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

freewheelreport

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 website’s mobile experience.

stumbleupon-redesign

“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.”