I’m pleased and proud to say I’m now the owner of a Samsung Galaxy S Fascinate™ 3G Smartphone. It came at zero cost when renewing my 3 year contract with Telus and it lives up to all the hype that has surrounded it.
The Comscore Search Market Rankings data for the US in March had few surprises:
Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in March with 65.1 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (16.9 percent), and Microsoft Sites (11.7 percent). Ask Network captured 3.8 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.5 percent.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was something we rarely think about and that was the rate of growth of searches as shown in the following table.
Yes search is growing at seven percent between the two months. Facebook has a remarkable growth but that is only part of the growth that all the search engines are seeing.
It may well be that a disproportionate part of this growth is coming from the mobile web. After all Google has now adopted as a slogan, Mobile First.
That explains why Google is now putting much more emphasis on this sector. As a signal of this, it is now renaming the Google Local Business Center and making it part of Google Places.
One out of five searches on Google are related to location, and we want to make sure that businesses are able to be found and put their best foot forward. We’re excited to announce Google Places today, as it’s just the beginning of what’s to come from our efforts to make Google more local.
Google is also offering customized QR codes that are unique to an individual business and can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials. Customers can scan them with certain smart phones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for that business.
As Greg Sterling comments, this should be seen as the opening of a new push by Google into the local market, bringing closer together its SMB promotional and consumer assets and cementing a local “brand” around “Places.” The figures are certainly impressive:
Expect to see more and more of this emphasis as time passes. The mobile sector has much greater potential than the existing PC world and Google is determined to get the lion’s share.
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Perhaps the title reminds you of that old cartoon labeled, Look Mom No Hands, where the young boy bravely rides his bicycle with both hands in the air. In some versions there is a follow-up where he proclaims, Look Mom No Teeth.
This post may possibly represent the same kind of risky behavior. It stems from that outside-in view that we are now applying to websites. Frequent readers of this blog may not notice any difference. The blog Home page has always included only a single post and this post looks exactly the same. The only way of spotting the difference is by looking at the address field at the top of your browser. Although you may have followed a link to the domain, http://www.staygolinks.com/, you will note that the link displayed there is now the permalink for this particular single post. For quick reference, we will call this the LMNHP approach, not to be confused with the Lucknow Muzaffarpur National Highway Project.
Not having a Home Page brings a number of advantages. If you write a particularly good blog post, it will often perform well in keyword listings. This is helped because Google factors in the recency of new web pages by giving them a higher ranking in the search engine results page (SERP). What you may have noticed if you did a keyword search to spot new blog posts, is that often the first entry shown by Google is the Home page of the blog rather than the specific blog post. As further blog posts when written push that particular blog post off the Home Page, then a keyword search will some time later show the correct blog entry as the appropriate entry rather than the blog Home Page.
Part of the reason for this is that the blog Home page has many back links or inlinks pointing to it which causes it to outrank new blog posts which have very few links. This after all is the fundamental principle of the Google search algorithm. The Home page has the highest PageRank and other web pages have lower values. Indeed if they are very recent, they may not even have a value assigned.
This blog has now changed the balance by immediately redirecting visitors who visit the website to a web page which shows only the latest blog entry. This is a permanent 301 redirection, which should ensure that any inlink to this web page are correctly assigned to it rather than to the website as a whole.
You may wonder why there should be a permanent redirection when this latest post will only be on the front page for a little while, perhaps days or even hours. The thinking here is that for a little while the most important web page on the website is the latest blog entry. It will be assigned back links, some of which are intended for that particular blog post, rather than for the website as a whole. Indeed for a blog this is probably true in the majority of cases. Once the latest post has become a previous post, then it may receive additional back links from other sources as normally happens.
Knowing what I wanted to do, i.e. not have a homepage, I decided to bounce my crazy idea off two of my fellow Cre8asite Forums moderators, Donna Fontenot and Pierre Far. Pierre who is a wizard in these matters in a trans-Atlantic chat session, rapidly came up with a solution. He suggested that the best way was to modify the front end of the index.php file in my blog theme. His solution worked like a charm. It is shown in the image below. The new code surrounded by the yellow rectangle is inserted within the first instruction in the index.php file.
If in your theme, you use a home.php file rather than having the index.php file produce the Home page, then the code should be inserted there.
There would seem to be no downsides on this LMNHP approach and the upside is that rather than creating a homepage with a high PageRank, you spread out those PageRank contributions over individual blog posts as they are created.
If anyone has concerns about this approach, then it would be most useful to have them mentioned in comments here. Equally if you feel there are distinct advantages to this approach, then your contributions would be most appreciated
This approach seems to be performing well in the SERPs and producing higher search engine rankings.
The concept of looking Outside In on almost anything brings to mind a whole series of possible issues. Here are just some:
Outside In has now been suggested as an approach in thinking about customer service in organizations. What counts is how the customer perceives what is being done for them.
It very much relates to the notion of an organization as being customer centric. In other words, this is an organization that focuses on customer needs. Many traditional companies concentrate on producing high quality products and are sometimes described as product-driven. They may not be adequately sensitive to customer needs. The Outside In approach forces the organization to consider the perceptions that customers will have looking from the outside.
This Outside In view also has merit in thinking about websites. Many website owners are proud of the online presence they have created. As they explore what they have created, they may well rightly feel that they have produced a website with a mass of useful information for their prospects and clients. As they look from the inside, the online structure they have developed may well appear most impressive.
Taking the Outside In perspective may produce a different answer. A visitor from the outside only sees the page they land on. With Google searches that may possibly not be the front door: the Home page. They may check out a few other web pages but are never fully aware of the hidden mountain of information that they could explore. If a site map is provided, they can certainly see a long list of what is available but few visitors probably do that.
This different view of the website might appear just a question of different amounts of knowledge, but in fact the Outside In view is a better reflection of what this website notion really involves.
That Outside In view that sees only a series of web pages is in fact reality. The alternative view that in some sense there is a website on the Internet which represents a closely related set of web pages is false. If you do not find that statement sufficiently outrageous, then for simplicity let us say that websites do not exist. A website is just a loose definition of a group of web pages connected by hyperlinks. If you try to make a precise definition of a website, you will find that it does not fit most websites in real life.
Although an owner of an online property may feel a certain group of Web pages constitutes their website, the web pages are quite independent of each other and there is no simple tag or label that indicates which website they belong to. Each web page does contain hyperlinks of course and these may well link with other web pages that are owned by the website owner. The search engines only index web pages and they too have no tag or label that indicates which website any given web page belongs to.
This is not just playing with words. Of course the front end of the URL of a given web page may well be identical with the front end of other related web pages. If so, any hyperlinks between the two web pages can be called internal links. However at no stage of this analysis is a website label attached to each of these web pages.
This is not intended to fuel a philosophical discussion. Rather these distinctions have very important consequences in how the group of web pages should be monitored and managed.
The best big picture view of the Internet is that it is a huge population of web pages which are interlinked via hyperlinks. Any association among a group of web pages is really determined by these hyperlinks. It is not determined by whether or not those web pages exist within the same domain or sub domain.
You may occasionally hear that it is important to get inlinks or backlinks to a website in order to make the website more search engine visible. This should really be interpreted to mean that the particular web pages that are the target of such inlinks will be more search engine visible. It will also give more authority to other web pages they link to. However the authority that passes through these hyperlinks will be the same whether these hyperlinks target closely related web pages or quite independent web pages.
This outside in view of what we call websites highlights the challenge. It is not sufficient just to get a large number of inlinks pointing to the Home page of that fuzzy collection you call your website. This will get a highly diluted amount of authority for all other web pages that are buried deep within the website structure. The best working view is that every web page must create its own visibility through its own inlinks.
This is the difficulty with a traditional website. You add a web page but the only inlinks it has are those created within the website architecture. Special efforts must be made to generate backlinks specifically for any given web page.
This is where a blog becomes so much more powerful. Every new web page (blog post) that is added automatically generates its own inlinks from a variety of sources. Such things as Technorati tags or Deli.cio.us references are one way. To this we can now add social media such as Twitter and Facebook, even though the initial references may have nofollow tags. As human viewers see the references, they may create blog posts themselves that reference (link to) the new web pages. In addition you have the whole slice of the Internet that is set up to handle RSS news feeds with other social media such as FriendFeed to spread the buzz even more.
So forget you have a website. It is sloppy thinking and you will not target your efforts in the best way. Realize that what you have created is a group of web pages. Some of those web pages are much more important than others. Those are the web pages that should be highly visible to the search engines. Plan carefully how you can concentrate your efforts on those ‘money’ pages. You will get much more bang for your buck.
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As the Wall Street Journal tells us, for two years, Milo has tried to Put Store Stock Online. That’s not the dog, but the company, Milo.com, named after him.
When you’re on the go, it is a whole lot easier if the Internet can tell you whether the stuff you are looking for is available at stores nearby. Milo.com, in Palo Alto, CA., has been setting up a database for two years that knows what products are in stores near you and whether they’re in stock.
It’s an obvious need so it’s not surprising that the universal provider of all information has now decided to tackle this tough problem.
Google launched its service with inventory data from just five retail outlets — Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm (the last three of which are all owned by Williams-Sonoma). They’ll undoubtedly expand that list, and are taking volunteers from businesses that want to join in the program.
Milo has signed up 49 retail chains, covering 48,000 stores and 2 million products. Beyond brands like Best Buy and Sears, which have open systems that let any outside programmers tap into their inventory database, they’ve managed to sign up some big names, including Target, Nordstrom, Macy’s and J.C. Penny.
As Google explains, all you need to do is look for the blue dots.
If you’re searching for a product that is sold by participating retailers, you can just look for the blue dots in the search results to see if it’s available in a local store. If you see a blue dot, you can tap on the adjacent “In stock nearby” link, and you’ll be taken to the seller’s page where you’ll see whether the item is “In Stock” or has “Limited Availability” near you. You’ll also see how far away the stores are from you — as long as you’ve enabled My Location or manually specified your location.
It works with any iPhone, Palm WebOS phone, or any Android-powered device in the US. Search with Google.com in your mobile browser, tap on the “more” link, and then select “Shopping.” Or you can check the “Shopping results” section in Universal Search results when you search on Google.com.
Google is now looking for retailers who would like to participate in the program. Provided your Local Business Center data is up to date, and your Product Search data is in great shape, then you can ask to be considered.
The real question is whether Google can provide good information like this when data quality really is not easily scaleable. Perhaps it’s better handled by a vertical portal like Milo.com. After all even Google must focus its efforts if it is to do a good job for all its stakeholders.
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For those on the go, Google continues to add interesting innovations to its search facilities. As Google announced you can now refine your searches by location.
Location has become an important part of the way we search. If you’re a foodie looking for restaurant details, food blogs or the closest farmer’s market, location can be vital to helping you find the right information. We have now added the ability to refine your searches with the “Nearby” tool in the Search Options panel. One of the really helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don’t have to worry about adding “Minneapolis” to your query and missing web pages that only say “St. Paul” or “Twin Cities.” Check it out by doing a search, clicking on “show options” and selecting “Nearby.”
Naturally this also works when you do a search on your mobile device. If your local restaurant has also decided to add an advertisement using AdWords then you can now even click on their phone number in their mobile ad. It would seem to be a win win situation.
Calling the business is now easier thanks to a feature that allows advertisers to add a clickable local phone number to their mobile ads. If you’re using an iPhone, Android, or other smartphone, you just click the number to call the business.
The results of this process can be really staggering. Below you will see a Nearby search for pizza here in Langley BC. As might be expected, there are quite a number of pizza restaurants, many of which do not even have websites. It was particularly pleasing to see a mention of a pizzeria in Fort Langley.
Perhaps the only surprising thing to remark here is that still Google has not included the new Golden Ears Bridge, now in operation for nine months. Perhaps it is a question of priorities. After all, Translink, the agency for the Golden Ears Bridge has no need to spend money on Google advertisements.
This blog started out with the tagline, the Mobile Web from a Desktop perspective. Many assumed that tweaking the web pages on standard websites would make them suitable for smart phones surfing on the mobile Web. Progressively that has become less and less tenable. Nevertheless many seem to assume that the real Internet space is that visited via a desktop PC.
There are a number of factors that mean that it is only a matter of time until the Mobile Web becomes the predominant cyber-space. Consider a few of them:
If you don’t find those arguments compelling, then perhaps you need to study the behavior and attitude of those who can accelerate the pace of change. On that, the headline says it all.
Google Adopts a New Strategy: Mobile First
At the Mobile World Congress tradeshow, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that more of his company’s focus is now on smartphones than on desktops. He summed this up with a new motto: “Mobile First“.
With this rule, Google developers are now creating versions of new services for smartphones before creating ones to run on PCs.
In his opinion, the key reason for this is the importance of cloud computing, where applications and data are handled by the Internet.
Google is a leading proponent of cloud computing. Its Android operating system for smartphones depends heavily on always-on, high-speed wireless data connections, since many of its more advanced features are handled in the cloud, such as speech recognition.
I believe it’s the time for us all to smell that coffee. It’s certainly on the go.
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Manas Ganguly highlighted the way in which Google Audio Indexing (short form GAUDI) is encouraging media democratization. That process was started by YouTube but Google video search can now allow a user to search for a particular reference in a speech.
Google Audio Indexing (Gaudi) is a new technology that allows users to better search and watch videos from various YouTube channels. It uses speech technology to find spoken words inside videos and lets the user jump to the right portion of the video where these words are spoken. Google Audio Indexing thus makes it easier for people to find and consume spoken content from videos on the Web.
The official announcement suggested we would be seeing continuing innovation. For more detailed information on GAUDI, check out the FAQ for this technology.
Google for some time has had Google Elections Video Search gadget which is wholly US centric information. It was very instrumental in pulling together information on the views, actions and platforms of the two presidential candidates. Google Audio and the Google Elections Video Search gadget use the exact same underlying technology.
Google Audio Indexing uses speech technology to transform spoken words into text and leverages the Google indexing technology to return the best results to the user. The returned videos are ranked based — among other things — on the spoken content, the metadata, the freshness. The gadget periodically crawls the YouTube political channels for new content. As soon as a new video is uploaded to YouTube, it is processed by the system and made available in the GAUDI index for people to search.
Google Audio Indexing searches only those videos uploaded on the YouTube political channels at the present time. That is a very limited scope currently, but it will surely not be long before Google extends the use over the whole YouTube Gamut.
An item on The Street reports that Google Plans Its Own Android Phone.
In what is likely to be seen as disruptive to the wireless status quo, Google is working with a smartphone manufacturer to have a Google-branded phone available this year through retailers and not through telcos, according to Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar, who has talked to Google’s design partners about the plan.
This move would fulfill Google’s pledge to bring a new generation of open-standard mobile Internet devices to consumers. Traditional carriers keep tight controls over the features and applications that are allowed on phones. On the other hand, Google will presumably offer a device that lets users determine the functions.
This could be a low cost ‘terminal’ giving access to a whole cloud-computing environment supported by the major players such as Google. That would certainly seem to be the Google strategy.
If talk of the Google phone plan is true, the entrance of a unlocked, low-cost, Web-friendly touchscreen device will probably undercut other Android phone efforts by players like Motorola, Samsung and Dell. Motorola’s entire turnaround strategy is based on the Android operating system. The company is expected to announce a ultra-thin Droid phone at Verizon next month.
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SEO clients may well be aware of the furor that has been going on in the SEO world. Danny Sullivan described why SEO experts were so incensed in signaling that Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting. It is all concerned with the NoFollow tag that can be applied as part of the code for hyperlinks from web pages.
If you want to understand the implications of the changes then an article, PageRank Calculation – Null Hypothesis, will provide a lead-in to the ongoing discussion.
What does all this mean for SEO clients who have paid their consultants fees for Search Engine Optimization. The aimClear Search Marketing Blog has a good account of what they are telling their clients in a post, NoFollow noWorries: An SEO Linking Update.
Though this 180 degree about-face in what Google had been preaching (literally) to webmasters was poorly handled from a public relations perspective, presumably it was made because the tag was overused, abused and had the potential to skew Google’s rankings. No worries. We actually think the change will bring some positive changes to the SEO process, though as always there are tradeoffs.
Of course this has all been going on in a time of recession where companies are trying to make sure they get the maximum bang for whatever bucks they still have in their budgets. Companies paying SEO consultants who have implemented PageRank Sculpting programs are now told that such programs were ineffective. This only came to light when Google decided to spill the beans since it looked as though SEO experts had not spotted that the Google advice was no longer effective.
It is all rather messy but the bottom line is that clients have spent money that produced zero returns. What recourse do they have? Who should they be talking to?
Unfortunately the biggest culprit, Google, will provide the defense that they are providing a free search service. Too much information given away would mean that webmasters could perhaps manipulate the search results so that less relevant web pages nevertheless would appear high in the keyword query listing of results. If any information is given out, then webmasters should do their own checking to be sure that the information works for them. This is somewhat facile reasoning since it is very difficult to do Split A/B testing on anything other than simple changes to web pages.
If Google is off the hook, this leaves only the SEO consultants to listen to the SEO clients. Here again the discussion is difficult. Reputable SEO consultants use their best skills and knowledge to provide maximum search engine visibility to their client’s web pages but without any guarantees on performance. In this case, they were following information put out by Google and which was never withdrawn or modified until very recently. They put in the effort. Google rendered their efforts for naught. It would appear that the SEO consultants are off the hook too.
If companies were doing their own SEO, then they would have paid the salaries and again would have seen no results from the PageRank sculpting. Using SEO consultants or doing SEO in-house would have had comparable effects. Perhaps this is just grin-and-bear-it time. Search engine marketing is on average very powerful, but its mechanisms are sometimes difficult to discern. The NoFollow confusion has just added to those ongoing difficulties.
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