Can anybody explain Google Zeitgeist?
December 22nd, 2006
As reported earlier, Google’s Zeitgeist this year shows that “Bebo” was the most popular search term for 2006, totally outstripping MySpace. Yet if you use Google’s own trend service you’ll see the exact opposite?
The conspiracy theorists are going to love this one!
Google Snooping
December 22nd, 2006
With some smart scouring through Google’s robot.txt file Garett Rogers has found a new Google service that’s not quite ready to annouce yet.
Featured in Marketing Week is a news snippet that Google has struck a deal with NASA, which means that under the Space Agreement Act, surfers can view images of Mars and the moon. I’m sure that mars.google.com and moon.google.com have been around for a while, does this mean an improvement in the current, rather sparse mapping?
Scalable Inman Flash Replacement
December 21st, 2006
Scalable what? Scalable Inman Flash Replacement or SIFR is a rather neat way of using Flash text to make your website look gorgeous, while keeping your site search engine friendly. The end result is replacing the h1 tag in the code with selectable, scalable and accessibility compliant flash text. sIFR is the result of many hundreds of hours of designing, scripting, testing, and debugging by Mike Davidson and Mark Wubben. It is an open source project and is free for you to use.
For the coders, here’s how it works:
sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash. Here is the entire process:
- A normal (X)HTML page is loaded into the browser.
- A javascript function is run which first checks that Flash is installed and then looks for whatever tags, ids, or classes you designate.
- If Flash isn’t installed (or obviously if javascript is turned off), the (X)HTML page displays as normal and nothing further occurs. If Flash is installed, javascript traverses through the source of your page measuring each element you’ve designated as something you’d like “sIFRed”.
- Once measured, the script creates Flash movies of the same dimensions and overlays them on top of the original elements, pumping the original browser text in as a Flash variable.
- Actionscript inside of each Flash file then draws that text in your chosen typeface at a 6 point size and scales it up until it fits snugly inside the Flash movie.
This all happens in a split-second, so all of the checking, replacing, and scaling is not visible to the user. It is not uncommon to notice a very short delay as the Flash loads, but to the user, none of the internals of this process are exposed.
More dodgy SEO spam
December 20th, 2006
Just received another spam ‘SEO services’ email - this time from Websquash.com
If you’re not in the Top100 listings, you don’t exist. If you’re not in the Top 50, you’re probably losing business.
No, no.. no. If you’re not in the top 10 listings, then you don’t exist for 76% of potential customers, and if you’re not number 1 in search results for your key phrase, you are losing business (3.5x more clicks are to result 1 compared to result 2, using AOL data)
I guess if you’re touting for business at $74.99, you can’t really make any real promises. It surprises me how many people do not take their business seriously enough to invest in a professional service - and instead chuck money at ’services’ that we would not consider for a second if they were off-line advertising propositions.
How To Bully Your Way To The Top of Google
December 20th, 2006
Or rather anger the SEO community with one e-mail. After returning from a relaxing two week holiday, I was catching up with some blogs (no wifi on the top of the Eiffel Tower) and found one of the biggest head-scratchers I’ve seen in a while.
Blogger Dean Hunt received a rather strange request via e-mail:
On Thursday morning I checked our google positions and your site is now above us for this term. I have checked your blog and it has nothing to do with [edited], so I think it would be best all round if you remove your blog from google for this search term.
Please understand that we make our living from this, and you are just writing a blog that has nothing to do with [edited].
If you do not remove yourself from google for this search, then I will call them myself and have you removed.
Obviously from somebody who has no clue how search engines work and takes a rather rude approach trying to resolve the issue. Dean, was not sure how to reply to this e-mail and posted it on his blog for suggestions and received hundreds of links.
Here was Dean’s response:
Dean here from DeanHunt.com
I just received your e-mail. My first question would have to be… Are you serious?
I had to re-read your e-mail three times to make sure my eyes were not playing tricks on me!
Here is some more info that may help you understand my stance on this:
a) I have never attempted to rank for the search term [edited], I seem to rank fairly well for [edited], which I suppose is fairly similar. But if Google prefers my site to yours then perhaps you should be asking yourself why that is.
b) There is nothing I can do about removing myself for that search term, nor am I going to attempt to do anything. I have no information on my site related to [edited], so I am sure that the searchers will generally visit your site instead.
c) You can contact Google if you wish! I doubt you will get a serious reply though.
Perhaps instead of wasting your time with e-mails like this you could work on improving your web site instead?
Anyway, good luck with contacting google, if you do get a reply, I would love a copy of their e-mail. I have prepared a nice little place on my wall to hang it from.
Take care,
Dean
To which he received this reply:
Dean,
Firstly, I have to admit that I was not impressed with the sarcastic nature of your reply.
Secondly, I am writing to let you know that I have contacted Google and am awaiting their reply.
You have to understand Dean that an online business should be higher in Google than a blog.
Don’t forget that Google is a business as well, they obviously make more money from other businesses than they do from blogs, so it is in their interest that I am higher than you for certain searches.
I have also contacted my lawyer about this issue, so you should expect a letter in the post very soon.
I expect a reply soon.
The whole story makes for amusing reading, rather than buying a link, hiring a search engine specialist, it appears the guy has decided to burn money on a lawyer to pursue an argument which has no steam at all. Dean, has not released the source of the e-mail, or the search term, which for some raises eyebrows - is this genuine? Or is it an excellent demonstration of viral marketing?
