I said this a year ago….

Almost a year ago, exactly, I made comment that the landscape was changing. Now, with Yahoo! and Bing teaming up, it seems that the front-runner, Google, will no longer be the only big, bad dog to put up a fight….

clipped from seochatter.wordpress.com I’ve noticed a severe and drastic change in the landscape of search from just a month ago. Even if you’ve really been watching, you’ll be surprised to know that, in the past 3 weeks: Google data scrapers stopped working – SERP structure changes broke many SEO tools Google Chrome – The omnibox All indicators are that Google has not monopolized its browser Yahoo! BOSS – A whole new ability to “foster innovation in the search landscape” Yahoo! SiteExplorer new features Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update Yahoo! SearchMonkey – Yahoo!’s new developer platform that uses data web standards and structured data to enhance the usefulness of search results Live Search Webmaster Tools – All new look at Live’s indexes IE 8 – All indicators are that Micro$oft has not monopolized itsbrowser For that much activity across all search engines, within such a short period of time, one could only reason that competition is getting quite fierce!

How to Guarantee Noticeablity

Seth’s newest post has encouraged me to beef up the About Chat Man section of SEO Chatter. The plain and simple fact of the matter is that I am doing it differently: I want potential SEO clients to know what to ask their clients and what kinds of answers should be expected. 

Many thanks, Seth, for reminding me to remember *why* I do the things I do and undertake the projects I start.

clipped from sethgodin.typepad.com But you’re not saying anything Posted by Seth Godin on September 18, 2008 big companies didn’t want the logo to be part of their story, they just wanted it to fit in with all the other big company logos same thing goes on with pricing. If you price your products like the competition does, you’re not saying anything with your pricing. “Move along, there’s nothing to see here.” Marketing storytelling is not about doing everything differently. You do many things the same, intentionally, because those ’same things’ aren’t part of your story. It’s the different stuff where you will be noticed, and the different stuff where you tell your story. If you’re not telling a story with some aspect of your marketing choices, then make sure that aspect is exactly what people expect. To do otherwise is to create random noise, not to further your marketing.

PowerSet and Microsoft Roll-Out First Collaboration Tests

Microsoft’s purchase of PowerSet is beginning to yield fruit. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to taste a sample of semantic searching in action, but only if you use MSN Live on a consistent basis because testing is only ‘flighted’ at the current moment.    

I’ll do my best to find reviews of the newest results, but it may be a bit tricky!

Read More, below:

clipped from www.powerset.com     Powerset’s First Live Search Projects Posted by Mark Johnson Wed, 17 Sep 2008     Powerset officially became a part of Microsoft a little over a month ago and we’ve already completed our first few integration projects: Freebase Answers, improved captions for Wikipedia results, and new related searches using our Factz engine .�     These projects were meant to be achievable in 30 days and act as a first collaboration between the Live Search and Powerset teams.� We have plans for deeper integration in the future, but these projects gave us an opportunity to get to know our colleagues up in Redmond and drive greater understanding of our respective technologies.� All of these projects are currently being “flighted” on Live Search, which means that they are being shown only to a small percentage of users (if you get one, consider yourself lucky!).� Once we’ve gotten data back from the tests, we’ll plan next steps and decide what features will eventually roll into the product.

QuarkBase.com SEO Data Aggregation

QuarkBase.com offers up some pretty substantial stats and if you haven’t come across it, you should take a quick peek.

Areas to note on a QuarkBase info page are:

Social Information on NBC.com as reported by QuarkBase

Image of Traffic info on NBC.com as reported by QuarkBase

 

Company and Tech info on NBC.com as reported by QuarkBase.com

HTML <title> Tag

You can find any number of individuals that refer to the importance, or lack thereof, of the character length of a <title> tag.

Although it may seem like the character lengths people recommend regarding a good <title> tag are arbitrarily tossed around, these numbers (for the good information sources) are based on sound advice.

W3C recommends a shorter <title>, supported by additionally clarifying and descriptive text in the <h1> tag. This recommendation implies the importance of <h1> and other heading tags, so why not use them?

clipped from www.w3.org <title>: the most important element of a quality Web page The <title> element in HTML is designed to provide a short piece of text that should stand for the document in cases such as: window title bars bookmark lists result lists from search services not too short “Section One” won’t help much when it shows up in a search results list. Section one of what?. Better: <title>Section One of the Modern Music Guide</title> or even better <title>Time Frame (the Modern Music Guide, Section 1)</title> not too long Because only 60 to 80 characters are displayed in many window titles, menus, etc.; you can give a more detailed/pleasant title in the top level heading of your document, e.g. <h1>Section One: When has the Modern Time Commenced, Musicwise?</h1> (with a link to the whole Modern Music Guide for context).

Rumors with Foresight

I don’t know if there’s any truth to this particular post, due to questionable sources, but recent developments have made me think that this may be something in the works.

Afterall, it only makes sense for Google to acquire potential competition before rolling out ‘audio-to-text’ searching across the board.

clipped from www.searchenginejournal.com Rumor: Google is Set to Acquire a Company Named Valve September 17th, 2008 by Arnold Zafra Industry watchers are speculating on the reason behind Google’s decision to buy Valve (if indeed, the well placed sources leaked info is correct) Some are even thinking that Google maybe entering the video market, but no words have came out yet from the Google camp.

MSN Live Search Update

The good folks over at WebmasterWorldForums.com, with their trusty SERP watchers dedicatedly staring at vid screens for endless hours, have reported movement in Live’s SERPs.

There is a speculation that in-link weight has been adjusted, but it will be a few more days before any other noticeable algo changes can surface.

Is Query Reprocessing the Next Big Search Advancement?

The semantic web is difficult to index. With many enduring thanks to heteronyms, proper indexing of the web is still a good way off. Either we need to change the structure of language, globally (Yeah, talk about unrealistic), or someone has to devise more effective method of semantic disambiguation. Will Query Reprocessing be that method?

I think it may be a step forward, but does Query Reprocessing have the ability to tie in the contextually relevant words, as well? Hmm… Well, it can be done with ‘cars,’ what else can they do it with?

I think Query Reprocessing, if it advances and is embraced by the masses, will be highly effective at filtering malware/spam pages.

With that said, check out the post at SEOChat.com

clipped from www.seochat.com A Different Way to Search – Query reprocessing This approach, implemented by sites such as Hakia and Powerset (recently purchased by Microsoft), attempts to subject search queries to logical analysis in order to better determine the intentions of the searcher. Categorization This is the subdivision and display of short – often single-word – queries in categorized form to help the searcher distinguish between various interpretations of the search. Parallelism This feature enables certain terms in the search query to be dynamically replaced with others that have the same meaning in order to expand the result set. Hakia provide the example of “cure” replacing “treat” in a health query Generalization A typical search engine query contains general terms that if treated literally artificially limit the result set. Hakia’s generalization function will show results, for example, that contain the names of specific car manufacturers in response to a query that contains the word “car.”

Googleopoly Conspiracy Theorists with Programming Expertise Needed!

I begain touching on the concept of the Googleopoly with so many current advancements from SEs and the recent release of GChrome. Believe it or not, from those seemingly tangential writings, I was headed in a very specific direction; and the release of audio-to-text searching pushed me to share some speculation on my part.

(disclaimer: The following ideas are based on nothing other than my own observation and conjecture. I am not an official source of any company’s information, nor do I engage in conversation skewed toward anything other than open discussion. Basically, I like to theorize and argue; the following statements and proposals should be held in that context, alone.)

I’m not a programmer and I don’t pretend to be, so please grace me with forgiveness for asking what may, very well, be ‘obviously dumb’ questions:

1) Is there any chance that Google is building a crawler based on the technology of GChrome? I just find it intriguing that part of GChrome’s purported advancement is translating JS into in-line, machine readable code (and JS, as much of a ’spidering’ challenge as it is, isn’t going anywhere but up, IMO – look at the use of AJAX – a crawler that ‘gets’ JS is becoming more necessary, every day); and it seems as though this technique could be passed on to a bot’s programming, somehow. Wouldn’t a bot with this kind a capability be far more robust than what we have now? (Or, was it just to boost Google’s search volume? When one searches through the ‘omnibox,’ a SERP from Google is given by default; whereas searching from the address box in IE, the default SERP is MSN or Yahoo!, depending on your ISP; this is another significant detail that I just can’t gloss over.)

2) If Google can turn audio to text, will GoogleBot be able to ‘listen’ to audio captchas, return the appropriate text, and then navigate a site beyond a simple ‘human verification’ page?

I can’t help but ponder these questions; and I hope I’m not the only one who’s considered them. If Google’s ‘bread and butter’ is search, then why would they dedicate so much time and energy developing technologies that don’t work toward that end, directly or otherwise? It’s along the same line of reasoning as why large oil companies haven’t ‘led the charge’ on exploring and developing new energy sources; a good business model enhances the need for its company’s services/products, not the opposite. And, I’m fairly certain that some significant time, resources, and money went into the latest push of Googlervices (Google + services), so I have to consider the motivating factor that’s behind all of this ‘growth’ lately.

I do hope that someone would tell me if I’m on a proverbial ‘goose chase,’ because all of my conjecture leans on the concept that these services (how Chrome handles JS and Google’s converting audio to text), and the technology behind them, could possibly be the ‘outline’ of the GoogleBot yet to come. Seeing as I’m not a programmer, I need that one extra bit of info to gauge wether these ideas are something to consider or just smoke-and-mirrors.

My sincerest thanks to all for letting me ramble on. I do that from time to time…

Enjoy your day,

Chat Man

Indexing Audio Content: 5 Questions About Google’s Latest Strive

CitizenTube.com reported on how the ‘Barack Roll’ gained the momentum that it did, thanks to Google’s Election Video Search Gadget.

Now, the technology that spurred a whole new on-line political arena is open to the masses, for the most part.

I will ponder the following questions (you’re more than welcome to ponder with me!):

1. How long before spammers take advantage of this search technology?
2. Will this really give Google the edge it needs to maintain ‘top dog’ status?
3. How long will it be before others institute similar capabilities?
4. How long, really, will it be before this search method produces reliable, relevant results?
5. How is this advancement going to affect text searching? (sometimes I just want a song’s lyrics – not the artist, not the EBay page, just good ‘ol fashioned lyrics in text form. Will I still get the results I expect?)

Hmm… I wonder…

Chat Man

clipped from googleblog.blogspot.com Google Audio Indexing now on Google Labs 9/16/2008 12:07:00 PM Nearly two months ago, we introduced the Google Elections Video Search gadget on iGoogle, a tool that transcribes and indexes the spoken content on YouTube’s Politicians channels. It didn’t take long for folks to find some creative ways to use it! Now it’s possible to enjoy this technology in a bigger way: We just launched Google Audio Indexing (aka GAudi) in Google Labs. The dedicated site offers more features, such as “search within video” and “sharing,” and a more robust user interface.   As with all things in Labs, we will continue to experiment with new features. So whether you care about flip-flopping, the glass ceiling, change or taxes, we’ll keep working to provide the most relevant results for you. Posted by Arnaud Sahuguet, Product Manager