Thursday, August 30, 2012

Google Video Explained

1. About Google Video
We are living in a digital world, where pretty much everything gets uploaded online. There are 80 million web hosts according to the stats made in 2006. The growth of the World Wide Web is obvious, it's all on the web - companies addresses, documents, pictures, books, you can buy everything from cars to ships. But it's not just documents any more, pages are far from stating these days. The web is now full with video clips being shared by millions of people around the world.
Google Video allows people to search for video files, download and play them on their computers. Although Google has not released an exact number of the video files available at their site, they claim there are several thousands and increasing all the time. The video material includes just about anythhng - TV shows, movies, amateur videos, commercials not displayed on US channels, etc. The files are either free of charge or must be purchase online from the Google Video Store. Google Video enables users from all over the world to upload their own content on Google Servers and share it with everyone. The files are in GVI, AVI, GVP and MP4 formats.
Google Video Player lets you watch videos that have been downloaded or purchased from the Google Video website, video.google.com. Google Video Player allows you to watch the videos in full screen as well as browse the video using thumbnails. It also uses OpenSSL Toolkit, QPluginLoader and QLibrary classes.
Some say that Google Video is just an effort of the search engine giant to enter the online video sharing, gathering up a rich archive of moving pictures to be accessed either for free or for pay. Market trick or not, Google Video is here to stay and this article will try to familiarize you with the technology behind it.
The Google Video Player is a piece of software that transfers the paid video content from Google's servers to your computer. There is a version for MAC and Windows. Technically as a video player, it has some pretty cool features. It allows you to browse the scenes using thumbnails, so that one can easily find each and every moment.
The GV player has full-screen mode and the FTP portion of it is on a high level as it supports download resuming, automatically. This is a really nice feature especially for people on a dial-up or other users with a low and unstable connection. Perhaps the only strange thing about this application is that it is made to play paid-content, which is sort of useless, considering the amount of websites with video clips and all the video players, torrents and ftp clients.
The overall success of this software depends on the richness of the library. If it has a lot of interesting content, it will succeed even if the service is paid. But if the library is weak, then it doesn't matter how smart and functional the player is, cause it just won't matter when you don't have any multimedia to play.
In the context of all that, it's important to know that Google faces a strong competition when it comes to online video content, from the likes of YouTube, MetaCage, iFilm and several other websites with a pretty decent traffic. A lot of money are involved in this sector, so that's a big opportunity for any company. The content available at Google Video is mostly amateur, because of the ease with which users can upload their files. Video files can be uploaded at the website video.google.com or with the help of Google Video Uploader, available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Google Video ExplainedBut it's not just amateurs that upload content to Google Video, television networks also participate by making whole shows available and Hollywood studios are also putting up some movie trailers. Because of all that, the video quality is inconsistent, depending on who uploaded it. There are all types of video files, copy-protected or not, with or without ads. Google screens out any sex related material, so Google Video is totally safe for the children.
The paid content is another interesting moment regarding Google Video. Amateur movies might be free, but episodes of Survivor or other TV shows cost $1.99 each, a price set by the producer of the given video.
2. System Requirements:
• For playing videos:
As mentioned, you can play the videos with your Internet browser or trough the Google Video Player.
To play videos through your browser on Google Video, your system must meet the following requirements:
- Adobe Flash Player 7.0+
- Microsoft Windows 2000 or higher, all updates installed
- Internet Explorer 5.0+, Firefox 1.1+
- broadband connection with 500+ Kbps for continuous playback on Google Video.
Google Video Explained
To play videos trough the Google Video Player, your pc must meet the following requirements:
- Intel Pentium III 1GHz
- 256MB RAM
- 16MB Video memory
• For uploading videos:
The Google Video Uploader has the following requirements:
- Windows 98 or higher, Mac 10.3 or higher, or any OS that has Java 1.4.1 or higher in order to install the Uploader
- broadband connection to upload video.
3. Installing Google Video Player and playing it
Google Video Explained
If there is a video you wish to view from video.google.com, then click the "Download" button to the right of the video, and if you don't have the GVP installed, you will be prompted to do so. Of course, you can download the setup executable on your own from http://www.freesecuredownloads.com/free-downloads-download.html#video, or from the official website at [http://video.google.com/playerdownload]. Once you have it on your desktop, run the GoogleVideoPlayerSetup.exe application to complete the installation. When the installation is complete, the video you've selected will download automatically.
4. Finding videos on video.google.com
Google Video Explained
Google's video library is expanding all the time. Considering the amount of video clips available, users often need an advanced search technology that will help them find what they are looking for. Google has responded to this need, by developing the Advanced Video Search available at http://video.google.com/videoadvancedsearch. On this page, you can specify all or just some of the words describing it; filter results by duration, price, and genre; language; duration; price; site domain. The Advanced Video Search will output results based on their relevance with the video's title, popularity, and many other factors.
5. Buying Google Videos
Google Video Explained
Apple's iTunes Store was the first that started selling videos online and from the day they started, internet exprets immediately understood it will be a great hit. TV fans from all over the world bought videos for about $8 million just in the first three months. Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Google are the major competitors on the "download TV show for free" market. Google calls its system "the first open video marketplace" because of the idea that everyone is able to upload his content, from professional TV producers to neighborhood amateurs. Everything is available - complete NBA reruns, TV shows from CBS to family videos. This makes the whole market a bit chaotic, as there is a lot of contrast in terms of video quality. Therefore, some videos are copy-protected and require payment, while others are free for download and distribution. Google gets 30% of the fee you pay for a given video.
The thing about Google Videos is that some of them will self-destruct 24 hours after being downloaded, because you buy the rights just for that short period of time. That's how we come up to the three basic categories established:
1) Commercial TV Shows - Star Trek, I Love Lucy, all games played in the National Basketball Association are available for download 24 hours after they are played, for $4 each. Sony Music Videos can be downloaded for $2 each.
2) "Pseudo-commercial" - concerts and third-tier stuff.
3) User submitted material - home movies, just like the ones you see on YouTube.com.
Videos that should be purchased have buttons saying "Buy High Quality" and "Day-Pass High Quality". Buy High Quality is the best option, because the video doesn't self-destruct and you can watch it whenever you want, directly from your Desktop. The Day-Pass High, are once again with high quality, but cheaper, because you must be online to view them and you got only 24 hours to do that. You must be online to view copy-protected content, because to decrypt those files, Google Video Player needs to communicate with Google servers over an active Internet connection.
To purchase Google Videos, you must create a Google Account, by entering your email address, password and payment details.
6. The GVI Format
The Google Video Player reads files in Google’s own GVI format. The Google Video Files – GVIs are a modified .avi files with an extra layer with additional information, about the type of the file – self-destructable or not. GVI video files are encoded in DiVx along with MP3 audio stream.
You can download a GVI2AVI converter from http://www.kultiras.net/programs.html. The program requires the .NET Framework.
Naevius.com is also a website from which you can download a GVI converter allowing to turn GVI into AVI and the opposite. It's extremely easy to use, simple and clean interface.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Google Promote, Remove and Comment Feature - Effect on SEO

Google Promote, Remove and Comment Feature; Is it a death-knell on all established SEO techniques? What is it's apparent effect on Search engine optimization? How is it going to affect the SERPs (results page)? A colossal change has just been made by big G. Google could not have gotten better at what it does. It revolutionized the search engine all over again.
To the makers of Google, it is nothing short of the fairy-tale crystal ball where they can see everything happening around in the universe. Everyone online is sort of an open book to Google whether you want it or not. And just when you thought that Google already knows too much about people; about what they thought, what they dreamed, what they pursued, what they shopped, what they searched, Google comes up with another milestone idea to get people even more personal; the ability to promote, remove search results by every individual on the planet and add unique comments to any of your preferred result. Wow, so what if you decide to promote a website from 50th page to 1st page. And let's say you demote a top ranking result into oblivion, never to be seen on the 1st page again. So in one click did you just kill the hype and hoopla of search engine optimization?
Because the best of optimized pages could literally be gone out of your sight with this tool if you decided to have it so. And if it is really so, then this is the END OF THE WORLD. Is it the END of conventional SEO? Do i hear a pin-drop silence?
No need to panic yet. If you see the buttons then you must have noticed that they appear only when you are logged in to your Google account, and the reprise is that they only affect the results that you see, not what the world does. Do i hear a sigh of relief? If you want to skip my detailed analysis and description of this feature, you may straightaway read the conclusion at the bottom.
How does Google promote/remove actually work? A specific example.
To check the same, simply log in to your account, let's say you do a Google search for the keyword phrase "webkinz dollar store", and click on the promote button next to a result in a subsequent page. You will immediately see it magically go to the topmost SERP in the 1st page. If you click on 'promote' for another "webkinz dollar store" search result, it will move into the second place on the 1st page itself. You can move the second web page to the first position by clicking "promote" on it again. Now Log out and search again for the same keyword, you will see your selected pages dropping back to its original ranking position. Login again and you will notice your chosen pages are back to your promoted order. If you click remove on any of your promoted website, it will return to its previous place in your Google search results. But If you click remove randomly on any un-promoted website, it will be permanently removed from any results. Of course you can get it back to the search results by clicking on restore at the bottom. The results are associated with your Google account only so they will be constant across any computes of you account logs.
At first instance it is bound to give the webmasters a cold feet with the thought that Google has handed over the fate of search engine results to people and everything about SEO goes to the dumps. It convincingly looks like, as if now people are to alter, improvise the worldwide top results for each search term. But it certainly isn't the case. It's only for your own Google account, for your own personalized result page order. And it is important to know that every new search term will have entirely different promoted and removed results than the other.
I'm sure even the biggest of SEO experts, guides and critics must have lost their nerve for a second with their first experience with Google promote and remove feature just as much as I did. So the big question still remains, is this the end of our struggle and success with SEO? Is it really all up to searchers and surfers to decide the ranks of our web pages? Are we supposed to watch helplessly all the big and popular web pages get to the top, while the smaller ones vanishing away? Thank the stars that it isn't the case.
What is Google promote / remove system called?
It's called SearchWiki. SearchWiki lets users have their own order of promoted and removed results, and leave comments on specific links. Google thus remembers changes that are made by the account holder to the organic search results pages, and subsequent searches will then be displayed as per the user's customisations and notes. And most importantly, users will also have the option of seeing how other searchers have rated and reordered search results and view their notes as well, making search results a innovative community based initiative.
Who does searchwiki help?
In course of time, it will surely make a huge impact on how SEO affects a site in my opinion. Prior to this feature, a webmaster was the only individual who had an influence on the SEO aspects but now each and every Google user has the ability to decide where that site should be listed, making search engine results a different concept altogether. It may even revolutionize the idea or existing technology like browser bookmarks and RSS readership.
Customized search result page? Is it happening?
The way it stands now, it isn't a possibility e.g., a specific page could be pushed to the top result for everyone just by getting shoppers or enthusiasts to 'promote' that site a million times. Neither can your competitors outrank your site by clicking on removal link a thousand times.
Yes, you can now customize your search results with the organic rankings, deletions, leave notes against each page for future reference and see how other Google users have tailored their searches. SearchWiki notes will be visible to other users, identified with your Google Account nickname.
What are the implications of Google searchwiki on SEO?
It is like an alarm bell for everyone to straighten up their act, specially thin affiliate sites, spammers or the ones resorting to black hat stuff. Yes sooner or later there will hardly be a scope for anyone to deviate even by an inch from the core of search engine fundamentals. That is relevance and accuracy.
Yes, many things will be affected from sales to delivery and reporting. SEO won't be dead but it will have evolved and more oriented towards content than techniques .
Google has been remarkable in preventing spam and this new tool on the prima-facie would not only generate more direct data for Google analysis but would also also initiate a mass spam removal movement worldwide. As far as promoted and removed data is concerned, Google obviously is wary of SEO masters using proxy servers running multiple alias sites and redirect pages and unethical methods that can easily used to promote a single page. Hence they will never make a mistake of simply considering all the votes gained for a page to it's ranking algorithm for organic searches without due verification. All of this will give Google a whole new perspective to search user habit and patterns by allowing the user to mix and alter the organic results itself. Unthinkable but true that it is already happening.
What if Google decides to apply the promotional and removal data to page ranks? Dooms day?
Top 10 ranking results will be flooded with the sites that the majority of people prefer. The hottest and most popular existing pages will fill up the top slots overnight, for every imaginable keyword search phrase. The scope for newer, smaller, unpopular websites will virtually perish with no place in the top noticeable positions. As a result it will hardly ever gain a promotion. And slowly it will stand as good as removed even if it is not.
It might be great to force people to look at the most popular websites, but the small ones which are less marketed or are comparatively of less value or quality will never stand a chance. Lesser traffic can never be the final diagnostic indicator.
But look at this from the perspective of a person who's looking to find something out. If I need to learn about the "webkinz dollar store", I don't frankly care whether that comes from a small blog or a an unknown forum page, as long as I find the info I need, and its reliable. And I can always find them right where i need from anywhere in the world.
For those concerned about SEO.
The agony or the anxiety about it's effect on SEO and rankings could be erased in a second just by reminding ourselves of the one and only governing factor about search engines, that their existence itself depends and will always be on it's ability to offer accurate and relevant information to the users and not anybody else. Even searchwiki, this new Google tool is intended with no other intent but relevance. Isn't it so common find relevant content even after page 10 at times? ( I don't know about you, but I do search deep when I need information ). In such a case one would either bookmark that page or copy the content for future reference. I always sympathize with quality web pages nowhere near to the top ranking positions. That proves that just great content alone can not guarantee top ten results. A multitude of factors like SEO, backlinks, sandbox are responsible to drive a page to the top. And the process itself is slow.
Relevance will now be "of the search (Google), by the search (Google) and for the search (Google)." Sounds quite like a democratic definition of a search engine.
Not so long ago when webmasters saw the immense potential in harnessing people's bookmarking habits, the craze of social bookmarking sites diggs, del.ico.us erupted overnight giving search relevance a completely relative meaning.
Things will now change. What better to bookmark a page from within the searches in just one click with no further accounts to log in to.
Backlinks and quality links are still the driving forces behind a websites rise or fall. It is equated as votes earned from other sites. As far as Google's stand point is concerned, a natural promotion of a webpage from different un-suspicious IP addresses can count as votes of relevance for a search phrase.
Scientists are maybe still trying to unify the forces of nature into one formulae, but looks like Gnogle almost successfully unified the world.
Welcome to Google monopoly. Look how it gets bigger by the day.
One Account: Where your world converges.
Effect on SEO(Oh if you haven't got a Google account yet. You will be compelled to have one sooner or later)
One Search Engine: The keyword manufacturing unit. Keyword demand supply chain. Unlimited Manpower at work for the biggest keyword market. From where internet business and ecommerce are governed.
One Search Tool (External keywords tool) : Manufactured keywords put on window display. Who does have a better authority to declare than Google itself, about what people are exactly searching for? Take it or leave it.
One Traffic Estimator: (Google lets you judge the cost of your keyword too) Window shopping for keywords.
One AdWords: OK so interested parties can shop for keywords from the keyword store.
One AdSense: Auctioned keywords recycled back to the people (searcher) working in the keyword factory.
One Webmaster Tools: The manufacturers of keyword money are now the safekeepers of all your keyword rich belongings.
One Analytics: Realtime live tv telecasting keyword news to keep the buyers and sellers interested.
One Web history: Refined fuel for the keyword engine machinery. Everyone's web habit and online track records are well kept with Google. They exactly know geo-specific, cultural specific keyword needs. Well who better to assign a price-tag to a keyword up for auction?
One Homepage (iGoogle): If all these have become second nature to you, then iGoogle is the way to stay hooked. You will get a handful on your finger tips.
And Now Google searchwiki: Google taking control of what you thought is best for you.
It is like, you have helped manufacture some great and moderate keywords so far, so why don't you manufacture some great result pages with your click votes too. After all there are a free gazillion keyword workers (search engine users) in the factory (Google) at any given point in time. Keep working a bit extra and Google shall know what exactly the gazillion wants to see or not see. The fairytale crystal ball is for real now.
Where do you stand? Your best kept secrets are the best resources to the Google rulers. Google knows what buyers want, what sells most. Google knows what sellers want, what buyers are willing to pay, how much are they willing to pay for, where do best buyers come from and the sellers too. The world wide web is not so entangled for the big G anymore. They conquered the world faster than Alexander.
Everyone's Top 10 Pages will look different for the same search phrase. Scary to even think about it.
Google has gotten perfect at eradicating it's imperfections. And if you thought you had a reason to point a finger at them due to erroneous relevant results, they gave the baton to you to improvise. Google may use 20 million algorithms in a millisecond to offer what is relevant. But now they will have a gazillion more from an entire planet to vote for and review their own definition of relevant searches.
Conclusion.
What are the future projections and it's impact on SEO practices?
1. Analysis of top ten projections and reporting is likely to change based on a world consensus.
2. The definitions for pagerank and rankings for single phrases and e-commerce variables could change. If a considerable number of people are not seeing a particular result in the first pages because they have it custom configured for a particular phrase with pre-selected results crowding the top, then definitely there would be lesser click-throughs as even the top sites will be pushed back further. Thus resulting in lesser visitor count for subsequent pages and affecting pagerank algorithms.
3. Marketers and SEO experts will have to look at a bigger picture than being obsessed with pagerank and rankings for single phrases.
4. Google AdWords will become more eminent as an assured method for topping the results with paid rankings, even if the user's result page is highly customized. This means more revenues for Google.
5. When everyone starts to promote their favorite sites, the quality of content will definitely become even more undeniable (as it should be), and "classic" SEO techniques will need a complete re-orientation.
6. Marketers and SEO industry now thriving on Google, will be more proactive on Yahoo, Quil etc as alternative options.
7. Since this feature is only for Google user accounts. As of now the page rank and result pages outside logged Google accounts will very much be based on the organic SERPs. Especially given the fact that yahoo still owns more account user bases than Google. But eventually they will dominate even more with search engine market share, because of their unlimited customizable features.
8. As this Search Wiki tweak can be highly prone to spams, we won't really see any sea change in the PR status radically soon until the rest of the planet not on Google account register and start using the feature.
9. Analytics will be even more laser focussed. Google will harness immense amount of personalized data and use them to improve relevance of results. You now will have to option to know your promotion vs removal ratio for every indexed page. You will soon know your popularity rank as much as your PR rank.
10. You will soon be presented with realtime reviews on your web pages moderated or not moderated by Google.
Effect on SEO
11. Websites with genuine content and relevance will now be a super must to even fair anywhere near.
12. SEO will spell "Authority pages" more than "Optimized pages".
13. Survival of the fittest will be the new Google theory.
14. All onsite testimonials and reviews on products, services often clinically engineered or manipulated will matter less because you will have realtime online reviews even before you land on that page. (Google comment feature = Realtime reviews)
Effect on SEO
Millions of webmasters and people must still be biting their nails, trying to figure out what is wrong or right with our big Google. How is it likely to affect the already established businesses, websites and SEO? But I hope this article gives you enough insight about our fate or growth on Google in near future.
Another search engine revolution has begun with Google Promote, Remove and Comment Feature. Are you ready for the change?
Krsna Solo
I believe, if internet marketing had a generic signature line, it would read, "try this at home". And you don't even need an expert license to build an affiliate empire. All you need is experience and more experience.
Effect on SEO
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"Statutory Warning"
Effect on SEO
Affiliate marketing has serious occupational hazards like voluntary submission to amnesia and (OIC) obsessive internet compulsion. But sleep can wait till mustaches turn Grey. What if you already have one? Then you have slept enough. Take a leap with me.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Napoleonic Lessons for Google & Microsoft

Google & Microsoft
Napoleon Bonaparte was arguably the most strategic mind set to war. As we shall see later, his strategic brilliance, however, is equally applicable to the competitive world of Business; and in this case, Microsoft's rivalry with Google.
A little history
Google & Microsoft
Microsoft, the world's largest software vendor, has been around for quite a long time. Its target market is mainly selling operating systems and office applications for the desktop computers. Microsoft products are sold to computer manufacturers, i.e. Dell Computers, who in turn install and ship Microsoft software package to the consumers. So in a sense, consumers end up writing Bill Gates a $100+ check without ever knowing it. This is how Microsoft became to dominate the computer desktop industry and turned Bill Gates into modern day Henry Ford.
Google & Microsoft
Google, on the other hand, is a relatively new company. It blossomed during the dot com boom, and eventually came to dominate the online search engine business. Today, Google attracts more than 200 million unique queries on its search engine every day; statistically speaking, each query generates 12 cents for the company...that is 8 zeros multiplied by 12! Google, for the most part, profits through its search based advertisement technology known as Adwords. AdWords makes online advertisement approachable in terms of easiness and affordability. Adwords, combined with a similar technology called Adsense, made Google endless amounts of cash. Google, today, is the undisputed champion of the online world.
How they became enemies
"When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna" - Napoleon
Google & Microsoft
Until recently, both Google and Microsoft were living in harmony. The masses used Microsoft's Internet Explorer to surf Google's search engine. However, internet's seemingly unstoppable growth since the early 2000 began to attract the attention of many industries. Microsoft executives clearly saw Internet as the next big thing; possibly a market worth pursuing. Meanwhile, Google continued to make unprecedented strides within its search engine market. Having generated enough cash, however, Google took a different direction; founded by technology enthusiasts, Google began to enter various markets unrelated to its search business. Rumors began to spread that Google is building an online "free" Operating System and various other tools such as an alternative version to the dominating Internet Explorer. This, as you might have guessed, ticked off Microsoft, and it took the bait and decided to roll its war drums against Google. Microsoft, by the way, is not the only company that feels threatened by its presence. Other internet giants, such as AOL, Yahoo! and eBay, are also feeling the heat ever since Google embarked on its journey towards dominating any market of technological interest. Google innovated in markets that already existed and, surprisingly, came about to dominating them. For Microsoft, it was a threat worth neutralizing. Today, Google has its hands in web search, email, online videos, calendars, news, blogs, desktop search, photo sharing, online payments, social networking, instant messaging, WiFi, word processors, web hosting, web browser, search tool bars, spreadsheets, discussion groups, maps and more.
Before long, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and eBay maneuvered to encapsulate Google's ever-growing strength. Over two hundred years ago, Emperor Napoleon, the Google of his day, found himself in a similar situation. Russia, Prussia, Austria and Britain had decided to go to war.
The drums of war
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" - Napoleon
Microsoft's take on this war is quite different from that of Google. Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, has repeatedly alleged that the online market is not a zero-sum game; in other words, it is possible for two or more players to dominate a large share of this market. Microsoft is not used to this. In the past it has decisively eliminated any competition, and taken the throne for itself. Consequently, Microsoft has publicly declared an all out war on Google.
Ironically, Google is the company that is on the attack; it has been aggressively pursuing Microsoft's market. However, using clever tactics, it has intimidated Microsoft to appear as the aggressor, while Google quietly carries on with its business. In other words, Google has lured Microsoft into a rash attack; when it ends up in disaster, Microsoft will have only themselves to blame, and everyone around them will blame them, too. Google will win both the battle of appearances and the battle on the field. Very few strategies offer such flexibility and power.
Google & Microsoft
It takes more energy to take land than to hold it. Throughout history, defensive tactics have won more battles than the aggressors. After the first wave of siege, the aggressor loses the advantage of surprise attack and leaves himself exposed to a counter attack. The defender can clearly see his strategy and take protective action. Napoleon's most celebrated victory, the battle of Austerlitz was a counter attack, defeating a larger army with a kill ratio of 15 to 1. A defensive position has become the perfect way to disguise an offensive maneuver, a counter attack. Google has repeatedly asserted that it is not interested in competing with other businesses; it is a web search business only. They have used this facade to make Microsoft's concerns with the company seem paranoid; a clever move that worked. The fact remains that Google is a powerful secretive company, driven by smart people, and for a cause.

Google Is Not Only A Search Engine!

When you now organize a street interview and ask people "What is Google", I assume more than 90 percent of the people answer that Google is a search engine. Indeed, Google is a search engine and it is probably its core business, but Google is much more!
A short overview of the main services of Google:
++ Category One : Google Web Search Features ++
Search Engine!
- Besides the traditional Google search engines in different languages, there is also a local search engine available: Google Local. As Google Local is in beta, only US searches are possible.
Are you living in Detroit and hungry and you want a taco, do a search on http://local.google.com and you get a list of all taco restaurants.
- Google Mobile : search with your cell phone online information
http://mobile.google.com
- Google Print puts book content right in the Google search results
http://print.google.com
- Calculator: Type a mathematical expression (e.g. 5+2*3) in the Google search box and you get the result, even with complicated math!
- Definitions: when you search for 'define Personal Computer', you get the definition of that word;
- With Froogle, you can search for products (independent free service)
http://froogle.google.com and http://labs.google.com/frooglewml.html (Froogle for your cell phone)
- With 'I'm Feeling Lucky™' next to the Google search box you will see directly the first web page for your query. You will not see the other search results at all.
- Movies: To find reviews and showtimes for movies playing near you, type 'movies', 'showtimes' or the name of a current film into the Google search box
- With PhoneBook you can search for US business and residence phone numbers in the Google search box, e.g. 'John, Fitzgerald, Washington'
- Q&A answers (all) your questions in the Google search box, e.g. birthplace Bill Clinton
- You can get specialized information in the Google search box of parcels, patents or other specialized numbers.
- Restrict your search to a specific site (Site Search), e.g. 'google site: http://www.wallies.info' for wallies.info pages with the word 'google'
- Stock Quotes in the Google search box, e.g. GOOG for the Google stock quote
- Weather conditions and a four-day forecast for a particular U.S. location, e.g. 'weather Miami, fl' in the Google Seach box;
- Travel information: To see delays and weather conditions at a particular airport, type the airport's three letter code followed by the word 'airport'; To check the status of a U.S. flight, type the name of the airline followed by the flight number.
- Google Alerts send you an email with the latest search results of your query.
http://www.google.com/alerts
- With Google Catalogs you can search mail-order catalogs online.
http://catalogs.google.com
- Search for images with Google Image Search
http://images.google.com
- Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature.
http://scholar.google.com
- Google special searches: http://www.google.com/unclesam (U.S. Government), http://www.google.com/linux, http://www.google.com/bsd (BSD), http://www.google.com/mac.html (Apple Macintosh), http://www.google.com/microsoft.html
- Google University Search enables you to search to a specific school website.
http://www.google.com/options/universities.html
- The Google web directory
http://directory.google.com/
++ Category Two : Webmaster Tools ++
- Enter 'link: http://www.wallies.info' in the Google search box will show you all pages that point to wallies.info;
- Add your URL to Google on http://www.google.com/addurl;
Search Engine!
- Develop your own Google applications with Google Web API's.
http://www.google.com/apis/
- Google Adsense: place relevant ads on your pages and get paid
https://www.google.com/adsense/
- With Google AdWords you can create your own ads.
https://adwords.google.com
++ Category Three : Stand alone services ++
- With the xml Google Sitemaps, https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ the Google crawler should index faster your website. See also http://www.wallies.info/blog/item/132/index.html.
- Google Blog is the official weblog of the people behind Google:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com
- Blogger is the free weblog service of Google
http://www.blogger.com
- With Google Maps can you search for a specific US location on street levdl and see a satellite image of that location
[http://maps.google.com/!]
- Gmail is Google email with 2GB space
http://www.gmail.com
- Google Groups are discussion groups
http://groups-beta.google.com/
- Keyhole: nice satellite imagery of our world.
http://www.keyhole.com
- Google Video enables you to se`rch a growing archive of televised content – everything from sports to dinosaur documentaries to news shows.
http://video.google.com/
++ Category Four : Google Software
- Gmail Notifier : Check your Gmail messages without opening your
browser.
http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/index?promo=gdl-en
- Google Deskbar lets you search with Google right from your Windows taskbar
http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/
- Google Toolbar is the open-source Googlebar for your browser
http://toolbar.google.com/googlebar.html
- Search your own computer with Google Desktop
http://desktop.google.com/?promo=gdl-gds-en
- Picasa is free software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC: http://www.picasa.com
- Google Video Viewer is needed for Google Video
[http://video.google.com/video_download.html]
Search Engine!
++ Google Labs ++
Google labs showcases a few of our favorite ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time - http://labs.google.com/
- Google Personalized Search: Get the search results most relevant to you
http://www.google.com/psearch
- Personalize your Google Homepage with information for you
http://www.google.com/ig
- Save time online by loading web pages faster with Google Web Accelarator
http://webaccelerator.google.com/
- My Search History Easily access and manage your Google search history from any computer
http://www.google.com/searchhistory/
- Find a taxi, limousine or shuttle using real time position of vehicles with Google Ride Finder
[http://labs.google.com/ridefinder]
- As you type your search, Google Suggest offers keyword suggestions in real time
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
Search Engine!
- Google SMS: Get precise answers to specialized queries from your mobile phone or device
http://sms.google.com/ and http://www.google.co.uk/sms/
- Google Sets: Automatically create sets of items from a few examples
http://labs.google.com/sets
++ Various ++
- Google Store: pens, shirts, lava lamps of Google, http://www.googlestore.com/
Maybe there are a few services we've forgotten as this list is already so extensive.
Last to know the Google quote on Nasdaq (GOOG): http://quotes.nasdaq.com/asp/summaryquote.asp?symbol=GOOG%60&selected=GOOG%60
For comments on this article, please visit [http://wallies.info/blog/item/171/index.html]
Search Engine!
Walter V. is a self-employed internet entrepreneur and founder-webmaster of several websites, including wallies.info :: A snappy blog about snappy blue things :: blog | wiki | forum | links - [http://wallies.info] mblo.gs :: A snappy moblog community - http://mblo.gs

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Google Pages Demystified

It is now about 2 months ago that Google announced its new Service (currently in Beta) with the name "Google Pages" or "Google Page Creator" (Url: http://pages.google.com).
It is intended to give average people and internet newbie's the ability to create a website via a free and easy to use tool. Blogs became main stream over a year ago and proved to be so easy to use, that virtually anybody was able to start one and publish content without the need to take some internet 101 or Web Development classes.
Google Pages is geared toward the same audience. The difference between Blogs and Google Pages is, that Blogs are meant to be a "Journal" to publish recent News and Events and not permanent content such as a Family History or "About Me" pages. Google Pages tries to fulfill this need.
The high demand for the new Service forced Google to disable the creation of new Google Pages accounts only a short time after they announced it. New Accounts are only available by invitation only.
I got an invitation last week and started playing around with the new Service to find out how far it developed, what you can do with it and what not. This article is a brief review of the current features and shortcomings of the service. You can visit my Google Pages Test Pages at http://carsten.cumbrowski.googlepages.com to get an Idea how Pages created by this new Service can look like.
The Basic Layout
The first choice the user has to make is which of the 4 pre-defined Layouts and 41 pre-defined Designs he wants to use for his pages. There is no option to change a design or layout to custom needs which really limit the possibilities to create unique looking pages severely.
The Google Pages Team did obviously not study how Blogger is solving this problem in an elegant way by providing the selection of templates with the ability to tweak it afterwards by more experienced users. Blogger is also owned by Google. I recommend that the Google Pages Team meets with the Blogger Team to discuss synergies and learn from the years of experiences the Blogger Team already has with this problem.
The WYSIWYG Editor
Google Pages
The intuitive WYSIWYG Editor is overall very easy to use, but rather limited in options. Only 6 Fonts are available: Arial, Verdana,Times New Roman, Courier New, Georgia and Trebuchet; 4 Font Sizes: small, normal, large and huge; 70 fix Colors; H1, H2 and H3 Head Lines; Unsorted List (ul); Bold or Italic font formatting (no underline, superscript or strike through); Link to other Page, File, Email or External Link; Alignment of Content: left, right and center; Image (must be uploaded) with 4 fix size options: small, medium, large and original size.
Google Pages
There is the option to edit the HTML Code which you need to fall back to when it comes to creating "Tables" or using additional HTML Syntax not provided by the Editor like "hr", sorted list, the mentioned font formatting or specific colors not available in the list of the 70 predefined ones.
What I also miss is a simple build-in spell checker. The Google Toolbar has one build-in and there are various free solutions out there as well, such as the Lingucomponent Project from Open Office (http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org).
The Page and Image Management
The Management of the individual Pages is easy. Google Pages refers to Pages by what you use in the predefined "Title" area of a page. So far so good, but there is an issue when it comes to the Page Name used for the URL. The Initial Title specified for a new Page is used for the Page "File name" and can not be changed afterwards.
The Google Pages URL Syntax is [http://username.googlepages.com/pagename]. Make sure that you give a new Page a title that reflects the wanted "File Name" and change the Title of the Page to its real Title afterwards. The Inability to rename a Page renders the "copy page" feature more or less obsolete. The copy of the original page is simply named "originalpagefilenameX" with X being a number starting with 2 for the first copy.
Google Pages
Accessing the uploaded Images and deleting them is simple. The user must be careful though, because there is no indicator if an Image is used in a "published" = live page or not. Deleting a used image creates a broken Image on the public site.
"Static" Content is not an option
If you would like to have the same content for certain areas on all your pages, such as a Footer or Main Navigation you have a problem which can only be solved by cumbersome manual labor.
You can not incorporate anything to your Site Template. This means that you have to recreate the static content for every page manually. If something changes, you have no choice but must update every single page of your site manually one by one.
This is a major shortcoming that practically causes users to be inconsistent with the overall look and usability of their site.
No JavaScript or iFrames
JavaScript and iFrames are forbidden to be used in your Pages. If you add the Code manually, it's getting removed by the Page Creator automatically. This includes inline and external JavaScript
This means, that you can not add most of the common types of Advertisement to your pages to monetize the site including Google AdSense Ads, Amazon Product Ads, Linkshare DRMs or Chitika Ads.
You can also not use any JavaScript to improve site usability.
Google Pages
General Tools are simply absent
Google Pages does not offer any type of tools to extend the features of the site beyond a small collection of static HTML Pages with a little bit of content.
The ability to place AdSense Ads on those Pages should be of high interest by Google since it allows them to increase their Advertising Revenue. Any build in function to place AdSense Ads somewhere into Google Pages is not in sight anywhere. I asstme that this will be coming at one point because Google Pages is simply perfect for Google AdSense.
The ability to create any type of Forms or in general ANY interactive content does not exist, which severely limits the use of Google Pages. This is something the Google Pages team should work on.
Providing features like a contact form that integrates with Google GMail, the publishing of Feeds from Google Reader or the Integration of Google Maps and Google News would be perfect for Google Pages. Google Analytics can't be added to the Pages as well.
Indexing of Google Pages by Google Search
What I haven't found out yet, is if Google automatically adds Google Pages to the content to be crawled by its Web Crawler or not. A Search in the Google (http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agooglepages.com) Index reveals that over 46,000 Google pages were already indexed and added to Google's Search Index as of today. This tends me to believe that the pages are in fact automatically crawled by Google.
Conclusion
Google Pages is surely for a good reason still in Beta Status and will probably remain in that Status for quite a while. The existing features have a lot of flaws and also a lot of very important features are missing all together.
Google Pages does also not interface with any other existing Google Service although Google Pages is a perfect candidate to exploit and showcase a wide variety of existing Google Services (live and beta ones). Google has still a long way to go with this service to provide a useful tool for the general public.
I see its use today as a place where you can create some static pages with content to link to from your blog at Blogger or other Blogging Services. It is certainly not enough for most people to create their complete Homepage/Presence on the Internet via Google Pages.
It might also be an alternative for some Geocities Users since Google Pages does not show any 3rd Part advertisement anywhere on the pages.
Google Pages
Carsten Cumbrowski is a professional Web Developer with years of experiences in creating enterprise Web Solutions. He has also over 5 years of experience in Internet Marketing.

SEO - Google Sitemaps Explained

SEO
Once again I seem to be writing about Google. The reason Google keeps cropping up in these articles is that:
  • Google is a innovative company always coming up with new ideas to keep one step ahead of the competition.
  • Search Engines are the most important way that most webses generate new traffic.
  • Google is the most important of the Search Engines.
One of Googles latest implementations is a method of allowing web-designers and website owners to create specially formatted sitemap documents that inform and direct the Google robots. These sitemaps are a quick and easy way to keep your site constantly indexed and updated within the Google database and to ensure that all of your sites pages are crawled by the Google search engine robot. The program is called 'Google Sitemaps' and this is what Google themselves have to say about it:
Google Sitemaps is an experiment in web crawling. Using Sitemaps to inform and direct our crawlers, we hope to expand our coverage of the web and improve the time to inclusion in our index. By placing a Sitemap-formatted file on your webserver, you enable our crawlers to find out what pages are present and which have recently changed, and to crawl your site accordingly. Google Sitemaps is intended for all web site owners, from those with a single web page to companies with millions of ever-changing pages. If any of the following are true, then you may be especially interested in Google Sitemaps:o You want Google to crawl more of your web pages.
o You want to be able to tell Google when content on your site changes.
What is a Google Sitemap?
The Sitemap protocol requires the sitemap to be present on your web-server in the form of an XML document. XML is simple code like HTML and it is used to syndicate your content to all interested parties. You may have seen it in use for syndicating weblog entries via RSS to a news-reader. In the case of Google Sitemaps, the XML document is syndicated to Google and their software uses it to ensure that the pages of your website are crawled and indexed.
Before the introduction of Google Sitemaps, website-owners had to rely on the Google robot to find all of a websites links in order to make sure that all the pages were indexed. The introduction of Google Sitemaps now gives website owners some control over this process. In additoin, the XML format of the sitemap document also gives you control over several key variables.
If we examine a very simple chunk of code from a basic Google sitemap XML document we can see the variables we now have control over.
SEO
<url><loc>URL HERE</loc><priority>1.0</priority><lastmod>2005-07-06T18:00:00+00:00</lastmod><changefreq>weekly</changefreq></url>This part of code describes one page of a website, so a typical Google Sitemap document would contain similar chunks of code for every page contained within the website. As you can see each web page has 4 variables:
LOCATION - Simply the URL of the web page.
PRIORITY - A number from 0.0 to 1.0 allowing you to set the priority of a particular page within your website. This number is a relative setting and relates only to those pages within your site. It allows you to instruct Google to pay more attention to particular key pages within your website.
LAST MODIFIED - This tells Google when your web pages were last modified so preventing the robot from having to index pages that haven't changed since its last visit.
CHANGE FREQUENCY - This allows you to tell Google how often the content of a page is likely to change. You can set it to never, yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly and always.
How do I create a Google Sitemap?
SEO
There are a number of ways to create a Google Sitemap document for your website.
The simplest but least controllable way is to use an online XML generator that will spider the pages in your website, and automatically create the XML file for you. With most you then have to upload the file to your web-server and inform Google of its presence. There are plenty of these scripts popping up and many of them are completely free. Select this link for a
The main disadvantage to using these online generators is that they need to be recreated each time you add new pages to your website. This won't be a problem for many website owners who rarely add new pages, but for those who are constantly adding new pages another approach may be better.
If you would like a little more control over the various parameters stored within your Google Sitemap XML document then a script that you configure and then upload to your web-server may be the answer for you. These are written in various scripting languages such as PHP or Perl and give you more control over your Google Sitemap. They do require some knowledge of scripting and installation to get them working which is beyond the scope of this article. Many however can be set up to run at regular intervals and not only spider your complete site and automatically generate your XML Google Sitemaps document but also upload it to the relevant place on your web-server and ping Google to tell them that the sitemap exists.
SEO
Finally you could use Googles own Sitemap generator which is a Python script and takes a little more knowledge to install and configure on your web-server. It also requires that Python 2.2 is installed on the server.
Note: These automatic Sitemap generators work by following the internal links within your website, any orphaned pages that are not linked to will not be included in your sitemap.
How do I submit my Sitemap to Google?
Whichever method you use to generate your Google Sitemaps document, you then need to submit it to Google. Most of the online generators and scripts will either do this for you or give you an option to do it once your XML document has been uploaded.
First, you should create a Google Sitemaps Account (which requires you to have a Google Account). This account enables Google to provide you with useful status and statistical information. The My Sitemaps page lets you know if there are problems with your Sitemap or with any of the URLs listed in it. Your Google Sitemaps account will also allow you to re-submit your Sitemaps document when you make changes to it.
Once your Sitemaps account is set up simply use the online forms to inform Google of the location of your new Sitemaps document and your site will soon be indexed.
Summary
Google Sitemaps give website owners the opportunity to inform Google about all the pages of their website. It should ensure that no pages are missed and also allows a certain degree of control over the relative importance of individual pages. Simply generating a Google Sitemaps document won't necessarily give you higher rankings within the search engines as you will still be competing with other websites for those top spots. Both on page Search Engine Optimisation and off-page promotion will still be essential. However, sitemaps make sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by Google, and may therefore give you a competitive advantage over those websites that don't have a Google Sitemap.
SEO
Alan Cole runs http://www.pixelwave.co.uk, a one-person web design studio. His aim is to provide cost effective website design production and maintenance by offering professional web solutions that stand out from the crowd. Increasingly his work involves website promotion and Search Engine Optimisation as well as training courses on all aspects of web design and promotion.