Ok, I know some of you guys have probably had this interface for the past couple of weeks already, however it has only just appeeared for me and I’m kinda annoyed that it has. I can understand why there have been some design changes, but the first thing that really struck me was the similarity between the new Google results page, and the existing Bing results page. Like seriously, of all search engines, you go and copy Bing….
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Australian SEO Rankings Dropped on Google
Ok, I haven’t blogged for awhile due to a busy lifestyle which is keeping me very far away from my website, as well as Twitter for thoes who follow me. Anyways, I was using www.seo-browser.com to check out how my website looks on a text browser, and to my surprise I fould hundreds of spamy links on the footer of my homepage. Atfirst I thought www.seo-browser.com was just broken as I would never add random links to spam websites. But it turns outI got hacked!
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Google Launches Real Time search, Time to say goodbye to Twitter Search
I guess we all saw it coming, it was really only a matter of time before Google invests in having real time search results at a click of a button like Twitter. Ofcourse, the difference between Twitter search and Google is that Twitter only shows tweets where as Google shows actual quality results (including tweets). Come on, we all know Twitter is dead, its really only a matter of months before people realises this.
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This is a blog post to see how quickly I get index
Well, like all SEO geeks, I am very curious as to how quickly I get indexed. The last time I actually kept track (a few months ago), my blog entry was indexed in approximately 7mins on Google.com.au. I am assuming this post will be indexed at about the same time, however I’m going to take a screenshot to keep record of how long it takes Google to index my blog posts. Well here we go, *fingers crossed* =)
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Text Ads in Google’s Image Search?! Woot?
Here I was minding my own business, running a quick image search for cars and to my surprise, I saw text ads above the images, yes Google Adwords text ads above images. Ok, this may not be new for people in other countries but I am pretty sure this is new in Australia (unless I am super behind with whats happening at Googleplex).
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Google Knol – A wikipedia competitor but will it win?
Looks like Google has finally decided to launch a user generated encyclopedia (pretty much Wikipedia but owned by Google) called Google Knol. Already having stiff competition on the playing field, which consists of Wikipedia, Scholarpedia and Helium, will Google Knol really make that much of a difference?
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Amazon tells Google Teleport to shove it
Amazon, the worlds largest online retailer of books has given Google a big slap in the face over their new Teleporting site search bar. As per my previous post regarding Google’s second search bar, which was named Teleport or Teleporting, this feature provided users with a method of searching deeper within a selected website and helps Google increase revenue (as users are being exposed to more ads). This site search bar was developed under pressure from their investors to “Go back to their core business and raise revenue”.
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Official Sync for Outlook & Google Calendar – Thank God!
I’ve been scratching my head for awhile now regarding Google calendar and how to sync it with everything else that matters (mainly Outlook since thats permanently on for me). Unfortunately, there has been no way to do this without performing some crazy hack which is usually not a 2-way sync between Outlook and Google calendar. Chances are that I am not the only one who has been having headaches over the calendar syncing issues as Google has finally decided to give us a hand by release a little program that syncs Outlook with Google calendar – Thank god!
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Google’s second search bar helps users teleport!
Google has recently (Yesterday to be exact) added a second search bar within the Search results page to help users fine tune their results. This is in hope that users can get more specific results for a broader topic. This is what Google calls “Teleporting”.
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Scraper Duplicate Content Sites – Do they affect your search rankings?
In short no, the worse that could happen is that you get frustrated another website has stolen your work and repurposed it as their own. I currently have atleast 50 scraper websites with my content on them, be it abstracts of my blog posts or complete rip offs, however none of them have affected my rankings on Google (I don’t really care about Yahoo or MSN Live to tell the truth).
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Website Delisted from Google – Wonder why hmm
Well, I’ve been shamelessly promoting my new educational websites in previous posts and everything was going fine until today. I had a quick health check on two of my international websites – Learning How Germany and Learning How Italy, and to my surprise both of them have been delisted from Google.
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Google Adwords CPC Inflation – More Money More Money
I am not sure if its just me but are the CPC on Google Adwords starting to inflate alot faster than usual? I have been running accounts for clients on multiple verticals and have started to see an increasing trend on CPC inflation. I know Australia is going through inflation but is that directly affecting the online market?
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Wohoo, page rank toolbar update – now I’m PR4
Finally, after waiting for like 6 months, Google finally decided to update the page rank on their toolbars. Though I know it doesn’t really mean anything, its always great to see that you’re doing something right by having a significantly higher Page Rank than before (do note that my previous page rank was zero, hence any movement is good).
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Microsoft Live Search upgrades in hopes to gain market share in search
Microsoft has finally decided that they don’t want to be number two (or three or four for that matter) anymore when it comes to search and has supposedly matched Google’s search relevancy as well as surpassed Yahoo’s search relevancy. As with many news that comes out of Microsoft, you need to take it with a grain of salt and hearing that they have beaten Yahoo at their own game (which mind you they have been doing for 13 years) over night seems like a bit of a stretch to me.
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Touch Graph – A way to find relationship between websites via URLs or Keywords
I just came across an incredible relationship mapping tool which determines website relationships via either Keywords or URLs as seen by Google. The tool itself is simple enough, programmed in Java and presented in a very neat looking web 2.0 type of structure. However, the information which it presents is incredibly insightful and very very useful.
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Google Webmaster tools got an facelift
Just noticed that Google webmaster tools received a face lift over the weekend, not only that, it seems like it has been given some new features! With the new design Google Webmaster tools (GWT) seems to be significantly more streamline, easier to use with the Ajax features and atleast more organised.
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Cheese on the Moon? Google says Yes
Just made an interesting discovery today after reading B&T, it turns out that Google actually hides easter eggs (basically a nerdy way to say special hidden treats, usually used to describe secret locations/items in games) in their products. As everyone should know already, Google has always been trying to be fun and innovative with their products, but since all of them are free (atleast the ones we actually use), I guess it gives them the right to do things which other companies dare not do to their paid products.
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Ad placement formula change for Google Adwords
Seems the guys at the plex have decided to updated the way Google text based advertisements are being displayed and organised. This change should help improve the way ads are promoted to the top position on Google search engine result pages.
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Supplemental Results Tag Removed from Google SERPs
Just when I thought I found the answer to looking up Supplemental result pages within the Google Index, the giant search engine decides to completely remove the notion of “supplemental results” from their index. This doesn’t actually mean that they have removed all supplemental pages, they just removed the “label” of supplemental results from their index, where by giving us as webmasters no indication of whether or not our pages are seen as low quality or not.
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How to check Supplementary Results on Google
I have recently been riddled with supplementary results related questions at work and from clients, mainly after the recent Google update (Buffy) in April I believe. Unfortunately, Google also decided to remove the supplementary results checking command which we have all depended on for quiet some time. For those who can’t remember what it was here it is again.