Webmaster News

Google Page Titles

Google have recently announced (Better Page Titles in Search Results -12th Jan 2012) that the Google algorithm is so advanced that it no longer has to default to a website page Title Tag in it’s search results. If pages are well optimised for search engines then Google will use the Title Tag that has been used for the page because it will be relevant but for pages that don’t have Title Tags assigned or have irrelevant title tags such as (at this point I say shame on you); Google will use data that it deemed as most relevant.

You may have noticed this happening recently. Mainly we have seen Google Automatically adding company names to the end of title tags. For example if you type Blue Sheep Services into Google then you will see the following snippet:

However on this page the Title tag is simply so Google has added in the company name to improve it’s relevance to the search term used.

Google Monthly Series On Algorithm Changes

Last month Google Announced that from now on they will be publishing lists of improvements that they are making to search engines. This is a topic that we covered in our last News Round Up.

In December Google made 30 improvements and most of them now have codenames to make it easier for us to relate to them; awe thanks Google.

Here’s a summary and the detail can be found here …..Google Insider Search Blog

• Image Search landing page quality signals. [launch codename “simple”]
• More relevant sitelinks. [launch codename “concepts”, project codename “Megasitelinks”]
• Soft 404 Detection.
• More accurate country-restricted searches. [launch codename “greencr”]
• More rich snippets.
• Better infrastructure for autocomplete.
• Better spam detection in Image Search. [launch codename “leaf”]
• Google Instant enhancements for Japanese.
• More accurate byline dates. [launch codename “foby”]
• Live results for NFL and college football. [project codename “Live Results”]
• Improved dataset for related queries.
• Related query improvements. [launch codename “lyndsy”]
• Better lyrics results. [launch codename “baschi”, project codename “Contra”]
• Tweak to +1 button on results page.
• Better spell correction in Vietnamese. [project codename “Pho Viet”]
• Upcoming events at venues.
• Improvements to image size signal. [launch codename “matter”]
• Improved Hebrew synonyms. [launch codename “SweatNovember”, project codename “Synonyms”]
• Safer searching. [launch codename “Hoengg”, project codename "SafeSearch"]
• Encrypted search available on new regional domains.
• Faster mobile browsing. [launch codename “old possum”, project codename “Skip Redirect”]

Other News

Google has profited from illegal Olympic Ticket Ads

The BBC has reported that There have been Google Ads selling unofficial Olympic 2012 tickets as well as fake Ids and Cannabis. However as soon as the BBC brought them to Google’s attention they were promptly removed. Olympic Ticket Ads – Full Story

New Google Changes Upset Twitter

This week Google announced a major search update called Google Search, Plus Your World. Which is includes Google+ in the Google search results to help personalise search results.

Twitter have claimed that this is bad for the web and will warp results.

Find out more about Google Search, Plus Your World.

To learn more about Online Marketing and how it can benefit you, book a place on our next SEO Training Course in Manchester on 22nd March?

Give us a call on 01928 788100 for more details.

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Google is now including Google+ in search results. For quite a while now Google has been working on making search more personal. This started with the Google Social Search back in 2009 and now that Google has Google+ this is getting more and more advanced.

Now is a good time to let you know that this has not rolled out to the UK now so if you want to see this in action you should visit Google.com.

If you are not logged into Google then the results won’t be personalised; however there will still be changes in the search results to include Google+ information.

To show this we have used a generic term computers. If you search for this in Google.com then you will get the following screen.

Here you can see that a new People and Pages on Google+ has been added to the search results.

However when we login and type in SEO we can switch between personalised and non personal search with a simple click of a button.

When we click on the personalise button Google drills down into our Google+ data; including both our posts and pictures but also the pictures and posts of people in our circles and so on to give as much more personal experience.

Here we can see that we still have the People and Pages block but we also have the option to click on personal results that we can click on to open a new type of search.

Together with Google+ results appearing in this search. These are not just Google+ pages but actual posts from Google+.

Google have also included a profile search in this new change. If you start typing a name into Google it will show possible contacts from your circles and from other peoples circles that are in your circles:

Search, plus Your World

Get involved: Here is a tutorial on how to create a Google+ account

To learn more about Online Marketing and how it can benefit you, book a place on our next SEO Training Course in Manchester on 22nd March?

Give us a call on 01928 788100 for more details.

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Webmaster News

Google multilingual tagging

Last September Google launched its multilingual tagging which allows us to target visitors speaking different languages and remove the worry of duplicate content. This was done by using the following code:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang="a-different-language" href="http://url-of-the-different-language-page"  />

However we all saw a possible problem with this; that problem was that we still had content in the same language but wanted it to serve different regions. For example: Spanish pages that serve Spain and Mexico. This week Google has released a New Mark-up For Multilingual Content which allows us to target both language and location:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://www.example.com/" /> - General Homepage in Spanish
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES" href="http://es-es.example.com/" /> - Users in Spain (in Spanish)
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-MX" href="http://es-mx.example.com/" /> - Users in Mexico (in Spanish)
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://en.example.com/" /> - English version of the website

Google releases tips for hosting providers and webmasters

If you are experiencing hosting related issues affecting your website on Google then there is good news. Google has now released tips for hosting providers and webmasters. This includes a collection of hosting related issues that could harm your website on Google, including:

• Blocking of Googlebot crawling;
• Availability issues;
• Invalid SSL certificates;
• Wildcard DNS;
• Misconfigured virtual hosting;
• Content duplication through hosting-specific URLs;
• Soft error pages;
• Content modification and frames;
• Spam and malware.

Facts & Figures

Google dominates internet advertising

The heading above seems obvious but we thought we’d add some facts and figures to this statement.

Since 2006 Google has continuously increased its share of the internet ad market and Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL have seen their shares drop from 33.1% to 13.8%. In 2010 Google had 44.1% share of the internet ad market which has increased from 34.9% in 2006. In the same time Facebook has increased its market share from 0.2% to 3.1% and Facebook has now overtaken AOL.

Video ads views

FreeWheel has released figures for the last quarter (Q3 2010) and these figures show a 97% increase in video views compared with the same time last year (Q3 2010 6 billion views – Q3 2011 11.8 billion views). However there is a more interesting figure: video ad views grew at a rate of 128% while video views rose 97%. The number of video ad views has risen from 3.1 billion to 7.2 billion.

If this is something that you are interested in please visit our Video SEO post

FreeWheel Report

Other News

Yahoo improves image search

Yahoo has improved its image search and now has 2 additional features:

Similar to a feature on Google image search it allows you to infinitely scroll through the images by clicking the Show More Images button;

Images can now be shared through social networks.

StumbleUpon re-design

StumbleUpon have released a new design for their website today. After seeing mobile traffic grow over the last year the new design is inspired by the websites mobile experience.

“We’re doing a complete relaunch of the site, and a lot of it is inspired by our mobile experience,” says CEO Garrett Camp. “It’s basically because of our mobile traction. That streamlined experience, which is simpler and without complexity, has really resonated with users. We wanted to take what we learned from mobile and bring that to the web.”

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Become a Jan Klin VIP member and get the latest news and lessons from Jan Klin & Associates for free. We will now be publishing a wide range of online marketing news and freebies on our Google+ page. You can get all of this for free by adding us to your Google+ Circles. When you add us we will add you to our VIP members circle.

If you already have a Google+ account then please visit the Jan Klin Google+ Page. If you don’t then here is how you create a Google+ Account [there will be a link here].

Click on the Add To Circles in the top right corner:

When you click on this button you will get a drop down menu. Please add us to your most relevant circle.

Then as soon as we add you to our VIP members circle you will start to get lessons, online marketing news and more… Starting with our free SEO 12 lesson eBook.

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This is a mini tutorial to show you how to create a Google + account.

First please log in to your Google account. If you haven’t already got one please visit Create A Google Account for details on how to create one.

Once you have logged in. you will be taken back to the Google homepage but your Google account name or email address will be visible in the top right hand corner. In the top left hand corner please click on the +You.

This will take you to the Join page

Fill in your details on this page then click Join.

Next you can either Find people you know on Google+ or Skip this step (you can do this later on). After this screen Google will continue to ask you to find people you know. You can either skip these steps or fill in the details to find people. If you do skip these steps and Continue anyway then you can connect to these accounts later to find people.

Next you can add you profile information or you can just click Finish and go to your Google+ account:

At this point you will be sent an email by Google which will give you information about how to use your Google+ account in the future.

Now that you are logged in with your new Google+ account please visit the Jan Klin Google+ Page

Click on the Add To Circles in the top right corner:

When you click on this button you will get a drop down menu. Please add us to your most relevant circle.

Then as soon as we add you to our VIP members list you will start to get lessons, online marketing news and more… Starting with our free SEO 12 lesson eBook.

Posted by Jon Seymour

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