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Thursday, September 13, 2007
Cricket scores on Google
I'm running out of reasons to ever visit the BBC site now - live Cricket international scores are now available on Google by searching for 'cricket'. The scores, provided by Cricbuzz are updated real-time; as convenient as this is I can't help feeling every time Google screws around with the search results like this they are moving further away from their simple user interface.
I'm running out of reasons to ever visit the BBC site now - live Cricket international scores are now available on Google by searching for 'cricket'. The scores, provided by Cricbuzz are updated real-time; as convenient as this is I can't help feeling every time Google screws around with the search results like this they are moving further away from their simple user interface.
Labels: cricket, google, search
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Friday, August 24, 2007
Flickr photo top result in Google in 2 hours
I posted this photo on Flickr at 11.37 this morning. 2 hours later I was wondering what used to be on the site and I remembered reading a blog last year that covered wastelands all over Liverpool (great blog if you can find it). So, I searched for 'wasteland lodge lane' and the first result on Google was my Flickr photo! I've noticed Google indexing blogs quickly recently but I've never noticed this for Flickr before.
Labels: flickr, google, moblog, search
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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Google agree hyphens as good as dashes for urls
It seems that good things do come to those who wait. A few months ago I was gutted to come across this post from Google blogger Matt Cutts on the use of hypens in urls. I've always used underscores to separate words but, as the post lays clear, google wouldn't differentiate words when they are joined by an underscore (it was something to do with the fact that the google algorithm began as a way of searching through code).
We considered switching all our urls on a pretty large site, but decided against it, partly because the work involved would have been a pain and partly because we felt that underscores were a more sensible way to separate words than hyphens. Looks like our foresightedness/laziness has paid off, Matt Cutts anouncing Google will soon treat underscores as appropriate word separators. ¶ Permanent link 0 comments
We considered switching all our urls on a pretty large site, but decided against it, partly because the work involved would have been a pain and partly because we felt that underscores were a more sensible way to separate words than hyphens. Looks like our foresightedness/laziness has paid off, Matt Cutts anouncing Google will soon treat underscores as appropriate word separators. ¶ Permanent link 0 comments
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Emma Watson more popular than Daniel Radcliffe
Heather Hopkins' Hitwise UK blog is a great source of stats on current search trends. Heather analyses the Hitwise stats to produce regular reports on the popularity of those involved in current events. This week, Emma Watson is being searched for more often than Daniel Radcliffe (and Paris Hilton), top searches being for 'Emma Watson photos' and 'Emma Watson boyfriend'. ¶ Permanent link 0 comments
Heather Hopkins' Hitwise UK blog is a great source of stats on current search trends. Heather analyses the Hitwise stats to produce regular reports on the popularity of those involved in current events. This week, Emma Watson is being searched for more often than Daniel Radcliffe (and Paris Hilton), top searches being for 'Emma Watson photos' and 'Emma Watson boyfriend'. ¶ Permanent link 0 comments
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Time to move over to Yahoo Image Search
I'm always a bit bewildered by how many referrals sites I work on get from Google Images. I don't really use it myself, the results are terrible. Yahoo have finally done the sensible thing and intregrated their Flickr photos into their search results.
I'm not sure that this really shows how good a development this is, but the first results now for an image search on 'Catharine Street Liverpool' are photos from inside my flat.
I'm not sure that this really shows how good a development this is, but the first results now for an image search on 'Catharine Street Liverpool' are photos from inside my flat.
Labels: flickr, google, search
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Thursday, June 07, 2007
Google's improved webmaster guidelines
Google's Webmaster guidelines have for a long time provided a simple outline for optimising content for their rankings. Google believe in being transparent about the techniques needed as it helps them produce better results - their biggest problem being web content that is incompetently optimised rather than spam content that is overoptimised.
Earlier this week Smashing Magazine produced a good introduction to the basics of Page Rank, today I read on Phillip Lenssen's excellent Google Blogoscoped that Google have updated their webmaster guidelines.
Included in the guidelines for the first time, I think, was an explicit warning not to include pages that install viruses, trojans and badware. ¶ Permanent link 0 comments
Earlier this week Smashing Magazine produced a good introduction to the basics of Page Rank, today I read on Phillip Lenssen's excellent Google Blogoscoped that Google have updated their webmaster guidelines.
Included in the guidelines for the first time, I think, was an explicit warning not to include pages that install viruses, trojans and badware. ¶ Permanent link 0 comments
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
New clean design for Ask.com
As Google continues to clutter its homepage and results pages there's an opportunity for their rivals to claw back ground by offering users clean design. Ask's new homepage offers a modern straightforward alternative.
Apparently, the systems delivering the results have also been updated. I can't judge on any improvement as the last time I used Ask Jeeves was probably the first day I used the internet but trying a few searches that I regularly use in Google this afternoon I was impressed with the results.
Lifehacker doesn't think much of it, but I still think Google is beatable and I'll be looking out for in-depth studies of the Ask system in the coming weeks. ¶ Permanent link 0 comments
As Google continues to clutter its homepage and results pages there's an opportunity for their rivals to claw back ground by offering users clean design. Ask's new homepage offers a modern straightforward alternative.
Apparently, the systems delivering the results have also been updated. I can't judge on any improvement as the last time I used Ask Jeeves was probably the first day I used the internet but trying a few searches that I regularly use in Google this afternoon I was impressed with the results.
Lifehacker doesn't think much of it, but I still think Google is beatable and I'll be looking out for in-depth studies of the Ask system in the coming weeks. ¶ Permanent link 0 comments
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Tanzania National Park and Harry Belafonte's daughter
I'm sure Alta Vista were doing this 10 years ago, Google developed Google Trends today by adding Hot Trends, with a top 100 for any particular day. These aren't the top 100 search terms today, they are the search terms whose occurence has increased most compared to their usual occurence.
Most are hard to understand but there is a Google group dedicated to trying to explain them.
Judging by the speed that Google indexes blog posts (a couple of hours usually) you could gain a lot of traffic by following this each day. ¶ Permanent link 0 comments
Most are hard to understand but there is a Google group dedicated to trying to explain them.
Judging by the speed that Google indexes blog posts (a couple of hours usually) you could gain a lot of traffic by following this each day. ¶ Permanent link 0 comments
Monday, March 26, 2007
Check url popularity with popuri.us
A good quick tool for checking any domain's popularity on Bloglines, MSN Live, Google, Yahoo, Alexa, delicious and technorati - http://www.popuri.us
Labels: search
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Thursday, February 08, 2007
Google extend support for link: operator
You can find out how many and which webpages link to your site using the query operator 'link:www.example.com' on Google. While very useful, these results have always been an underestimate on the true number of links that the Google index sees pointing at your site. Whether this is a deliberate feature or not is debatable - it may be that Google doesn't want you to be able to find out all the links for any given page.
Now, Google has extended this support for webmasters, providing access to more detailed reports through the invaluable Webmaster tools.
Now, Google has extended this support for webmasters, providing access to more detailed reports through the invaluable Webmaster tools.
Labels: search
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Monday, January 22, 2007
Wikipedia adds nofollow to urls
Wikipedia has added the "nofollow" attribute to external urls within its english language pages. An attempt to combat link spamming, it has the added advantage for wikipedia of bolstering its position in search engines at the expense of those it links to. I'll think twice about linking to wikipedia pages in the future, particularly now it is possible to deeplink into encyclopedia britannica pages.
Labels: search
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Friday, December 29, 2006
Google Zeitgeist
Google Blog on How we came up with year-end Zeitgeist data.
Labels: search
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Monday, December 18, 2006
Does nofollow really mean noendorse?
This discussion at Search Engine Roundtable suggests that search engines may still index a page that they find through a link with a nofollow attribute. This might seem (is) counterintuitive, but it seems that search engines treat this as more of a warning sign not to treat the link like a normal one.
Labels: search
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