07.20.06
Posted in General at 4:29 pm by Christine
Google introduced the “NoODP” tag a couple of days ago. In this post they mention that they often draw the SERP descriptions from the DMOZ directory. What this tag now enables site owners to do is to choose whether they want their ODP description used (well taken into consideration) or not. If not, all one has to do is include this tag to your meta.
Although they state this, in my experience I’ve often found that when you write your meta descriptions objectively and page relevant, whilst still optimised – more often than not (if you get the formula right) it will display your meta description on the SERP as well.
Has MSN developed a spam killer for search engines? Strider Search Defender claims that it’s capable of doing just that. According to Microsoft, the tool will identify spam URLs that are distributed through different sites and prevent them from being indexed by search sites. (They released a paper on this, but unfortunately the link is not working for some reason today.) In this paper it claims that it starts with a list of confirmed spam web addresses. By using the “link” command, a “spam spider” runs the addresses through search engines to find other pages that link to those sites. Any other potential spam URLs found on those sites during this process are also run through the “spam hunter” program. The spam list is created by a process of filtering out all the false positives and a list of web pages that do redirect to spam sites is compiled.
Once this has been completed the list is fed to the Strider URL tracer to find the domains which are associated with high volume doorway pages. This list then goes through further refinement until they are investigated manually at which time they will either be removed from the search index or assigned a low relevance ranking.
I bet spammers are shaking in their boots about that low relevancy ranking…lol. Most spammers have so many domains and are quite prepared to have them dropped out of the index, at which point they will just turn to the next batch of domains and start all over again.
At least it’s a start – well done Microsoft.
Google 0 – MSN 1
Your move Google ; )
On a Personal Note
I changed over my DNS records as I am testing Google’s Email for Domain. I (well more accurately Joey) saved my site as whilst I was doing all of this I somehow managed to delete the www record – so my site vanished for a couple of hours…but, its back now, and luckily still indexed ; )
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07.18.06
Posted in General at 1:08 pm by Christine
But when will it become really overused – or even abused?
Well, that is the beauty of RSS – it can’t. It works on the principle of supply and demand. Readers have to sign up to your feed and if they don’t like what you have to say, they can very easily delete it from their Reader.
RSS has been evangelised as the way forward to get your information delivered right to your target market’s desktop or onto your website without having to go out and look for it. I am an evangelist of this content delivery method, without my RSS reader – I would not be able to keep track of all the latest info for my industry as quickly as I am able to.
Not only is this a great way to stay up to date with content, but the flip side of the coin is that it’s a great marketing tool – if used properly.
In terms of marketing methods, it’s also relatively cheap to set up and very quick to implement on your site.
USAToday.com reports that their RSS traffic is ‘rising month after month by orders of magnitude’, even though they are barely promoting their RSS feeds.
Travelocity identified the Yahoo and MSN email users among their current email subscribers and sent them an offer to subscribe via RSS feed with the easy-to-use MyYahoo! and MyMSN buttons. 2/3 of the people that opened the e-mail actually subscribed.
There is a market for everyone out there – you just need to know how to set it up correctly, have your own voice and present your content appropriately.
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07.11.06
Posted in General at 3:19 pm by Christine
It has become best practice to “google” someone prior to an interview, meeting or potential business deal these days to try and source as much information about that person as possible.
We use this term so widely that it has become part of our day to day vocab. So, it’s about high-time the dictionary acknowledges it as a verb, which it has just done in the new release of the 2006 edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which features the verb along with several other new words.
Another brand that made it to verb fame is “xerox” - which we often use as a term to indicate that we’re about to make a photocopy.
Another phrase that I quite like is the phrase “mouse potato” which is used to refer to someone who is glued to the computer screen, akin to the earlier “couch potato”, who was someone glued to a television screen.
On a Personal Note
Knysna was awesome as always! Joey had a great run – and cut 7 min off his previous personal best time for a ½ marathon. We had a huge after marathon party at Crab’s Creek – which was incredibly full, but loads of fun!
Sunday, we ventured to the oyster company where we had our traditional bottle of bubbly and tray of oysters. Was delicious! Afterwards we made our way back to Cape Town in the bumper-to-bumper traffic across the pass. It was a great weekend and we’ll definitely be back there next year for round two.
We went to watch Superman Returns last night. It was good, but incredibly cheesy!!
Too much romance and too little action IMO, but the graphics were cool. My next movie scheduled to watch is Pirates of the Caribbean.
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