Light SEO Advice from Yahoo
Yahoo offers advice on search engine optimization of websites.
However, most of it doesn’t seem to be great news to me, without wanting to sound too arrogant. But hey…
„A Netrospective“: 100 big things in 10 years of the internet
So Yahoo! is celebrating their 10 year anniversary, and shows the 100 most memorable moments on the internet (since ’95 only).
Well, congratulations, Yahoo!.
With Yahoo you can set your mind.
Yahoo has just launched a new search from their labs: intent driven search – called Yahoo Mindset. You can fine tune the results you get by moving a slider on a horizontal axis between „research“ and „shopping“ – admittingly the two most common intents people might have on the net.
Typing in the words „Mobile phone“ I got the following top two results (after the sponsored results!):
Research intent:
– Cellular Phone Antennas and Human Health
– Mobile Phone Virus >> News, Reviews and Alerts
Shopping intent
– Amazon.com: Cell Phones & Service
– Mobile Fun Limited
So that proves it works well. But how will they expand this tool, when they take other intents into consideration, that users might want on the internet, like communicate or play?
A good idea to counter Googles Adsense
This seems to be a good idea: Vidsense. A program working similar to Googles Adsense. Only difference: the context-sensitive input are little video clips. They are, of course, preceded by short adverts – 15-30 secs long. The clips are about 45 secs to 90 secs long. And the videos don’t start to play, unless a user initiates them.
This can be, of course be much more effective than Googles Adsense, as there is more than just text, but it’s (hopefully) not as intrusive as banners or rich media ads. And its relevant to the content your reading.
And you can also choose, if you don’t want X-rated clips, but only G-rated ones. (Other than that, you don’t have a choice).
Nice thing: you also earn money by a user’s click. Difference being: the click you need here is the one of the user starting the movie. And since the user doesn’t think the tool will take him off the current site (as it would be with Adsense), a click is much more likely…
Google doing the MS thing
Gary Price of the Searchenginewatch Blog writes about the new Google Toolbar.
It offers
– Spelling Correction (obviously working well with Gmail),
– Autolink – which, as Gary rightly says, offers many commercial opportunities: Google inserts links into the webpage whereever the context allows for relevant links.
I wonder if this will not get too annoying at some point? Addresses on a webpage can even be linked to Google Maps.
He mentions other features, but I won’t go into that here. The main point is, that this is another step on arranging information neatly. At the same time, Google is taking the opportunity to once again show that they are really at the top of filtering information on the web.
There are quite a few blogs upset about it. Steven has a post on it and Rex also mentions it, referencing Dan Gillmor, who complains that Google emulates MS (and gets away with it sofar). Greg Linden is also highly scepticle about it.
I have already mentioned in a previous post, that I think we need to watch Google. Sofar everything has been very much user centric and supported users in many ways.
But now they even modify the webpages you’re reading. Question is: if this is a trend, when will we reach a stage, when you just can’t read original content any more, because someone modified the content on everything you read (without the original authors knowledge or permission?)
Another quote from Greg, which he wrote after several people commented on his first post:
To clarify my original post, I’m not so concerned about what Google Toolbar currently does with Autolink. It is what may follow that bothers me.
Rewriting pages to add links is a dangerous trend. While Google’s current implementation may be fine and dandy, it may also be the first step on a slippery slope.
I fully agree!
Not News: Google pay-per-click fraud
I have no idea how the german manager-magazin.de thinks that it is really delivering a newsworthy story about fraud with the pay-per-clicks, since CNN already had this story 2.5 months ago?
I guess for some things I will always have to read international press in order to stay on top of things.
For those interested in a quick reminder: it is about companies hiring people, or using software, to have their competitors pay-per-click ads clicked on. The effect:
1) they increase the ad costs of their competitors,
2) once a certain spent-limit is used up, their competitors will not have the top spot of the list on certain keywords any longer.
Wo ich sonst so bin...