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Posts Tagged ‘seo’

Google just changed search. Again. Four ways.

January 19th, 2009 Comments off
This article was originally written for The Next Web Blog and appeared on Saturday, 17th January 2009.
Today, we found out that Google, where search is the core of its business, have added a link to new experimental features to its home page, which show options that can be added to the 'standard' search. The most dramatic of these is probably 'Alternate views for search results' which, due to its nature, gives you different search results and rankings in different views of the same search query. So Search Experts take note: Page 1 of Google now has at least four different results!. Your site can be #1 in one type of search, but be invisible in others. The standard Google search results page now also has "News about search term" appended to your search results as you can see below. google experimental search

Google's New 'Alternate View' Search Types

It is worth taking a look at this new feature for searches that include:-
  • Search Results in Timelines [try this]
  • Search Results on Maps [try this]
  • Search Results in 'Info Views' which allow further refinement 'on the fly' [try this]
  • One-click returns you to 'Standard' List View
You can obtain these views immediately using the standard google search interface by adding "view:map" "view:timeline" or "view info" following your search term - so rather than a search for 'the next web' you search for "the next web view:timeline". internet conferences view:map - Google Search
I'd recommend you check out these new search views, and also ensure that your site's metadata is structured to ensure you appear in these new formats of search results. david petherick view:timeline - Google Search
There are also three other experimental search features at present - web conferences view:info - Google Search
  • SearchWiki with sound - when you remove a result from your personal results, toy can have a sound effect play along with the animation whenever you remove a result. The sound is recorded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
  • Keyboard shortcuts - use your keyboard to navigate results - so J Selects the next result, K Selects the previous result, etc.
  • Accessible View - As you navigate, items are magnified for easier viewing. If you use a screen reader or talking browser, the relevant information is spoken automatically as you navigate.
Google continues to innovate and to develop its search technology, and in my view these new experimental features show that it's still the very best at delivering search results. It's also a wake-up call for you to ensure that the information on your web pages is given proper semantic structure - or meaning - because that will be a crucial differentiatiator as the amount of data online increases. (Screen shots created by David Petherick using plasq's Skitch)

How to get to Page 1 on Google in 24 hours – and get paid for it.

July 27th, 2008 2 comments
read russian - Google Search The Google Knol I created on the 24th of July entitled 'How to Read the Russian Alphabet in 75 Minutes' was already appearing on Page 1 of a Google Search for "read russian" with 12,300,000 results following, just a day later. I have updated the title within Knol from the one showing in the Google index, but that's still a pretty impressive result for content that I created and put online only the day before. And Google say they'll pay me from any adsense revenue the page generates. This is part of the reason why I was interested in Google Knol from December last year when it was first announced. We'll see how it develops, but it looks like a fairly effective way to share your knowledge, get good search positions, and also perhaps make some money. Until someone pinches your content... (to be fair, Google allow content to have three copyright models - the two popular Creative Commons licence types, and one of 'All rights reserved'. You may be interested to joing a Ning-powered discussion group that I created when first hearing about Google Knol, and which is now beginning to gain members and become active: Knol Roll on Google Knol .
View my page on Knol Roll
PS: You may also want to see Search Success for details of getting yourself to Page 1 on Google.