What Google is Looking For: Index Ranking: Pointed by Google’s Maile Ohye

As a part of Links Week held recently, Google’s Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google – San Francisco, California, gave some pointers on what Google is looking for and how it does its index ranking.

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(Quoting Maile Ohye)

- Start a blog: make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you’re passionate about your site’s topic, there are lots of great avenues to engage more users.

- Teach readers new things, uncover new news, be entertaining or insightful, show your expertise, interview different personalities in your industry and highlight their interesting side. Make your site worthwhile.

- Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable perspective to the community.

- Provide a useful product or service. If visitors to your site get value from what you provide, they’re more likely to link to you.

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(End Quote of Maile Ohye)

- SEO experts have been telling webmasters for years that creating valuable, unique, relevant useful content is one of the best ways to get your site and pages highly ranked in Google. If you create valuable content then other sites will want to link to you naturally.

- What has confused things lately is all the “link buying” which Google greatly discourages and has shown its displeasure by de-ranking many paid directories. The size of your “wallet” shouldn’t be the determining factor in how pages and content are ranked. If you’re selling a link, it should have the “no-follow” tag so that it doesn’t pass PageRank along and confuse the system. Policing or deciding what is or what is not a “paid link” has become a major problem for the search engines, including Google.

- You should not have more than “100 links on a page” as this can overload the search engine robots that regularly crawl the web, indexing pages. Likewise, your site’s “linking architecture” should be natural and easy for both your visitors and the robots to follow. Make sure your important pages are no more than a few clicks away from your homepage.

Microsoft Skype $ 8.5 Billion Deal – Hurts or Benefits

The aforethought acquirement of Skype, announced and approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype, as on May 10, 2011, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake, is the another leading affiliation of MSN against Google. A week before this alliance, lots of fore-sayings are there that Google and Facebook were both involved in buying Skype.

The blockbuster acquisition of Skype will set the free-calling service in front of exceedingly more computer users, advancing a technology that already troubles long-standing phone giants. Industry Analysts says that, Microsoft Skype Deal may affects its other affiliations such as with AT & T, Verizon and other Wireless Operators, as this affiliation threatens the business growth of those Wireless Operators.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) may have a tougher time convincing wireless operators to support mobile phones with Windows software after its $8.5 billion purchase of Skype Technologies SA, analysts said. ​

“Microsoft’s backing of Skype may be seen as a threat by wireless carriers such as AT&T Inc. (T) and Verizon Wireless because it could cut into voice revenue”, said Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.

“It is kind of a head scratcher to me how Microsoft is going to navigate the complicated relationships that it has to have with carriers at the same time as it is repositioning itself as a potentially major threat to their wireless voice business,” Moffett said.

Nokia, the world’s largest mobile-phone maker by unit sales, said last month it plans to introduce devices running Windows Phone in volume next year.

Remember the Nokia MSN Deal that is intended to beat Google and Apple, so as to create an impact on Third Eco System.

“Cellphone giant Nokia has teamed up with Microsoft to build an ‘iPhone killer’. Standing alongside Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that the Windows Phone operating system is now the software of choice for Nokia’s next generation of smartphones”.

Skype lets the users to do calls with data services, simply they make up this calls when surfing the Internet, alternatively making use of traditional voice minutes. Carriers usually billing customers for voice plans and data plans respectively.

“Using a data plan for voice or video calls can make them much cheaper for customers”, Moffett said. Google and Apple offer similar products.

This deal renders the software giant an online communications tool that will be interlinking through its Office applications, Xbox games and nascent smartphone line. But it had to compensate a high-pitched price. Any how, Skype owners will delight with a multibillion-dollar bribe, even though the company does not make a profit. Lets see whether this deal hurts or benefits for the business growth of Microsoft.

New BING Business Portal Beta

The BING Local Listings is now transformed into BING Business Portal Beta which predicted to be a real challenge for Google Places and improved exposure for Local Businesses. 

Features helps you in:

Dress up your Listings 

Promote Special Deals 

Media and Marketing Elements Integration 

Consumer Reviews 

Quick Response Codes – Most compatible for QR codereaders on most smart phone cameras

Visualize Listings on PCs and Mobiles 

Menu Creation 

Post to Facebook Business pages from the portal’s interface 

Free Coupons and Offers 

SE Indexing 

Contacts Book/User Management/Role Based Access 

Drag and Drop Option 

High-Lighted Listing on Local SERPs (previously BING used to bring the results from Yellow Pages) 

Beta Version Tools 

Help Forums 

Quicker Verification 

Cartoon Format

And similar features to and advanced features than Google Places and Local Business Listings. 

Also, planned to include more in near future. 

Remember,   

BING and YAHOO signs a Deal on Jul 29, 2009. The Deal is, “Microsoft’s Bing search engine will power Yahoo’s search site, and Yahoo will sell premium search advertising services for both companies.”

BING moved to second place and raising its share on SE Market Place, as well having alliance with FaceBook in few aspects. 

Also the Max. Traffic for our Websites comes from BING & MSN, next to Google.com. 

Now Google puts More pressure on Google Places to add some more features to match Bing’s offering.

Grey Hat SEO​ – The Most Questionable SEO Hat Ever

Grey Hat SEO is represented by experts as a tactic used by unethical SEO experts and webmasters making use of legitimate SEO in an unethical way. In my point of view, Grey Hat SEO is the developed black hat tactic that looks like as White Hat SEO from search engine visual aspect. Simply says, it is a border line between White Hat and black Hat regions. But where exactly the border lies is very much up for discussion. More attention needed while using Grey hat SEO for your websites.

Although your website will possibly not get banned for using these tactics and there are definitely times when they need to be used, webmasters are overcautious in their use as SEO tactics that are subject to pervert are often penalized by search engines consistently in their acceptable moulds as exceptions are intractable to compose into compound search engine algorithms.

Gray Hat SEO is concerning to chance taken versus reward. The majority of SEO programs are classified below Gray Hat SEO tools. Few Gray Hat SEO services incline to use up much questionable tactical maneuvers and bring forward big endangerment. Although few Gray Hat techniques may mostly adapt search engine procedures, others might bring down in difficulty and require determined attention and needed forethought before utilization. Gray Hat SEO techniques persist unclear by all Google SEO rules.

The grey hat field is not clear cut, on the other hand it is overmuch survives. First of all, the major search engines do not guarantee precisely what is unobjectionable and what is not. The undefined dictation to that matters should be cooked to gain users results comprehensiveness for representation. In few case like, the deficiency of clearness on subjects such as keyword denseness leads the separate site owner in something of a difficulty.

The thing is, the profitable payments are there to stimulate SEO firms to overture the boundaries of honorable practice. In a competing sector, not many firms desire to deliver any needless advantages to their contestants. The next thing is, the reality that more constantly changing Search Engine algorithms and guidelines can bring forth the outcome that once accepted activity is underestimated and gone to pot intends that individuals may misstep into Grey hat orbits for the reason that they are slenderly out of step with present-day evolutions.

Few examples for Grey Hat Techniques

Paid Linking - The activity of buying a link on a website. Its legitimacy decided by Google based on the intent that is ‘good or bad intent’ idea. When paid links are bought for advertising, they are acknowledged as legitimate. At the same time, f they are bought to gain link popularity, they fall outside of the SE rules and can ensue in a penalty from the search engines.

Link Buying – Google stringently prohibits link schemes, but at times money can change hands for links without it being a schema. It is conceivable to ‘buy’ a link on someone else’s site in a legitimate way, just for offering sponsorship, though it is in the outdo involvement of your site to assure the search engines will be capable to differentiate.

Micro Sites – Denotes to a mini website or small website or individual web page or bunch of web pages that is separated from or acts apart of its parent website. An outstanding “white hat” method when admitting in the right way, but unfortunately for the most part, they are utilized in an unethical way.

Duplicate Content – It falls under ethical white hat SEO in case of Link Building/Link Submissions, that is, submitting your own description of your site, for your own URL, to other sites. But there is another facet for this Duplicate Content that is Duplicating the overall/partial content from a website to your website and tries to show it as your website content. The major SEs are very well structured in differentiating those variances. So be aware of that.

Cloaking – One form of content to the viewer and another to the search engines.

Grey Hat cannot be tagged as black on the grounds as it is not straightforward against Google guidelines, but the same time it cannot also falls under white hat SEO as its whiteness is in question.

SEO techniques you followed which are not “natural” falls under Grey Hat. SEO techniques which are intended to actively double crossed and misleaded falls under Black Hat region. So pay more attention when using these borderline SEO methods.

Google Crawled, Indexed. But not Visible in SERP at Any Position for Any Keywords

I found the above titled issue at a redirected URL recently after the Google update 2011. That is, “URL Crawled, Indexed. But not shown in SERPs for any keywords at any level”.

The time gap of “Google Crawling” is also reduced which is a Good Sign.  But at the other end, when I type the URL in Google it’s shown up. But, not for the basic level as well as targeted keywords and even for its own content. If I copy paste the first few words of its own content in SERP (actually it must come), it is not visible at any level.

After a thorough analysis on various factors, found content duplication is the main issue and also found out the sites that are having the entire content even with same images.

As per the information I have gained, the same Content came for the results, before the URL redirection. The problem happened after redirecting to a new URL with the same content.  Because those people copied that website’s content before the URL redirection and before the Google Update 2011. The redirection done after the date, they have copied. So the problem is, coz of the recent update happening in between these, Google assumed that the redirected URL is the copied victim based on the date factor.

Solutions to be made, if above issue happens:

First analyze whether is there is any other site copied your content. If it is so,

1. We could try the old URL without redirection but with the same content. Since it is an old content for that Old URL and Google already knows it, there might be a chance for reconsidering the content into its SERP.

Or

2. We could completely put up Fresh content with current URL. And suggest for URL for reconsideration in Google Webmasters tool with the explained details. But it might take a long time to bring the URL.

Or

3. Completely change the URL and Content for that product.

FaceBook’s Recent Search Patent Overshadowing Google?

Facebook’s Search Patent “Visual tags for search results generated from social network information” put up before a month or two, is now catching the attention of Search Marketers which may be a worry for major SEs like Google. Assumed, that the high-reaching social media/networking site is started moving forwardly to the direction of search market.

With the recent approval of an automatic “curated” search patent, Facebook could well be moving into Google’s territory and making it at least a little nervous as the social network’s 600 million users (and growing) could use the algorithm to find answers to their burning questions amongst their FB friends, rather than go outside of it.

Previously, Google’s web search tests getting more social after the announcement of FaceBook and BING alliance concerning to the Like and Profile search data of FB.

Data released from comScore Friday points to a rise in U.S. share for Bing and slight decline for Google.

Is that all means FB is overshadowing Google?

404 – Responds with an Error, but Shows a Custom Page to Help your Visitors

The 404 Error is a Not Found error message and is a HTTP standard response code indicative of that the client was able to communicate with the server, however the server could not uncover what was appealed.

404 errors should not be perplexed with “server not found” or related errors, in which a connection to the destination server could not be made at all. 404 errors signify that the demanded source possibly accessible again in the future.

The Error 404 “Page not found” is the error page showed whenever someone requests for a page that does simply not exist on your website. The reason for this is that there may be a linkage on your website that was erroneous or the page may have been recently removed from the website. When there is no web page to put on view, the web server sends a page that plainly says “404 Page not found”.

The 404 error message is an HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol – standard status code. This “Not Found” response code signifies that even though the client could communicate to the server, the server could not locate what was requested or it was constructed not to carry out the request.

The 404 “Not Found” errors are not the same as the “Server Not Found” error that you perceive whenever a connection to the destination server could not be recognized in any way.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) affirms that 404 Not Found should be applied in cases where the server is unsuccessful to establish the requested location and is unsure of its status. Whenever a page has been everlastingly removed, the status code used should be 410. But barely have we seen a 410 page. Instead, 404 Not Found page has develop into popular and the most commonly used error page.

ROR Sitemap – Resources of a Resource – Importance

ROR (Resources of a Resource), a fast growing independent XML format for describing any object of your content in a standard manner, so any search engine can be able to better understand that content. RORweb.com is the official ROR website.

ROR feed is an influential structured feed for describing all your objects to the search engines: products, services, reviews, discounts, images, events, schedule, podcasts, as well as anything you want.

ROR information is typically stored in a ROR feed called ror.xml placed in your website’s main directory. Unlike Google Base, ROR feeds can be easily accessed by all search engines: at http://www.your-website-name.com/ror.xml.

ROR was created before Google Sitemaps, as a way to describe website information for the search engines. ROR is much more than Google Sitemaps. Also, ROR Sitemaps are automatically readable by all search engines, including Google.

ROR was created before Google Base. But unlike Google Base, ROR is for all search engines, not just one. Any search engine can find your ROR information using this scheme: http://www.your-domain-name.com/ror.xml.

The name ror.xml is just the default name; that’s where search engines look by default. If they don’t find it there they look for a <link> tag in your main page (between the <head> and </head> tags):

<link rel=”alternate”
title=”ROR” href=”http://your-site.com/ror.php” />

Alternatively you can simply create a tiny ror.xml file and use it to tell the search engines the real location of your ROR feed.

<rss version=”2.0″ xmlns:ror=”http://rorweb.com/0.1/”>
<channel>
<item>
<title>Your Site Name</title>
<ror:seeAlso>http://your-site.com/ror.php</ror:seeAlso>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

A ROR Sitemap is simply a special type of ROR feed, a feed that provides sitemap information to the search engines. The ROR team is working with several companies in defining new object types and attributes for everyone to use. ROR is spreading very fast. There are currently tens, if not hundreds, of thousands website using ROR.

Online Reputation Tracking Tools

http://www.naymz.com/

http://www.rapleaf.com/

http://www.keotag.com/

http://www.buzzlogic.com/

http://www.sentimentmetrics.com/

http://www.cymfony.com/Solutions/Our-Approach/Orchestra-Platform

http://en-us.nielsen.com/tab/product_families/nielsen_buzzmetrics

http://www.trackur.com/ for individuals ($18 per month), companies ($88), enterprises ($197)

http://www.brandseye.com/ for bloggers ($1 per month), small businesses ($95) and enterprises ($350)

http://www.reputationdefender.com/

http://www.whostalkin.com/

http://www.filtrbox.com/

http://www.viralheat.com/ packages starting at $9.99/month

http://chatterboxhq.com/

Brand Monitoring Tools

http://google.com/alerts

http://technorati.com/

http://backtype.com/

http://www.cocomment.com/

http://www.yacktrack.com/

http://commentful.blogflux.com/

http://co.mments.com/login

http://boardtracker.com/

http://boardreader.com/

http://www.big-boards.com/

http://www.twilert.com/

http://tweetbeep.com/

http://friendfeed.com/search

http://alertthingy.com/alertthingy_friendfeed.html

http://socialmention.com/

http://www.serph.com/

http://www.keotag.com/

http://www.filtrbox.com/

http://www.vml.com/seer/ – Paid

http://omgili.com/