As the major search engines compete to dominate the web, users are looking at ways to improve their search experience. Recently a blogger caught one of Google’s impressive new features being tested. Google is known to test some of its new features amongst a random subset of users. One such user doing a web search noticed his results page was appearing as he typed and would change as additional letters were added or subtracted.

I imagine this will only work with high-speed, low-latency Internet connections as there is a lot of back and forth from the web page to the server going on in the AJAX.

From the looks of the video however, it seems pretty effective (even faster than my Mac desktop Spotlight search!) and could see a broader rollout in the coming weeks/months. Microsoft’s Bing would need to play catchup on a feature like this.

Why doesn’t search query data in Webmaster Tools appear to match what I see when searching. How come the search queries report in Webmaster Tools shows some keywords ranking and when we search for them they are nowhere to be found?

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Google announced that you can now verify your site in Webmaster Tools with a Google Analytics JavaScript snippet.

“Nobody likes to duplicate effort,” said Google software engineer Sean Harding. “Unfortunately, sometimes it’s a fact of life. If you want to use Google Analytics, you need to add a JavaScript tracking code to your pages. When you’re ready to verify ownership of your site in other Google products (such as Webmaster Tools), you have to add a meta tag, HTML file or DNS record to your site. They’re very similar tasks, but also completely independent. Until today.”

“If you already have Google Analytics set up, verifying ownership is as simple as clicking a button,’ he says.

Google notes that this method of verification only works if you’ve migrated to the newer asynchronous version of the tracking code. The JavaScript has to stay in place on your site or your verification will expire. You also have to remain an admin on the Google Analytics account that the code is associated with.

If you’ve verified your site, you can add additional verified owners via the verification details page. The verification page has a new interface as well.

Read more here http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/08/verification-time-savers-analytics.html

Now that you’ve done the work to get your site ranked in Google it’s time to take a look at where Google is sending your customers once they find you. Do they provide a link to your site? Is it accurate? Does it take them to the most effective page on your site? These are very important questions that you need to be sure you have the answers to and continue to check in on.

First of all, go to Google and do a search for your business name.

Take a look at the results. Under your business profile there should be at least one sitelink, that is one or more links to various pages within your Web site. If there isn’t at least one link then your site navigation can’t be parsed by Google. This is a sign that you need to alter your site navigation and provide Google with a better sitemap. The more simple and well formatted your site, the more likely Google is to include a sitelink with your business results. The more sitelinks the higher the likelihood a user clicks into your site directly to the page of their choice.

It may be time to dust off your site and be sure you’ve got the basics down. Here’s a great article showing you exactly how to structure your site to be as search engine friendly as possible. A Professional SEO’s Cheat Sheet for Building a Search Engine Friendly Web site for 2010.

Modifying your sitelinks

If Google did provide a sitelink with your business results make sure that it takes your customers to the page that YOU choose. If it doesn’t, then you need to make sure that your main page is clear to Google. Again, simple navigation and good backlinks should clear things up and get your desired sitelinks showing up in Google.

You can block any irrelevant link that falls into the reasons below:

Bing has just launched a completely revamped version of their Webmaster Tools for our SEO and webmaster enjoyment and it looks OK, if not quite perfect. Bing’s Eric Gilmore spoke at SMX Advanced earlier this summer about having hit the reset button and started with a blank sheet of paper and really having listened to their forums; building a modern and more simplified architecture. But a quick glance at the various comments on Bing’s community sites shows that they have missed out or lost a few key features.

The new toolset is supposed to offer a simplified and easier to use interface than before and they are focusing on three main topics, Crawling, Index and Traffic data.

During our review of the new toolbox, we were left with the impression that the main reason for the update was to show off their new Silverlight 4 features rather than give webmasters an impressive toolset. Most lacking is the ability to export any of the data for further analysis. However, the tools do allow you to peer into how the spider is crawling the site, and what pages are getting indexed.

Unfortunately, Bing decided to remove the Outbound links and Backlinks reports which did provide some useful information. They also removed the Robots.txt validator which really was a bad move with the upcoming change to their robot name from MSNbot to BingBot. Domain score was also removed, which we won’t miss as it really didn’t mean anything, nor did the Page Score values – good riddance to those tools, we won’t have to scratch our head wondering what they meant.  See what – Anthony M Garcia, Senior Product Manager, Bing Webmaster Tools had to say

Finally we are also missing the language/country information that helped you define where your site should show up for different countries. We’ve used that in the past to help get sites in the correct search results when they were hosted in a different country than the business was located in. Another fail for Microsoft on taking that feature out.

The features they did keep and improved on in some cases are worth using. Here’s a look ath what we now have..

Crawl Data

The crawl section allows you to review up to 6 months of data which lets you see how the BingBot is spidering your site. The Silverlight graphs are admittedly real nice graphs, with easy to use sliders to view the data quickly.

The Crawl Details is an important report that shows you what URLs BingBot is having problems with, or URLs you’ve told BingBot not to index and those they believe to be malware infected.

Index Summary

The Index Summary is a new chart that displays how many URLs of your site were indexed on a day to day basis in Bing. The numbers can be a bit worrying, especially when you see a drop in URLs indexed – however sometimes that can indicate that some problems have been solved, such as duplicate content issues.

It is common to have somewhat large surges in the numbers of URLs indexed, for example the domain in the above screenshot did not implement any changes over the timespan when two thirds of its URLs dropped out and we’ve seen similar drops on other sites during the same time period. You may also find interesting that the site in the example did NOT see a traffic drop during that period with a large dip in indexed URLs. In other words, remain calm if you see a massive dip or gain in this report and be sure to study what you’re seeing.

Index Explorer

Index Explorer is just a fancy way to view what URLs from your site Bing has in its index. It’s also a tool to make it very easy to block a URL, or block the cache for a URL or entire directory. This one looks like it’s going to lead to trouble for some, read on to see why we think so…

Traffic Summary

You will need to validate your site to be able to use these new features. Go to http://www.bing.com/webmaster

View original source : Stoney deGeyter

I was talking with a client the other day about how to optimize their content. They kept saying, in a way of trying to understand what they need to do to improve their website, that what they need to do is to create a bunch of content and keep using their keywords over and over.

Uh… no.

That might work in politics, where saying something enough times gets people to start believing it’s true. But, not online.

People are pretty adept at sniffing out the fakes. If your readers come to your site and just see a lot of unnecessary repetition of your keywords, they are going to see right through that. Even if they don’t realize it on a conscious level, their spider-senses will kick in, and they’ll walk away just because they are not “feelin’ it”.

The issue is one of trust. Your readers may not be able to quite put their finger on it, but something will feel… off. And that’s when visitors start to run away.

Build content people trust

How to Have Trusted Content

No Hype: A lot of people like to use hype. We see it all the time in commercials, billboards, and magazines. That’s been going on for years and people have become accustomed to it. But the web is still new, and people use it for all kinds of things like research, business, shopping and more. This has made hype far less desirable in the online sphere.

Don’t make claims that cannot be substantiated. Don’t claim to be “the best” or the “#1? or “the ultimate” unless you can back that up with third party verification. Claiming you’re the best because you want to be doesn’t make it so. People get suspicious of such claims.

Be Genuine: Write your content as if you were talking to someone face to face. Use a conversational tone that is both helpful and free of superfluous fluff. Don’t go out of your way to tell outlandish stories or make claims that will appear too-good-to-be-true. Neither stories or verifiable claims are wrong, but how you present them is important to coming across to your readers as genuine.

No Hidden Text: Back in the old days of SEO, people used to write content and color it white on a white background to hide it from the readers. That’s a sure sign that what you have to say blows chunks! Today, you can “hide” content with CSS, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. If you’re hiding content to make it more difficult for readers to find it, that’s the wrong way. If you’re hiding content to make your page more usable, and the reader can easily find it with a simple click or mouse-over, that’s the right way.

When it comes to hidden text, intent matters. In other words, why is it hidden? Where is the content going? Why does it need to be hidden?

But, the most important question? Whether or not the text is valuable. This one matters the most. If the content is valuable, then your visitors need to be able to read it. If it’s not valuable, then it shouldn’t be on the page to begin with.

Negative Reviews: If you’ve got a product site or a blog, and people have the opportunity to write negative comments or reviews, you can’t only allow the good stuff. Nobody is going to believe that 100 of 100 reviews are positive. You lose credibility immediately.

In fact, negative reviews can help sell a product. If the reader can see all the negative things people have to say, they at least have a more well-rounded picture of what they are purchasing. They can use the negative reviews to determine that the good outweighs the bad, and they’ll be less likely to write a negative review themselves because they know what they are getting into.

If your readers cannot trust you, they won’t engage you for business or whatever else you want them to do. Your content is the first impression your visitors will have of you, so you have to make sure that you give them a good first impression rather than a jumbled mess of “keyword optimized” content. It all goes back to writing for your visitors first.

View original source : Stoney deGeyter

There are two large threads that started over the weekend at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums with discussion around the Yahoo Search results.

The thing is, I have never seen such a large influx of buzz around Yahoo Search results, at least not for the past 3 years or so. People are reporting huge, I mean huge, shifts with Yahoo’s search results.

At first, the folks at WebmasterWorld have called it a bug but some are now suspecting this has to do with Yahoo testing Bing results. Yes, as expected, Yahoo should begin testing the Bing powered results on Yahoo Search any time now. Maybe this is the first signs of it?

Why would Yahoo spend the time drastically revamping their algorithm? Either this is a huge bug or Yahoo has let some people into a bucket testing of the Bing search results.

The thing that kind of makes me feel this is more of a bug than a Bing powered Yahoo is the results. I tried to personally match up Bing and Yahoo results and they are different. Some said in the forum that the results “looks like a mix of bing and google.” But honestly, when Yahoo begins Bing powered results, the results of the organic listings, the ranking and order, will be exactly the same as you see them on Bing. Yahoo may throw more visual results at the top, middle and so on, but the organic result should be exactly the same.

Maybe I am not in this bucket test and maybe this is Bing on Yahoo?

What do you see?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Source: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022484.html

Always consult an SEO Consultant to work you through as a defined process that works.

Free ice lolly anyone?

During the month of June the Bing Ice Cream Van is on tour handing out free delicious Bing Ice lollies and giving people the chance to demo the great Bing products and services as part of our Bing consumer engagement activities.

The van arrives at TVP on Monday 28^th June.  It will be parked outside Building 2, from 11am-5pm so make sure to head down for your free ice lolly.

But the tour isn’t over there, the van will head back to Cardinal Place on Tuesday 29th June and will be parked outside the entrance to Building 100 from 11am-6pm.  This will coincide with the Great British Summer 10 event taking place at Cardinal Place from 25^th June to 9^th July where visitors will have the chance to enjoy free outdoor screenings of Wimbledon, Cricket and films.

Finally, check out this link to see a Bing Maps collection of all the locations where the Bing van will be visiting during June so you can pick up your free Bing Ice Lolly and have your Bing demo.   

On Friday the 18th evening, the latest version of WordPress was released. This new version of WordPress includes many new features which we as developers are very happy. In the movie below the main points discussed.

Some other new features at a glance:
Wordpress and WordPress MU aggregation
Wordpress MU has made it possible to run multiple blogs from a WordPress installation to run, this functionality is now the default WordPress 3 built.

Menu management
With the new menu manager you can arrange multiple menus with both pages and categories and external links. With the addition of drag and drop is to create and manage navigation to the next level.

New default theme
The new default theme ‘Twenty Ten’ has a more modern look like the old ‘Kubrick’ theme. From now on, every year a new default theme included with WordPress.

Header image management
Large header images are increasingly used in WordPress themes, now in the default theme. So there is a feature included for the header to change.

Bulk update plugins
By popular request, plugins now in an updated time. Especially if you use many plugins is of course very much.

Choice login name during installation
This was always default ‘admin’, by this change immediately upon installation improves the security of WordPress.

Different types of mail
For this website we had to deploy all plugins and template hacking to a specific type of blog post for our portfolio items to get. In WordPress 3.0 is elegant regulated.

Writer-specific templates
We will be able to assign each writer their own template, for example by a template author-naam.php to it.

Background Management
Upload a background or a color choice is a standard feature later in 3.0.

Short links
To disseminate such information through Twitter are often shortened URLs used. There is now a feature in WordPress that allow shorter links, for example: grtt.uk /? Post=1234

More information about WordPress 3.0 is available at the WordPress Blog or codex. Having the right wordpress theme can be the difference with a successful SEO Campaign, always liase with your SEO Consultant to guide you a defined process