02nd May2012

Google’s biggest concern (part 2)

by admin

As promised here is part two of the article ( Google’s biggest concern part 1 )

The point we are making is the following, if Google were losing revenue attributable to their large operation, do you believe they’d have the time, energy or resources to sustain “shaking things up” in the organic results in the name of superior search quality?

future of search

Would they’ve time to shun infinite advertisers (because they jointly are not deserving the time to service equated to fortune 500 and upward business)? – I believe not.
Is Google’ Greatest Fear Competition or Complacency?

With Facebook (the social behemoth) and Apple (the mobile heavyweight) both conceiving getting into the search engine space, Google could possibly experience some severe rivalry ahead (dissimilar to Yahoo or Bing) and which indicates that…

Google biggest dread is:

1) they’ll get outdated for the favored organic search engine and lose their monopoly (and revenue).

2) Cost Per Click will fail to deliver (because organic search is no more “the cats meow” for dissatisfied users) and the organic hits userbase will decrease.

3) The curve will change (which is the most probable) entailing that Modern technologies, platforms, techniques and/or solutions will come forth and masses will just progress from typing keywords in to search engines and use alternate ways such as apps, HTML5 or other options to consume media or commerce delivered on demand.

The rhythm of rising innovation (from bulletin board system, to directories, to search engines) accompanied by user adjustment which at present approaches user complacency has already achieved the point of integration.

This entails that the cycle is mature for change and a fresh potential curve (like Apples Siri) or another alternatives to search could cause the former accomplishment to be outdated (for instance. Beepers, cassette records, videocassette recorder, the Yellow / White Pages).

Nevertheless, at the time (back in the day) hardly anyone was betting past the phase of user self-complacency and would still be utilising beepers, cassette – tape recording, VCR’s, etcetera. However new inventions and curves had took over them, instantly establishing them out-of-date.

Though most businesspeople did not acknowledge (or worry) what a search engine was a decade ago, fast forward a decade and they might not even be able to recall.

Remember, the marketplace is erratic and here today, lost tomorrow can take place quicker with the acceleration of communication and Modern nascent technologies.

The Take Away:

1) The actual information in Google’s index that they endeavor to police and impose doesn’t belong to them, it belongs to the other people (those who composed and published it) and the World Wide Web as a whole who are kind sufficiency to share. Google doesn’t produce the articles in their index, you do, and how you advertise is to be decided by you.

2) The internet is greater than Google and you adjudicate Google’s destiny every time you search on their program or prefer a different search engine you draw your vote. There are 1000s of traffic funnels to bring visitors to your sites apart of search engines (look into them for viability to your business sector).

3) Google ordering people to parachute through hoops (in fearfulness from a page-rank penalty or removal from their index) is a Pandora’s Box they had better leave alone (or they could be left alone on the next coming forth exit by those very same censored/punished users).

In closing, Google’s most avid dread is you not utilizing Google search and although their business model is magnificent, they are the most prosperous business in the history to turn a profit by (1) utilizing data produced by other sites thru crawling and indexing technique (2) create an integrated advertising framework as a supplement to their organic search results and (3) being paid to direct visitors out from their own web site as a influential go-between – this model, put plainly, bears its restrictions, especially, whenever some of the aforesaid metrics vary, (like Google being forced to get a permit to crawl your content).

Luckily for us (based on former experience), we recognize that consumers are erratic and at whatsoever time they could opt-out and patronize different sites which deliver more affectionate, functional or curb appealing than Google. Google started as merely an internet site and can possibly be cut back thereto if masses decide not to use them.

This implies you, the users guard the key to just how much might or dominance you want to tolerate them to hold over you or your company.

Please share your opinions below in the comment section…

Category : Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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01st May2012

Google’s biggest concern (part 1)

by admin

With thousands of website owners, web developers and associates expending millions of dollars on search engine optimization and infinite hours exhausted optimizing their sites (simply to bear Google organic search results reorganized or altogether taken away due to vacillating repositions from new algorithm modifications) is truly producing notions of anger, defeat and contempt.

As if managing a business was not difficult enough, business proprietors are nowadays pressured to address with the ascending and descend of Google search results (recognizing that at any time apart of pitiless rivals targeting their most desired positions that a new algorithm alteration could come along and possibly brush entirely progress under the carpet) without notice.

The sole answer is to either (1) adapt or (2) broaden your traffic generators to become not as much addicted to any source of visitors, yet, most are either reluctant or incognizant of their alternatives.

For big or little business likewise confronted with budget items, cash flow and rivalry; adapting or excessively hinging upon any one traffic source (Google) isn’t a feasible answer for producing long-run constancy.

Confronted with wild wobbles in rankings and either carrying record revenues or red ink based on where you rank constitutes a type of traffic-dependency. That addiction could be ablactated and substituted if those aforementioned business proprietors took their seo or cpc budget to other feasible search engines and / or traffic generators to funnel traffic.

Objectively, it is time to examine affairs for what they actually; the reality that Google (not astonishingly) constitutes a business model prompted by earnings. In spite of the “do not be evil” slogan which formerly brandished a blind eye by most, with recent allegations of privacy concerns, modifications in Adwords policies (which left over thousands prohibited without any accountability) and the never-ending organic search algorithm shuffling, at some point in time users will come to terms on this and act consequently (and disregard Google).

The Pervasive menace of Google penalizations

Lately Google advised untold numbers of webmasters that they were in violation of their conditions of service because of unnatural link activity. Unnecessary to say, the concern of loss comprises an eminent incentive. Once masses are ordered to conform, most will to avoid breaking the stream of the status quo.

Still, the audaciousness that webmasters had better follow the terms of service agreement (considering they did not choose to opt in originally) based upon Google’s limitation on checking the value of the link chart (paid link, deliberate link, unintentional link, etcetera.) is ludicrous. It’s not as if anybody in their index ever accepted a request inquiring whether it was all right to crawl their website and include them in their index?

Does CNN, New York Times, USA today or different large websites add rel=”nofollow” tags to all outgoing links or risk being delisted? Nah, they don’t… and so how come should you be expected to?

The reality is that sites with that much of dominance plainly do not need Google (since they already have an established trade name) and users will visit directly their website rather than utilizing Google as a go-between (which is fundamentally what they are).

And how “relevant” would Google look if a user searched for CNN in Google and could not see CNN (or whatever prominent brand name for that matter), which makes brands in essence insusceptible to being banished from their search results.

Nevertheless, for small businesses, enterprises, affiliates and other people constrained to compete day-after-day in Google to funnel traffic to expand and exist are perpetually pummeled through the obscure conditions of service which basically means you can’t advertise your website (unless it has been done fitting in to Google’s promotional policy).
Google’s position on Links is Dated

The last time I looked links weren’t solely contrived to falsify PR (Page Rank), links are just links, it is merely how a person moves from page to page and site to internet site. Just as freedom of speech exists, the freedom to link to who you wish as you wish exists in the same vein.

The only difference is intent and links are either designed to deliver visitors from Page A to Page B or to advertise – it is that uncomplicated. And citizenry is going to advertise their commercial enterprise from necessity in order to make some earnings so, I do not see links disappearing any time presently, so, Google you will apparently have to conform (and stop penalizing website owners /web developers / web designers) or they’ll merely march on to different traffic funnels…

(Part 2 to be published tomorrow)

Category : Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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12th Mar2010

Couple of things I learned while creating sites in Drupal part 2

by admin

As i am continuing to create sites in Drupal i of course continue to learn of new Drupal ways to accomplish them and make them better. Sometimes even going back to sites of our previous clients and adding a module or two that i just found out existed, and think would benefit them.

On one of the sites i recently worked we bumped into a very puzzling problem the site looked and worked fine in (you guessed it) Firefox, Chrome and Safari but for some reason was totally messed up in Internet Explorer 7. Don’t get me wrong i am not surprised when i see a site having alignment problems in IE this is a known thing, but here it was as if it didn’t see half the CSS at all!

After hours and hours of trying to figure out and nail down the problem, checking the HTML for possibility of any unclosed tags and the like, removing a variety of JavaScript files and removing CSS stylesheets one by one (there were 32 of them). We were able to figure it out the HTML, JavaScript and CSS were all valid, the problem was that Internet Explorer reads maximum 30 CSS stylesheets, and since we had 32 of them, the last two were just ignored. Yes i know 30 stylesheets sounds like a lot but if you ever worked on a Drupal website you will know its not hard to get there: 5 default Drupal CSS files, another 5 from your theme plus every second module you add to your site like UberCart ads one or two of them you are at thirty already. Thats probably one of the reasons Drupal has “Optimize CSS files” option in the performance section of your Admin menu.

Once i started optimizing the site i found few more useful tools and modules to get you there. You probably already know what firebug is and used this popular add-on for Firefox, there is one more add-on that makes the optimization work much easier “Page Speed by Google”. They will show how well you page performs and give you optimization tips. Following the tips i found that there are some good Drupal modules that could help you follow the tips. For example:

  • CSS GZIP module – this module will gzip your aggregated css files
  • JavaScript Aggregator – minifies the JavaScript using JSMin
  • Boost provides static page caching for Drupal enabling a very significant performance and scalability boost for sites that receive mostly anonymous traffic

Another useful tool for optimizing your page is CSS sprites. CSS sprite combines multiple background images into a single image. This technique makes web pages faster because it reduces the number of downloads per page. This step should be done at the design level, but it could be done later you will just spend little more time doing it.

If you liked this post you might want to read the first part.

Do you have any useful things you would want to share? Feel free to do so in the comments. Did you enjoy reading this post? Then share it by clicking the “share this post” button bellow.

Category : Drupal
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