Search Engine Optimisation Hampshire

For years now the debate has raged about the utility of Meta keywords for search engine optimization Specialists and whether they are still scanned by search engines and if they actually impact positively on a websites ranking in the search engines.

This debate started when spammers creating fake websites tried to cheat the system by filling the Meta Keyword tag of a website with irrelevant keywords that do not relate to the website. This led to the conception amongst the search engine optimization community that meta keywords were a fruitless waste of time that should be ignored.

These bold claims by the search engine optimization were not without sound reasoning. Search engines have decreased the importance they hold on the Meta keywords to determine rankings and having keywords in the domain name, title tag and having keywords spread nicely throughout the content of the site is of more importance when conducting search engine optimization tactics.

However despite Meta Keywords not being the most potent or shrewd weapon in the SEO arsenal, it does not mean that any search engine optimization specialist should merely disregard them as a defunct tool. For example sites that do not have a lot of content like a commerce site can still utilise them to good effect in the sense that the search engine can reference them and pickup what the site is about. This can help with referencing the site and although it may not have a direct impact on your immediate ranking, it cannot lower your ranking and furthermore it make the crawling and indexing of the site more efficient.

So to conclude, if your looking at building a sound, well rounded search engine optimization strategy pay attention to your Meta keywords and do not neglect them because as the saying goes, every little helps.

The latest rival to Google's undisputed crown was launched earlier this week to much excitement and media coverage. Cuil, the US based search engine has been developed as a result of two ex Google staff and almost $300 million of initial investment.

They marketed themselves in direct competition to the silicon valley giant and succeeded in generating a great deal of buzz upon the run up to its launch by taking the step of not creating a Beta version of the site to allow limited public testing. Therefore it may not come as much of a surprise to you that the excitement around Cuil, quickly turned to disappointment and anger as Cuil's server failed to process the large quantity of traffic that the site attracted and subsequently returned inaccurate, irrelevant or no results at all! For example when searching for Arsenal F.C Cuil returned, "We didn't find any results for "Arsenal F.C" and when searching for The Dark Knight Cinema Times Cuil returned patchy information about the films of Gwyenth Paltrow.

There is an explanation for this however, Cuil's indexing system is separated into data centers that deal with a particular area of expertise, for example one set deals with all fashion searches and one deals with health-care searches. As the number of searches on the first day was so massive they could not handle the amount of searches.

This begs the question how can a search engine that is designed to over take a search engine that handles over 60% of searches crash due to the amount of searches on the first day. Well the answer is, it won't. Google is too dominant a brand and has become the benchmark for the industry that even the technology giant Microsoft can't compete with. Cuil will just join a ever growing list of new search engines ventures that fail to make a dent in Google's ever-increasing market share.

Two months after launching their cashback incentive Microsoft have developed a new feature to add to their search engine arsenal. Microsoft have echoed the search engine giant Google by developing their own system of ascertaining a pages importance and ranking it thusly.

Browserank is developed with a different ranking techniques in mind. Whereas Google's page ranking system is based on the number of links that link to a particular site Microsofts Browserank with developed with a far more human element in mind. Instead of focusing on the number of links to the website, Browserank seeks to measure the amount of people that are navigating to the site and also the time they spend each visit.

This is directly in contrast to Googles system as Browserank tends to rank the most popular websites that people spend the most time on so therefore that the most popular websites feature heavily e.g. Myspace is top on browse rank and several social networking sites feature heavily whereas Adobe is top on Google page rank.

Therefore this system of ranking is flawed in the sense that page ran k does not really rank on trust or quality of content but rather on what websites are the most popular. Furthermore younger people tend to spend more time on the web and browserank does not take into account these demographics or the content of the website in question.

It has to be considered that pagerank is not an adequate match for Googles pagerank simply because of the nature and habits of web users to navigate not to pages of most importance but of most popularity.

A brand new search engine was launched today by ex staff of the search engine giant Google. Cuil (pronounced 'cool') spokepeople have claimed that the number of pages that they index is larger then Googles standing at an impressive 120Billion (a claim that Google have been quick to deny without actually revealing the number of pages that they have in their index).

Cuil's algorithm apparently not only takes into account what people are searching for but the context in which this is being searched. However when I attempted to search for "Microsoft 1st quarter performance" Cuil eventually returned only two results of irrelevant pages. Furthermore when researching the site for this article I was unable to click through to the "about Cuil" or "privacy" pages.

The upshot of this site is that Cuil will eventually just join a ever growing list of companies that have attempted to take on Google and have failed.

The primary reason for this is that the indexed pages size wars ended a few years ago and Google do not rely on building the biggest bank of indexed pages (although they claim to have scanned over a trillion pages) but rather to build a bank of top quality sites that have good content and are relevant to the searches and are fully search engine optimized Furthermore the top three search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) all have such high brand awareness and trust that browsers rarely look outside the first five results as they trust in the search engines to return the most reliable and relevant content.

To conclude it is going to be very difficult for any new search engine to even get close to Yahoo let alone Google, although this is not through a lack of trying, the fact simply remains that if Google continue to do what the're doing they will be at the top for a very long time to come.

Two months after launching their cashback incentive Microsoft have developed a new feature to add to their search engine arsenal and to aid search engine optimization specialists. Microsoft have echoed the search engine giant Google by developing their own system of ascertaining a pages importance and ranking it thusly.

Browserank is developed with a different ranking techniques in mind. Whereas Google's page ranking system is based on the number of links that link to a particular site Microsofts Browserank with developed with a far more human element in mind. Instead of focusing on the number of links to the website, Browserank seeks to measure the amount of people that are navigating to the site and also the time they spend each visit.

This is directly in contrast to Googles system as Browserank tends to rank the most popular websites that people spend the most time on so therefore that the most popular websites feature heavily e.g. Myspace is top on browse rank and several social networking sites feature heavily whereas Adobe is top on Google page rank.

Therefore this system of ranking is flawed in the sense that page ran k does not really rank on trust or quality of content but rather on what websites are the most popular. Furthermore younger people tend to spend more time on the web and browserank does not take into account these demographics or the content of the website in question.

It has to be considered that pagerank is not an adequate match for Googles pagerank simply because of the nature and habits of web users to navigate not to pages of most importance but of most popularity.

Yahoo! Have recently announced the launch of their new strategy to reduce Googles vast market share by encouraging users to build their own search engines using their BOSS (Build your own search service) program.

This project allows web developers to build their own search engines into their search service and gain access to Yahoo's vast data bank, which would be otherwise impossible for independents hoping to develop a search engine. Developers can build search engines into their sites by utilising Yahoo's API's (Application Programming Interface) and the Mashup technology to develop their own search engine algorithms and parameters to develop a unique set of alternatives based on what they think the most relevant results will be.

The social searching site Me.dium have already adopted the technology and base their results on what your friends are searching for and what they think will be the most relevant to you based on your profile. Yahoo hope that this open source strategy can increase their presence on the web and reduce the number of browsers going straight to Google for their searches and, instead use the independent tailor made search engines to produce more relevant results to the user.

It comes as no surprise that Yahoo are adopting this strategy to attempt to fragment the search engine market into a group of independents as this has become the case with most traditional media devices. Further more user created content is one of the most powerful and popular marketing techniques and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have utilised this to the full.

There is a real hope for this idea as Yahoo believe that if offered the choice most people will prefer to tailor their search engine results to what they hold to be important, which may seem paradoxical at first but could pay dividends in the not to distant future.

The upshot of this being that all search engine could become increasingly fragmented and searches could use several different search engines depending on their needs and the perceived expertise of the search engine to deliver the most relevant results. This will also make search engine optimization a more difficult task as the market could become flooded with a vast number of search engines each with different techniques and algorithms that have to be worked towards.

Google have lately 're-iterated' the point that they are definitely going to 'punish' companies that try to buy links on the Internet in the attempt to misrepresent their rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This has been acknowledged for a while in the domain of search engine optimisation marketing and has been hotly deliberated amongst the best search engine optimisation specialists for the past two years.

Google's explanation of what a paid link is not one where you pay a chap to submit your website to 400 SEO hospitable directories, nor is it a 'quality link' bought in a Directory like Yahoo, Joe Ant or Green Corner; these directories make certain of relevancy and anchor text. However, high PageRank sites that include a sponsored links zone and the links within are identified as paid links and a forum poster that suggests to sell you links based on a toolbar PageRank is a paid link. Even deep links and paid directory submissions are dubbed as 'paid links' by Google. Matt Cutts himself, from Google, phrases it "paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google's rankings.".

Matt Cutts is head of the quality group in Google's company and specialises on in any search engine optimisation problems. His big reputation within the search engine optimisation world is because the Google Webmaster Guidelines and even more so for cutting out link spam. Based on this, shouldn't all of us in the SEO world listen to what he says?

People are still in big deliberation to whether they can be refereed at all and if the problems associated with the 'Google Slap' are as damaging as made out by Google. The main point that came up is how Google are going to become aware of bought links; if direct communication is made between two webmasters through telephone or E-mail and money is sent via post, how can Google know?

This point is applicable, until someone find the prices objectionable, refuses to obtain an ad on your web site and then procedure for whistle-blowing those who are selling and buying links is well known in the search engine optimisation community and it is obvious they take this very seriously.

As well as the reporting method, Google has indeed got other techniques for detection. For example, if the user you have just sold links to has bought links on other sites that have got caught, this will end up getting mirrored back on you. It may be that they get reported for other destructive activities or their rivals report them, meaning ultimately, it will come back to you. Google is a multi-billion dollar company, which has more highly developed technology than a large amount of us of us haven't even heard of and will not be fooled easily.

In conclusion, whatever you decide to do, you do so purely at your own risk. Google has its rules in place and isn't pleased when there are people breaking these regulations; taking into account Google holds the control, is it really worth paying the price?