Web Moves Blog

Google Chrome is currently world’s third popular browser, after the Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox. Although it is only two-and-something “years old”, the Chrome has quickly gained popularity due to extensive advertizing campaign – Google can afford that, of course. However, in order for advertizing campaign to succeed, the featured product should be, at the very least, adequate. Moreover, newly introduced items (in almost any industry) should offer certain innovation or at least a slightly different approach.

When Google launched the Chrome their basic idea was “simplicity and minimization”. No menu, no additional toolbars, small symbols, partially hidden option bar… Everything was designed to maximize the internal area – the one that has the website loaded. And this idea had actually worked – many people find the Chrome design to exactly suit their needs.

It seems that Google is taking these ideas one step further. Reportedly, when discussing several possible layouts for the next version of Chrome, Google designers even consider the option of removing the URL bar – well, not exactly removing, but hiding it when it is inactive. It would pop-up whenever the user needs it, allowing new URL entry.

As already said, this is only one of the four possible layouts, but the trend is clear. Bigger viewport, less menus – the idea is extremely appealing for those who like to surf the web from their iPad or SmartPhone.

Numerous websites reported that Google is ignoring the page title tags, replacing them with something “equivalent”. The discussion started on the WebmastersWorld forum with several “upset” webmasters claiming that Google is shoeing page titles that are different from what is included in the page HTML.

Well, instead of being upset, I would rather try to understand the issue. Not a big fan of Google myself, I still recognize the fact that whatever they do, they do for a reason. Matt Cutts says that “We (Google-J.S.) reserve the right to try to figure out what’s a better title.” Of course, one can shout “who are you to determine a better title for my page”, but the answer to this is pretty simple – they are GOOGLE, world’s number one search engine. And with the SPAM issue so hot, their quest of fighting “crawler-fooling-techniques” is understandable.

So, when does Google try to find an alternative title for a page? According to Google’s John Mueller, this happens when “the titles are particularly short, shared across large parts of the site or appear to be mostly a collection of keywords.” Those titles are regarded as “inappropriate” by the search engine that will try to replace them with “other text on the page”.

Some might see this as a violation of rights and yet another step towards global domination by the greedy Google. What I see is the basic principle of SEO – offer a solid and interesting content in your website and you will rank high. Page title should definitely be remarkable and unique, providing the user with the most important info about the page. So, instead of complaining about Google policy, go and check your page titles. If they are good I am sure Google won’t touch them.

It is no secret that Google is dominating the search engine market. However, it is also no news that there are people (about 35% of users, actually) who prefer other search engines – such as Yahoo!, Bing and others. Blekko is gaining some ground as does GoDaddy… It this situation, it was only a matter of time when another level of search is created, one level “above” search engines. www.megasearches.com is exactly this thing – a search that combines several search engines results, presenting it to the user in a tabbed way.

The site, created by Arshat Ali Suzon, a California State University graduate student, integrates results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, AOL, Wolfram Alpha, Baidu, Snap and Wikipedia – you can browse through those by clicking the appropriate tab on the search page. You can also define which search engines you are after, by pressing the “+” sign; creating several “configurations” is also possible. In addition, there is a “More>>>” tab, that will present a list of eleven more search engine sites (including Lycos, AltaVista, WebCrawler and About.com). By clicking on each of those, you will be taken to a new page, presenting results produced by the selected SE.

The site has been around for about eight months now and already has gathered several thousand of adept in 25 countries. Is this mega-search the next big thing in the search industry? Let’s wait and see.

The battle between FaceBook and Google mightbe overrated, but in terms of innovation, both companies are definitely doing their best. In the “50 Most Innovative Companies of 2011” list, published by Fastcompany Magazine, Facebook, the leader in 2010 is placed third (“For 600 million users, despite Hollywood”).

Notably, one place ahead of the world’s largest social network is the micro-blogging website Twitter (“For five years of explosive growth that have redefined communication”). 200 million users mark is certainly not far away.

At the very top, placed first, is Apple (“For dominating the business landscape, in 101 ways”). iPad is probably the reason they went two places up from last-years third position.

And what about Google? And Microsoft? Don’t worry, both are there. Google is sixth (“For instantly upgrading the search experience”) – one place behind Groupon (5), whose courage is also admitted (“For reinvigorating retail — and turning down $6 billion”). Microsoft is only 37^th – but still 9 places up from last year. Bing, and Win Phone OS 7 are both noted as good products, but it is the hand-free Kinect that impressed Fastcompany, “turning the human body into a game controller”.

Another notable inclusion is LinkedIn (“For turning 90 million members into the world’s most useful career database”) and Russian search engine Yandex (26) that is given credit for successfully battling Google in the Russian search market niche and for various complex algorithms. The list, of course, includes off-line companies, such as Nissan(4, “For creating the Leaf, the first mass- market all- electric car”), Trader Joe’s (11, for “For vaulting past Whole Foods to become America’s favorite organic grocer) and Snohetta (35, “For design that’s both social and beautiful”).

Getting included in Google News database is not an easy task. Their guidelines are not that clear and sometimes it appears that you have to do something special to get listed. Here is an example of our communication with Google regarding the matter. Doesn’t make much sense, right?

However, it seems that even if you are among those fortunate to get listed in the Google News database, your worries are far from over. According to a public announcement, made by Harvey P. from Google “… we (Google – J.S.) periodically review sites in our database. Sometimes, we include or remove sites based on a series of quality guidelines…” This means that you can get “kicked off” from the list any time. And as Harvey confesses, sometimes even without a proper explanation: “…Google employees don’t comment publicly on why a specific site has been removed from Google News.… when it comes to questions seeking input about a site’s removal, our team will not provide public feedback.”

He, of course, recommends contacting Help Center in case of site rejection or removal, but clearly states that “…we can’t promise personalized responses for every email.”

So if you had worked so hard to be included in Google News and all of the sudden you are not there anymore – there is a chance you will be left wondering what you did wrong. It seems, the wrong thing is to count on Google. But the sad truth is that website owners do not have much of a choice. Not yet…

GoDaddy might not be as familiar name as Google to ordinary internet users, but most webmasters had, of course, heard this name. GoDaddy is currently on of the leaders in webhosting industry, providing various related services, such a website hosting, domain registration, dedicated servers, email plans, etc. Although dominating the market is not something GoDaddy had achieved, it might very well be on their mind.

It has been reported recently, that Google and GoDaddy enter certain form of partnership considering a “WebSite Tonight” feature, offered by GoDaddy. This service is a powerful tool that allows users create a website pretty quickly by using one of the available pre-designed templates, making it look almost “professionally designed”.

Google’s share of WebSite Tonight is offering various add-ons, widgets and tools that might be useful for a website owner and/or visitor. These include customizable search bar, Google Webmaster Tools, SEO-checking tools and more. Submitting website to Google is also made easier, helping webmaster to appear in the listings of world’s leading search engine quickly. Some tools will be available during the website building process; others are incorporated into the website’s control panel.

Twitter has been here for over five years, but it has become a real “hit” only recently. During the last Superbowl game, a new record for number of over 4000 tweets-per-second was recorded, emphasizing the usefulness of this tool when you want to share your thoughts/impressions/ideas/anything else quickly.

But maybe the founders/owners of twitter have finally decided to make some serious profit from the almost-two-hundred-million registered users? According to some unofficial reports, Twitter had talks with both Google and FaceBook about a potential deal – that is the buyout of Twitter, of course.

While the talks are, reportedly, in the very early stages and seem more like a “what-if” scenario for Twitter, the figures mentioned show that the micro-blogging site’s value went up considerably. It is now estimated about $10 billion, opposed to about $3.7 billion figure, reported about a year ago.

An interesting is that the two “potential buyers” are Google and Facebook. Not Yahoo, not Microsoft… With Google being a runaway leader in the search industry niche and FaceBook establishing itself as an undisputed number one social media , blogging (and micro-blogging) seems like a field that neither of the two has a real advantage. So, will Twitter serve as a neutral ground for a decisive encounter between the two giants? I guess it will take several months, and maybe years until we get a conclusive answer to this question…

Woke up this morning thinking further about my statement yesterday that Microsoft should by Twitter.  I really think that if Google does not buy Twitter and it lands in the hands of Microsoft, it could potentially become a great equalizer. Bing’s real time search results would be exclusive and therefore at the very least very different from Google. Bing needs to do something, it is sort of floundering as many companies do when they are not really committed to being the best.

On the other hand if Facebook buys Twitter, Google has a much bigger problem, potential elimination from real time search. Facebook is the number one visited website in the world. Now this is great, but their problem is, their visitors are not interested in buying anything, they do not click on ads, they do not convert into $$, and this is becoming a problem for the future of Facebook. It is sort of the old school internet business model on steroids:  build it,make it cool and free,  get traffic, and with traffic all your problems will be solved.  Now if your roll Twitter into Facebook, you do not get any better profit generation, but now you hold all the cards in real time search. Facebook could place extraordinary value on this real time data, and begin to charge search engines massive amounts of fees to access their websites and data. If the search engines do not agree to pay these outrageous fees, then Facebook can begin to build their own search engine. Even if their algorithm was not very robust to begin, with having the real time data from Facebook and Twitter would insure that they provide phenomenal real time information (that would not be found anywhere else) and can use this real-time data VERY effectively. It is a fact that no one is really Tweeting or Facebooking about the spamming Viagra website they found on page one of Google, nor the insurance website they found in BING. Therefore Facebook would be able to quickly put a serious reduction on spam, create a place in search, and provide themselves with very bright future for profitability and a serious chunk of what Google and BING currently have.

As an internet marketing professional, I really do not care who does what. I do not own the game, just play by the rules set forth by people far smarter and wealthier than I. I must say though, I really like Twitter in the hands of Facebook or Microsoft. Lets see what Google is really made of….

Bringing the most relevant results to the user is the quest of every search engine. Fighting spam is one aspect of this issue. The other one is personalization – showing the results that would be the most interesting to the SPECIFIC searcher. Hence the localization, hence the search history….

Bing has recently followed Google on that path, applying city-based localization to the query results in the US. It will now give additional weight to local businesses, especially service providers. This is another step forward, as the local Bing searches in various countries are showing different results for quite a while already. However, for big countries, such as the States this might be not enough – so additional refinement is now applied, based on the city you are in. It must be noted, the results are not entirely different – it is just that local businesses are given some “extra points” by the search algorithm.

Another aspect is using your past search queries in the results. The Bing (as does Google for some time already) tries to “learn your preferences” based on the searches you conduct and the results you pick from the presented list. Those will be stored in search history and shown more frequently (or higher) in the result list when similar query is submitted.

It seems that “those who bought this also liked that” feature, used by many online stores and other websites is now entering the SE world.

I was in the shower this morning, considering the impact that Twitter and Facebook have had on Google’s search results. After reading Rands test results from Twitter links versus traditional text links in ranking pages within the Google search results, it is clear that Google is placing significant weight on links from Twitter and Facebook. Based upon this information, one would assume that if Facebook and Twitter no longer permitted Google-bot access their websites, Google’s algorithm would have to be seriously adjusted.  It would probably end up in pushing Google search results to displaying only yesterday’s news and information, instead of real-time search results currently based upon the linking patterns Google-bot gets from Twitter and Facebook.

I was just reading a blog post on searchengineland about Twitter being acquired by someone, whether it be Google, Microsoft or Facebook. I find this concept interesting: Whomever buys Twitter will have the most updated real-time content online. I believe that the acquisition of Twitter must be made by Microsoft. This would give Microsoft its first leg up on Google in search. Microsoft could probably license the access to Twitter to Google for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The facts are quite simple that without Twitter and Facebook links, Google’s sort of screwed. Unfortunately Google’s recent behavior has created a bit of industry anger towards its online business practices. I think this is why Groupon did not sell to Google.

I wanted to mention that this blog post was written with the assistance of NaturallySpeaking by Dragon. If you have hesitated in using speech-recognition software, I would say now is the time to give it a try. I think that using this software will make it much easier for me to blog from this point forward.

While I’m getting NaturallySpeaking a plug, I may as well mention the really really cool viral marketing tool they’ve built on their website. It’s called Fingers of Fire.