WDTalk

I just typed in “Let It Snow” on Google – as recommended by a story in the Los Angeles Times.  Instantly, my screen started filling with snowflakes and in just a matter of moments, it fogged over. Fortunately, I could wipe the fog from my screen with my mouse.  I wonder – Is that causing condensation inside my monitor?

Anyway, once your screen becomes unreadable – there is a defrost button in the upper right hand corner that clears your screen.  They do this by turning up your internal monitor temperate remotely. NOT!

Tilt and Askew – Google didn’t stop there. Type either tilt or askew in Google and see what happens. Try scrolling thru the results.

There was also a time when if you typed the word “Gravity” into the search engine you’d watch all the copy on the page plunk to the bottom. It doesn’t do that anymore, but you can see what you missed here.

As Google continues to refine its algorithms to return relevant results - I sometimes don’t want to see results based on where Google thinks I am, my past search history or what Google Plus circle I’m in.

In the graphic below, my default location - is Maryland Heights, MO (West St. Louis County). If my default location was Honolulu, or if I selected my location to be Honolulu, I’d see different results for the search query of “dedicated servers St. Louis,” even though my search was very specific to St. Louis. From Honolulu, WHT dropped from number 2 to number 5, Hostirian remained at number one on both, and a couple of local St. Louis firms moved ahead of WHT (using Maryland Heights).

In the following graphic, I’ve compared search queries, again using Honolulu versus Maryland Heights, but dropping St. Louis from the search query.

In this comparison, the query using Honolulu as the location showed NO results for Hostirian, a St. Louis dedicated server provider. However, the same query using Maryland Heights did show Hostirian on the first page at numbers 11 and 12. Worth noting is that by adding St. Louis to the search query, Hostirian ranked at number one on both, because it is a local St. Louis company.

Of course, if you’re using Chrome – and are logged into your Gmail account, throw all this out of the window. Personalized search takes over, making social book marking all the more important.

Last month, Matt Cutts from Google posted - on his blog, “What cool new websearch ideas should Google launch in 2012?” That article received 254 comments like the ones listed below:

• “I’d love a “search by date” and “search by newest” options to be expanded to the main search functions (and as a webmaster, the option added to Site Search). Too often I am looking for something very specific that happened recently, but get older articles that Google deems to be more relevant, even though from my perspective, they are useless.”
• “The other thing I would like to see (and rumors say it is coming) is the scroll down result effect you see for image searches being applied to web searches so there is no longer page 1, page 2, page 3, etc. results. It might level the playing field a bit and would certainly make scanning results easier.”
• “I would like to have the option of turning personal search on and off for when I need to see different results.”
• “And a “-1″ button in the search result, so I can penalize pages I don’t want to see.”

Revised Oct 31, 2011 to reflect Bing update.

Bing clarifies stance on keyword meta tags - if you’re tagging keywords in WordPress, you need to read this!

Volumes have been written about – keyword meta tags and keyword density. While Bing still looks at keyword meta tags, Google does not. If you’re like us, the majority of our referrals are from Google, followed in the far distance by Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. Don’t forget about Bing, though – if you’re looking to maximize your SEO efforts because indiscriminately throwing in tons of keywords on your keyword meta tags could result in spamming penalties.

I have a keyword statistics plug in on this site - and found that it was generating keyword meta tags for some absurd keywords, so I blocked the ability of robots to read those tags.

Staying in the game means – keeping in touch with industry trends. Thus, I recommend Google Webmaster Tools as a viable resource for Search Engine Optimization of your site.

In the following video clip – Matt Cutts from Google officially addresses a lingering SEO controversy on the viability of keyword meta tags.

The full article can be seen on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

In the last week, I’ve read a number of threads discussing Page Rank – most noticeably how it affects SERPS or back links.  To optimize your back links, measure the relevance of the content of the source page of that link to the content on your landing page. The more relevant, the more weight given that back link.

To determine Page Rank - which of the following are easier to grasp?

PR(A) = (1 – d) + d * SUM ((PR(I->A)/C(I))

Where:

* PR(A) is the PageRank of your page A.
* d is the damping factor, usually set to 0,85.
* PR(I->A) is the PageRank of page I containing a link to page A.
* C(I) is the number of links off page I.
* PR(I->A)/C(I) is a PR-value page A receives from page I.
* SUM (PR(I->A)/C(I)) is the sum of all PR-values page A receives from pages with links to page A..

Versus

PR is a purely mechanistic calculation of the probability of a resource being randomly requested, defined by the following expression.

 

 

where:

• p1,p2,…,pN are the pages under consideration;
• M(pi) is the set of pages that link to pi;
• L(pj) is the number of outbound links on page pj;
• d is the damping factor; and,
• N is the total number of pages.

What is your Google Analytics IQ score? Google offers a Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) test to determine your score, but you might want to take their Analytics IQ lessons first. You’ll learn everything from interface navigation to event tracking and virtual pageviews.

Google offers twenty five analytics presentations – each on average lasting from five to ten minutes. While most of what is presented will be second hat to seasoned webmasters, much of Google’s analytics has been updated, for example – Campaign Tracking and AdWords Integration. Are you running AdWords? Google recently updated their Analysis Focus – AdWords.

For an in depth analysis of your sites -you may wish to view their presentations on custom reporting, advanced segmentation, motion charts, internal site search, event tracking and virtual pageviews.

Google Presentations

First Steps

• Updated: Introduction to Google Analytics:
• Interface Navigation:
• Updated: Installing the Google Analytics Tracking Code:

Interpreting Reports

• Guidelines:
• Pageviews, Visits, and Visitors:
• Time Metrics:
• Traffic Sources:
• Content Reports:

Fundamentals

• Profiles in Google Analytics:
• Updated: Campaign Tracking and AdWords Integration:
• Updated: Analysis Focus – AdWords:
• Goals in Google Analytics:
• Analysis Focus – Funnel Visualization:
• Filters in Google Analytics:
• Regex and Google Analytics:
• Cookies and Google Analytics:
• Updated: E-commerce Tracking:
• Analysis Focus – Revenue Metrics:
• Updated: Domains and Subdomains:

In-Depth Analysis

• Custom Reporting:
• Advanced Segmentation:
• Motion Charts:
• Internal Site Search:
• Updated: Event Tracking and Virtual Pageviews:
• Updated: Additional Customizations:

Last May 2010, Google updated their search results – to include an expanded left-hand navigation panel:

What’s new and what’s changed?
We’ve added contextually relevant, left-hand navigation to the page. This new side panel highlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for your query. Over the past three years, we’ve launched Universal Search, the Search Options panel and Google Squared, and it’s those three technologies that power the left-hand panel.

Universal Search helps you find the most relevant types of results for your search. The top section of the new left-hand panel builds on Universal Search by suggesting the most relevant genres of results for your query and letting you seamlessly switch to these different types of results. The “Everything” option remains our essential search experience with different types of results integrated into the main results, but now you can also easily switch to just the particular type of results you are looking for.

Our expandable Search Options panel launched last spring brought many rich slice-and-dice tools to search. The new left-hand navigation showcases these tools and enables you to get a different view of your results. Perhaps you’d like to see images from each of the results or just the newest information? These options are all on the left, and our technology will suggest the tools that are most relevant and helpful to your query.

Their slice-and-dice tools offer – a truly unique way to research your website and the products and services you offer. For example, typing in your domain and clicking on ‘Blogs’ returns every blog that mentions your domain name within their content. Want to know if you’re being tweeted about? Click on ’Realtime’ and hope the tweets fly off the page (in a good way). Selecting ‘Discussions’ returns threads about your company on forums and social media sites.