the present generation, mobiles are undoubtedly the next platform of mainstream computing.

The main competitors in this space are Nokia, Apple, RIM, Microsoft and Google. Though hardware is what presently sets the limits on phones, it will be software that will come to rule in the future. Google has grasped that concept pretty well, which explains why it did not venture into a hardware and software product (much like Apple). The freedom to develop and download apps coupled with affordable handsets is what Google is targeting to gain a foothold in the mobile space.

Microsoft is clearly an established force in the mobile space. With 50+ handset makers along with 150+ telecommunication companies backing the Windows Mobile products, Android or even Apple for that matter have a long way to go to emerge as serious competition to Microsoft. Its interesting that Nokia has taken a web based turn in its mobile strategy as well, developing the Ovi Portal and acquiring Map maker Navteq. Among all the contenders, Nokia is the most best placed because of its market share and variety of products catering to different customers.

With the stiff competition one hopes that security is an area that is not overlooked. Apple's approach to test out applications that air on App Store is a great initiative. Google's free for all approach is a bit scary in that sense. There is a humongous amount of information in one's mobile phone (passwords, account numbers, contacts, emails, photos, videos) and there are no limits to the ends that such information can be put to. Hopefully solutions that can monitor and block applications as soon as they are hosted (automated behavioral testing in a sand-boxed environment ?) will be developed.

The coming years will be very exciting for the mobile space. Though the same cannot be said for mobile developers.

© chadmill

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Many of the methods that promise high Search Engine rankings are basically spam. Google doesn’t like spam at all and if Google finds out that your website contains spam elements, your website will be penalized. Will Google forgive you if you remove the spam from your site?