Google Webmaster Academy Google has launched a new resource named Webmaster Academy. This is a resource to teach small businesses the basic of how Google search works, ranks content and how they can improve their web sites. Vanessa from Google Places Help said this is what to expect: An explanation of how Google Search worksHow best to represent a brick and mortar business onlineAn introduction to Search Engine Optimization There is some pretty useful beginner content on the Google Webmaster Academy so check it out and recommend it to some newbies. Forum discussion at Google Places Help. Here’s What Goes Into Making Google Maps, Will Apple Be Able To Recalculate? Everywhere you turned last week, there was another story about iOS 6 Maps. Some feel like it’s a great new direction for Apple, but people like me feel like we’re left with an ugly experience that shouldn’t have been introduced to the public in its current state. Yes, Google Maps was removed from iOS 6, but we’ve known that for quite a while now. What we didn’t know was that Apple would make no real improvements on its own offering from the second developers starting tinkering with the OS until the day it was made public. As I tried to use Apple Maps for the first time with the first developers version, it felt very unpolished and not well thought out. Google Maps has been a major player in the maps space since it launched almost eight years ago. As you listen to the company speak, it reiterates its mission of “organizing the world’s information,” but it rarely talks about how that organization actually happens. Merging the virtual and real-world Sounds simple, right? Connecting the dots
Improved Tools for Driving Search, Journalism, and Content Strategy | Mojo40 Keywords are out! Kaput! Passé! Semantic search is in. Just as Rosie used a paper towel that was a “quicker picker upper,” digital search has become more exact by using semantic search technology. On May 16, Mashable reported that Google search would no longer be based on keywords in a search string, but on a much more refined understanding of how language is used. Semantic search uses a deeper understanding of the relationship between words and the intent of the searcher, so when you type in something on a search engine or on a closed loop system (like that found in an enterprise), the underlying software examines the broader meaning, digests it, and spits back results that are much more relevant. Semantic technology is a subject touched on in a previous post profiling an education start-up, but it deserves a deeper dive. According to the Gilbane Group, semantic software technology has led to a wide variety of improvements in: Mojo40: What do you offer that is new? Related posts:
A faster, simpler Google Search app for iPhone (Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and Google Mobile Blog) Starting today, when you use the Google Search app on your iPhone, you’ll see a completely redesigned interface that gives you faster results, beautiful full-screen image search, and a simple way to access all your Google apps in one place. Search by voice, by typing, or with your camera Get results, fast When you’re on the go, you usually want to get things done quickly. Autocompletion of search suggestions is significantly faster in this latest version of the app, bringing you search predictions instantly with each letter you type. Beautiful Image Search Searching for images will never again be a chore. Full-screen image results take advantage of every inch of the screen Swipe or tap on the edges to move between images Simple access We’ve put all of your favorite Google services in one place for easy access. All your Google mobile apps in one place
Chrome OS's Secret Influence - PCWorld When Google gave the first demos of its ChromeOS-based PC this week, there were only a couple of mentions of the new feature that's going to have the greatest impact on Web-based apps, or Web access of any kind, really, during the next few years: offline storage. HTTP and HTML, the core protocols of the Web, were designed to not store information between browsing sessions unless the user specifically arranged to do it. Cookies, browser caches and other performance-enhancers do store more data between sessions than you'd think (not always the embarrassing stuff, but certainly that seems to be the majority). With current Web browsers, unless you purposely store a Web page to your hard drive, though, you're not going to have it after you relaunch the browser or reboot your machine. That's both a usability and security feature, though neither is effective in that way now. The less data you store between sessions, the lower the chance malware or bad scripts will corrupt your data or apps.
Entrepreneur Gaurav Mittal led ITCONS will introduce Intelligent concept search based on Semantics Technology for Recruitment Industry Entrepreneur Gaurav Mittal led ITCONS will introduce Intelligent concept Search based on Semantics Technology in January 2010, a first of its kind in India. Current product portfolio of ITCONS comprises of SaaS based Online Resume Parser & Applicant Tracking System. While the international markets are talking about Monster.com’s recent launch of Power Resume Search based on semantics (a technology which helps scan resumes and job openings for better matching) in the US provided by a company called Trovix, which was acquired by Monster or a cash prize of $72.5 millions last year. Delhi based entrepreneur Gaurav is set to launch prototype of ICS (Intelligent Concept Search) in January ‘2010, which is similar to one provided by Trovix. ICS will work with any Online Job Portals/ with any ATS/ HR applications of any company to provide advanced searching and matching capabilities between a source document and candidates. Use resumes /CVs as source document: Traditional Search Approach
Multilingual and multinational site annotations in Sitemaps Webmaster level: All In December 2011 we announced annotations for sites that target users in many languages and, optionally, countries. These annotations define a cluster of equivalent pages that target users around the world, and were implemented using rel-alternate-hreflang link elements in the HTML of each page in the cluster. Based on webmaster feedback and other considerations, today we’re adding support for specifying the rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in Sitemaps. Using Sitemaps instead of HTML link elements offers many advantages including smaller page size and easier deployment for some websites. To see how this works, let's take a simple example: We wish to specify that for the URL targeting English language users, the equivalent URL targeting German language speakers Up till now, the only way to add such annotation is to use a link element, either as an HTTP header or as HTML elements on both URLs like this:
Why Google can’t build Instagram Tonight I was talking with an exec at Google and I brought up the success of Instagr.am (they’ve gotten more than 500,000 downloads in just a few weeks) and asked him “why can’t Google do that?” I knew some of the answers. After all, I watched Microsoft get passed by by a whole group of startups (I was working at Microsoft as Flickr got bought by Yahoo, Skype got bought by eBay, etc etc). I told him a few of my theories, and he told me back what they are seeing internally. Turns out he was talking to me about these items because Google, internally, knows it has an innovation problem (look at Google Wave or Buzz for examples of how it is messed up) and is looking to remake its culture internally to help entrepreneurial projects take hold. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. So, how does a big company innovate? Another way? Sachin Agarwal, one of the founders of Posterous, echoes these comments in a post about what he learned working at Apple (Small teams rule). So, how about you?
Text analytics / June | Volume 39 | Number 3 / Public Articles / ORMS-Today / IOL Home - INFORMS.org By Douglas A. Samuelson New computer software and analytical methods offer promising ways to combine two kinds of data traditionally separated: quantitative and qualitative information. What data mining became in the 1990s, text mining/text analytics may well become in the current decade – a powerful way to find patterns not previously suspected. Statistical analysis and understanding natural language can go together. New methods and technology now make it possible to store, index, search and retrieve free-form text more effectively and efficiently, and on a much larger scale, than was possible just a few years ago. Buoyed by these advances, text mining offers great promise for OR/MS and general analytics. Computerized storage and keyword-based retrieval of free-form text is not new. In 1991, this reporter applied text-mining methods to demonstrate the ability to detect and discover patterns of causation in general aviation crashes [5]. Expanding the Method: Key Definitional Questions
Most SEOs Negatively Impacted By Google's Penguin Update About a month ago, we polled our readers asking how they were impacted by the Google Penguin update. We have well over a 1,000 responses and I wanted to share them with you. Keep in mind, those who were negatively impacted are probably more likely to take the poll. That being said, 65% said they were negatively impacted by Penguin, while only 13% said they were positively impacted. This is way more than the Panda update where only 40% said they were negatively impacted by the Panda update. Forum discussion continued at Google+, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, Cre8asite Forums and Google Webmaster Help. Disclaimer: Please see my poll disclaimer post before coming to any conclusions on these results.
What If Google’s Social Layer Is Chrome? What If Facebook Builds A Browser? Since being wrestled back from Microsoft’s death grip, the web browser has thrived thanks to its openness. All of the popular browsers beyond IE — Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera — are either based on open-source or have a thriving community that helps develop and expand each of them. And it’s relatively easy for a user to switch between any of them. But what if that were to change? I have no direct knowledge that this is about to happen, but recent conversations have me thinking about this. They could do this, of course, because they make the Chrome web browser. That may sound weird, but we’re not that far away from this personalization of the browser. And shortly, Chrome will have its own Web App Store. How will that work? Oh yeah, and there’s this thing called Chrome OS which is due to launch shortly. Other attempts have been made at social web browsers — notably, Flock. “We want people to be more logged in to Google,” CEO Eric Schmidt said last week.
Web Graph Database (This excellent overview was written by Woody Pidcock of the Boeing company and posted at metamodel.com. It has been edited slightly so it could be archived here.) I will answer this question one step at a time. To keep this answer focused on the question, I will use other concepts that I will not define here. A controlled vocabulary is a list of terms that have been enumerated explicitly. This list is controlled by and is available from a controlled vocabulary registration authority. If the same term is commonly used to mean different concepts in different contexts, then its name is explicitly qualified to resolve this ambiguity. A taxonomy is a collection of controlled vocabulary terms organized into a hierarchical structure. A thesaurus is a networked collection of controlled vocabulary terms. People use the word ontology to mean different things, e.g. glossaries & data dictionaries, thesauri & taxonomies, schemas & data models, and formal ontologies & inference. Additions ¶
First Report Of Google Penguin Recovery The Google Penguin update first touched down on April 24th and many webmasters that were hit by this update were frantically making changes to their web site in anticipation for a Penguin refresh. That refresh happened late Friday evening and we have one report that appears to be a legit Penguin recovery. An SEOmoz story named How WPMU.org Recovered From The Penguin Update has a pretty good case of a likely Penguin recovery. We have reached out to Google to see if this site did indeed recover from the Penguin update but from the looks of it, it has. This site claimed the reason it recovered was because it was able to remove over a half a million links from sites using their WordPress themes. Other changes they made but don’t believe made a difference were: We’d love to hear more stories of Penguin recoveries. Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO