Google Product Search and Old School SEO
OK, I know Google Product Search is in Beta, but such heavy stuffing of product codes is a bit much? It is annoying because well written product listings are getting shoved down in favour of listings like these. It’d be good if ‘relevance’ in Google product search depended more on the qualities of […]
Strange Google Cache Headers
Noticed a different style & wording tonight in Google’s cached pages header:
The text: “This is Google’s cache of http://www.alistapart.com/. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 14 Jul 2008 08:58:09 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime. Learn more >>”
UPDATE: I saw the original cache […]
Google At Number Two Ranking Shocker
Typed in “Google Sitemaps” into Google UK today & saw that
XML-sitemaps.com is at number one. Google’s even “bidding” on the term - do you think they’re paying per click?
Firefox Speed Tweaks
Firefox is one of the fastest browsers out there, but you can make it even faster by applying the following tweaks:
Type “about:config” into your Firefox address bar, you’ll see a config page load up in your browser window;
Change “network.http.pipelining” to “true” (by right clicking and selecting “toggle”);
Change “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”;
Increase “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to “8″ (by right […]
The Google Porn Game: Redux
This was featured on this blog several months ago until I deleted everything. Something funny that I have noticed about Google Images is that when you type in practically any female first name with SafeSearch turned off, chances are you’ll get a lot of porn images. It is fiendishly difficult to search for […]
Google Updates Snippets Using Uncached Content
While doing some research and looking at the SERPs for “fridge freezers”. I was surprised to see Google pulling in content that wasn’t yet in its cache for a snippet for Co-op Electrical Shop’s fridges page listing. You can look at the screenshot and see that the snippet below the listing for “Refrigeration […]
Bulk Directory Submissions: Debunking A Myth
Lots of people within the SEO community seem to advise against bulk directory submissions packages, where you use services such as Seoster or Nationwide Submit to have them manually submit to, say, 200 directories in the space of a few days. Their rationale against bulk directory subs goes along the lines of: “it will […]
PageRank SmageRank
Typed ‘web directory’ into Google UK this morning & noticed bl3.co.uk at number one.
Not bad outranking Splut and the Google Directory. Now, it would seem that they’ve had their toolbar PageRank spanked down to zero, but still have this fabulous number one ranking.
Just another stake in the heart of toolbar PageRank providing any sort […]
Postcode Finder: Silly Duplicate Content
This was around before results started dancing about a bit recently. There are multiple landing pages for the Royal Mail / Post Office websites that essentially serve up the same postcode finder page. Being an extremely high traffic search term, it is even more irritating to see three results of duplicate content on […]
Don’t Bother With Facebook Ads
Was having a look at one of my client’s Google Analytics data and noticed they’d had a stab at using Facebook Ads. Here’s a snapshot of the data:
An average bounce rate of 79.38% is pretty appalling, not to mention an average 1.6 pages per visit and 51 second average visit length. Any half […]