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Some Interesting Questions Answered by Google Spam Team

On June 19, 2008 there was Google Webmaster Live Chat Event. It was for the general public to ask questions to the Google spam team.

Below are some of the most interesting questions and answers:

1)   Kien Lai - 5:03 pm

Q: Q: “can google crawl flash sites/”

John Mueller - 5:05 pm

A: “Somewhat — we can extract some information from the flash files, but it’s generally not the same as with HTML sites/pages.”

2)   Quentin Muhlert - 4:37 pm

Q: I’ve got a question about internationalization: I have a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and I’ve registered these as such in Webmasters’ tools, will this be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning uk/us/aus ?

John Mueller - 5:07 pm

A: That’s generally ok. I would still make sure that the pages are obviously well-targeted for those audiences. It wouldn’t make sense to send users from specific areas to one general page. In that case, I would use a single page without geotargeting.

3)   Quentin Muhlert - 5:07 pm

Q: Is there a comprehensive list of the tags that GoogleBot can read somewhere?

Matt Dougherty - 5:11 pm

A: Hi Quentin, try this HelpCenter doc - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812

4)   Oliver Gonzalez - 5:10 pm

Q: Is there any limit on the number of redirections 301, a Web site?. In a large site, if you change the URL structure, is the optimum time to do it with 301? or is best done gradually

Matt Cutts - 5:17 pm

A: There’s no per-page limit on the number of 301s you can do, so you could move 100K pages to 100K new location. However, if we see a really long chain of redirects, eventually we will decide to stop following the chain.

5)   jeremy rivera - 5:06 pm

Q: If a website’s Robots.txt file is goign to a 404 error will it be removed from the index? What if it is missing altogether?

Michael Wyszomierski - 5:17 pm

A: If there is no robots.txt file Google will assume that there are not any crawling restrictions, as long as there are no other robots directives via meta tags or the x-robots HTTP header directive.

6)   Jacob Bandes-Storch - 5:07 pm

Q: In regards to the Flash files, I believe it is possible to create Flash movies with extra accessible content, correct?

evan t - 5:19 pm

A: We encourage building flash sites with html accessibility for googlebot to crawl. For more information check out our blog post on flash: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/best-uses-of-flash.html

7)   Lauren Fortner - 5:07 pm

Q: Our pages are using mod_rewrite to strip “.html”– Will google think of “process” and “process.html” as separate pages?

Susan Moskwa - 5:20 pm

A: If both URLs serve content, we will interpret them as two separate URLs. If the one redirects to the other (e.g. with a 301 redirect), this will let us know that one is the preferred/permanent URL.

8)   Abhijeet Mukherjee - 5:18 pm

Q: Whats the average time after which the PR of a site gets updated?

Matt Cutts - 5:22 pm

A: We typically do pushes to the toolbar every 3-4 months, so it can take that long between toolbar data pushes.

9)   paul brewster - 5:09 pm

Q: does google ‘value’ a website incorporating a relevant blog and forum

Matt Dougherty - 5:22 pm

A: Hi Paul, I would say that an organic blog or forum definitely adds value to your website by creating a community effect.

10)  Chris Hornak - 5:08 pm

Q: Does google take anything from links taged nofollow, for example does it read the anchor text and credit that to the destination?

Susan Moskwa - 5:24 pm

A: No, it basically drops that link from our link graph (it ignores it).

11)  Jonathan Faustman - 5:21 pm

Q: Will hiding navigation items with css (that are displayed on certain pages/directories) have a negative impact when google indexes the site?

Mariya Moeva - 5:26 pm

A: Hi Jonathan, when building your site and considering hiding navigation elements, it’s best to always think, “is this good for my users?” and “would i do this if there were no search engines?

12)  Morris Rosenthal - 5:24 pm

Q: What reasons may cause Google to ignore a small percentage of pages in a small sitemap (less than 1K pages submitted by Console).

Matt Cutts - 5:30 pm

A: We do look at the number of links when we decide how much to crawl, so just submitting a sitemap doesn’t guarantee crawling.

13)  Brian Rutledge - 5:24 pm

Q: Where does Google stand on Sub-domain spam/doorway pages right now? In some verticals, sub-domain dw pages are more than 50% top 10 serps.

Reid Yokoyama - 5:32 pm

A: Hi Brian - just caught your question. Google still considers doorway pages and obviously webspam as violation of our Webmaster Guidelines.

14)  Carlos Obregon - 5:31 pm

Q: Typically, what % of the websites’ pages does Google index from large sites

Bergy Berghausen - 5:33 pm

A: That depends on the size of the site, its PageRank, and a bunch of other factors. This is hard to generalize for.

15)  Ash Buckles - 5:32 pm

Q: Are there any amount of duplicate content pages that are acceptable? In other words if we have 2 pages serving the same content is that just as bad as 40 pages serving duplicate content?

Susan Moskwa - 5:33 pm

A: The real issue with duplicate content is that Google will try to filter out duplicates when we serve search results. Generally you don’t need to worry about it, but if you want to have more control over which version we serve, you can try to mitigate it.

MOST corporates worldwide are giving more importance today to reputation management as opposed to public relations or image building. Is there really a difference between the two, you might ask. Yes, there is. The big difference is that corporates which have some semblance of a reputation are more interested in preserving it, which is vital to its own future. It’s definitely better than starting afresh and embarking on a fresh image-building exercise or a makeover. A corporate takes several years to build a strong image for itself either in the public eye or in the market with its customers or vendors. It is mostly based on the strengths of its financial assets, manpower, technology, quality, reliability and service.

To help achieve this objective, the top management of the company usually works in close cooperation with its communication department, making public healthy information about itself or retrieving a bad situation by explaining through background briefing to the friendly media the actual position and the industry environment in which it works. This helps sustain the corporate’s image.

What should one do when a corporate’s reputation nosedives or suffers?

· Don’t panic, be calm and strategise

· Don’t pass the buck or blame others

· Don’t find a scapegoat

· Don’t indulge in witch-hunting

· Sit and think calmly and analyse the reasons for the bad reputation incurred

· Thereafter handle the remedial measures proactively

· An ad hoc or homogenous approach is not feasible if there are different companies under one umbrella or in the fold - each will have its own strengths and weaknesses

· Take professional help and the help of experienced people in the organisation

· Be transparent in all your dealings at all times - you will win the day.

Effective management of risk will not only go a long way in protecting the corporate’s reputation but will also enhance it. Every challenge coming the way of the corporate is to be treated as an opportunity to enhance reputation. Ability to manage reputation and its associated risks will effectively become a core competence for a corporate in a fiercely but often murky competitive world.

Color Theme on your website design template is very important to realize that different colors invoke different emotions, are associated with specific concepts and say different things in each society. The colors you choose will have a direct effect on how the public perceives your web company. Technology allows us to create color combinations.

Here are some of color according from Human Body Chakra’s :

Red:
Sense of power, excitement and energy, Money, strength, action

Orange:
Love, passion, sexuality, Ideas, Imaginations, Currier, friendliness, and energy

Pink
Love, Peaceful, happy, feminine, compassion, sweet, playful

Yellow:
Prosperity, Caution, brightness, intelligence, joy, organization, Spring time

Green:
Health, nature, comfort, growth, freshness, sharing and responsiveness

Blue:
Knowledge, Scientist, Understanding, cooperation, protection and security

Purple:
Spiritualism, Royalty, sophistication, religion

Black
Super power, Elegant , Dramatic, classy, committed, serious

White:
Pure, fresh, easy, cleanliness or goodness

We know that if we can cause some kind of an emotional reaction in the people we are marketing to and communicating with, By choosing the colors of your websites or online media publisher with deliberate care, we are purposefully trying to invoke a specific emotional response that will increase sales. So pick your colors carefully.

When ordering websites from your web hosting, ask to use one primary color and one secondary or complimentary color only. Base these colors on the specific audience, market and the messages you want to communicate to the rest of the world. If more than two or three colors are used, things tend to look a little messy, and the power of any one color is diluted too much, so we most often stick with two colors.

If the client already has an established brand, make sure to match the colors of the website with the original colors of the company. It is not wise to have print collateral material one color and the website a totally unrelated color. All marketing channels need to remain consistent, with one face only.

Whether you are designing websites, media printing on paper for clients or for your own business, your color choice is vital. Be sure to try different colors, different shades, and different combinations before you decide.

What’s next in the ever-changing, mindboggling computer age? Virtual plucking.

That sentimental, psychic ritual you’ve always performed in a garden or the dark recesses of a florist’s shop has rooted online. Grab a digital flower, removing its petals one-by-one to answer the mysteries of love. “She loves me. … She loves me not. … She loves me. …”

If only there was a flower which we could pick the petals of and tell that Google loves me or not… hmmm but amazingly enough there are other ways to tell how much Google loves you.

Since we are on the topic of flowers I am going to pretend that these methods of checking your love with Google as petals.

Petal One: Checking Your Content/Keywords in Google

One handy tool that will show you what Google thinks your pages consist of is located here:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Just type in your URL and tick off website content and you will get a listing of the major keywords Google has for your content. If your targeted keyword or keywords are not listed, then you have to do some re-writing.

Petal Two: Checking Your Backlinks in Google

If you want to find out how many backlinks your site has in Google, just open up Google Search and type in:

link: yourURL

and it will show you the number of backlinks you have.

Since Google doesn’t give you all your existing backlinks, many webmasters also use Yahoo! to find a more exact number of links your site has on the web.

Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain: yourURL

Petal Three: Checking Your Indexed Pages in Google

You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by using the site command.

Just type into Google Search:

site: yourURL

A little while back, having your pages indexed in Google’s Supplemental Index caused webmasters much stress as it seemed Google was judging these pages as “second class” pages. Since then, Google no longer uses the Supplementary Label in grading pages but that doesn’t mean a supplementary index doesn’t exist; just that Google has promised to crawl and consider these pages as well in any search query.

Petal Four: Checking Your Google Cache

You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last retrieved.

Just type into Google Search:

cache: yourURL

Petal Five: Checking Your PageRank within Google

Another tricky issue is PageRank. This is supposed to be the heart of Google’s ranking system created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; each link is considered a “vote” for your page and the higher the number of “votes” you have, the higher the PR your page receives. However, again Google is using “smoke and mirrors” to conceal your true PageRank mainly to cut out abuse and manipulation of their results. Some experts say PageRank still counts, other say it doesn’t.

You can check your Google PageRank here:

http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker

Some Statistics on search market:

Ø Multi Billion + 35% annual growth rate is a big market – BIG opportunity

Ø Today’s major players of the street fight (229 Billion market cap)

– Google (13 Billion revenue 170 Billion market cap)

– Yahoo (33 billion market cap)

– Microsoft (other business segment)

– Amazon (other business segment)

What is at stake culturally and socially in the search wars?

Ø During most 90’s search had no money in it, suddenly every one seem to be interested - Why?

Ø The first round of search wars was own by two young Stanford graduates – how did it happen?

Ø Unusual Company formed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page – 1998; rest is history

Ø Currently revenue is around $13 Billion

Technology gap between Google and other companies is narrowing down

– Lead in the index

– Features like news or product search

We see 10 major cultural implications of the growth in popularity of social software, or more loosely, the fact that more and more of your social interactions are moving online.

Implications for Individuals:

1. Basic computer skills really matter. . . and fortunately the next generation is much more technologically skilled than the current generation. It is harder and harder for blue-collar professionals, let alone white-collar professionals, to do their job without basic computer literacy.
   
   
2. Communication skills really matter. . . but they’re not improving as fast as we would like. Half of all companies take writing into account when making promotion decisions. A poorly-thought-through email (or blog post) can get you fired. And yet, one third of employees in the nation’s blue-chip companies write poorly, and businesses are spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.
   
   
3. Your professional competence will be more and more visible. As a result, the successful will get more successful, and the unsuccessful will have fewer second chances. Potential clients and recruiters are finding it easier to evaluate your visibility and knowledge in your industry, by reviewing your blog or using a biography analysis tool like ZoomInfo.
   
   
4. Your personal life will also be more and more visible. Potential employers and business partners will correlate your name with photos, perhaps even using technologies like Riya to identify you in photos that someone else took. This is excellent motivation to be careful as to what activities you engage in.
   
   
5. People will become more effective and more thoughtful in building their personal networks. Job applicants are already showing off the number of people they’re linked to on LinkedIn, and whom they’re linked to. (”Hire me and I’ll get you in the door at _ _ _ _ _.”) Who do you link to on your blog? Who are the people that Visible Path shows that you have emailed? The answers impact your professional success.

Implications for businesses:

1. Businesses can’t control the dialogue, but business will attempt to “own the frame,” to quote Lee Bryant. Although businesses cannot control what consumers say about their products, at the very least they can make the conversation more visible.
   
   
2. The Pro-Am Revolution: more amateurs are pursuing their part-time activities to a very high, even professional standard. One of the multiple factors driving this widely-discussed trend is the ease of connecting with and learning from other serious amateurs online. Companies will learn to leverage their employees’ part-time activities.
   
   
3. Companies will ship more often and fix more often. Have you ever wondered why the great majority of Google’s services are still in “beta?” One of the major reasons is that Google has found that they benefit by gathering reams of free online user feedback and incorporating it into their services before they go live with a finished product. They use the online network of the entire Google user community as their extended Quality Assurance team.
   
   
4. The prosumer is always right. Inferior products are much more visible, and consumers are proactive about publicizing that fact. For example, some bloggers recently publicized how Kryptonite locks could be opened with a bic pen, and lockpicker Barry Wels showed how you can open a Kensington laptop lock with a toilet paper tube. Kryptonite lost an enormous amount of money because they made the mistake of shipping an inferior product.
   
   
5. More and more value will rest in the long tail, defined loosely by Jason Foster as “the realization that the sum of many small markets is worth as much, if not more, than a few large markets.” Businesses will figure out ways to make money by providing access to content in the long tail (e.g., Amazon), or by helping people to generate content in the long tail (e.g., Blogger).

When it comes to maintaining a successful ecommerce website, there are several essential ingredients.

1. Clear idea of the products and services that your new site will provide.
   
   
2. Obtain the best ecommerce web hosting solution, which includes the right shopping cart software.

Site Layout and Architecture:

1. User is looking for a structure when navigating a site. This can be accomplished with both headings and sub-headers.
   
   
2. Users also expect, in today’s online shopping world, to be able to remove their narrowing options, to be able to sort products for sale in a variety of ways, from low to high to high to low, popularity, best selling, new, etc.
   
   
3. Include the correct pages within said site structure. These include the main category page, which should target both the names and plural and singular versions of the products and or services offered. Descriptions of the products and services that include embedded text links are also effective.
   
   
4. The subcategory page is the place to expand the descriptions of the products and services offered, as well as your target keywords. It may seem like a daunting task to try to come up with so many descriptions, but the vendors who supply your site with products undoubtedly have descriptions prepared. If not, or if your products and services are not supplied by the vendor, you should search for sites that offer products and services similar to your own and then base your descriptions around the descriptions that said sites provide.
   
   
5. Selecting the right shopping cart software at the outset can save you considerable amounts of time and frustration. One of the most popular hosting solutions and shopping cart software providers, Miva Merchant, offers different options depending on the needs of individual sites.
   
   

The success of your e commerce website depends on the right site design, structure, and hosting, which is the reason that regardless of the company that you choose, it makes sense to research all of your options carefully before making a decision. Many people have e commerce websites, but not everyone can run a successful online retail business.

The analysis of websites ability to fulfill the objectives set while initiating the marketing strategy is called Web Analytics. It provides a series of following data:

• Pages least viewed
• Pages most viewed
• Potential profit pages

Search engine marketing has more to it than onsite and offsite SEO. Yes, it is all about building popularity, positioning the brand and maintaining a traffic flow to your site. When it comes to maintaining the web traffic, you cannot do without web analytics.

Shortcut to Maximize ROI (Return On Investment)

Web analytics will help you find the sources that have the highest browse-to-buy ratios; also, you can identify which referral sources generate the maximum revenue and orders for your business. This detailed analysis report helps you find out which visitor groups have got the higher tendency to convert into members or customers.

Measure the Strength of Your Keywords

This report gives a detail analysis about the traffic to your site and their path. Analyzing this data gives you a better insight about the keywords that are effective for your business. Also, you can remove the ‘inert’ keywords from your site based on this report.

Optimize Your Business Conversions

The user behavior and conversion rates show how you can further improve your business. In addition, you can identify where you went wrong and can alter the content and navigation of the site accordingly.

Identify Where People Are Exiting Your Site

This feature allows you to have an understanding about where users are exiting your site. This analysis helps you to discover what is costing your sales. If the report indicates that a majority of the visitors leave the site on a particular page, just pay close attention to the contents and features of the page and find out what went wrong.

Formulate a Better Business Plan

You can draft a better business plan and course of action with the aid of web analytics. The main advantage of sketching your business plans based on web analytics is that you are dealing with facts and not on assumptions.

Google Analytics: The Supreme Advisor

A reliable and free source, Google Analytics provides you with a detailed statistics about the visitors to your site. If your search engine marketing requirement is handled by an SEO firm, you can make the most of this tool to analyze how efficient are they in putting your marketing goals in terms of the search engine language. Another advantage of using Google Analytics is that you can track all online campaigns, from emails to keywords, irrespective of the search engine or the referral source.

It is advised that you go for the assistance of a professional SEO firm for your web analytics requirements. Such firms could give you a better advice and suggestion regarding how you to go about with your search marketing campaign. Choosing firms that offer periodical web analytics report would be a better move.

People read on their screens more than ever. Email communication, online newsletters, marketing messages—it’s not simply Web writing anymore. In our information overloaded world, keeping readers engaged isn’t easy.

When producing Windows 95, Microsoft commissioned celebrity typographer Mathew carter to design screen friendly fonts. The results were veranda and Georgia. Among others these were crafted with the goal of retaining legibility at both small point size and subjection to poor screen aliasing.

Universal web type

If the Web is the platform, and browsers are the gateways to it, then we don’t just need standards for layout and object rendering, but also a standard type library that is universally available to all, with a mechanism to allow new faces to be added over time.

This is not an alternative to @font-face—there will always be a place for very specialist typefaces for specific uses—but it is a compliment to it.

I would like to invite you to contribute how you think this might work. This is how I see it:

1. Organisation: We should form a grass roots organisation to provide universal Web type. It could be part of, or complimentary to the Web Standards Project and the W3C. It would reach out to, and include anyone who has a stake in implementing, creating or using Web fonts.
   
   
2. Structure: The organisation should be co-operative and democratic, with membership open to all. Intellectual copyright and assets would be jointly held by the group on behalf of everyone.
   
   
3. Purpose: The group would strive to find common ground between all stakeholders to research or support common standards, find funding to create a font library with complete typefaces that would be freely distributed.

The group could be funded by a mixture of micro-finance, donations of time and money, public funding and sponsorship. It would also affirm the right of type designers to proper remuneration for their work, and foster recognition of type’s importance to the Web.

I’m deliberately publishing this idea to elicit your feedback and comments. The way forward is not clear, and I do not claim to have the answers, but I believe that between all the interested parties—whether individuals, companies or organizations—we have the ability to give everyone a better typographic experience.

Facebook announced on May 9^th, 2008 about facebook connect. Well let’s see what is Facebook connect.

Some features of Facebook connect are:

Trusted Authentication:

User will be able to connect their profile with any partner website using this feature. The user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment.

Real Identity:

User will be able to represent themselves with their real names and real identities.

Friend access:

Users can take their friends with them where ever they go. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites.

Dynamic Privacy:

As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that user’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date.

So, you’ve decided to create a blog good for you - one of the single most effective ways to draw an audience to your profile. Before you get started, it is important that you know exactly what seven things you can do to ensure that crowd shows up though - otherwise, you will be left scratching your head at the lack of views:

1. Write Every Day - You must write frequently and often for more than one reason. First, the search engines will pick up your blog quicker and more often if you post every day or two. Second, your readers will return more often if they know there is going to be new content every day.

2. Create a Theme - Don’t write about any thing that pops into your head. Try to create a theme - in this case, likely your band and its development - and stick with it every day. An occasional aside never hurt anyone, but consistently changing topics only diffuses your message.

3. Be Informative - Offer useful, new information. Your readers want a good reason to return and the classic “you heard it hear first” mentality almost always works. Announce new tracks, new tours, and new ideas here and people will start following your posts for new information.

4. Proof Read and Spell Check - Always ensure every post looks nice and crisp before launching. If it appears you don’t care about quality, it only negatively reflects on your band and your profile.

5. Seed Your Blog Posts - Use social bookmarking websites like Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumbleupon, Netscape, Facebook, Reddit, and Furl to seed your blog posts so that more people can find them. If you are especially proud of a post, make sure to seed it everywhere.

6. Comment on Other Blogs - By commenting on other popular blogs in your niche - bands and music related topics - you can draw other blog owners and readers back to your own blog to check out what you write about. You might even get a link back which will increase your visibility.

7. Provide Something Extra - Give your readers a little bonus for stopping by. Create videos, podcasts, etc. Freebies and incentives are always a good way to maintain heavy blog traffic.