Due to its stock’s performance and the falling-apart of its relationship with Microsoft, some rather harsh things have been said about Yahoo lately. Site owners and SEO specialists might want to send the company a little “thank you” note, though, as a new update to its search index seems to have worked in their favor.
Granted, not everyone can benefit from an update; the concept is similar to that impossibility whereby most people claim to be better-than-average drivers. Still, the effects appear to be either neutral or positive for the members of the WebmasterWorld forum.
In a short thread discussing the update, measured traffic increases of 10, 25, 30, and 50 percent are mentioned. As far as rankings go, “arikgub” saw his site move from somewhere outside the top 200 results for a keyword to the very first page.
This all caused “supermanu” to write, “Definitely an EXCELLENT update 
. . . . Thank you Yahoo! I love you! I hope it will stick like this FOREVER ;)”
With any luck, at least a few of you have been left feeling the same way.
Share: del.icio.us Reddit Google Netscape StumbleUpon Technorati
Google’s an integral part of a lot of our daily lives, and Twitter’s got bunches of fans, too. Nonetheless, a recent interaction between the two companies has left many sites’ owners with a bad taste in their mouths.
It used to be that Twitter users could put links in their profiles and see a little bit of PageRank get passed along. Then Matt Cutts sent a note to one of Twitter’s cofounders about the practice, and not long after, the bio links were nofollowed.
This led Rae Hoffman to write, “My personal twitter page has 1700 links, 1500+ followers, contains over 7000 tweets and is a toolbar PR of 5. Last I checked, I got all those links. I wrote all that content. All those people were following me as a person. I developed that link popularity. Why on earth would I not deserve ALL the benefits (including that in the form of a profile link) from building up the value of that page?”
People have been trying hard to convince Google and/or Twitter to not worry about the bio links, or, if spam is an issue, to establish standards (number of followers, time the account’s been established) that should straighten things up. Feel free to write some emails yourself if you find the subject interesting.
The development’s at least worth noting as a sign of how Google remains a top influencer in the search engine and social media worlds.
Share: del.icio.us Reddit Google Netscape StumbleUpon Technorati
It took a certain search giant about four years to release Google Suggest to the public, which, considering the feature’s simplicity, is a rather ridiculous amount of time. Only now that Google Suggest’s out, complaints are starting to pile up, and some people are wishing the feature had been held back even longer.
Google Suggest is the thing that tries to autocomplete all queries. Moreover, it recommends correct spellings when the searchers goof, and shows about how many results there will be for any given phrase.
One problem with this is the clutter that’s introduced; people who know what they’re searching for don’t need dropdown menus and a bunch of numbers to appear and self-revise.
As for the other (probably more important) stuff, Tamar Weinberg mentions “the negative impact to long tail searches, more traffic to regional sites, and less opportunity to capitalize on misspellings . . .”
She later continues, “Martin Bowling explains that Google Suggest is a reputation management nightmare. Using an illustration for Obama, one sees that a lot of ‘common’ searches include ‘obama antichrist’ and ‘obama muslim,’ search phrases you wouldn’t think of . . . . This can eventually grow over time and the reputation management dangers could increase.”
Businesses and individual bloggers will want to run some test searches with Google Suggest to see how they’ve been affected. (The feature can then be disabled through the “preferences” menu if you don’t like it.) Here’s hoping all the recommendations point your would-be customers and readers in the right direction.
Share: del.icio.us Reddit Google Netscape StumbleUpon Technorati
Yahoo Site Explorer may not be something you use much, or, for that matter, at all. But the tool’s been updated, and early feedback indicates enough improvements have been made that some people will want to reconsider their stance.
Are you on such distant terms with Site Explorer that its purpose is a mystery? No problem. It was started, as an entry on the Yahoo Search Blog explains, “with the goal of providing site owners with better visibility into how we index their websites and what data we use in our search service.”
The tool’s had little impact, given that most people gravitate towards Google’s products, anyway.
However, “[W]e launched a new look and feel for Site Explorer that provides a more dynamic interface to accommodate future feature roll-outs,” according to the blog entry. “The new interface also includes a new Site Summary page to provide statistics for authenticated sites. On top of this, we’re also increasing the number of rules for Dynamic URL Rewriting that you can enter from 3 to 10.”
Yahoo’s asking for feedback, so if you see any room for improvement or have ideas about those future features, speak up and let corporate representatives know.
Share: del.icio.us Reddit Google Netscape StumbleUpon Technorati
Certain buildings are undeniably beautiful. Others are at least interesting to look at, and pretty much everything is better than what the average person could construct on his or her own. The piles of building supplies that once existed weren’t so nice, though, and it’s important that you keep search engines from seeing your site in a similar condition.
We’ll start with what came as a response to a longer article. Jaan Kanellis wrote, “Why not work within a dev environment and then push changes live? Your website should NEVER be down during changes and updates.” This is a reasonable approach, and no one’s recommending that you do otherwise.
However, if you for some reason want or need to perform some more public renovations, Ann Smarty offered a couple of good tips.
“Don’t show [an] ‘under construction’ notice to search bots,” she began. “[B]y this you risk wasting your chance getting indexed properly on the spot and you will have to work much more to get them come back and change their opinion about your site.”
Also, “It might be wise to put a holding page to update your casual visitors of your upcoming site status but let it return 503 header status-code to invite crawlers return later.”
An update is a risky thing - you’re betting that the finished product will be in every way equal to or better than the original. But it would be a pity to lose ground before that revision even launches, so follow the advice of either Kanellis or Smarty if at all possible.
Share: del.icio.us Reddit Google Netscape StumbleUpon Technorati
