'google' Category

• Google, Transparency, Social Media and PR

  Google has a major strength and a major weakness, and they are the same. It is an engineering-lead business. That gives it some unique capabilities and some weaknesses. Before you make too many assumptions about me, let’s disabuse some of them:

  I used to be a Top Contributor in the AdWords Help Forum (that’s a designation [...]

  March 3rd, 2010

• Duplicate Content, And Blog Spammers

  Around half the people I talk to, about Search Engine Optimisation, are terrified of duplicate content on their own websites. But 80% or more of the spam that I see, is massively duplicated. Why do real site owners, with valuable content but multiple paths to it, fear duplicate penalties from Google, but spammers who endlessly [...]

  February 28th, 2010

• Google Hates Me, I’m Being Penalised. Or Not.

  Great story from a Google staffer about how his site started to disappear from rankings. I’ve seen clients lose *huge* chunks of traffic for very similar reasons. Sometimes the reason you don’t show isn’t for the obvious search engine optimisation reasons or that you’ve lost Google’s love. Sometimes there’s a simple technological explanation…

  February 25th, 2010

• Google Product Search, Ciao, Foundem and the right to make a buck in search results

  The Telegraph gives some details about the cases being brought against Google in Europe, about product search results. Who’s complaining, and about what, makes for some interesting speculation.
  Let’s have a look at what Google Product Search is, and does, first… so we’ve got some context.
  Google Product Search
  It’s free. Anyone can sign up, and feed products. [...]

  February 24th, 2010

• Social Network results in Google Search Results

  Personalised Search - how personal is it? Well, Bill Slawski, author of the SEO by the Sea blog, is someone for whom I’ve a lot of respect. So he’s in my social network. And when I went looking for recent articles on the uses of Google’s Website Optimiser for SEO purposes, look what I found:

  You [...]

  February 22nd, 2010

• Google Is Better On Caffeine?

  Google continually fiddles with the way in which search results are ranked and presented. Usually we find out after the fact. This time, Google is telling us beforehand, and inviting comments, on the Google Webmaster Blog. What’s the significance?

  Early warning of rank changes - helpful to know, and there’s a feedback form at the bottom [...]

  August 11th, 2009

• Making Money With Google AdWords

  Good summary article from Google specifying all the ways that you can’t make money online, and some of the ways that you can safely make money with an outline of the techniques that should work. On the AdWords Help Forum, users asking about various scams are a common feature. More common since the credit crunch [...]

  July 10th, 2009

• Blind Search Testing

  Microsoft employee Michael Kordahi has a new and suddenly popular tool - Blind Search. It presents search results from the three search engines side by side, with branding removed. Until a few hours ago, you could see which search engine users were voting for - until some git decided to game the service.
  As Michael himself [...]

  June 8th, 2009

• Google Analytics - Toolbox Summary

  When I start working with clients that want to learn about AdWords and Analytics, I often end up describing the same collection of tools and techniques, again and again. This new posting in the Analytics Blog is a great summary of the FireFox tools to troubleshoot Google Analytics, and adds tools for MSIE. I’ve developed [...]

  April 29th, 2009

• Google Helps US Small Businesses

  In yet another US-Centric move the world leader in search engines and search marketing offers a US-only initiative for small business. If I lived in the US, I’d be tolerably happy with this. Small businesses account for a large fraction of economic activity, and are often hard hit in a recession.
  However, the UK has [...]

  April 29th, 2009