Search Engine News about Alexa.com
Few webmasters are aware of the existence of Alexa.com.
Alexa is a compilation of the top 100,000 websites on the
internet. If you're not there yet, you're not there
yet. Here's how to get your website, and a snapshot of your
website on alexa.com.
First you need to install
the alexa.com toolbar and then visit your website from the alexa.com
homepage, that visit triggers Alexa to take notice of your
website. Then you can take a snapshot of your website from
alexa.com . This will display a thumbnail of your website on
alexa.com.
Alexa Snapshot
The Alexa Snapshot provides one-click access to
Alexa's award winning information, including Related Links,
website owner Contact Information, and Site Statistics. Plus, it
is available on more browsers and platforms, including the MSN
Browser, Macintosh, Linux/Unix, Netscape and America Online.
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Search Engine
Optimization News:
from Entire Web
Quick loading web pages -
a must for website optimization and a good policy in search engine
optimization.
Why Quick Loading Web Pages?
Unless you rely ONLY on
users with high speed Internet connections, you must take into
consideration the quick loading issue for your web pages. According to
statistics, a first-time visitor will not "waste" more than 5
seconds until seeing the content of your web page or, at least, until
he/she gets an idea about what the web page is about. This means that
for an average transfer rate of 3 Kbytes per second your web page must
take maximum 15 Kbytes of disk space.
If we understand
this as being the size of all the displayed elements
(page's script + graphics + content), then 15 KB doesn't seem so much,
right? Let's see what we can put into 15 KB:
*
one graphic element (your web optimized logo) with a disk size around
1Kb
* 1000 words of content (you should have content-rich pages)
* 3 KB of script (HTML, CSS)
* another graphic element of, let's say, 2 KB (your linking
partner's banner etc.)
It is not so bad,
is it? Of course, if you need to have pictures
on your page, you will not be able to keep size within 15Kb. But even
so, if in 5 seconds from click your logo and your content are displayed
on your visitor's screen, then it is OK. If the visitor is interested,
they will wait another 5 seconds or more for your images to load.
How to minimize the "disk size" of a web page
and how to make it load quicker
1. Minimize
Scripting
Try to stick with plain HTML when designing
your web pages. Do not abuse of text formatting and/or excessive special
effects. Use CSS to define the behavior of the links on your web pages.
If you use a WYSIWYG-type HTML tool, make sure that you delete all
unnecessary blank spaces this tool inserts in your HTML code.
2. Keep Content to
the Point
Keep your content simple and easy
understandable. Use short and eloquent sentences. Do not use
"high-tech" terms, unless your readers are of academic level.
Use HTML Heading Tags to emphasize what's important.
3. Minimize
Graphics Size
Because graphic elements are critical when it
comes to the size of a web page, you must pay a lot of attention to the
graphics optimization issue. Carefully choose what type of image format
you choose (GIF, JPEG or PNG) and make sure that you find for your
graphics the limit point of the "screen size / quality / number of
colors / detail level" ratio. If possible, keep the size of your
small, simple graphics below 1 KB. It will load almost instantly due to
the way the TCP IP protocol transfers data.
4. Split Website
into Sections
Split your website into more small-sized
sections (web pages), instead of single pages with large amounts of
information. Especially if you have to display a lot of pictures on your
pages.
5. Minimize use of
Graphics
Try to have no more than 4 graphic elements on
each of your web pages. Replace, when possible, image-buttons with
simple text links towards the other sections of your website or towards
your linking partners' websites.
Interlace GIF Images
When saving big
graphics in GIF format, make sure you check
the "interlaced" box in your image processing software's
"Save As" box. This will not minimize the size of the GIF
file, but it will tell the browser to load the graphic in two phases and
quickly put something on your visitor's display.
Is quick loading an advantage in Search Engine Optimization?
I can tell you for sure that
it is not an inconvenience. In terms of Search Engine Optimization it is
also recommended to have quick loading web pages. At least at their
first visits, the search engines robots will spend little time crawling
your website. If they can easily access the content of your pages they
will be able to gather more information in less time and this is a good
thing, isn't it?
Bottom line:
In terms of Website Optimization and Web Efficiency, we must make sure
that we do what we can to ensure our web pages will load as quickly as
possible on our visitor's display. There are more chances for The Quick
to survive on The Net, than for The Slow.
About the author:Decebal
(Dudi) Scraba of http://www.ewolwe.com/
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Googleguy reminds people again that Bourbon is
only "halfway through".
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He suggests that Googlebot pretty much ignores any
page with "&id=" in its URL - this is done to avoid
indexing duplicates of pages with different session ID strings.
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Google's PageRank ™ is continuously updated by
dedicated machines, the toolbar PR is only a "snapshot in
time" (didn't we all know that already?).
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That webmasters should use absolute links instead
of relative links on their pages, and that it is highly
recommended that sites use a 301 redirect to send non-WWW requests
to the WWW (or vice versa - pick one and stick with it).
Furthermore he recommends that webmasters chose a single home page
convention and use it consistently through the site (all links to
the home page should be www.dotcomicide.com, not
www.dotcomicide.com/index.html, and other variations.
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He stresses the importance of natural, organic
growth of a site's links, and suggests that a site that has a
"viral" growth spurt won't be harmed by a sudden influx
of links (but won't be helped either) - citing as an example, a
"friendster" type site that has surged in popularity,
gaining massive links in recent months.
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Googleguy suggests that webmasters submitting a
"reinclusion request" for a site send in detail a
complete description of what the site was doing wrong, and expect
at least 4-6 weeks for the request to be processed.
All in all, some great answers from Googleguy - with
more to come.
Facts
of the week: What the Google patent means for SEO
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summarize the most important parts of the patent specification
in this issue so that you have a quick overview about how Google
might rank your web site according to this patent.
Google might use the following
to determine the ranking of your pages:
- the frequency of web page
changes
- the amount of web page changes
(substantial or shallow changes)
- the change in keyword density
- the number of new web pages
that link to a web page
- the changes in anchor texts
(the text that is used to link to a web page)
- the number of links to low
trust web sites (for example too many affiliate links on one
web page)
Your Google rankings can also
be influenced by your domain name:
- the length of the domain
registration (one year vs. several years)
- the address of the web site
owner, the admin and the technical contact
- the stability of data and host
company
- the number of pages on a web
site (web sites must have more than one page)
How Google might rate the
links to your web site:
- the anchor text and the
discovery date of links are recorded
- the appearance and
disappearance of a link over time might be monitored
- the growth rates of links as
well as the link growth of independent peer documents
might be monitored
- the changes in the anchor
texts over a given period of time might be monitored
- the rate at which new links to
a web page appear and disappear might be recorded
- the distribution rating for
the age of all links might be recorded
- links with a long life span
might get a higher rating than links with a short life span
- links from fresh pages might
be considered more important
- if a stale document continues
to get incoming links, it will be considered fresh
- Google doesn't expect that new
web sites have a large number of links
- if a new web site gets many
new links, this will be tolerated if some of the links are
from authorative sites
- Google indicates that it is
better if link growth remains constant and slow
- Google indicates that anchor
texts should be varied as much as possible
- Google indicates that burst
link growth may be a strong indicator of search engine spam
Search results and user
behavior might influence your Google rankings:
- the volume of searches over
time is recorded and monitored for
increases
- the information regarding a
web page's rankings are recorded and monitored for changes
- the click through rates are
monitored for changes in seasonality, fast increases, or
other spike traffic
- the click through rates are
monitored for increase or decrease trends
- the click through rates are
monitored to find out if stale or fresh web pages are
preferred for a search query
- the click through rates for
web pages for a search term is recorded
- the traffic to a web page is
recorded and monitored for changes
- the user behavior on web pages
is monitored and recorded for changes
(for example the use of the back button etc.)
- the user behavior might also
be monitored through bookmarks, cache, favorites, and
temporary files
- bookmarks and favorites are
monitored for both additions and deletions
- the overall user behavior for
documents is monitored for trend changes
- the time a user spends on a
web page might be used to indicate the quality and freshness
of a web page
Miscellaneous factors that can
influence your Google rankings:
- web pages with frequent
ranking changes might be considered untrustworthy
- keywords that have little
change in the result pages are probably matched to domains
with stable rankings
- keywords with many changes in
the results are probably matched to domains with more
votality
How to optimize your web site
for Google's ranking algorithm
Detailed information on how to
react to the different ranking factors can be found in the previous
five issues of this newsletter.
Remember that this patent doesn't
mean that Google really uses all of this. The patent only lists
options that might be used by Google in addition to their
main ranking algorithm.
The most important factors for
high rankings on Google are good
incoming links and optimized
web page content. You should make sure that your web site
has both if you want high rankings on Google.
| 1.
How your firewall can destroy
your search engine rankings |
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Some webmasters recently
experienced a delisting from the
search engines without any good
reason. The webmasters had not
done anything wrong and their
web sites were optimized for
search engines. Nevertheless,
the web sites had been removed
from search engines.
Poorly configured
firewalls can block search
engine spiders
It turned out that the
delisted web sites were all
hosted by the same hosting
company. More precisely, the web
sites were all hosted by a
hosting company that used a
special firewall software by
SonicWALL Inc.
The
importance of robots.txt
Although the robots.txt file
is a very important file if you
want to have a good ranking on
search engines, many Web sites
don't offer this file.
If your Web site doesn't have
a robots.txt file yet, read on
to learn how to create one. If
you already have a robots.txt
file, read our tips to make sure
that it doesn't contain errors.
What is robots.txt?
When a search engine crawler
comes to your site, it will look
for a special file on your site.
That file is called robots.txt
and it tells the search engine
spider, which Web pages of your
site should be indexed and which
Web pages should be ignored.
The robots.txt file is a
simple text file (no HTML), that
must be placed in your root
directory, for example:
How do I create a
robots.txt file?
As mentioned above, the
robots.txt file is a simple text
file. Open a simple text editor
to create it. The content of a
robots.txt file consists of
so-called "records".
A record contains the
information for a special search
engine. Each record consists of
two fields: the user agent line
and one or more Disallow lines.
Here's an example:
This robots.txt file would
allow the "googlebot",
which is the search engine
spider of Google, to retrieve
every page from your site except
for files from the "cgi-bin"
directory. All files in the
"cgi-bin" directory
will be
ignored by googlebot.
The Disallow command works
like a wildcard. If you enter
both "/support-desk/index.html"
and "/support/index.html"
as well as all other files in
the "support"
directory would not be indexed
by search engines.
If you leave the Disallow
line blank, you're telling the
search engine that all files may
be indexed. In any case, you
must enter a Disallow line for
every User-agent record.
If you want to give all
search engine spiders the same
rights, use the following
robots.txt content:
Where can I find user
agent names?
You can find user agent names
in your log files by checking
for requests to robots.txt. Most
often, all search engine spiders
should be given the same rights.
in that case, use
"User-agent: *" as
mentioned above.
Things you should avoid
If you don't format your
robots.txt file properly, some
or all files of your Web site
might not get indexed by search
engines. To avoid this, do the
following:
- Don't use comments in the
robots.txt file
Although comments are
allowed in a robots.txt
file, they might confuse
some search engine spiders.
"Disallow: support #
Don't index the support
directory" might be
misinterepreted as "Disallow:
support#Don't index the
support directory".
- Don't use white space at
the beginning of a line. For
example, don't write
placeholder
User-agent: *
place
Disallow: /support
but
User-agent: *
Disallow: /support
- Don't change the order of
the commands. If your
robots.txt file should work,
don't mix it up. Don't write
Disallow: /support
User-agent: *
but
User-agent: *
Disallow: /support
- Don't use more than one
directory in a Disallow
line. Do not use the
following
User-agent: *
Disallow: /support /cgi-bin/
/images/
Search engine spiders cannot
understand that format. The
correct syntax for this is
User-agent: *
Disallow: /support
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/
- Be sure to use the right
case. The file names on your
server are case sensitve. If
the name of your directory
is "Support",
don't write "support"
in the robots.txt file.
- Don't list all files. If
you want a search engine
spider to ignore all files
in a special directory, you
don't have to list all
files. For example:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /support/orders.html
Disallow: /support/technical.html
Disallow: /support/helpdesk.html
Disallow: /support/index.html
You can replace this with
User-agent: *
Disallow: /support
- There is no
"Allow" command
Don't use an
"Allow" command in
your robots.txt file. Only
mention files and
directories that you don't
want to be indexed. All
other files will be indexed
automatically if they are
linked on your site.
Tips and tricks:
1. How to allow all search
engine spiders to index all
files
Use the following content
for your robots.txt file if
you want to allow all search
engine spiders to index all
files of your Web site:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
2. How to disallow all
spiders to index any file
If you don't want search
engines to index any file of
your Web site, use the
following:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
3. Where to find more complex
examples.
If you want to see more
complex examples, of
robots.txt files, view the
robots.txt files of big Web
sites:
That firewall stopped the
search engine spiders from
accessing their web sites.
Google, Yahoo, MSN and all other
search engines that request the
robots.txt file couldn't index
the web site anymore because the
firewall didn't allow that:
"An attacker could
retrieve robots.txt from the
server, then use the contents
of this file to discover the
path of an unprotected
administration interface for
the server. The attacker may
gain control of the webserver
using this interface.
The information gathered
from robots.txt could be used
for system compromise and
control of the web
server." (source)
This is the standard security
settings of the SonicWALL
firewall and it basically means
that your web site won't be
spidered by search engines if
you use this firewall without
customizing it.
A firewall with these
settings will drop the
connection to anyone requesting
the robots.txt file so that it
looks as if the web site is
offline. From an SEO point of
view, this is very bad for your
web site because all good search
engine spiders request the
robots.txt file before indexing
your web site.
What does this mean to
you?
If your web site is not
listed on search engines
although it has many good
incoming links and , you should
ask your web host if their
firewall blocks search engines
that request the robots.txt
file. Your web host might not be
aware of the problem. |
| 2.
Search engine news of the week |
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Google introduces personalized
home pages
"In what appears to be
a broadside aimed at MyYahoo,
Google rolled out a new
feature on Thursday that lets
people set up a personalized
Google home page.
The feature [...] lets
people with Gmail and other
Google accounts create a home
page with different modules
that they can drag and drop
across their page, giving them
one place to go for e-mail,
headlines, weather reports,
maps, movie schedules and, of
course, Web search."
Ask Jeeves Buys Excite Europe
"The acquisition of
Excite Europe will give [Ask
Jeeves] ownership of Excite's
Internet domains throughout
Europe as well as control of
existing portal offerings in
several major European markets
including Spain, Italy,
France, Britain, Germany,
Austria and the Netherlands.
Ask Jeeves will also have
the ability to extend its
search technology to Excite
Europe users."
Espotting wins deals with Lycos
in Scandinavia
"Espotting Media, a
leading European paid listings
provider, today announces that
it has renewed its agreement
with 2 major sites in
Scandinavia - Spray in Sweden
and Jubii in Denmark, both of
which are owned by
Lycos."
Seekport UK-specific search
engine moves out of beta phase
"[Seekport returns]
UK-relevant content from nine
out of every ten searches.
This contrasts significantly
with the ‘three out of
ten’ performance from US
search engines such as Google,
Yahoo and MSN Search."
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Google
CEO defends privacy policies
"Google Chief
Executive Eric Schmidt
acknowledged that his
company's search engine can
ruffle privacy feathers [...]
Many people are disturbed to
find their home phone number.
But we found it because it was
a public piece of
information."
Attorneys seek advertisers for
click fraud class action
"The attorneys have a
pending class action suit in
the circuit court of Miller
County, Arkansas. Plaintiffs
in the case are Lane's Gifts
and Collectibles and Caulfield
Investigations, while the
named defendants include
Google, Yahoo!, Lycos,
AskJeeves, FindWhat.com, Buena
Vista Internet Group,
LookSmart, America Online,
Netscape and Time
Warner."
A Google project pains
publishers
"The major presses are
raising thorny legal issues
with the search giant's
initiative to digitize the
books of the world's great
libraries."
Google searches its soul
"The Web search king
wants to offer portal-like
features without cluttering
its site. Can it pull it off?
Despite claims to the
contrary, over the past couple
of years Google Inc. has
evolved from a simple search
engine to a full-featured
Internet portal, offering news
headlines, maps, e-mail, and
more."
Non-traditional sources cloud
Google News results
"Additional research
suggests that the search
engine's selection of
online-only news sources to
include in Google News skews
its search results toward
political extremes."
Back
to table of contents - Visit
Axandra.com
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