Spezify – the Latest Entry in the Search Engine Arena
Posted by timware in SEO - Google on June 19th, 2009
Although Google sits atop the search engine heap with a commanding 60%+ of market share, there continues to be a steady stream of new contenders looking for a way to conduct searches and/or present search results in some novel way that might catch on with users and begin to chip away at Google’s hegemony.
This is certainly a viable strategy, as long as the novelty creates a useful and user-friendly service that somehow enhances or augments what is offered by Google’s search.
Recent entries into the field include Bing, Microsoft’s latest attempt to somehow wrench market share away from Google and get a larger piece of that ad market. Billed as a “decision engine,” Bing, which became available to the public on May 28, 2009, presents search results in a visually organized manner that has garnered it some positive reviews. Its graphics-dominated home page – the very antithesis of Google’s clean no-BS look — is to my taste a bit, um, overcooked and visually unappealing (very 1990s – hard to imagine how it got approved!), but the search results are organized well and, thankfully, the SERPs are much cleaner in presentation. However, in terms of relevant search results, the consensus seems to be that Google still rules. However, Bing did quickly double Microsoft’s search marketshare in its first couple weeks, so it’ll be interesting to see how it fairs as its results and features improve and evolve and after its novelty fades.
Another recent search engine is Wolfram|Alpha which bills itself as a “computational knowledge engine” and was rolled out to the public on May 15, 2009. Based on the work of Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha is not, as a ReadWriteWeb Blog posts warns, a general purpose search engine. As the Wikipedia entry describes it
It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might.
Wolfram|Alpha’s strength is in the computation area — excelling in information that can be packed into data snippets (height of a mountain, chemical formulas, population stats, stars, planets, etc.): math problems, word puzzles, statistics. But a “Google Killer” it’s not, and really doesn’t purport to be.
Spezify is a new search engine with a unique graphical interface, and driven by Flash, that has just come out of beta, as of June 15, 2009.
I did some searches on Spezify and I have to admit that the presentation of “hits” is quite unique, with different sources (MSN Live search, Yahoo, Amazon, Twitter and Ebay, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.) aggregated and each source represented by a different graphic. For instance, Twitter results are represented by a speech bubble, and other sources are branded in the top left with their logo/icon.
Trending Topics Search: Google was then, Twitter is now
Posted by Analisa in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on May 21st, 2009
This morning I was annoyed to find three spam messages in my Facebook inbox, all from friends (victims) and all containing a link to “areps.at”. I was smart enough to not open the messages at all, let alone click on the evil little links. My first thought was, am I the only one? I went straight to Twitter to investigate…
First I sent out a tweet asking if anyone else had experienced the same problem, but that was really unnecessary. My second step should have been my first, which was simply searching “facebook” in the Twitter search (that now sits conveniently in the right hand-side toolbar). In the results I saw that the most recent tweets that contained my keyword ALL related to the scam! My question was answered immediately, by complete strangers. Some tweets looked like this: Read the rest of this entry »
Wordpress Plugin to Order Your Blogroll Links & Categories
After experiencing a fair amount of frustration trying to order the blogroll links on our Social Media Resources website which is built on Wordpress, I googled around and found My Link Order. This plugin really does the trick, and plays nice with Wordpress v.2.7.1.
If your theme uses widgets, they suggest that you replace the standard “Links” widget with the “My Link Order” widget.
However, the theme our Social Media blog uses is “Modern,” designed by Ulf Pettersson, which doesn’t use widgets, and the My Link Order developer’s instructions form using their plugin with a non-widget theme aren’t accurate.
You need to do two things:
1) Make “/wp-includes/taxonomy.php” writeable (permissions: 666)
2) In “sidebar.php” replace the PHP code for pulling in the links with this code:
<?php wp_list_bookmarks(’orderby=order&category_orderby=order’); ?>
Once you have installed the plugin and made the above modifications, ordering your blogroll links and categories is a piece of cake — just drag and drop them into the order in which you wish them to appear.
I find it odd that this feature isn’t built into Wordpress. Without the My Link Order plugin, ordering the links is very limited.
Using MAMP and VirtualHostX with Parallels
Posted by Daniel in Web Coding on May 15th, 2009
In Geek & Mild’s post on using MAMP and VirtualHostX in conjunction with VMWare, there are no less than four requests in the comments section asking how to run the same local webdev set-up using Parallels instead of VMWare. Well, I’ve got it running on my machine and I’m here to show you how I did it. It’s quite easy, actually. (If you have not yet set-up MAMP and VirtualHostX, do follow Sean’s excellent steps in the aforementioned article above).
First of all go to OS X’s System Preferences and click on Network. Select Parallels NAT in the left pane then select “Using DHCP with manual address” from the Configure drop-down menu. Leave the IP Address untouched and make a note of this IP address. Click Apply.
Launch Parallels and go to Start>Run. Copy and paste the following in the Open field: wordpad c:\\windows\\system32\\drivers\\etc\\hosts and click OK. Type on a new line each of your hosts using the IP from the OS X side:
10.211.55.X mysite.dev
10.211.55.X mysite2.dev
You should now be able to view the virtual hosts you set up in VirtualHostX under Parallels.
Resources:
Setting Up a Killer, Local Web Development Environment on a Mac With MAMP and VirtualHostX
Google’s Wonder Wheel – Search Concept Mapping
Posted by timware in SEO - Google on May 13th, 2009
Google has just rolled out some new features recently and the standout, from a wow-factor POV, has to be Wonder Wheel which displays search results as a series of spoked hubs, with the search term in the hub and related terms at the tip of each spoke.
Just do a Google search on, say, Thomas Pynchon. You will see the results displayed. Click on the “show options” link just beneath the Google logo.
Maximizing Wordpress Blog SEO + General Tips for Efficient Blogging
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing, Wordpress on May 4th, 2009
Having set up various clients with Wordpress, clients who were interested in search engine rankings and ways to optimize their blog and posts for the search engines, I thought I’d layout some basics for setting up your Wordpress blog for ultimate SEO bang.
Also included here are some other Wordpress plug-ins & tips we’ve found indispensable for setting up maximum-efficiency blogs.
Renting a room in Social Media’s BIG house
Posted by Analisa in Social Media / Inbound Marketing on May 4th, 2009
Today at the office a few people were troubleshooting an issue with a client’s online forum, and her complaints about having to deal with spam and regulating the users who can post to the forum, etc. Someone suggested setting up a Facebook page for her instead. This seemed like it would be a simpler way for the client to initiate and engage in dialogues with her audience. Then the wise Rachel so wisely pointed out, “But then anyone who wanted to be a part of the discussion would have to be on Facebook.” Yes, Rachel, of course they would, but isn’t everyone?
Read the rest of this entry »
Moving from Headdress to VirtualHostX
Posted by Daniel in Web Coding on April 24th, 2009
Here at HyperArts, the Mac users in our group use MAMP as a basis for our local web development environment. It’s a sweet set-up that makes our individual PHP, MySQL, and server installs easy to manage. The “one-click-solution for setting up your personal webserver” works as advertised and does it beautifully. Gone for us are the days of fudging with different config files whose locations we’d just as soon forget.
One thing that MAMP doesn’t do, however, that would make it the ultimate all-in-one local web development app is virtual hosting. Virtual hosting is essential in developing multiple sites which use root-relative links. One can certainly dive into hidden system files (or in this case, nested MAMP files) and enter each local site in the designated host file. But since we are partial to GUI-based apps, our initial attention went to Headdress. Headdress was great for a while until I found myself having to launch the program each time I wanted to view a site in a browser. Headdress designates port numbers (http://localhost:9001) to locally-hosted files, and when you have a dozen or more, they’re difficult to remember. This made me miss my old name-based set-up (before Apple nixed NetInfo Manager) where all I had to do was type in a browser the local domain name and TLD of my choosing for a particular site (e.g. http://clientsite.dev) and I was there.
Organic v. Paid Results – Different Searches = Different Biases
Posted by timware in SEO - Google on April 20th, 2009
Over the past several years, there has been much discussion about user preferences regarding click-through rates for the organic search results and the paid results (eg Adwords).
Recently, in discussing the advantages and disadvantages associated with each class of results, we decided to dig a bit deeper into the user bias against paid results, to understand: 1) the extent of user bias regarding “sponsored links” and organic results; and 2) if such a bias is dependent on the type of search (eg informational, product search, location-based search) being conducted.
While googling to get more data on this, the most common article that came up was by Scott Buresh, CEO of Medium Blue, an SEO company, entitled “Organic SEO or Pay-Per-Click Advertising – Which Should You Choose?” As the CEO of an SEO company, one would expect he’d prejudice working on your organic SEO rather than relying on PPC (eg Adwords) to increase traffic, and he does.
All of my search engine results in one aggregated basket
Posted by Analisa in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on April 17th, 2009
Leapfish, a new search engine aggregator still in beta, called HyperArts the other day, selling ad space similar to Google Adwords. They have, however, come up with a unique take on the concept of search engine advertising. They sell a string of keywords, but instead of paying per click, the advertiser buys ad space for those keywords permanently. Only three advertisements appear on each results page, and the top spot is sold for more than the second and third. Like buying real estate, or stock in the company, you are investing in that location, one of only three ads at the top and bottom of each search results page. The idea was intriguing, not enough to buy the ad space (since we do so well in Google’s organic results already 
, but enough to make me curious to explore Leapfish and their site a bit more thoroughly.
