The Definition Of Web Usability

To implement an intuitive layout on your site that makes it easy for visitors to find what they want, you need to understand what web usability is and how it works. Defining web usability is simple: it’s how easy an interface is to use and how much of an impact it makes on the user. The five qualities of web usability are defined by useit.com

Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?

Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?

Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?

Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?

Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Following these five rules will force you to think from the visitors’ point of view which is something we designers tend to forget. It’s easy to forget the end user during the design process as we instinctively know where elements are and how they work. These five rules will help you change your mindset and give you a fresh perspective on your website is viewed and used.

Following Best Practices

Following best practices and paying attention to the small details is one of the most fundamental aspects of web usability. A lot of great online resources exist and to cover every single one of them would probably spawn a series a books. This blog posts only covers some of the important best practices but you can learn more from Trip Wire Magazine and Desizn Tech.

Color

Color makes a huge impact on design, even more so when designing with usability in mind. Designers use color to express that status of certain elements such as visited links and differentiate call to actions. Using color in a way that helps the user understand the changed state of an element is critical for visitors to understand the user interface of your site. An example would be a visited link changing from a light blue to a dark red indicating the user has clicked on that link.

Hierarchy

Hierarchy plays a huge role in web usability. Visitors need to know a structure exists that sorts content by importance. While body copy, case studies and blog posts might be important as a whole, you have to consider what users want to see first. When hierarchy is used effectively. Visitors can scan the site for the information they need. On the issue of visitors leaving your site after they find the information they need is where “Call To Actions” come in to play. Using effective copy is one way to retain visitors coming in from search results and converting them in to leads.

Things You Should Not Do

Not making common usability mistakes is just as important as focusing on a usable layout. There are many do’s or don’ts and covering every single one could span an encyclopedia’s worth of material. Focusing on content and how it’s displayed is one of the most important aspect of website usability.

Making Content That’s Hard To Read And Scan

While you may like your site design and consider it a work art, the amount of time a visitor scans a site won’t be adequately convey the quality of your work (unless it’s horrible). Instead, they’re looking for the information they want. Making text scannable will help visitors stay on your site. They’ll be please they found the information they need and leave or become a returning hit.

Putting Important Information In A Banner

People are exposed to as much as 1,000 brands in a day. To deal with this overload of information, we tend to filter out anything that remotely looks like an advertisement. That’s why putting important information in a banner, despite its visual appeal, may work against you. Visitors immediately blocked out banners whether it looked like an ad or not. This is called “Banner Blindness” and it’s a real problem marketers have to deal with. Avoiding the banner format for critical information users need will prevent it from being mentally filtered.

Trends That Users Exhibit

Understanding how users respond to navigation techniques and which visual elements work to guide visitors through your site is important. Following trends that users exhibit will help fine-tune your layout. Understanding your users will give you a better understanding of how your website is being used, how it’s perceived and what needs to change.

Users respond to human elements

A study done by Usable World revealed something interesting: people respond to human characteristics and features. This study demonstrates visitors immediately looked at a baby’s face and then focused on text the baby was looking at. Using human elements effectively will help guide visitors through your site as they scan through body copy or media. If you have a face looking off the page, visitors will follow the implied line created and wander away from what really matters: the website.

The Two Second Rule

There is an unofficial rule that visitors will make the decision to continue browsing within http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/2-second-rule/" >2 seconds. Designing with the two second rule in mind will force you to make important navigational elements and content stand out. Keep in mind that within this short timeframe, visitors will only scan elements and text that stands out.

There are so many things to cover when it comes to web usability it can’t possibly fit in one blog post without diluting the overall message of this post. I’ll be writing more about web usability and how it can help your business but in the mean time, continue the conversation on Twitter and Facebook to learn more about best practices and what web marketing experts would recommend.

Google And Verizon Not Against Net Neutrality

The rumor first broke by the New York Times (via: Gizmodo) which reported Google and Verizon were inking a deal that would challenge net neutrality ideals. According to the NY Time’s source, content delivered by Google would be delivered faster and favored over its competitors thanks to a paid deal with Verizon. Such an agreement goes against the fragile ideals of net neutrality which treats all data downloaded or uploaded to the Internet as equal bits. The FCC has come out as a proponent of net neutrality which would prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from creating a tiered data plan allowing you to only visit websites that paid up or charge you additional fees to receive faster service from the same website. The potential of such an agreement goes against both company’s ideals as Google has been a vocal critic of those who throttle data and Verizon has been a staunch defender of net neutrality. However, Google has come out to vehemently deny any rumors it’s in talks with Verizon over such an agreement via its public policy Twitter account:

“@NYTimes is wrong. We’ve not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic. We remain committed to an open internet.”

Google reiterated its stance in the following statement:

“The New York Times article regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken. It fundamentally misunderstands our purpose. As we said in our earlier FCC filing, our goal is an Internet policy framework that ensures openness and accountability, and incorporates specific FCC authority, while maintaining investment and innovation. To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect.”

What Is Net Neutrality?

Net neutrality is the concept that data should be delivered equally and not favored over other sources. However, some people are against those ideals, the most prominent being Comcast who has come under major criticism for throttling data downloaded by their customers to manage the stability of its network. While the obvious solution would’ve been to channel money in to improving the quality of service, sadly its easier to ensure a quality experience by restricting data heavy users. But there are more apocalyptic, doomsday like scenarios associated with critics opposing net neutrality.

Google Promoting YouTube Over Others

Internet Service Providers could charge per gigabyte downloaded on an astronomical scale, restrict you to visiting websites that have paid them and slowing down data delivered by any service that directly competes with them (i.e. YouTube loading at a snail’s pace to entice you towards an ISP’s video on demand offerings). Of course Google would be paying a hefty sum to direct a massive amount of data over smaller video sharing websites it would provoke a backlash towards SEO. Since an ISP would pick and choose which sites it would feature determined on payments, websites that rely on SEO would be rendered useless if they don’t have the cash to pay out to an ISP for a featured spot in its package. No longer would Google comb the Internet for content thats relevant and interesting but content deemed profitable would be chosen on cash alone.

It’s also a grey area the FCC has fought to protect but due to recent legal action, the agency has less power than it did before. In April, a Federal court of appeals announced its decision to grant a petition of review for Comcast who was challenged by the FCC for data throttling. The FCC could not enforce the concept of net neutrality on Comcast according to the court. The case was a huge victory for its opponents and an even bigger one for the Internet service provider which was slowing down the bandwidth of users who were using p2p file-sharing programs.

Google’s View On What Net Neutrality Means

However, Google has been discussing net neutrality with Verizon but not on the apocalyptic scale many are thinking. Late Wednesday, Eric Schmidt spoke at the Techonomy conference in Tahoe, California giving some insight in to the inner workings of Google, discussed Google Wave, the Verizon deal and more importantly, net neutrality.

“We have been talking to Verizon for a long time about trying to get an agreement on the definition of what net neutrality is. We’re trying to find solutions that bridge between the hardcore net neutrality view and the telecom view. I want to be clear what we mean by net neutrality. What we mean is if you have one data type like video, you don’t discriminate against one person’s video in favor of another. But it’s OK to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video, and there is general agreement with Verizon and Google on that issue. The issues of wireless vs. wireline get very messy because of the issue of Type I vs Type II regulation and that is an FCC issue not a Google issue.”

Gigaom has the complete 40 minute presentation available.

Any talks between Verizon and Google in any form will carry some unease as the the search engine’s mobile operating system, Android is available on phones sold by Verizon. Compromising net neutrality would directly benefit Google in delivering YouTube content much faster and would give the company an unfair advantage over other mobile operating systems sold on phones by Verizon. However, this is only a doomsday-like scenario that won’t come to fruition.

Google and Verizon’s agreement to define net neutrality will have a big impact: it could provide a standard to define what is discriminatory and what isn’t in regards to delivery content. It is very important to note that Google had not discussed a content delivery system that would favor YouTube or other video hosting websites such as Vimeo and Hulu. However, it could also give some of the cable companies and net neutrality detractors more power to enable data throttling all in the name of maintaining network quality if a clear set of standards are created. It will be interesting to see how Google, Verizon and other major backers come together to help define this fragile concept and hopefully empower it with some legal strength from the FCC. By defining what net neutrality exactly is, courts and the government will have a clearer view on an already grey area.

What we’d like to hear, how would you react to your internet service provider enacting a tiered structure for which websites you can visit much like your cable companies offers different packages of channels.

Here we bring you 10 fun facts about Google to quench our own thirst for Google knowledge as well as hopefully offer you a distracting diversion from your daily life.

1. The First Google Doodle

Google’s famous homepage “Doodles” (the changing Google logo graphics) are well known and enjoyed by millions around the world as a way to mark an event or anniversary. But did you know that the very first Google Doodle was designed as a kind of “out of office” message?

In 1998 Brin and Page took the weekend off to go the Burning Man festival in Nevada. The Burning Man doodle (shown above), was designed by the Google guys and added to the homepage to let their users know they were out of office and couldn’t fix technical issues like a server crash.

2. Interesting Figures from the Google IPO

While the initial price for Google’s stock at its Initial Public Offering in August 2004 is an interesting stat in itself, there’s more to the story. The opening price for Google’s stock was $85 per share. At the time of writing, the stock price was $483 but has soared as high as $600 in the past year, making GOOG a rather nice investment for many.

A bonus factoid from Google’s IPO process is the value Google stated it hoped to raise on its S-1 form — as much as $2,718,281,828. It may just look like a string of numbers to non-mathletes, but 2,718,281,828 is actually the first ten digits of the mathematical constant ““e”,” showing that even as their company was planning to go public, the Google guys could still geek out with a bit of numerical humor.

3. The First Google Storage Was Made From LEGO

As proud hosts to Google back when it was still a research project, and known as “BackRub,” here Stanford now showcases the original Google storage from way back in 1996. It’s made up of a whopping 40 GB (less than a modern iPod) and it’s made from, as fans of the building bricks will be delighted to see, LEGO. It even hash funny mini-figures on the top.

Legend has it that the reason for the LEGO construction was that the Google guys needed an easily expandable, and cheap way to house 10 4 GB hard drives, and LEGO fit the bill. Whether the primary colors of the bricks used were the hues that went on to inspire the Google logo’s design is up for debate, but we’d guess it wasn’t just a coincidence.

4. Google’s First Ever Tweet

Google’s first ever Twitter post was as satisfyingly geeky as you could hope for. The message, sent in February 2009, reads “I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010.”

For anyone not fluent in binary, here’s a hint — it’s a well known phrase from the company’s homepage. Got it? Yep, it reads: “I’m feeling lucky.”

5. Google Rents Goats

This one isn’t actually one of Google’s infamous April Fools’ Day jokes: Google rents out goats. Yes you read that right. It rents goats from a company called California Grazing to help cut down the amount of weeds and brush at Google HQ.

The operation of 200 goats (plus herder and a border collie) is kind to the environment, and as Google puts it: “A lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.”

6. Google’s Impact on Language

While you’d think the news that the Merriam-Webster and Oxford English Dictionary adding “google” as a verb to their lexicons in 2006 would thrill the search engine, Google was actually none too pleased with the development.

“We’d like to make clear that you should please only use ‘Google’ when you’re actually referring to Google Inc. and our services,” the company wrote in a blog post at the time.

The rationale behind the semantic displeasure was that Google had “a brand to protect,” and feared Google would “slip from trademarked status into common usage.” Now, four years later, we have to say Google was fighting a losing battle — just ‘google it.’

However, we’ve found some other Google-themed linguistic delights for you — a Google staffer is commonly referred to as a “Googler,” while a new team member joins as a “Noogler.” Nooglers also used to wear a colorful hat with a spinner on top. According to a former employee, those hats are now pretty scarce in some offices, instead: “Every Noogler gets a yellow smiley balloon and a nameplate.”

7. Google Is Dog-Friendly

Google is a super dog-friendly company. It proudly names “company dogs,” like Yoshka (described as a “free-range Leonberger”) pictured above. Yoshka accompanies Urs Holzle, senior VP operations and Google Fellow to the Googleplex. Less senior staff are also allowed to bring their dogs to the office.

According to Google’s “Dog Policy”, one indiscretion too many on the Google carpets, or aggressive behavior, means Lassie will have to stay at home in the future. Strong bladdered and friendly canines are more than welcome across the campus.

Unfortunately, cats are not quite as welcome. Here’s an excerpt taken directly from Google’s Code of Conduct: “Google’s affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture. We like cats, but we’re a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our offices would be fairly stressed out.”

8. Google’s First Ever “Company Snack” Was Swedish Fish

Back in February, 1999, the chewy candy known as “Swedish Fish” became the first ever company snack (not counting beverages) that was ordered into the Google office.

Although a relatively small event, it has led to big things. Google is infamous in the industry for treating its employees to not just free drinks and snacks on tap, but full-on gourmet meals, three times a day at a plethora of on-site cafes and eateries, as well as regular BBQs during the summer.

Brin and Page have been quoted in the past as saying no Googler should have to go more than 100 feet for food, leading to snack-filled “microkitchens” that are liberally dotted around the Google offices.

In fact, the free food is said to be so tempting that Googlers risk the “Google 15,” similar to the “Freshman 15,” where they pile on weight soon after joining the company. Good thing they also have a Google gym.

Backing this up, here’s a stat from Google — “Bay Area Googlers consumed approximately 5,500 pounds of handmade chocolates from the snack bins in the microkitchens in 2007.” Wow.

9. The Google Logo Was Not Centered Until 2001

Google’s famously sparse homepage is considered a classic design in the online world. The Google logo, however, wasn’t actually centered on the page until March 31, 2001. As early users will remember, the homepage had a bias to the left-hand side, and even earlier — back in 1998 — Google sported a Yahoo-style exclamation mark.

10. Google Has a Company Dinosaur

By all accounts, there are many wondrous sights to be seen at the Googleplex, but one of the most arresting is surely the gigantic T-Rex skeleton — nicknamed “Stan” after a “real” dino found nearby — that looms menacingly at Googlers in Mountain View.

Joining Stan in the unique campus decorations is a scale replica of the SpaceShipOne, enormous Android ()-themed models, pink flamingos, a large LEGO man, Google-colored phone boxes and grown-up size ball pits. One thing seems for sure — just like the company itself — life at the Googleplex must be far from dull.

In the immediate aftermath of a slew of new upgrades, Google Docs is changing how we share and control privacy for our documents, presentations and other stored files.

The changes are intended to make sharing and collaboration simpler while also letting users see at a glance what people have access to which documents. Now, the level of privacy or publicity a document has is more readily visible, which should make managing who can share your docs a lot easier.

Now, you can take any document you have stored on Google Docs and designate it with one of three sharing/privacy settings. The doc can be private and viewable only by you. It can also be viewable by anyone with a link; a Google rep compared this option to giving someone an unlisted phone number. Or the document can be completely public and viewable by anyone.

Public documents will also be indexed by search engines, so make sure your public docs are something you’d want the whole world to see. It’s also important to note that the default setting for new docs you create will be private.

Along with these sharing and privacy changes, Google Docs’ sharing features are getting a cleaner interface and the ability to reset the doc’s URL (i.e. changing your unlisted phone number, to reference the previous metaphor) and to make bulk changes to multiple documents’ settings.

Here are a couple demo/tutorial videos to quickly explain the changes.

These changes should be visible to most Google Docs users within a week or so.

What do you think so far? Will these changes make it easier to share the docs you want to share and let your personal info remain private?

Google has increased its commitment to clean and sustainable energy with a sizable investment in two wind farms. The company will put $38.3 million into two NextEra Energy Resources wind farms to speed the process of serving consumers with renewable energy.

The wind farms currently generate 169.5 megawatts of power; that’s enough to power more than 55,000 homes, according to Google’s blog post on the investment.

Energy conservation and renewable energy have been key initiatives for Google for the past several years. Last year, Google.org (the company’s philanthropic arm) rolled out PowerMeter, a service to help consumers monitor and optimize their energy usage. It’s been bringing the service to more users and more “smart” devices and appliances throughout the 2009 with the PowerMeter API.

And in February 2010, Google was granted an order by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to buy and sell energy at market rates, mostly to make energy management for its data centers more efficient, but also in case Google Energy ever becomes a power utility.

So why did Google choose NextEra for its wind farm investment? Google’s Green Business Operations Manager Rick Needham wrote today that this company “uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid. The turbines can continuously adjust the individual blade pitch angles to achieve optimal efficiency and use larger blades with 15 percent more swept area than earlier generations, allowing capture of even more wind energy for each turbine. The control systems for these wind farms are also advanced and dynamic, allowing for remote 24/7 monitoring and operation to ensure maximum turbine up-time and power production.”

With more than 9 million posts and comments in two days, Google Buzz has stormed the web like a swarm of locusts. An array of strong features, integration with Gmail and lots of press have turned Buzz into an overnight phenomenon.

If you’re like a lot of us, you’ve suddenly found yourself using your Gmail even more than you already were. Spending so much time in Gmail and Buzz, though, inevitably takes away from your Facebook () and Twitter (), and who wants to sacrifice their tweeting and Facebooking?

Luckily if you’re a Gmail user, you don’t have to sacrifice either, even while you’re browsing your e-mail or your buzz.

Gadget Integration Is Your Friend

“The key was using Gmail Labs feature at the bottom of the list called ‘Add any gadget by URL’. This allowed me to add these 3 features to my Gmail sidebar.”

By utilizing third-party gadgets, he transformed his Gmail into a place where he could access his Twitter, Buzz and Facebook straight from his Gmail. Here’s how:

Step By Step: Integrating Your Social Media into Buzz

2. Now go to Settings –> Gadgets. Here you’ll find a place to add Gadget URLs.

3. Add the TwitterGadget App. Any iGoogle gadget will do actually, but the best one in our opinion is TwitterGadget, a fully-functional Twitter service for iGoogle and Gmail. This lets tweet from the sidebar or open up your Twitter with all of your tabs intact. It even supports multiple accounts.

To add it, copy and paste this URL into Gmail’s Gadget settings: “https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml”

4. Add the Facebook Gadget. In the same way you added TwitterGadget, you can add Facebook to your Gmail. While Google has an official Facebook gadget, it doesn’t play nicely with Gmail, so we suggest using the app Ari Milner users: Facebook Gadget by iBruno. It will expand into the rest of your Gmail for easy Facebook management.

To add it, copy and paste this URL into Gmail’s Gadget settings: “http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104971404861070329537/facebook.xml”

5. That’s it! Google Buzz, Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail are now all wrapped up into one. Pretty nifty, no? Let us know about your experience in the comments.

I took two of my sites to the top of the SERPs in three months, so it can be done. My pages have few competitors: my challenge was mainly to get past false positives such as resumes, job vacancies, articles, and so on. If you are competing with “real” sites that are selling competitive products such as the ones you read about in your spam e-mails, you can get there within a year with some persistence.

Goal

Casual Google users use default settings, so your site must get into the top 20 results. Unfortunately, you cannot assume that visitors will use the most appropriate search terms. Real people are unpredictable.

Google SERP

You must understand that SERP positioning is dynamic – what you see depends on no single factor. It depends on the viewer’s location, the type of search used (basic, advanced, regional, filtered, and so on), the content of the page, their keyword density, the page rank (PR), the search term (words or phrase), and so on. Therefore, you need to plan your site carefully.

Ten-Point Checklist

1. Domain Name and Server

Get a.ca domain if your audience is likely to look for Canadian sites. Use a global, top-level domain (gTLD) such as.com if your business is not local. A unique, topical name such as “dentist-atlanta.com” should rank higher in the SERPs than “dentist.com” or “smithclinic.com” (if the search term is likely to be “dentist in atlanta” or similar).

It is nice but not essential if the web host gives your site a unique IP address, but it is highly advisable to host your site on your own dedicated server. Shared web hosting means that a server could host thousands of web sites, and Google’s spiders would be slowed down.

If you already have a Web site, you can find out its IP address using cmd.exe or an MS-DOS prompt, e.g. “ping cnn.com” and call up the displayed IP address in the browser. If you don’t see the expected web page, it has a shared IP address.

2. Page Title

An ill-planned page title is the Achilles Heel of a Web page. This is the text that appears at the very top of the browser window.

The Title tag text should be brief and readable, avoiding superfluous words and punctuation marks. Begin with the most valuable keywords, e.g. “Root canal specialist dentist clinic, Mayfair, London”, not something like “***** Fred Smith, BDS – 5 Stars Dental Clinic *****”, or worse, “Welcome to my home page”, or “Untitled”.

3. Style Sheet

Placing style definitions in a.css (Cascading Style Sheet) file moves the body text close to the top of the document and shrinks the page size. Many Javascript effects can be replaced by CSS. Fast-loading pages are good for both humans and search engine crawlers.

4. Meta Tags

Google ignores the Keywords meta tag for ranking but other SEs use it. An extract from the Description meta tag sometimes appears in the SERP; sometimes you see a snippet from the body text. Moderation and relevance should be your benchmark for placing keywords in these tags.

5. Content

• Quality content is rewarded by top placement in the search results. For example, if you sell new cars, used cars, and car service, you would have three branches, each containing pages relevant to that theme.
• Links to popular causes, memorial ribbons, HTML validation, page counters, etc. could distract visitors to other sites.
• Optimise images and keep the page size low.
• Place key phrases towards the top of pages and in heading tags such as H1. Don’t get hung up on a single keyword for the whole site. Pick different ones for different pages so that you have more ways to be found. Optimise for the search terms used by your paying customers, if you can identify them, not casual visitors.

• Consider (this depends on the size and nature of your business) placing noncommercial pages such as staff pages, personal hobbies, genealogy and so on at a secondary level but not linked from the entry page. Some of my ranking success comes from hosting my hobby pages below my commercial site, because I cannot justify buying a domain for each of my interests. I legitimately link them to my resume, which has a link to my business site. This enables free placement of the secondary pages in otherwise for-fee directories.

  6. Links and Folders

• Link a site map from the home page so that crawlers can find the rest of your pages.
• Link each page to the home page and to others in its logical group (but not to every other page in the site). The anchor text should use key phrases and words.
• Use keywords for folders, image names and Alt text but don’t overdo it. e.g. /hamilton/lawyer/divorce.htm, alt=”Perth plumber” The deeper your directory structure, the less likely it will be spidered regularly.

  7. Neighbourhood Watch

  Get quality incoming links from sites that share your theme. Without referrals, it’s near impossible to be visited by Googlebot. Try to get such links from sites with PR3 (Page Rank – see below) or better, not from link farms that are clearly built to boost PR. Make it easy for other sites to use keyword-loaded phrases in their links, say, by offering a cut-and-paste slice of HTML anchor code. Here is an example you can use to link to this page:

  Links from lower-ranking peers will not penalise you; they simply won’t appear in Google’s list of backward links to your page. You cannot control who links to you, but you have control over who you link to.

  Add a judicious number of outbound links to topical peers of the same or better calibre. Google likes links to authoritative sites, but don’t overdo the external links. Although such sites might not overtly link to your site, their site statistics file might get crawled and constitute a link back to you.

  8. Cloaking

  Cloaking hides content from humans and SEs, which is generally a bad practice. Good reasons to cloak include hiding parts of your optimised pages from amateur competitors or to show different pages to different visitors based on their browsers.

  Subscriber-only sites also manage to get into SEs. They use a cloaking practice known as “agent name delivery”, which is a slab of code that checks whether the visitor is a crawler or a human. Crawlers get to see the whole site, but others are directed to a sign-up form.

  9. Avoidable Practices

  The following practices could get your site banned from Google at worst or lower its ranking at best:

• Gimmicks. Pointless Javascript effects such as cursor trails and transitions do nothing for your viewers but place a lot of code above your body text. You want your content close to the top of the page.
• Bad HTML code. Novice hand-coders might copy some HTML tags without understanding their meaning. One webmaster used the robot directive
• Multiple sites with duplicated content, e.g. http://www.example.net and http://www.example.com hosted on the same server or different ones, as this is considered spamming. Use a permanent redirect on all secondary sites to point to the main domain.
• Multiple copies of the same page. This is typically an entry or “doorway” page optmised for different keywords to lure different people, e.g. crackz.htm, serials.htm, passwords.htm, and so on.
• Hidden content. This can be repetitive text on the same colour background or a layer with coordinates that are off the visible page. It begs the question why the author does not put this effort into creating visible text.
• Flash-Only pages. A solution is a user agent entry check that displays Flash to enabled browsers, but plain HTML to crawlers and other human visitors.
• Frames. Googlebot will crawl links in the Noframes text, but not ones in the framed pages. Other SEs might not crawl frames, so it is better to use tables and more so to use CSS. If you must use frames, ensure that you use the correct Doctype declaration for frames. I have noticed that Googlebot can now crawl links in frames but sometimes it cannot.
• Submission software or service. They could submit your site to thousands of unknown SEs. You will get a lot of spam, abuse, and possible inclusion in link farms that will ruin your reputation in Google’s eyes. After all, can you name more than five major SEs?
• Session IDs. Sites that require session IDs from crawlers will get poor visibility because the previous session will have expired by the time Googlebot returns.
• Over-optimisation. [Update 11/2003] Many sites that followed a strict “SEO formula” found that they could not be found at the top of the SERPs, or in the index at all. There is speculation that such tactics cause the sites to be filtered out of the search results.

  10. Patience

  Having optimized and submitted your pages to Google, get on with growing your business, because Google takes time to rank you. Work on getting quality, inbound links from high-ranking sites that feature the same subject matter. Increase your content and keep it fresh. Get free or paid listings in Google AdWords, Overture, Yahoo, Open Directory Project (dmoz.org), and reputable engines such as MSN, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves.

The momentum, was too strong. Real-time search — and Google’s (Google) inability to beatTwitter at it — became a huge trend in 2009. Everyone wanted a piece of it, and Twitter had the goods. When you want to find out what’s happening right now, this very minute, Twitter’s search trumped Google, and Google had no choice but to react. Luckily for Twitter, the reaction came right on time. Both Bing (Bing) and Google signed a deal with Twitter to incorporate real-time results from Twitter into web searches, just as Twitter’s flat traffic figures became impossible to hide. The effect of this deal is still unknown, but when Google sends you traffic, you can bet it’s going to be noticeable.

Twitter’s future is still uncertain. We still don’t know the overall business plan beyond a few hints at at least some current revenue, and we still don’t know if the service’s huge popularity boom in 2009 was just a passing fad. One thing is certain, though: The Google deal was the adrenaline injection Twitter needed. If Twitter is really destined to become the world’s new SMS, 2010 is the time to do it, and we’re happy to be along for the ride.

According to Engadget’s source, the phone will initially be available by “invitation only.”  It looks like Google will be deciding who gets invites (hey, Google, call me), but the specifications also indicate that T-Mobile will be able to sell the phone directly to the customers in the future.

The Breakdown

- 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, included 4GB microSD card, expandable to 32GB

- 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and mechanical autofocus

- 3.7″ WVGA AMOLED screen — in other words, as big as the Droid and brighter

- Worldwide GSM/EDGE, but 3G only on T-Mobile in the US (supports 2100, 1700 and 900 frequencies, meaning Europe should be covered)

- 1GHz Qualcomm chip — if accurate, that would make the Nexus One one of the fastest — if not the fastest — smartphones on the market.

- Wi-Fi A/B//G/N

- Bluetooth 2.1

- GPS

- Accelerometer

The specs look solid, the phone matches or beats every competing Android phone on the market (aside from having no physical keyboard) and also compares quite favorably to the iPhone (faster processor, nicer screen, wireless-N).

The only caveat for potential U.S. buyers is that, barring some sort of firmware upgrade (assuming the 1900 band is just disabled), this phone will only work in 3G in T-Mobile’s network.  If you live in a large city, that might not be a problem, but T-Mobile does have the smallest 3G footprint of any of the major U.S. wireless carriers.

For international users, this is really enticing, because the phone should be compatible with all UMTS bands in Europe, Asia, South America and Australia/New Zealand.

Now all we need is a solid release date and a price.  My friends are ready to buy this sight-unseen.  What about you?  android, Google, nexus oneWhat do you think of the Nexus One?

Burn Your Feeds

You first need to head over to Feedburner to claim your blog’s RSS feed.  Log in with your Google account and enter the URL of your feed into the “Burn a feed right this instant” box:

Click next and you’ll be asked to choose a title and address – the defaults are usually fine.   Follow the rest of the instructions through and you should arrive at the Feed Management page.

Enable Email Subscriptions

Hit the “Publicize” tab and select “Email Subscriptions” from the left hand side.

Click “Activate” to enable the feature.

Customisation

In the left hand navigation you should now see four more options below “Email Subscriptions”.

“Communications Preferences” allows you to change the from address and subject/body of the confirmation email your readers will receive on subscription.

“Email Branding” lets you edit your email’s subject, fonts, colors, and allows you to add a logo.

At this stage it may be wise to edit the subscription email and subjects so that the tone is consistent with your blog.  The applies to fonts and colours too – leaving the email as it came out of the box looks dull and lazy.

Finally the “Delivery Options” page lets you customise the time zone and delivery window.  Ensure that the time zone matches that of the geographic location of the majority of your readers (check this in Google Analytics) and think about the best time of day for your email to go out.  The nature of your content may dictate this, but generally just before lunch is a good shout.

Add to your Blog

Go to the “Subscription Management” page to get the code to add a means of subscription to your blog.  The Subscription Form Code adds a form like this:

The Subscription Link Code adds a straight link.  There are also widgets available for TypePad and Blogger.

Simple!