Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Google’s ‘Penguin’ Update – Welsh for White Hat?
I am probably way off on this one but knowing a little Welsh, I couldn't help but wonder whether Google's latest Penguin Update has a Welsh connection... Continue readingno commentsHow to Optimise Images for Search Engines
Optimising your content for search engines, no matter what type of content are we talking about, is essential for getting the free traffic everyone is after. Continue readingno commentsWhy You Simply Must SEO Your Images
When people hear about significance of optimising their content for search engines, they usually think of doing SEO for their posts (articles). However, SEO is much more than just optimising your text content. Continue reading8 comments19 March 2008, the day Google’s homepage broke!
1 commentWell maybe not entirely broken, but with only one image to get right you'd think they could manage that! Anyone else seeing this at the moment?
Here are the stats of the missing image:
Continue readingGoogle Website Reconsider Request, it only takes 3 days!
Well that's my recent experience of a big site that is well known worldwide. It may be just as speedy for smaller sights too and I've got to take my hat off to Google for being so quick off the mark. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe reconsider requests were running low for March in Google, either way I think you need a genuine reason and here is how Google dealt with mine and a bit of a background overview: Continue reading2 commentsWhat’s new at Web Master Central?
no commentsQuite a lot as it happens:
- You can now associate website content by the country per-domain, per-subdomain, or per-directory level "“ very useful indeed. It will be interesting to see how useful this really is.
- View and block potential Google sitelinks. I have experience of this taking two weeks, very useful if you have out-of-date sitelinks
- You may like to submit multiple sitemaps to Google's Web Master Central, now you can.
Firefox more popular than I.E. 6
no commentsSlightly misleading as Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser, but Firefox is more commonly used than Internet Explorer 6, just!
Firefox is growing at by roughly 5% of the market share per year. This implies that 2010 could be the year that the fox out muscles Microsoft for the biggest market share of Internet users "“ go fox, go!
2007 IE7
IE6
IE5
Fx
Moz
S
O
September
20.8%
34.9%
1.5%
35.4%
1.2%
1.6%
1.5%
August
20.5%
35.7%
1.5%
34.9%
1.3%
1.5%
1.7%
July
20.1%
36.9%
1.5%
34.5%
1.4%
1.5%
1.9%
June
19.7%
37.3%
1.5%
34.0%
1.4%
1.5%
1.8%
May
19.2%
38.1%
1.6%
33.7%
1.3%
1.5%
1.7%
April
19.1%
38.4%
1.7%
32.9%
1.3%
1.5%
1.6%
March
18.0%
38.7%
2.0%
31.8%
1.3%
1.6%
1.6%
February
16.4%
39.8%
2.5%
31.2%
1.4%
1.7%
1.5%
January
13.3%
42.3%
3.0%
31.0%
1.5%
1.7%
1.5%
NMA's Search Agencies Guide 2007 (UK)
NMA has complied a top 35 Search Agencies Guide for 2007. The guide has been out for a couple of months and allows me the opportunity to introduce Netizen (8th place) as my new place of work as a senior search executive. This is my first week and so far I am very impressed with the setup - checkout the top 10 below:no commentsAdd a bit of Vibrancy to your Google Homepage
no commentsI have been using Google's personilised homepage for some time and recently noticed a new feature that I thought I would like to share for those who have not seen it. It appears that the feature has been around for a few weeks, but it's only until recently that my Google radar picked it up.
You can now add a little more colour and personality by applying a background theme. What I think is particularly nifty, is the fact that your theme can change lighting according to the time of day that you view it "“ so if you are the closed curtains type, at least you will get an idea of the sleep you should be getting or the sun that you are missing. Nice one Google!
GMAIL the Great
I have always had a lot of time for GMAIL and think Google really has got it just right (nearly) and it only seems to be getting better. This weekend I inquisitively clicked on the 'new features' link "“ to my delight GMAIL's new service offers the facility to check the mail you receive from other email accounts and even reply from those accounts.no commentsThis feature has two obvious great benefits:
- The ability to check all your email accounts from one location. I for one have a gmail, hotmail and work email account "“ so this in itself is very useful. No flaws there!
- The second, the ability to send an email from one location, for all your email accounts. This sounds awesome, but there are a couple of flaws that question my 'GMAIL the Great' post title.
The major flaw lies in the fact that GMAIL is sending an email on behalf of your other email accounts. This results in some instances of the receiver of an email seeing the "From customaddress@domain.com on behalf of yourusername@gmail.com." as the sender field. This for me lowers the trust bar for the receiver regarding your email as being genuine.
The reason Google does this is to help combat against SPAM and although I understand the reason why, I have found emails sent this way, landing in my Outlook SPAM folder, so again there is a trust issue.
Although that aside, GMAIL gets another big thumbs up and it is definitely continuingly to move forward! I also recently discovered that you can add an HTML & image signature which great for Publicising your blog in emails.
