Zyas » Sue

Are Google Maps Spam Attractors?

Sue — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:56:24 +0000

There is no disputing the fact that Google maps can be very useful, especially if you are new to an area and are trying to find your way around. Google’s latest update on their longtitude and latitude is good, but it is so encompassing that it pulls in everything that is remotely attahced to what you were searching for. Put in Chinese Restaurant for example and you get thousands of little dots populating a small area, which makes it difficult to see the teardrops used of alphabetical listings.

Where you used to search for an exact neighbourhood Chinese, now you can just put in Chinese restaurant and be inundated with results. All of these results may be great if you want a tour of all the Chinese restaurants in a given area, but not so good if all you are searching for is Mr Pang’s. You do have the option to then refine your search using the exact area and the exact name and when you do, you get a change in the dots.

Although initial searches may bring up a lot of stuff that you won’t need, a lack of dots on a particular business could help those looking to start up something new. If there are less dots for shoe factories, for example, then this might be the place to start hitting the leather. The new version may attract some spam but it may also bring some gold for those businesses that are prospecting an area.

$20 Million in Funding – What Recession?

Sue — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:27:52 +0000

Over the last twelve months or so we’ve seen banks being bailed out by Governments, and workers losing their jobs and their pay packets. In the present financial crisis although it makes a change to hear that someone is profiting and doing well, you might be forgiven for thinking that recession only hits Joe public. Such thinking is intensified when you hear that a Luxembourg based company has just financed Synthasite to the tune of twenty million dollars to speed up the creation of website development tools and advance e-commerce growth. Much of the growth is dependant on Synthasite making some strategic aquisitions.

Synthasite, for those who haven’t heard, creates web building tools to be used by people who are looking to develop an e-commerce site – these sites are powered by Paypal and need little technical knowledge to set up. The company say that their aim is to help people set up websites so that they can join the e-commerce trend. You do have to wonder how realistic all this is when businesses around the world are either closing, or laying off employees on a daily basis. Where are the future customers of these future e-commerce sites expected to come from.

The Popularity of YouTube

Sue — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:02:33 +0000

YouTube is becoming increasingly popular with bloggers, and for good reason, YouTube is the fourth largest web property and the second largest search engine. What this means for bloggers and webmasters alike is that they have to get their videos ranked because there are 15 hours of them every minute, uploaded by people. If you are serious about marketing your blog then you shouldn’t neglect YouTube.

If you want to try YouTube in your marketing efforts then you will be more successful if you have a catchy title and use your keywords carefully in your description. For many people YouTube has become one of the webs favourite social sites and if you want to get your videos noted and ranked then you should participate in the community.

Google’s Friend Connect

Sue — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:19:18 +0000

Google has come up with a new social bar that allows users to keep all their friend connection gadgets in one place. The friend connect social bar is a new tool bar that goes across the top of your website. The bar has a comments section, a list of site members and a site wide connectivity feed. If you look on the main Google site you’ll be able to download a video that demonstrates how to install the social bar.

Google’s video gives you a taste of the social bar in action along with installation instructions. Google announced the launch of the social bar on its new social web blog, which tells people, “News and updates about Google products that are helping to make the web more social” For some reason, Google sees it as their mission to help internet users to socialise. Whether this will be a success remains to be seen, some sceptics think that Google should leave the social side alone and get on with what it knows best about search. It would seem that Google’s social bar is seen as just another step in the process of trying to perfect their search product.

What Innovative Search Methods Can Do For You

Sue — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:15:29 +0000

An innovative search method is made up of a number of things, from altering your meta data and adding to your site description to building a site in Flash; anything in fact that will increase the number of things that search engines pick up on. When you start a search campaign, and introduce new and different methods during the course of that campaign, you increase the visibility of your site and your brand. When a brand comes near the top of any search results, then that becomes a well known brand, a name that people recognise. Your search campaign not only increasing the number of ways in which you are visible to the search engines, it can produce a perception of your brand as a leader in your particular industry.

If you think that all this makes the whole process seem oversimplified, then you would be right. In the current climate it is all too easy to get carried away by the day to day tasks of keeping your business running at a certain level; when this happens there is little time for innovation. When you don’t have time for innovation then you leave the field open to your competitors. The only way around this, is to try and set aside a little time each day to work on your search campaign, otherwise, it will be some brand other than yours that is perceived as the industry leader.

Don’t Go Overboard With Your URL

Sue — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:27:58 +0000

There are things about search engine optimisation that you may never have considered. Whenever somebody gets their first website with their own domain name, there’s a tendency to go overboard with the URL. You must have seen those sites with a URL so long that there’s barely enough room for it on the page. The problem is, that if you get too creative with your URLs then you can complicate things later on down the line. It’s not easy to keep your keyword useage as simple as possible when your URL is almost long enough for hanging the washing.

From an seo perspective, the shorter and simpler you make the URL, the better it is. Take this site for instance, http://zyas.org, it really couldn’t be any less complicated. No matter what your website is about, the short and simple rule always applies. If you are lamenting the fact that you’ve got yourself a long and complicated URL that can’t be changed, then think again. There are special tools available on the internet, in fact wordpress has one, that will let you reshape your URL into something short and simple. Do this and your site will fare much better in the seo stakes.

Google and Search Habits

Sue — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 14:06:41 +0000

Currently Google is using eye tracking studies in its quest for a universal search. Eye tracking studies have become quite common because they show how surfers read web pages and where the eyes tend to focus the most. Experts in this type of study are of the opinion that the longer a person’s eyes stay in a particular area of the screen, the more popular that item is as it is attracting more exposure.

One of the problems with eye tracking studies is the fact that not everyone moves their eyes at the same rate or focuses their eyes in the same way, which raises questions as to how interested the person really is in a particular area. What Google is trying to ascertain are which search results tend to attract a user’s eyes more than others. Results so far, are similar to the results of any aspect of onscreen reading, the eyes focus on the first lines and attention begins to dwindle as the eyes go down the page.

Contrary to popular opinion, results also showed that people’s eyes tended to focus less on images and more on text. Search results loading time can have an effect on a user’s focus and that can lead to greater attention on the first line. How useful the results are remain to be seen.