Salient and not so Salient Features of Google Chrome

What a week it has been especially in Google land. As early as Tuesday, a comic book introducing Google’s Chrome browser was accidentally leaked out. Immediately after that Google admits that it is actually releasing its own browser, despite being a constant supporter of Firefox.What follows soon after is a frenzy over how Google’s Chrome browser would like, how it would change the internet landscape, how it would affect Firefox usage and most especially how it would beat Microsoft’s Desktop browser.In short, Google Chrome has totally eclipsed the whole of the web, as evidenced by an almost total page coverage of the browser on Techmeme’s page, sometime around Wednesday and Thursday.We’ve gathered some of the major and finest coverage written about the different aspects Google’s new browser as weekly recap of how all of use got “chromed” by Google’s simple and clean-looking browser.  (more…)

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What is Cloaking & Is All Cloaking Evil?

When talking about such widely used and abused (and forbidden) SEO technique as cloaking, Google’s official definition seems a bit fuzzy / general:

Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index.

and:

If the file that Googlebot sees is not identical to the file that a typical user sees, then you’re in a high-risk category…

So what’s exactly cloaking? Put simply, the ways it can be defined come down to two large groups of definitions (more…)

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MSN AdCenter Contextual Ads Running on Cartoon Barry Blog

I was running through some search blogs tonight and came across Cartoon Barry, Barry Schwartz’s search marketing and semi-personal blog, and found that Barry is running ads that look very much like Google AdSense. But they are not AdSense, they are powered by MSN and formatted in a really cool fashion!

Directly above the Google AdSense ads (thanks to lax TOS), Barry is serving MSN Content Advertising ads from the (Microsoft seems to have two or three names for all of their products and services), which are part of the Microsoft Advertising Network. (more…)

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5+ SEO Text Analyzers for SEO Diagnostics & Copywriting

Both with on-page SEO diagnostics and SEO copywriting, we often need to perform various types of text analysis. Here is the collection of tools that should come in handy:

1. Keyword usage analyzers give quick overview of keyword prominence, i.e. page meta description, title, H-headings, image alt text, links anchor text and bold text:

• Ranks Keyword Density and Prominence Tool;
• SEOworkers SEO Analysis Tool;
• RankQuest Keyword Density Analyzer.

(more…)

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Yahoo Taking Users Away from Internet Explorer: The Revenge To Microsoft?

As most of you already know, Microsoft and Yahoo have been in talks over the past year of a possible buyout which has left a sour taste in the mouth of many executives and investors in regards to not being able to come to an agreement.

While Google stood in the sidelines watching, they have reached an agreement with Yahoo in regards to Yahoo’s paid search. Within two days of Google launching Chrome (Google’s new web browser,) Yahoo is urging users to upgrade to the new FireFox 3 at the top of Yahoo.com. It reads, “Yahoo recommends upgrading to the new, safer, faster Firefox 3.” By downloading this browser, Yahoo would be your default engine as FireFox is known for using Google as a default search engine.

How do you think this will affect the market share for IE?

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SEO and Web Accessibility Come Hand in Hand

Web accessibility can be defined as:

an approach to web design that aims to ensure the widest access to the content and features of a website. The term is often used to refer to accessibility for people with disabilities, particularly blindness. (source)

However accessibility is also about making Web content more available to all users:

whatever user agent they are using (e.g., desktop browser, voice browser, mobile phone, automobile-based personal computer, etc.) or constraints they may be operating under (e.g., noisy surroundings, under- or over-illuminated rooms, in a hands-free environment, etc.).

While we (surprisingly) seldom see accessibility issues discussed in SEO community, search engine optimizers should definitely both explore and implement accessibility standards

(more…)

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Yahoo Site Explorer Showing Less Backlinks

After an update to Yahoo Site Explorer’s backlink tracking query results, Barry Schwartz reported over at SERoundtable that many webmasters were reporting a drop in their overall backlinks reporting, some with up to 100K backlinks missing.

Has Yahoo Site Explorer gone the way of the Googlebird in its backlinks reporting? Not yet, Yahoo does not seem to be limiting the amount of links being shown but may have possibly devalued some of the lesser important sites in its backlink reporting.

With multiple backlink generation systems and API driven research tools dependent upon Yahoo Site Explorer, I highly doubt the company would curtail one of the last lifelines it may have in its publisher relationship suite. (more…)

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Tagatum: Keyword Research by Analyzing Blog Associations

I have multiple times posted on non-standard keyword research tools and services (apart from regular keyword suggestions tools):

• Where to start your keyword research (reviewing online dictionaries and glossaries);
• Tools for keyword brainstorming (on term clustering and related words);
• Using social media for keyword research (on trend comparison and social media tags);
• Organizing keyword modifiers to create long tail strategy (on working with keyword lists);
• How to keep track of popular trends.

And here is another new valuable online tool to help you with keyword research: Tagatum that claims to gather semantic associations from the blogosphere, i.e. to search for any term associations by analyzing its related blog tags (more…)

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FireFox SEO Extensions - the Ultimate Collection

FireFox is the most customizable browser I am aware of and hence it is my favorite one. A while ago posting a huge overview of SEO tools I promised to compile a similar list of available FireFox SEO extensions; and so here I am.

Please mind I don’t use all of them (as that’s impossible, I guess) - you can see that in "How often I use it" column - but that doesn’t mean I do not recommend them; it only means I either didn’t need those add-ons or got used to using something else. Besides, some of the extensions listed might fail to work on the latest FireFox version but I still decided to include them as not everyone now uses the latest version.

(more…)

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Google Silently Rolls Out Picasa 3.0 and New Features of Picasa Web Album

While everybody is recovering from the massive assault of its Chrome browser, Google silently launched Picasa 3.0, a new interface of its two-year old Picasa Web Album, or to put it simply, Google’s answer to Flickr. (more…)

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