Matt Cutts on SEO Certification

Nice video by Matt Cutts, he talks about SEO certification and reason why its not possible to recommend a SEO certification that is purely ethical. At the end of video he also gives some tips on choosing a SEO company.

Yahoo promoting Internet Explorer

You must have heard of recent news that Bing is providing search results for Yahoo. Many users reported observing same results in Yahoo & Bing. Now given the association of Yahoo & Microsoft I think Microsoft will get benefit to its other products and services. E.g. Microsoft browser Internet Explorer which is till now leading the browsers world but is facing a very tough competition from Mozilla Firefox backed by competitor google.

Check the imge belo and you will understant what I mean, yahoo is promoting IE in its sponsored results when no relevants ads are found.

Google bends to German privacy concerns

BERLIN – Google Inc. said Thursday it would double the amount of time Germans have to opt out of having their homes shown in its "Street View" feature, which has sparked a fierce public debate over privacy concerns.

Germans will now have eight weeks, instead of four, to request images of their homes be deleted, Philipp Schindler, Google's vice president for Northern and Central Europe said in a statement.

Google last week announced its plan to introduce "Street View" for the 20 biggest German later this year, raising concerns in this privacy-conscious country.

"We were aware of the fact that 'Street View' could lead to discussions in Germany," Schindler said.

He stressed that Google has committed itself to an extensive series of measures to protect people's privacy, "far beyond those in other countries."

At authorities' insistence, the company created an online tool Germans can use to request pictures of their homes be removed before the service's launch — something Google hasn't done anywhere else. "Street View" is currently available in 23 countries.

Many officials and politicians pressured the company to extend the deadline for people to opt out.

Germany's justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger welcomed the move, saying in a statement that "it is good that Google has doubled the time for objections to restore lost trust."

The online tool launched Monday and will now be available throughout October 15. Google Germany spokeswoman Lena Wagner said the extension will not delay the launch of "Street View", tentatively planned for November.

Wagner declined to say how many people had already asked to have their house removed from the database. Germany's consumer protection ministry expects tens of thousands to request that images of their homes be deleted.

The Mountain View, California, company also addressed another demand of German data protection officials by saying that data would be handled securely and deleted as soon as legally possible. Google also conceded to allowing officials to carry out inspections to ensure appropriate handling of the data.

"Street View" has also tangled with authorities in other European countries, including Austria and Spain, over privacy concerns.

The U.S. Internet giant lost the trust of many when it had to acknowledge this spring that technology used by its "Street View" cars had also vacuumed up fragments of people's online activities broadcast over public Wi-Fi networks for the past four years.

Google is facing legal inquiries in Spain and South Korea on suspicion the search company illegally gathering personal data while photographing city streets.

How Google searches - Article on Yahoo

How Google searches - Article on Yahoo - Sound quiet amazinf well just found a nice article on Yahoo.com. The article cover the story right from the beginning of the searhc engines. A time where only Meta Tags were suffiecient to get websites ranked well in search engines. To the more recent updates on search algorithms by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Read the full article at http://in.news.yahoo.com/250/20100706/1627/tbs-how-google-searches.html

Google Mayday update - Matt Cutts on Mayday PR update

Watch the video below for Matt Cutts interview on Mayday google PR update by WebProNews.

More WebProNews Videos

Google local search results

Google now shows local search results when search history is enabled, even if you didn't type the city name in the search query. Check the screen shot below.

Spell Check and SEO - Interesting article

Found a very interesting article on SEO basic techniques titled Back to SEO Basics - Part 1, Spell Check and Content Analysis, article mainly focuses on why one should perform spelling check and how spelling mistakes can be avoided or tracked easily and effectively. In the last paragraph author Sana Smith says:

"More than 85% people click on "did you mean" link and will get redirected to the exact word search query. So from remaining 15% how much visitors will you get, will that be a quality visitor, and is this worth the effort? You can decide easily."

I'd like to add one thing more here, nowadays google has become even more smart, you will get spelling suggestions the moment you type some wrong spelling in the google search box, thus suggesting correct spellings before you hit the search button. Thus spelling check become lot more crucial. Check the screen shot below if you haven't seen google search spelling suggest till now.

Directory Submission - Free or Reciprocal link - What to choose

Directory submission is one of the oldest way of getting one way links for any website and in case you get listed in Dmoz thats the greatest thing. In this post I am not going to discuss about "How to get listed in Dmoz", I will post post about it later.

This post is about a funny this I noticed while directory submission. Normally what would you choose while directory submission free, paid or reciporocal. Majority of the time option is free links. Now to see the funny thing check the screen shots below. Free links are free and reciprocal directory links are paid. I think is a mistake hile configuring directories by Robingupta.com group of directories.

Top SEO tools - Must have webmaster SEO tools

These are the tools that will not just help a webmaster in carrying out a SEO campaign successfully but also make you undestadn some uncovered aspects of SEO like what rol does a header part play in the optimization, page speed, page download time optimization and lot more.

In this post I will only mention the tools name, to know more either search online for the tool or send me any particular query you have regradin a tool.

DigitalPoint Tools
GSiteCrawler
Hubspot Grader
Majestic SEO
Open Site Explorer
PostRank
SearchMetrics
SEOBook Tools
SEOChat Tools
SEOEng
SEOmoz Tools
Compete Search Analytics
Google Insights
KeyCompete
Keyword Discovery
MSN AdCenter
SEMRush
Spyfu
Wordtracker
WordZe

ANALYTICS:
ClickTale
CoreMetrics
CrazyEgg
Enquisite
Google Analytics
Hubspot
Omniture
WebTrends
Yahoo! Index Tools


SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLs:

BuzzLogic
BuzzStream
Hubspot
KnowEm
Nielsen
PostRank
Radian6
Scoutlabs
Search.twitter.com
SearchMonitor

Download videos - Convert Videos form any URL

I forget to mention in my previous post - Document Conversion without installing any software that the website Zamzar also allows the feature to convert/download videos from any URL. Check http://www.zamzar.com/url/ , here all you need to do is provide the video URL say youtube.com URL of a song you want to download, select the video type, provide email ID you want to reecieve the download link and click on convert.

You will recieve the video download link in less than a 30 seconds. Go and try it out. I am planning to try the features in free registered account also.

Document Conversion without installing any software

Many a times we are unable to open a file becuase we dont have the reader for that kind of file on your system. Say for example PDF files, docx, vsd,xml and many more extesnions require particualr software ot be installed. And in case we dont have the software either we try to purchase that software of install a document converte software to conver files from one format to another.
Now all this can be done even without installing a software, I found a very good website that allows free of cost document conversions without any limitations on number of conversions. Please visit http://www.zamzar.com/ and you can convert files from one format ot another easily and quickly. I am happy with the unregistered use of the website but I think registerting for a free acount will have more advantages if you requyire to convert documents more frequently.

Few websites that you may try for document conversion:

1. http://www.zamzar.com/ - convert muyltiple file formats
2. http://www.freepdfconvert.com/ - Allows pdf ot word, excel etc type of conversions. this one is best and I am using this website form last three years. (Avoid purchasing any paid pdf converter software like Hellopdf, pdf-file, 123pdf, 123fileconvertor, Docsmartz, Investintech, quickpdf, pdfkit etc - there is no fum purchasing these software when you can get all free)
3. http://www.download.com/ - In case you dont have internet connection or have limited access to internet then you can search for free document converter utilities, Flashpaper is one such free utility from adobe that allows you to convert word to PDF free of costs.

In case you are not sure of whic software to download don'r go by the reviews ver download portals more than 90% og the positive reviews are posted by the software companies. Contact me through comments at this blog and I will send you the review for the software or the software that best suits your requirements.

SEO Tools - Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

301 or permanent redirect is what always recommended when you want to move a pag or domain to give all the value of the current backlink, rankings etc to the new page or domain. Here I am found a tool that allows you to check if the redirect is search engine friendly for implemented properly.

http://www.webconfs.com/redirect-check.php - Checks if page has any redirect and the redirect is implemented properly.

Few other helpful URLs to implement 301 redirect:

http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php
http://www.somacon.com/p145.php
http://roshanbh.com.np/2007/12/301-redirect-in-php-and-htaccess.html
http://www.weborum.com/301-redirect.php

Alexa rank of Alexa.com

I've made various pots on Alexa rank, out of curiosity I checked alexa rank for www.alexa.com and I found Alexa doesn't rank itself. Only 250+ reviews for alexa.com are available (I will also post one for alexa later sometime.

Not ranking own site is pretty strange I thought alexa would be ranked somewhere around top 100 sites. You can see various other site like Google, SEOmoz, compete do rank themelves also.

Not sure whats the reason alexa not showing alexa rank for own site, it would be interesting to see the stats if possible.

Related posts:
Alexa Rank Simplified
Ways to Improve Alexa Rankings & Traffic
Alexa ranking myth simplified

Duplicate content Penalty Doest Exist

As posted in my previous blog post IPL Cricket & SEO, one of the website from the search results has gone now. This means duplicate content penality does exist. IPL Twenty Twenty season 3 will start tomorrow and surely like previous 2 season this one will also be a successful sports event. Like last year I am sure most of the Bollywood producers other than low budgets movie producers will surely not like to relase any Hindi Movies till next one and half month.

I also have eye on how search einge will be behaving specially when youtube will broadcast live video of IPL matches.

Anuja Lath one again In Media highlights

Few months back I posted about Anuja Lath of Red Alkemi won the women enterprenuer of the year award and now this time she is covered on the fron page of India Today Magazines Womens Special "Simply Punjabi". Redalkemi is one of the most reputed SEO company in the region.

IPL Cricket and SEO

IPL 2010 is beginning on March 12 and being a cricket player in the college time I've a great interest in cricket. IPL twenty twenty is about to begin and I have been a supporter of the Mumbai Indians team from the start of the tournament. Unfortunately the team was unable to do well in both the previous seasons.

Now comming to the reason why I am making this post at SEO blog is that, I just searched for Mumbai Indians to check latest updated from the team I support. Niow when i search "Mumbai Indian" in google. top two site in the results both are having same content in fact one website is photocopy of the other.

My question here is if google doesn't support duplicate content why both the site are enjoying the top rankings. One of them should be banned.

FYI URLS are:

http://75.126.186.214/Index.aspx
http://www.themumbaiindians.com/

Now this is a query you all SEO experts needs to check and answer. :)

Please do post your comments.

Google analytics System Upgrade

Just check at google analytics blog that google analytics is going for a major sytem in comming two weeks. Posted on Feb 24th tha blogs says "​Within the next two weeks, Google Analytics will be performing a system upgrade. This upgrade is to further increase the scalability and reliability of Google Analytics to meet the demand of an increasing number of enterprises using Google Analytics. Rest assured your website traffic data will be unaffected and there will be no interruption to data collection or processing. All reports will be available and accessible to users. "
Read full post at http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/02/upcoming-system-upgrade-for-greater.html

Dmoz contacr form not working

Soetimes it happens that you wait or plan for a thing very long and when it comes to implementation you get a error that is not in your control. same happened with me I was planning to submit one of my blog to Dmoz, first of all it tooooooooooooooo looooooooooooooooooong for me to get time for submission. Once submission was done I was sure to get the blog included given the previous success rate I have with Dmoz. I was just goinf to enquire about my submisison and to my surprise the contact form for the editor of that category wasn't working. I waited for full day for it to work but it wasn't working till now. The editos of the category is SEOmike and I will try to contact him later aftewr a day or two, hopefully the form wud be working that time.

Google Buzz a failure

Google Buzz racing against time to fix biggest privacy breach in its history. Google had introduced Buzz, which is similar to social networking sites like Facebook, to its email service Gmail, but in doing so it automatically made public its users' most frequently talked-to contacts.
The tool is now facing an avalanche of complains, as it has given an easy access to user information.

Read more

New look for Alexa site info

Alexa updated its new look for site info or alexa rank info which is displayed whenever we check alexa rank for a website. From all the alexa info layout changes this one is one I liked the most. In this view particularly the search analytics tab is very good one. If you want to check the update visit this link