TW Blog :: Entries for SEO
No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experienceJohn Locke
Google Desktop Search
Also relates to The Office
So, Google's Desktop Search Beta has launched. Danny Sullivan provides an extensive review of this latest application to join the Google suite, while screen shots can be viewed on the Google site.
I had high expectations in the light of Gmail, but this speculatively premature release leaves quite a bit to be desired. As with previous desktop search tools, the proprietary list of indexable file types makes the tool practically useless for users of open source tools like Open Office and the Mozilla Suite (bar Firefox Hacks). Over at the Register, Copernic CEO, David Burns, expands on privacy concerns in desktop search branding Google Desktop privacy unacceptable.
Google Desktop Search allows users to opt out of sending the company back detailed usage data, but it isn't possible to firewall it completely. David Burns, CEO Copernic
Integration with Gmail is also noticeably lacking!
The desktop search market is heating up with AOL snapping at Google's heels, putting pressure on well established smaller vendors like Copernic, dtSearch, X1 and others.
Personally, I am unable to test drive Google Desktop Search, not that I would want to - this platform is Win98, and GDS is compatible solely with 2000 and XP. Expecting more from the next release.
Posted on Oct 16, 2004 at 22:45:11. [Comments for Google Desktop Search- 0]
Moving Up the SERPs
Also relates to Blogging
Following the latest Google PR update, I have moved into the top 15 on Google for my name! Quite stoked when I think back to 6 months ago and I was lost somewhere in the depths of the three million or so Google SERP's for Tom Wright!
Posted on Oct 08, 2004 at 04:41:10. [Comments for Moving Up the SERPs- 0]
Search Engine Roundup
This post does not relate to any other topics
The Search Engine industry has been buzzing with activity the last couple of weeks. Tuesday 14th saw the launch of the A9.com engine from Amazon. It has come a long way from the beta version I tested back in April. John Batelle discusses the multipanel interface and click stream (or search history) tracking in detail. On the negative side CNet illustrates the challenge of retrieving images straight from the Google engine.
Also focusing on a personalised search interface is the beta release this Tuesday of MyJeeves from ask.com. MyJeeves also archives search history while providing flexibility to categorize results into separate folders - excellent for research purposes.
Meanwhile, LookSmart announced yesterday that it has acquired Furl.net - the archiving tool for text equivalents of web page content, which provides a great repository for future search and retrieval.
While recent Google hype has revolved around the GBrowser rumours, the potential for exploitation of Google SERP's has been further illustrated by results cloaking with 302 redirects.
Currently, most of my experience with the Search Engines is for SEO, but I have found myself using Vivisimo Clustering more and more for reasearch. As well as providing meta-search for Lycos, MSN, DMOZ and other engines, the logical groupings of clustered results saves considerable time.
Posted on Sep 24, 2004 at 11:50:27. [Comments for Search Engine Roundup- 0]
One Year, One Weblog Later
Also relates to Peregrinations
June 2003 Web Server Logs
- Total Pages
- 292
- Total Visits
- 125
June 2004 Web Server Logs
- Total Pages
- 7664
- Total Visits
- 4442
(Logs for www.severnsolutions.co.uk and its subdirectories. Un-adjusted for searchbots.)
Incontrovertible evidence for Standards Based development leading to improved SEO and accessibility. Oh, and the expansive presence generated by a pseudo-weblog archive system.
Posted on Jul 10, 2004 at 17:56:20. [Comments for One Year, One Weblog Later- 0]
Google Flashback?
This post does not relate to any other topics
While performing some SEO on my mate's longboard skates site earlier this evening, I decided to have a quick play around with the -nonsense exclusion parameter on Google to see what it would bring up. This was a familiar technique during the early fallout of hurricane Florida to see pre-Florida results, which Google reportedly disabled prior to Christmas of last year. The following search phrase certainly bought up a different set of SERPs:
longboard skates -abcd
I took this further adding additional exclusion parameters to see if the SERPs changed. The surprise came when I hit eight parameters (giving the maximum 10 words allowed in a search query):
longboard skates -abcd -abcd -abcd -abcd -abcd -abcd -abcd -abcd
The top 20 results looked very familiar to the pre-Florida results for longboard skates when Still Stoked had maintained top placement for a considerable period of time. (And rightly so being not only the home of the Landsurfer, the world's longest production longboard skateboard, but also one of the first dedicated longboard skates companies in the UK.)
The recent rebuild of the site had actually been in response to the dramatic demise of the site following Florida - disappearing altogether from the top 100 results. It is satisfying to see that by following the guidelines for Web Standards and Accessibility the site is working its way back up the SERPs with each new visit from the Googlebot.
Since I am discussing Google hacks, why not have a look at Google Hacking Mini-Guide to learn some of the ways hackers can exploit Google's service.
Posted on May 22, 2004 at 01:30:52. [Comments for Google Flashback?- 0]
