The name “Google Dance” is often used to describe the index update of the Google search engine. Google’s index update occurs on average once per month. It can be identified by significant movement in search results and especially by Google’s cache of all indexed pages reflecting the status of Google’s last spidering. But the update does not proceed as a switch from one index to another at one point in time. In fact, it takes several days to complete the index update. During this period, the old and the new index alternate on www.google.com. At an early stage, the results from the new index occur sporadically. But later on, they appear more frequently. Google dances.
The start dates of previous Google Dances have been compiled by WebmasterWorld’s administrator Brett Tabke. The last Google Dance has just been finished. It took place from 06/15/2003 to 06/22/2003. There are rumors that Google is about to modify its update procedures. However, if there will be another Google Dance we will report about it. But mainly, the reasons for the Google Dance shall be presented here. (more…)
Google Search Engine
In a matter of a couple of short years, the Google.com search engine has become the world’s favorite way to find what they’re looking for online.
Now, most of you who are reading this are saying “Duh”, butlet me ask you this: Do you REALLY know how to use Google and get the most out of this incredible search technology?
Hopefully, these tips will help you find EXACTLY what you want the next time you head on over to “Google Land” and start searching.
To start, unlike most search engines, Google does not care if your search term is in UPPER or lower case. In fact, it can even be MiXeD case and the search results will be identical no matter how you type in your term. (more…)
Google Search Engine
In “Part One” we discussed some of the more basic Google search techniques. (If you missed it you can find it here: How To REALLY Use Google Part Two
As promised, here’s the “juicier stuff”. Google has some advanced search options which come in quite
handy, depending on what items you may be searching.
TITLE SEARCH: Allows you to search for pages and sites that have specific words or phrases in their title. For example:
intitle: “direct response marketing”
This search would only give you results of sites that have that particular phrase in their title.
SITE SEARCH: Gives you the opportunity to search pages ONLY within a specific site or domain (or using the “negative” results technique from Part One you can “exclude” results from a specific domain or site as well). For example:
“lead generation” site:direct-response-marketing.net (more…)
Google Search Engine
In Part One, we covered the basics of searching on Google.com and in Part Two we moved into more advanced search techniques.
In today’s third and final installment we will peer into some ways of using Google you may have never thought of or knew existed.
DATE RANGES: You may limit your search to an exact date of a “range” of dates that a page was indexed by Google. To use Google’s “daterange” function, you will need to express your dates in “Julian” dates. This date format is express as an integer. To convert a common date into Julian format go to:
http://www.24hourtranslations.co.uk/dates.htm
As an example, if I wanted to find pages (about a certain topic) indexed by Google during the month of May 2003, I would type in:
“direct response marketing” daterange: 2452774-2452803
TYPES OF FILES: You can limit your Google search results to specific files ending in a particular extension (.doc, .txt, .rtf, .pdf etc…) (more…)
They Pick & Choose
I’ve seen a lot of articles around lately about how to pick and choose a search engine optimization company. That’s fine and dandy, but it often works the other way around in this industry. The most successful SEOs pick and choose their own clients. Good SEOs can spot a tire kicker from a mile off and I know of a few SEOs that quickly “fire” clients that give them too much grief.
Why? Because they can. Their reputation is widely known and they are constantly in demand. Many of them are too busy to spend time haggling over price or technique and why should they? Their reputation is rock solid, their results outstanding, the ROI for their work impressive. Companies are lining up to pay for their expertise and to benefit from the amazing income generation potential that a well-executed search engine optimization campaign can bring. To quote one of the best:
“I choose clients who choose me” – Jill Whalen, HighRankings.com (more…)
I tend to spend a lot of time in various search engine forums and newsgroups answering questions related to search engines. One of the most common questions that seems to come up is along the lines of: “My site was in Google yesterday and ranking well and today it’s gone! What happened?”
or
“I made some changes to my site and Google picked them up, but now, it shows the old page again. Why would Google do this?” and a number of other variations on the above two questions.
With the importance of Google these days, it’s no wonder that situations like the above would have webmasters quite worried. After all, with all the reports of sites being penalized or banned, having your site completely disappear could be a bit troublesome.
Luckily, there is a very easy explanation for the above phenomena and it’s been lovingly referred to as “Everflux”. What exactly is Everflux? (more…)
Breaking News
News broke this week that Yahoo has purchased the Inktomi search engine for around US$235 million. This is an interesting development in the search engine industry that may impact greatly on exactly where sites get their traffic from. Another new development in the past few weeks is the change to the HotBot service but first, I’d like to look at the ramifications of the Yahoo/Inktomi deal. (more…)
