Tag Archives: Google

Google Zeitgeist 2010

Posted on by

Google Zeitgeist 2010 — Global trends: Fastest rising

Above — Global trends: Fastest rising / Below — Facebook vs Twitter.

Google Zeitgeist 2010 — Facebook vs. Twitter

It’s the Google Zeitgeist time of year again, here to demonstrate to me that I have no idea who is famous these days or what real people do online. Facebook just makes it into the top 10 fastest rising search terms, though if you compare it to Twitter, it is much more popular in sheer volume. In fact, it’s much bigger than anything else here.

Amusingly, ‘chatroulette’ tops the list in almost every region, with ‘ipad’ and ‘iphone 4’ always up there too.

Google Zeitgeist 2010: Global / UK

Continue reading →

Advertisement

No such thing as bad publicity – for SEO

Posted on by

A fascinating story about a scumbag sales operation, DecorMyEyes.com, who leaned that a link is a link, and Google doesn’t care if it’s a good review or a scathing rant – so why make the effort to give good service?

“Hello, My name is Stanley with DecorMyEyes.com,” the post began. “I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement.”

It’s all part of a sales strategy, he said. Online chatter about DecorMyEyes, even furious online chatter, pushed the site higher in Google search results, which led to greater sales. He closed with a sardonic expression of gratitude: “I never had the amount of traffic I have now since my 1st complaint. I am in heaven.”

[…]

The strange part is that Google is intimately familiar with the rage inspired by DecorMyEyes. If you type the company’s name in a Google Shopping search, you’ll see a collection of more than 300 reviews, many of them arias sung in the key of livid.

[…]

In short, a Google side stage — Google Shopping — is now hosting a marathon reading of DecorMyEyes horror stories. But those tales aren’t even hinted at in the company’s premier arena, its main search page.

“It’s fair to say,” Mr. Sullivan concludes, “that this is a failure on Google’s part.”

via For DecorMyEyes, Bad Publicity Is a Good Thing – nytimes.com

Continue reading →

Clever website imitates a Google search results page

Posted on by

Michael Jang Photography

Michael Jang Photography imitates a Google search results page with his website.

This is such clever idea, although I think perhaps a photographer would be better off selling himself with his pictures, not his web presence. I actually think it would work a lot better for a social media/SEO type. Nonetheless, I like what he’d done, and is planning to do:

[…] “It is not what it seems,” said Jang, “Along the top and right are ‘ads’ all linking back to photo projects and videos.” As expected of any website, Jang provides his e-mail contact, links to his Facebook, Flickr and blog — all disguised as Google search options in the page header.

Ultimately, Jang intends to cede control of the links featured on his site. “Rather than totally control the content I want more transparency,” said Jang. The site “will link to anything about me, so sometimes there might even be threads that are less than complimentary.”

via wired.com (story found via PetaPixel)

PageRank explained with an interactive diagram

Posted on by

This is an excellent page that explains the mathematics behind Google’s PageRank and illustrates it with an interactive diagram. You can arrange a series of pages, link them to each other and see the resulting PageRanks.

PageRank explained with an interactive diagram

PageRank explained with JavaScript

After ‘the science bit’ he concludes with this little piece of wisdom that I hope all SEO ‘experts’ actually get to:

How can I use this to drive traffic to my website?

If you take anything from this article take with it the spirit of sharing knowledge. Knowledge is the only type of content that is truly valuable and there should be no doubt that search engines now and of the future will try their best to make sure it ends up at the top of their search results.

He has a pretty cool piece of JavaScript animated ASCII art on his homepage too: http://williamcotton.com/

Link

Web Seer is a fascinating tool that lets you explore what questions people are typing into Google, and compare it to other questions to see where they overlap. Admittedly, I can’t think of a real world use for this, but it’s fun to play with. If you find an interesting comparison, please leave a link in the comments!

More info on the Web Seer project page.

Continue reading →

#0044CC – The one hundred million dollar colour

Posted on by

Microsoft also tested multiple versions of blue for links in their search results. A specific color of blue (#0044CC) drove $80-$100 million dollars a year increase over the light blue the design team tried first.

(via lukew.com & found via Andrew Parker)

Andrew references Douglas Bowman in his post, who quit Google’s design team, citing an example of the time the company did extensive testing to pick from 41 shades of blue. It seems that perhaps Google have it right.

GUI design for a Google OS

Image

Last night I stumbled across this Photoshop mockup I have 2/3rds completed of a potential GUI for a Google operating system. This was created before Android, Chrome and Wave existed (as far as anyone knew) and is based on nothing but my own thinking.

I rather like the look of it, so I'm going to finish it off over the next few lunchbreaks. You’re welcome to share any thoughts you have on the subject in the comments.