Archive for September, 2008
Google Turns 10
Today marks Google’s 10th Birthday.
It has been over 10 years since Larry Page and Sergey Bernstein began Google, a Search Engine aimed at indexing the world’s information and providing fast, efficieint and relative results for web search.
It has been, at least 8 since Google rose to fame as a mainstream search engine, and with that followed fortune, seeing many of it’s employees becoming overnight millionaires, and it’s founders overnight billionaires when the company launched on the Nasdaq.
10 years on today Google is now the biggest search engine in the world, and one of the richest companies in the world.
In it’s first 10 years, Google has brought a lot of new services and features to the internet such as google maps and google books, that are a benefit to the community and help put the world’s information at our fingertips.
Google has done a great deal in it’s first 10 years, and it will be interesting to watch the future of the search company in the next 10 years.
Happy Birthday Google.
Google Chrome
Introducing Google Chrome
A new web browser from Google
Google, the world’s most popular search engine has this week launched a new web browser.
It is called Google Chrome, and it aims to take a slice of the browser market away from Microsoft in the same way that Mozilla has done in recent years with it’s free and open source browser Firefox.
Google Chrome features most of the features you’d expect to see in a web browser, such as tabbed browsing, bookmarks and other mandatory gadgets, but at it’s core, Google Chrome has one thing the others don’t:
“One Box for Everything”
This is what Google Chrome is centered on, and it is basically a URL/Address bar and search box all in one.
Google Chrome
In the past, some of us web-savvy folk have scoffed at less experienced users who type a URL or web address into a search engine’s search box, or entering key words in a search box, yet it seems Google has discovered that the majority of it’s users aren’t
Google Chromes “one box for everything” feature predicts the words you’re typing, and immediately starts presenting URLs of actual websites that you’ve visited in the past, or search results related to your keywords that are indexed in Google, and even presents related pages to those you’re searching for. This new feature alone has the potential to change how users interact with web browsers and search engines.
Google Chrome comes at an interesting time when the Search Giant has threats from new competing search engines such as CUIL, who are offering a different search experience with supposedly more results, as well as Microsoft’s recent update to Internet Explorer which has a new privacy feature dubbed “porn mode”.
Google Chrome’s response to the new Microsoft feature is “incognito mode” which stores cookies and session data in a temporary cache and removes all traces of form data, cookies and pages visited when you’re done using it.
At a time when Microsoft had finally received some new attention and perhaps respect for the feature, Google has stolen it’s spotlight and positioned their browser at a perfect time when many people are ready to download browser updates.
Google certainly seems one of the most capable companies in the world to adapt to change and react to it’s competitors whilst leading the way in innovation, which goes a long way to demonstrating their abilities as a software company.
Changes, Questions, Uncertainty
When they already rule the world in web search, video streaming (youtube), and many other mediums, it begs the question, “when does google stop”?
There has been speculation in recent times that Google was preparing it’s own operating system based on Google, and perhaps google chrome is one step closer to that dream, however given that an operating system is less important in this web 2.0 world where feature rich applications are run on a web via a browser regardless of your platfrom, and the rising interest in SaaS (software as a service), Google is positioning itself to gain yet more of it’s competitors ground.
SearchKing has been often critical of browser plugins such as Adobe Flash being used to stream video on youtube as a hack. Google’s ability to obtain a large portion of the browser market could see the search engine/browser change the trends and introduce new browser plugins in favour of it’s massive content networks eliminating licensing fees and changing the way we interact wiht the web.
This is certainly a very interesting time for the internet and for Google.
What does this mean for Google? It means that it can promote Google Chrome as a superior browser using it’s target audience on it’s search engine. It also means they can use the browser to present results it favours from it’s own networks such as Youtube and Google maps. It certainly creates a much more feature rich experience for the user, but poses certain speculative questions about privacy and other concerns over google approaching a monopoly. The browser certainly will certainly further contribute in bolstering it’s own search network and securing it’s advertising space.
What does the introduction of Google Chrome mean for the for the future of firefox? It will probably die off or emulate many of the features in Google Chrome, or be amalgamated and swallowed up by google.
What does this mean for Microsoft? They need to get creative and innovative, they need to set new trends and benchmarks and stay a few steps ahead of the competition. They will probably set their lawyers out to find ways to pick at the new browser.
What does this mean for SEO? It means that google’s browser has the potential to change the way people search for information and how it is presented, and therefore SEO Specialist had best invest a lot of time researching the new browser and changes in the search engine if they’re able to deliver relevant results to their target audience.
Checkout Google Chrome Beta for Windows today: http://www.google.com/chrome/
Like all things Google, it first comes out in Beta mode, and the new software is available to download now for Windows (sorry mac and linux users).
This article is brought to you by Search King.
Growing too big for your web host
Technology and adaptability is problem akin with many new startup business that experience great success and rapid growth.
Generally most startup businesses are one or two man (or women) businesses that are for obvious reasons, run on a very tight budget.
Over time, some of these startup businesses are fortunate enough to experience rapid growth and see their businesses go to great heights, but whilst this is occurring, there often remains a problem with the original technology solution they started with that may be hindering performance in the long term.
In terms of e-commerce and web hosting, these problems may be poorly designed web pages, or database structure which can sometimes be costly to fix if left unattended, and often should be addressed as soon as possible, when time and budget allow.
Other problems, and fortunately easily curable issues, but those that have an obvious and immediate impact on the business is the choice of web hosting company, or in some case web hosting solution that has been selected to host a fast growing website.
It is all too easy to order a very cheap web hosting account, which is sufficient in the short term whilst you develop your business, but when your business grows legs and takes off, can your web host handle it?
The most obvious problem you will encounter with increased growth in your e-business is traffic. This is usually the bad issue that you really want to have. Traffic is the page requests to your site or browsing, so in simple terms, traffic = customers, but there are bandwidth considerations.
Bandwidth is basically the amount of data, and the speed at which the data travels from the server to your computer.
Bandwidth issues are obvious in a few ways:
- Speed is affected. Your hosting server might not be able to keep up with the requirements of the vast number of visitors your site attracts.
- If you exceed the amount of bandwidth allocated to you, you may incur high excess usage charges.
- If your web hosting company only allows you to send or receive a small amount of data, then they may lock your account, which is embarrassing and unprofessional if your site says “suspended, contact accounts” as most companies will display with default hosting control panel software.
Last month we published an article on dead clicks, which explains how having your website down costs you money if you are running a pay per click campaign. This is a similar problem encountered when you exceed your bandwidth.
Other issues might related to the actual server that you’re hosting with. Shared hosting is great for small businesses as it is cost effective, but if your site is running intensive applications, then you might be too big for your own boots, and it’s times like these when you need to consider finding a hosting supplier that can handle your demands, or look at hosting your own dedicated server.
The cost considerations associated with these upgrade paths can sometimes be hard to swallow, but in most cases, these perceived problems are good problems that you want.
A busy website is a successful website, one which gives you opportunity to promote and sell your product.
When choosing a web provider, whether you are running a start up or blue chip supplier, you should look for a few factors:
- Cost, location, specification of hardware, software and network
- Account limitations - does it come with a lock-out limit, or will you incur high fees for excess usage?
- Upgrade path - can your host meet your current and future demands? Can they easily add more resources at the press of a button, or will you outgrow them and need to go through the trouble of relocating your website to a new host?
Search King is an expert in Web Hosting and Search Engine marketing, and we can’t stress enough that “traffic is king”, so whilst hosting your site with a quality hosting company may be an expensive exercise, if you have the volumes of traffic and potential customers, then you really don’t have a problem, and it’s now a matter of you turning that traffic into converted sales.
Splash Pages, Why they’re bad for Search
Remember the early days of internet usage? I’m not talking back in the 70s or 80s when internet used to be very basic HTML websites and text-based bulletin boards, I’m thinking more along the lines of the late 90s and early 21st century when the internet was becoming mass-market, and people first started experiencing the web and it’s potential.
The early days of web publishing saw an abundance of terrible looking websites churned out by Frontpage and worse, MS Publisher. The thought of a yellow-text website on blue background makes me want to cringe.
Fortunately for many of us, new content management systems and web design packages are standards compliant and pre-loaded with many visually appealing sites that can be built and published by even the most inexperienced internet user.
But despite all of the great lengths we’ve gone since the days of ugly websites, I’m still seeing a lot of websites that present “spash” pages, or intro pages to visitors upon first visit to their website.
I too have been guilty of using splash pages, and despite being a little outdated and unprofessional (if not done properly), splash pages can be bad for search marketing.
For starters, splash pages are generally presented in GIF, JPEG or Flash multimedia images, and search engines for the most part index text, which is where most of your search marketing efforts lie.
Due to the lack of text, a search engine is generally unable to determine the page relevance to search terms and categorised data on your website, so therefore the spash page is likely to have a much poorer page rank (or none at all) when compared to other pages on your site that are loaded with relevant information and key words.
You ideally want your homepage/start page to be the first thing that a visitor sees when they land on your page, and you want this information to rank well.
Internet users are very savvy, they use tabbed browsing and skim through information on many pages to quickly find the data they need.
If you’re presenting a splash page to a person who has clicked through a search engine, they need to wait or make an additional click to get through to the information, and you can’t afford to be adding these hurdles to your visitors, especially when you’ve paid for them to click on your advertised link in the search engines.
Additionally, pagerank is usually much lower due to the lack of information on the splash page when compared to other pages on your site that actually do contain relevant information and keywords, this is where you want to attain higher page rank and have your visitors land when they click on your link or paid advertisement.
Tip: remove your landing page and present your visitors with relevant information as soon as possible and you’re likely to attract their attention long enough that they stay on the page and find what they’re looking for, or in many cases, find the product or service they’ve been searching for, which will hopefully convert to a sale.
Be on the lookout later this week for more news from search king related to landing pages, part of a good search advertising campaign.