Entries Tagged 'Google' ↓

SEO Facts and Myths – W3C Validation, Dynamic Pages, Duplicate Content

Some interesting facts about SEO taken from Matt Cutt’s latest video sessions:

  • When you launch a new website, rather launch it with a few thousands pages instead of millions. After that, add pages in a healthy period of time.
  • Be sure to have unique pages!
  • Don’t worry about W3C validation too much. It’s good to validate but it’s not necessary. Usability and how the pag looks should be your first thing to worry about. Personally I never really cared about W3C validation because in my opinion they’re living in the past.
  • Dynamic pages with query strings are crawled by most searchengines just one link deeper. If you have to use dynamic query string pages be sure to keep your parameters short and avoid long numbers as they might be treated as session ids.
  • Try to use mod_rewrite or simliar techniques to make your urls more friendly and readable
  • GEOIP targeting is not treated as cloaking, however, you should never treat the googlebot or any other searchengine bot in a special way. Cloaking means to show different content to searchengine bots than to users.
  • Google does a lot of duplicate content detections. There are several forms of duplicate content, like full duplicates or just near duplicates. Be sure to write as unique pages as possible and you won’t get into trouble.

That’s a short summary of what I written down while listening to the videos.

Dropped Link-Vault

I finally decided to drop Link-Vault, I removed the code from every website I maintain.

Reasons for that:

  • The LinkVault website is banned from Google
  • I see lots of auctions about selling Vaultage on eBay (by the admins)
  • The admins are not responding on the official forum anymore
  • People say Google decreases the value of sites displaying Link-Vault Links

I wasn’t sure at first if I really gonna drop them, but in the meantime things have even gone worse than before.

Personally I suggest to drop Link-Vault. In long-term your site may experience penalities if you still use it.

Google supports META NOODP tag

Matt Cutts writes:

In some circumstances, Google uses descriptions from the Open Directory Project as the title and snippet for a web result; this tag lets you opt out of the ODP title and description.

This can be pretty annoying if you want your chosen title to appear in the Searchengines and someone else submitted your site into dmoz with a totally or slightly different title.

<meta name="robots" content="noodp" />

So that’s indeed a very cool meta tag and you should use it by default, just to be safe.

eBay bans Google Checkout

eBay has updated it’s “Safe Payments Policy” to specifically NOT allow Google Checkout.

Here’s the relevent excerpt:

Payment Services not permitted on eBay: AlertPay.com, anypay.com, AuctionChex.com, AuctionPix.com, BillPay.ie, ecount.com, cardserviceinternational.com, CCAvenue, ecount, e-gold, eHotPay.com, ePassporte.com, EuroGiro, FastCash.com, Google Checkout, gcash, GearPay, Goldmoney.com, graphcard.com, greenzap.com, ikobo.com, Liberty Dollars, Moneygram.com, neteller.com, Netpay.com, Nochex.com, paychest.com, payingfast.com, paypay, Postepay, Qchex.com, rupay.com, scripophily.com, sendmoneyorder.com, stamps, Stormpay, wmtransfer.com, xcoin.com.

Now this is something to think about. It seems like eBay doesn’t want to go for a fair fight. Banning Google Checkout from eBay is a step forward in making it a dirty war against Google. It also shows that eBay or specifically PayPal is afraid of Google’s new service.

My opinion: That’s not the right way to go eBay, it will produce more harm than good.

Google PageRank update rolled back

Too bad, the changes were not persitant. Anyway, expect an update in the near future. In case you were lucky enough to check your ranks yesterday: It looks like they were pretty authentic, I think those numbers will go live with the full update.

If you weren’t satisfied with your new PageRank – now you got a little more time left for trying to improve your ranking! 😉

Google PageRank update in progress!

I just checked several Datacenters and many of my new sites got finally PageRank! As of now, these Datacenters carry the new PageRank already:

  • 64.233.179.104
  • 64.233.185.99
  • 64.233.185.104
  • 64.233.179.99
  • 64.233.171.99
  • 64.233.171.147
  • 64.233.171.104

There are several Multi PageRank checkers out there which make it easier for you to aquire your new PageRank, just google them.

Time to go and check your new Rankings! 🙂

GBuy is now officially known as Google Checkout

Google finally launched their Payment Service. Many people speculated about the name and now we have an answer: Google Checkout.

Google Checkout helps you increase sales.
And process them for free when you advertise with Google.

That is the first thing you read when you visit the Google Checkout Website.

I wanted to use the new service for my Shopping Systems but one little input field stopped me: Country. For now they only accept Customers and Merchanents from the United States. Too bad. They are planning to expand their service to Europe but until now no date has been announced.

The system is tightly bound to AdWords and features little `Buy Now` Buttons when using AdWords as Merchanent. Here is an Overview:

  • Pay with a single Login (like PayPal)
  • Financing (like PayPal)
  • Costs: 2% of the Transaction + 20 US-Cent (almost like PayPal: 1,9% + 30 US-Cent)
  • Deductibles for acquisitions by using AdWords

Let’s see how this evolves..