Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Google Music - Search with an Extra Bit-e

Take a look at the above screenshot and you will see what I mean. I got a Google Music result off of the term "Foxy".

Although this to me is all a part of the Google search engine suite of tools, including but not limited to: Google Maps, Google Local, Google Desktop, Google Toolbar, Google Base, Google Trends, Google Finance and Google Coop. Of course there are more, but these seem to be the core of apps for the search engine giant, and this particular selection of tools seems to fit the bill when it comes to user search refinement and quality searching.

One thing in common is the logic behind the search engine applications, but they are all unique in the functionality and accessibility they offer to their users and sources.

KartOO Meta Search Engine

KartOO is a search engine which has applied a great implementation of design, interactivity and search, all-in-one website. Although it doesn't use it's own blended algorithym, this meta search engine taps into results from a variety of sources and brings them together into a map generated by top twenty results and then "maps" them into a keyword/theme cloud.

Not only is the KartOO search engine fun, but it also provides guidance for new web users, or for practicianers of SEO or website optimization for search engines. By viewing the keyword cloud provided, one can determine which of these words stick out at a search engine more (search engine simultation), posing keyword optimization issues or strengths.

Check out this website as it is indeed something to look out for and use.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Google Coop Testing and XML Feeds

I've been testing Google Coop quite a bit, making several XML feeds and trying out a combination of elements as per the Google Coop developer pages. I still haven't asked anyone to subscribe to my links just yet, but I am hoping since you are reading this (Hint, Hint), that you would want to subscribe to my SEO Google Coop profile...

Basically, I would think you will start seeing advanced notice of any activities related to my blogs, SEO, Search Engines and of course, updated info on Google Coop. Let me know what you observe given a subscription to my Google Coop Profile.

And feel free to post relevant and useful Google Coop profiles here as well.

Google Travel Inlays : CSI Las Vegas (Can Search Include?)

We've all seen by now the Google Base drop downs on Google's SERP for selections based on recipes, real estate, jobs and car models, but there is a new intregue upon the horizon.

Enter the specific search below for "Monte Carlo Las Vegas", bringing a travel inlay unlike the usual suspects...

In making this observation useful, I also searched based on the pattern for other "known" hotels in Las Vegas, namely "Paris", "Luxor", "Bellagio" and "Venetian". Funny thing is, that while "Paris" and "Luxor" hotels came up in the Las Vegas search, Bellagio and Venetian inlays were non existant - rather they led directly to the standard SERP listing on Google for the official hotel websites.

When I ran a more general search on Google for "Las Vegas", I got what appeared to be a Google Co-Op result - providing a selection of drill-down links to narrow the search down for relevance. I find this encouraging and highly useful for information and research abilities.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Kosmix Niche Search Engine

Practically, this is a refined search engine looking up relative topics and information across a select vertical set. Namely, Health, Travel, Finance, US Politics and Video Games.

It is refreshing to see how information is laid out at Kosmix, a combination of ASK.com and Superpages.com, giving refinement categories / key terms once a search is performed.

Although the Kosmix search engine is small right now, I could see where it has it's strengths, certainly specified searches in it's verticals can provide essentially more useful results than in a generic search like MSN or Yahoo!

Monday, May 15, 2006

Snap

Snap has come back into the race with a new interface and also a nifty new search engine. While I don't think it will win any following as of yet, it really is quite easy to use and may in fact beat out www.live.com (MSN's offering) without much difficulty. There are far less bugs and with a couple more features added to Snap.com, the search engine might be a serious contender.

Definately check Snap's search engine out, I had fun testing several searches and using the in-browser, browser, lol. There in fact seems to already be a way to "suggest" a website without them actually having any link to it... As a matter of fact, it looks as if Snap uses an ASK.com approach - Using results that it spiders without recommended URL's then if they exist in the database and someone searches on those sites that aren't yet popular, it votes it into caching a thumbnail and other relevant visual and textual info.

The inlaid browser that displays a thumbnail and information regarding that site being looked at, makes Snap's search engine easy to use for comparing result descriptions with actual page content, making the life of a search that much more short and efficient.

Now it's up to the test of time and feedback from users to see how Snap is regarded when compared to top-tiered and even second-tiered web search engines.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

AlltheWeb Livesearch Beta

I am sure this search has been around for a while on alltheweb, but I found it to be a very good implementation of a "Google Suggest" clone for search. It's slightly buggy, but for the most part fund and useful. If the engine also moves into being more targetted, perhaps a niche discovery search engine, I think alltheweb might gain popularity and play with the big boys...

Check it out for yourself.

SEO Keyword Trends Brought to you by Google Trends

Now this tool is quite useful when comparing terms due to consistancy of searches, seasonality of a search and also to determine popularity of terms. So in addition to keyword frequencies, this tool can certinaly help pinpoint the stress-points of an campaign or strategy to optimize it even further. Google Trends also displays regional, language and top cities that conduct the search. Talk about search intelligence!

Furthermore, Google Trends can do wonders for SEO and SEM in external site side optimization and keyword / trend research. It also comes with nifty and easy to use line and bar charts (which can go very well within research, sales and presentation documents). Another note to take in is the viability of ad posting and even related search terms inclusion into results in the future release of Google Trends.

Keep them coming Google.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Spam brought by StopBounce

All I have to say is, OMG, what a spammy concept. Not only is this very easy to implement (a javascript declaration on the homepage or landingpage replacing the "Back Button" destination with the spam site.

In theory, this is a good concept, but it seems like in every implementation, it goes to sites like these to ruin the viability of relevant results for users, after all, these are commissioned and can certainly be irrelevant. Figured I would speak on this topic since it's a rare implementation and it's just way to simple an exploit of website visitors...

Yahoo! tries SERP Integration

Although in many cases Yahoo! Buzz results are not extremely relevant, I have to say that there is one very positive thing coming out of Yahoo! and Google for that matter.

There seems to be a surge in search engine tool integration directly into the SERPs. While Yahoo! Buzz may not be best suited in this fashion, it's nice to see that Yahoo is taking search a bit more seriously and making a move on enhancing results.

Yahoo! Buzz would certainly help some users and for some particular searches, could be valued, but I am sure Yahoo has other tools which can be even more effective... to better follow in Google's footsteps with Google Local and Google Base.

I will certainly keep my eye on this movement and see if any new suprises appear.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Flash SEO and Optimization

This is an excellent example of how to and how not to use Flash on a website that is looking to gain traffic or to conduct SEO. The biggest no-no's for Flash is to have a 100% flash based website. It is a large topic of discussion in the SEO community - whether or not Google and the other large search engines (MSN, Yahoo, ASK) pick up on difficult-to-impossible coding technologies (IE: Flash and Javascript). Until search engines are 80% or more accurate at searching these types of files/code, there is no reason to adopt them. It may work in the longterm or it may not, one thing is for sure, simple is better.

Although I hate eye sores, you know, those websites made all of text with about 30 colors, many of them do extremely well and it is not because of their design. Think about it for a second, those websites are extremely thin, little to no hinderances in terms of code and visible content, thus search engines can better read and spider (AKA: scan) websites. This in turn improves the success of an SEO campaign or effort.

In my opinion, I don't refrain from using images, flash or javascript. I just offload javascript to external files, minimize the lines of code those external references take on a page, use a reasonable amount of images (roughly 10-20% of the page), and no more than 30% of flash is used on a page. When imbedding navigation into flash, I always double it up with either image links with alt attributes or straight-up text links (preferred).

Read the article for a bit more insight into this topic. I know you will find it useful and perhaps a great learnings opportunity.

SEJ - Google vs. Microsoft - Bout 2

This story, fresh off the press from Search Engine Watch, involves a treacherous plot followed by reveling in absolute horror and finally topped with incredulous mayhem! Just kidding, its the ongoing Google VS Microsoft battle involving a buch of whining, software debates and the neverending fight for market share.

Thing is, Google's bundled into firefox and now Microsoft intends on integrating MSN (Live) search into IE7. Of course Google has a problem with this move on Microsoft's part and has filed complaints, however is it fair that they do the same with firefox? Essentially We understand a couple of things that also make this unfair:

1) Microsoft sells everything under the sun (OS's, Search, Electronics, software) whereas Google is purely search (working on getting other offerings, clearly)
2) Google dominates the search market share, something like 45% VS MSN's 11%.

So this cannot be considered apples to apples, but on the search landscape, Google clearly owns it. As has been mentioned on other blogs, the two should shift from default settings to an initial user setup to determine which engine they want set up as default. Personally, they should just set the default to clusty, just to agree that neither will be favored ;)I left this comment on the page as an opine relation to the subject and companies: It's pretty incredible how easily the tide turns. Microsoft, just recently, in the public's eyes, was considered the big brother / evil corporation and now Google's being put into that role. The difference I believe is that both Google and Microsoft are the worlds mega corporations and it would seem perception has made them equal. Although users are somewhat married to Google search and Microsoft Windows, most refuse to let go to adopt new software, and perhaps with good reason. It costs alot and also requires a good bit of learning shifts and perhaps even paradigm altering. Despite the battle between the goliaths, so long as they perform at least to par, we are certainly talking business. By the way, I don't agree with Microsoft most times, but they are certainly using a strategy followed by tactic that will raise their search market share.

Let me know what you think, love to get feedback on these topics.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Social Networking - Does Myspace own it?

Never really having the inclination to participate on Myspace, I haven't felt the need or desire to communicate in that way, until now. Considering the possibility of Myspace-like websites that have more to offer than some rants from 11-16 year olds, I might, along with a myriad of other Internet citizens, also take flight to these new websites. It could take a while though.

A friend introduced me to myspace years ago, but it has really gained steam in the media as of late. As a matter of fact the "Social Networking" website has brought my best friend a fiance, and they are extremely well matched. I couldn't believe that Myspace could be a way to communicate effectively since to me it seemed like a college micro-site and nothing more, but once again, its how people use it and think of it - not how basic or advanced.

Well on to the actual story at hand. The article at CNN Money goes into a couple of new companies poised to make money off of the social networking space - based all on topics and subjects in business and personal fields. Everything from joke sharing to business collaboration.

Realizing that this is precisely what the Internet was envisioned to accomplish, these sites should do phenomenally well... Looks like the big boys have it in a vice at this point, but as always, the 'net gives the little folk quite some leverage...

Like the old saying goes, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for days, give a man a fishing pole and the man can live for years." , or at least somewhere along those lines. You get the point.

Prime Time for Vlogs?

I admit, when blogs just became known, I shrugged them off as diaries for little kids back in 2000-2001, but they have certainly come of age and advanced far beyond what I expected. Although they are in fact fun or useful and informative, there are lacking elements such as touch, animation and smell. Obviously we have not come of age for those senses through technology (at least not publically known or available).

Welcome to Vlogs. Practically an online video diary which can be used in a plethora of ways - everything from commercials to low-budget films to someone's every day existance. I can certainly ses this as a huge thing in the next year two with the abundant proliferation of video blogginh devices such as cell phones, Ipods and combination gizmos.

Let us all rejoice, yet another way to waste time in the office! But seriously, this coulod be a liberating experience for you and I, perhaps even a life saving method of delivery for those without the means to get their messages out from third-world countries and the like...

We will soon see and be able to contribute to this new found and widely available medium.

Google Versus Microsoft: Search Engines Divided via OS

And the beat goes on, a story of David and Goliath or in this case I would rather say Kong Vs. Goliath...

This is the anti-trust stigmata that has since plagued Microsoft since the beginning of it's days... I would expect that there are a few variables responsible for this reaction.

1) Microsoft has so much marketshare for OS sales and similar lines of computer products
2) Microsoft is clearly working on taking the search marketplace
3) Microsoft has leverage through its motive and domineering marketshare products

Simultaneously, considering the priciple of business operations and leverage, I would, in Microsoft's shoes also slip in "default" settings to MSN. Since Microsoft is leving users a choice by making the option available to select other search engines as default, they are in fact opening the OS and bypassing anti-trust related issues.

Its obviously to Google's gain to have the select your default search engine durring the OS setup, however, wouldn't that be too easy? After all this is business, not an arbitrary group looking out for all parties...