Google Inside claims no copyright to the above video

I will repeat that Google has too much love for Wikipedia, despite what people say or think about it.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Accepting Outrageous Claims as Truth

That aside, Facebook is becoming a larger and larger player in the online industry for social networking and community. By nature, whenever you get a database or website with the mass amount of users that Facebook or MySpace has, search becomes a serious feature.

Search on Facebook has become a widely used feature of Facebook.

Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, in the early days of search engines, were very apt to rank when webmasters used a lot of the same or similar keywords within the body of the page, also termed keyword stuffing.

I was browsing through Facebook last week and noticed this photo of Mat Mann.

So from what I can see, they’re keyword stuffing in order to get higher in the search results?

Not quite. As of right now, Facebook does not offer search functionality for photos. But when they do, they are going to have an amazing index and database of searchable photos. I would even hunch as much to say that it would be comparable to that of Flickr.

Should you be prepping your photos with a ton of keywords so when Facebook does come out, you’re all ready? Certainly not. Just like Google or Yahoo! improved its search algorithm, so will Facebook.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Keyword Search on Facebook

Well, if you’re not familiar with what CalDAV is, it’s basically a way to “mount” your calendar around the web. According to Wikipedia, it is “…a proposal for a standard protocol to enable calendar access via WebDAV…” This would be a huge feature to add because it would allow people to seamlessly and natively sync calendars around the web.

What I use as a solution is a product called BusyMac, it has been getting the job done quite well so far (a proud owner going on two months now).

OS X’s iCal already has CalDAV functionality built into it, but alas, without Google offering the service to the public, it doesn’t make it very useful.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google CalDAV Coming….Soon?

Google recently published their own “hitchhiker’s guide to the web,” more commonly known to the public as the Google Doctype.

In short, Google Doctype is a guide for everyone (including Google), on how to go about using and creating the web. I say, “creating the web,” because in essence, that’s what we do everyday. That’s what I’m doing right now with this article.

The web would not exist unless content existed. So therefor, it’s a good idea to have a “guide” to the way the web is created (and hopefully maintained at the same time).

Here’s a fairly lengthy, but informative video, about Google Doctype. Featured speaker of this video is Mark Pilgrim.

“By developers, for developers.”

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Web”

A happy Cinco de Mayo to everyone! You can read more about the Cinco de Mayo (the fifth of May, translated to English) at Wikipedia.

Tags: cinco+day+mayo, spanish+holiday, google, google+inside

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Happy Cinco de Mayo from Google Inside

The item of comment spamming is becoming more and more of an issue. The real problem that is occurring though, is that real people are doing the spamming. Real people, sitting at real computers, spamming real websites.

About a month ago, I left a comment on a Search Engine Journal post about comment spamming. I stand by exactly what I said, even today.

Here’s a quick recap,

And what the hell is the point of leaving your name as “SEO Services” or “Atlanta Web Design” … why not just leave you name? Joe Bob or how about Clint Westwood or Bill Dylan or whatever your REAL name is.

Why do people have such a problem about leaving their real name? Seriously, stop trying to leave legit comments with spammy names as the anchor text, it’s annoying as $%!*, you don’t deserve the right to comment. Just leave your lame%!%# comments to yourself, PLEASE.

You will not see me cussing or using foul language on this blog simply because that is not my writing style or part of who I am. This is one thing that really pushes my buttons and ticks me off. I’ve seen this time and time again where people don’t just leave their name. They always have some hidden agenda for leaving a comment.

Is it so hard to leave a comment for the pure reading pleasure of others or that you have a serious contribution you can make that will enhance the quality of the content? I just do not understand how that is so difficult for people to understand.

That said, I will not say I’m perfect and I’ve never done it. I used to it, a long time ago, but I quickly stopped and learned how to better hold up my reputation. Comment spamming does touch on reputation management and could very well effect your business.

This topic, comment spamming, was fired up again by Donncha yesterday. Again and again, it’s the same thing.

What is the bottom line that needs to be said, then taken action on?

Search engines need to figure out a better way to determine results instead of depending wholly upon links between websites.

Fortunately, we already have companies taking that kind of initiative. Mahalo.com is a startup which is focusing on generating human-made, human-edited, and human-approved content. In a way, similar to Wikipedia, but in a more search engine friendly way for consumers.

The topic of comment spamming will not be going away any time soon, so you better buckle up and hold on for the ride, it’s going to be a wild one.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Spam, Spam, Go Away — and Never Come Back!

So what’s really going on? The love/hate relationship going on is knol. Google is creating their own Wikipedia, so the real question is going to be: will Google still love Wikipedia? It may grow into a slow hate to love rather than a love to hate relationship.

Google has some serious decisions to make in the near future in regards to Wikipedia.

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google’s Love-Hate Wikipedia Relationship

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.

So essentially, Google is looking to create a user-contributed competitor to Wikipedia which they can monetize. Some people view Wikipedia as a great resource, but I however, do not care for Wikipedia. Personal opinions aside, Google has a huge motive for creating a competitor.

More money.

If Wikipedia opened up its doors and allowed Google to advertise all over Wikipedia, Google would not even think twice about shutting down the knol project. Why? Because they could serve their entire inventory on the already-existing Wikipedia pages. But, as we have heard from the Wikipedia founders, they will not be looking to monetize the site any time soon.

Google is looking at knol as a potential threat to steal traffic away from Wikipedia. Google could and probably will just as easily move traffic from Wikipedia over to knol. A few human touches to the algorithm and the knol is in business for traffic. Set it as a PR8, PR9, maybe even a PR10, and knol will rank just as high — if not higher — than Wikipedia.

The only problem that Google has right now, which actually isn’t that big of a problem in the large scale of things, is that they don’t have the content ready. But thanks to posts like this one, the world will happily give more money to Google, for free.

It’s a shame that people will lend a hand, for free, and ask for nothing in return.

Tags: free+information, wikipedia, google, knol, google+knol

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

Google to Compete with Wikipedia

So what actually is happening with paid links? Google is ‘asking’ that people report sites that are either buying or selling links in order to start to clear up the index.

I happen to completely and whole-heartily disagree with this move by Google. Normally I’m very passionate about what Google is doing and support it, but this is one move that I do not see as a favor for webmasters or the company as a whole.

As much as Google doesn’t want to admit it, paid text link advertising is a critical method of marketing for websites around the world. People who really care about how they are ranked should be able to do exactly that and be able to rank in a position they want — no matter the cost.

Yahoo! and MSN haven’t spoken out on this matter this, but Google is taking a very firm stance on paid link advertising.

The industry of paid textlinks has been around for years and won’t be going away any time soon. Some websites depend on textlink sales as an additional source of income on top of other traditional advertising. Some stores heavily depend on paid linking as a means to positioning themselves higher in the index for any given keyword term. Paid link advertising is very important and Google should be dismissing this fact instead of trying to fight it.

How does this effect Wordpress SEO? There are many advertisers out there that use companies such as TextLinkAds.com and such for advertising their site — I know I do — and it’s critical to know that this industry is not going away nor it is going to actually compromise how the web works.

Additional Resources

• ThreadWatch
• Michael Gray

Tags: paid+links, textlinks, textlink+advertising, google

Blogged on Google News by Jonathan Dingman © Fireside Media

On Paid Links