Gumby on the Google homepage

Todays Google Doodle honors the late late clay-animation artist Art Clokey with an interactive Google Doodle of Gumby & Friends. Art Clokey was a early pioneer in stop motion clay animation. This Doodle is similar to the tribute that Google paid to Jim Henson recently which found favor from many fans of Henson’s work.

Here is the animated doodle:
Art Clokey Animated Doodle

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Google TV vs. Apple TV

Apple TV is reportedly preparing itself for battle with Google TV by chasing the subscription model. This will be one of the biggest tests that Apple’s new CEO, Tim Cook will face in upcoming months as Google isn’t going to wait for Apple to grip that market. Google’s recent acquisition of Motorola, the largest producer of set-top boxes should provide a major advantage in the adoption of Google TV.

The two services are different — Google is all about making your TV Web friendly, while Apple sounds more like taking your iTunes video library to the next level. There’s still a lack of info on how Apple plans to integrate the subscription model but that could be huge as many can’t afford to pay individually for every episode or movie they want to watch.

Google seems more interested in integrating their products into an interface that might allow for them to reach audiences that they haven’t been able to reach previously. Overall what that means is I think they’re focusing on a more usable experience, who wouldn’t want to use it for checking e-mail, & social networking (including Google+ ?)

If Google+ gets added to Google TV I’d be curious as to whether Google+ will record what videos you or your friends like & how they’ll use/integrate that data into the search results.

Thanks to SoldierKnowsBest on YouTube for this Google TV vs. Apple TV comparison:

Cable TV & Satellite providers worldwide should have their eyes wide open as this will likely lead to people ditching expensive service contracts for less-expensive “web tv”, gee I think the last time I said that phrase was in 1998. Microsoft’s WebTV sure was ahead of its time– Did anyone besides me own one of those?

I think during the holiday season this year we’ll see an influx of set-top boxes & TV advertising from both sides as the battle for control of internet TV gets ugly.

Update 8/30 – Adding Google TV commercial:

Incoming search terms:

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A Closer Look at the Google-Motorola Deal

As with any tech industry merger, Google’s recent acquisition of smartphone-producer Motorola Mobility came to fruition for a number of reasons benefiting the participants.  The deal also should not be considered too much of a surprise, since Motorola and Google have been allies in the mobile wars since 2008, when Motorola committed all of its popular Droid devices to integration with the Android operating platform.  With both tablet and smartphone sales figures continuing to skyrocket across the board, and with the increasing popularity of Android and the need to defend it from the encroachment of competing tech companies, a closer look at this deal reveals a number of significant advantages for Google.  It also reveals a number of potential hairy spots, perhaps most significant being the likelihood of antitrust exploration of Google’s already dominant share of the mobile market through the Android platform.

First and foremost, Google publicly admitted that a main motivation for the acquisition was the access it would grant Google to the wide array of patents Motorola owns, patents which now can be maintained to help deflect competitors from exploring and parsing out Android technology and functionality for their own OS systems and mobile devices.  The importance of this was highlighted by the sale of thousands of Nortel Network patents to Apple and Microsoft among others this past July, to the tune of $4.5 billion.  With innovation and ingenuity perhaps the biggest competitive advantage in the ongoing mobile and tablet wars, it was a no-brainer from Google’s standpoint to purchase such a large folio of patents so that the company could further entrench its Android system from exploration by competing companies.

However, an equally significant aspect of this deal that is perhaps a bit less talked about is Motorola’s significant control of the development of set boxes for cable outlets, a realm that Google has publicly talked about wanting to focus on for future innovation and development.  Specifically, Google has talked about meshing internet into the basic television experience by designing a new type of set box that would allow for complete integration of web browsing and connectivity with a basic cable set box, one that could potentially be offered through another huge fish, Comcast.  Potential developments could include the integration of Google’s all-powerful search engine with TV listings and guides; creating the capability for interaction with Google Plus, allowing viewers to recommend shows and videos to friends and family by utilizing the “+1” already made popular through Google search results; and finally, it represents a potentially new market untapped by major competitors like Apple or Microsoft that would allow Google to set the market standard.  Of course, major questions surrounding cost, availability, and actual functionality of this type of set box remain, but the prospects and innovative power of Google’s brain trust are not ones to be counted out, and certainly had to be another major catalyst for the acquisition.

As was mentioned before, there are a few potential roadblocks and red flags to this deal, first and foremost being Google’s potential evaluation against antitrust laws because of its burgeoning control over the mobile industry in the U.S.  With the company already holding a near 50% market share, there are concerns that with further partnership with Motorola, Google could approach a market share in the realm of 75-80% that would allow it monopolistic control over the wireless industry (and further wireless innovative developments, especially regarding web browsing).  Also, there are concerns from other hardware manufacturers like HTC and Samsung that have partnered with Google on previous Android phone releases like the Nexus One.  Google has guaranteed that Motorola Mobility will remain an independent entity in regards to development contracts, required to bid along with other hardware manufacturers for future Nexus bids.  Whether this will be upheld remains to be seen.

No matter how you look at this deal, Google comes out looking like a winner with another trophy on its ever-growing mantle, one that allows it to remain a titan rivaling Apple and Microsoft for dominance in the ever-exploding tech industry of the 21^st century.  If Google can unveil an innovative set box to integrate its web-browsing and ad network into the home television experience, on top of the increasing market share it will command due to its control of Motorola Mobility patents, the folks at Apple and Microsoft might have a bit more to worry about in the future.  For now, the market and gadget-lovers everywhere will watch in anticipation on the projects Google and Motorola will unveil in the near future, and see where the bar gets pushed from there.

Even Google Thinks “Romney Can’t Win”

US presidential candidate Republican Mitt Romney can’t seem to catch a break even from Google. Not only does it suggest that he can’t win, if you start typing in Romney’s name, but if you disagree, Google tries to correct you.

Suggestion: Romney Can’t Win

Start typing in Romney, and Google as its top suggestion “romney can’t win,” as you can see below:

Did You Really Mean He Can Win?

Romney believers who ignore the suggestion and go on to search for “romney can win” get this response:

“Did you mean: romney can’t win” — that’s Google’s spell checking system kicking in.

Don’t Blame Us, Blame The Algorithms!

Slate appears to have spotted the funny correction first, and also notes that it doesn’t happen for any other Republican candidate; CBS News has exactly what you’d expect Google to say in response, that this is all down to automation:

Our spellcheck feature is automated, and while no algorithm is perfect, we’re always working to improve our search quality.

That’s true. But both the spelling correction and suggestion will come based on what actual people are doing.

Search-Off Says: “Can’t” Beats “Can” 5:1

The spelling correction system will look in part on what the most popular use of a word or phrase is across the web, to help spot errors. According to Google, pages with the exact phrase “romney can’t win” are beating those with the exact phrase “romney can win” by about 5 to 1:

The screenshot above shows that for a search on the “can’t” phrase, there are currently 339,000 matches across the billions of web pages that Google has found. In contrast, there are only 65,700 web pages that use the “can” phrase.

Is News Driving The Funny Suggestion?

The suggestions themselves are based on what people are searching for. For “romney can’t win” to appear, Google should be seeing a substantial number of people searching for that topic.

Interestingly, however, I can’t find that this term is popular enough to even register when using the Google Insights tool, which reports on the popularity of search topics at Google. When I tried searching for either phrase, no data was reported.

I also tried a check using another Google tool, the AdWords Keyword Research Tool. In that case, it reported that “can” searches happened, on average over the past 12 months, 590 times per month versus “can’t” searches at 110 times per month:

So if “can” searches beat “can’t” searches 5 to 1, why is Google’s suggestion tool — which is based on popular searches — suggesting the opposite?

There’s a very slight chance that someone generated enough queries purposely to trigger that suggestion. It’s possible, and some anti-Romney force might be clever enough to do this.

Much more likely, there’s been a recent upswing in searches for “romney can’t win” — most likely caused by attention to the spelling correction.

That’s especially supported by the fact that Bing doesn’t offer a similar suggestion. That indicates not many people are searching for “romney can’t win” at Bing — and since it doesn’t have a funny correction as Google does, they really wouldn’t be doing many search for that there.

FTC Finalizes Settlement of Google Buzz Privacy Issues

The FTC has approved its settlement with Google that addresses improper privacy disclosure during the release of Buzz. The settlement mandates additional privacy procedures, including third-party privacy audits every other year for the next two decades.

The FTC Settlement

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) gave the bill unanimous support (the vote was 4 - 0) in the official vote this month. In additional to the third-party audits, Google will have to: show privacy warning in a more prominent position, especially when user information is shared without the user specifically requesting such sharing; simplify or provide easier access to privacy setting controls; and ensure that all privacy policies held by Google are met in future product releases. The full FTC settlement is publicly available.

The primary concerns with Buzz were centered around the data shared with all contacts. If the user didn't specifically modify their privacy settings (i.e., just used the Google defaults), they automatically shared status updates, Picasa web albums, Google Reader items, imported blogs, and a lot more. The FTC found that this sharing was not communicated effectively to users, making Google's release (in legal terms) "deceptive."

Google admitted they were in the wrong and apologized repeatedly for the privacy issues. In anofficial statement responding to the FTC settlement, Google said, "The launch of Google Buzz fell short of our usual standards for transparency and user control – letting our users and Google down."

The History of Buzz's Privacy Concerns

The final approval of the FTC settlement is just one domino in a series of Buzz-related actions. Concerns with Buzz's privacy policy were brought up shortly after this Google mini-blogging service was released in 2010. A class-action lawsuit and an FTC investigation began shortly thereafter.

In December of 2010, Google addressed the class action lawsuit by giving $8.5 million to firms that specialized in educating users about online privacy. In March of this year, the FTC reached this settlement.

With the final approval, the privacy procedures go into effect. This combines with the imminent shut-down of Buzz make up the final steps in closing Buzz's casket permanently.

Celebrities Killed The SEO Star

As the co-founder of an SEO Consultancy, my biggest hurdle in business is finding more staff. Clients are lining up at our door, we have no trouble there, it's finding the staff to work with them that becomes the issue. This may not sound like the worst dilemma for a business to face, especially during the current global economic decline, but the causation is a matter of great concern to me as both an SEO and a businessman.

Ayima's company structure is such that only highly skilled SEOs make it through to our interview stage and yet even then, less than 5% meet our skill requirements. This isn't me being picky, misjudging characters or sourcing bad candidates - this is a knowledge pandemic that is spreading through our industry. We've started apprenticeship programs to teach eager candidates from the ground up, but this can take several years to generate the finished article.

After looking back at our past 30 interview candidates, my opinion for the reason behind this issue may not be a popular one. I believe that celebrity SEOs, brands and blogs are feeding a generation of untested and poorly trained search marketers, who pass themselves off as SEO experts. I will of course explain my positioning…

Google Whores Out Users With False Privacy Claims

So today Google announced that they have turned on SSL by default for logged in users, a feature that has been available for a while on encrypted.google.com. The way they set it up, as explained in this post, means that your search query will not be forwarded to the website you're visiting and that they can only see that you've come from an organic Google result. If you're buying AdWords however, you still get the query data.

This is what I call hypocrisy at work. Google cares about your privacy, unless they make money on you, then they don't. The fact is that due to this change, AdWords gets favored over organic results. Once again, Google gets to claim that it cares about your privacy and pulls a major public "stunt". The issue is, they don't care about your privacy enough to not give that data to their advertisers.

That might also enlighten you to the real issue: Google still has all your search data. It's just not allowing website owners to see it anymore. It's giving website owners aggregated data through Google Webmaster Tools, which would be nice if it hadn't shown to be so incredibly useless and inaccurate.

If Google really cared about your privacy, (delayed) retargeting wouldn't be available for advertisers. They wouldn't use your query data to serve you AdSense ads on pages, but I doubt they'll stop doing that, if they did they would have probably said so and made a big fuzz out of it.

If Google really cared, the keyword data that site owners now no longer receive from organic queries would no longer be available for advertisers either. But that would hit their bottom line, because it makes it harder to show ROI from AdWords, so they won't do that.

The Real Reason for killing organic referral data

So I think "privacy" is just a mere pretext. A "convenient" side effect that's used for PR. The real reason that Google might have decided to stop sending referral data is different. I think it is that its competitors in the online advertising space like Chitika and Chango are using search referral data to refine their (retargeted) ads and they're getting some astonishing results. In some ways, you could therefor describe this as mostly an anti-competitive move.

In my eyes, there's only one way out. We've now determined that your search data is private information. If Google truly believes that, it will stop sharing it with everyone, including their advertisers. Not sharing vital data like that with third parties but using it solely for your own profit is evil and anti-competitive. In a country such as the Netherlands where I live, where Google has a 99%+ market share, in other words: a monopoly, I'm hoping that'll result in a bit of action from the European Union.

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Joost is a freelance SEO consultant and WordPress developer. He blogs on yoast.com about both topics and maintains some of the most popular WordPress plugins for SEO and Google Analytics in existence.

7 SEO Friendly Site Features that Developers Often Miss

Web developers are great: without them, we wouldn't have, well… the web! But unfortunately, a lot of developers can have a bit of a blind-spot when it comes to SEO. While some on-site SEO features almost always come as standard now (ability to edit meta tags, image alt properties, etc.), there are some important areas under the hood that often get missed. Let's have a look…

Analytics (Google or Otherwise)

A decent analytics package is essential for any web marketing effort, both for measuring results and gaining insight into how your site is being found and used. Plus, as any marketeer knows, access to historical data from a site at the beginning of a campaign is almost priceless. And yet, it's amazing how many sites, big and small, are launched without analytics. Get it on there from the get go and get it set up properly!

Semantic URLs

A semantic URL is essentially an address for a page that is human-readable and conveys useful information. An example for a page on "blue widgets" would be:

• www.example.com/blue-widgets/

However, all too often we see pages with addresses such as this:

• www.example.com/index.php?page_id=46

The reason we see this latter version so often is that it is much easier to implement. The trouble is that it's a disaster for SEO! Although on-page factors are not that important compared to link building, by and large, having keywords in the URL is the single most important part of on-page optimization.

Make sure your developer implements semantic URLs on your site and gives you control over each page's URL – no excuses! Although you don't get penalized for using a non-semantic URL structure, you're missing out on a big opportunity… and changing it after the site has gone live can be a big headache.

XML Sitemaps

Sitemaps don't have a great impact unless your site is on the large side, but they're easy to set up and cost nothing, so are always worth using. It's not a problem to generate these manually (there are several free tools for doing this), but if your site is dynamic or updated often, this can become a real pain pretty quickly.

It's much better for the site's CMS to update the site map automatically whenever the site changes. A lot of packages will do this natively or with the aid of a plugin, but if you're having a custom CMS written, make sure the developer includes this facility.

Controlling Indexation

If you have a large site, Google will almost never index your entire site: they have a percentage cap of the number of your pages that they will keep in the index. Now, discussing how much of the site they decide to index and upon which pages they bestow the honor of indexation is a post for another time, but suffice to say for now that although you definitely can't tell Google which pages to index, you cantell them which pages you definitely don't want indexed. You do this with this meta tag in the head of the page:

• [meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" /]

Again, if you've got a small or static site, this isn't a problem to set up manually, but for larger sites you'll need to be able to control this through the CMS. You may even want to develop a strategy for noindexing pages automatically – if they're not getting search traffic anyway, for example. Ideally, yes, we'd like never to have to do this kind of thing, but if Google are only going to index a part of your site anyway, you'd better make sure it's the part that counts.

301 Redirects

Honestly, could this be more important? Unfortunately, a lot of developers don't think so.

If you're migrating from an old site, making sure that pages from the old version are redirected to the new is vital (assuming that the page names or URL structure has changed), but it's also important that your new CMS creates 301s automatically if you remove or change the URL of any page – something that you'll inevitably end up doing if you work actively on your site.

Again, some CMSs do this natively or through plugins, but many don't. If you're having something custom written or your developer is using something off the shelf, make sure it handles 301s for changed pages properly.

Canonicalization

Sorting out canonicalization of URLs from the start is another must – you don't want Google to see duplicate content on your site even for an instant, or it'll be reminding you of it through Webmaster Tools for evermore.

The first step is www versus non-www canonicalization. From an SEO perspective, it doesn't matter which you choose, but you have to choose one and stick to it. Implementing it involves just a simple 301 redirect rule and is easy for your developer to do.

The second step is making sure that your CMS, e-commerce package or other platform isn't generating multiple URLs for each page, and isn't adding a lot of extraneous data to URLs. This might sound like a no-brainer, but Magento, for example, makes each page available by three different URLs by default. Checking to see if you have this problem is relatively straightforward – use a tool such as Xenu's Link Sleuth(yes, it's a crazy site) to check the number of pages on your site. If it's way higher than you were expecting, you've got a problem. If you've not fixed this problem before the site goes live, that means a lot of 301 redirects to set up as you rationalise the URL structure.

Lastly, implement the canonical tag itself. At it's most basic level, this tag tells Google what the definitive URL of a page should be. If your CMS definitely isn't generating multiple URLs per page, it is still worth implementing, as it will help prevent potential problems caused by incoming links with extra URL data in them (e.g., tracking tags from mailing list software, etc.). The canonical tag is dead easy to implement and should appear on every page. It looks like this:

• [link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/page.html" /]

Google is expanding the remit of this humble tag over time as well, so it's worth keeping an eye on what you can and should be doing with it – it all helps with Google's indexation of your site.

Site Speed

Hardcore coders are often obsessed with speed. This is a good thing, as site speed is now a part of Google's ranking algorithm (although perhaps not a large part… yet). The problem is that the main issues to do with a site's performance are not to do with the code itself (at least not for most smaller sites), but rather to do with things such as HTTP request optimization, combining and compressing external files, loading JavaScript asynchronously, using cookie-less domains, etc.

If all that sounds pretty technical… well, it is. Luckily, you don't need to understand how to do it – you just need to ask your developer to look after it for you. If they're not already on the ball with site speed, a number of free tools will audit a site's performance and make recommendations for improvement, such as the Google's Page Speed suite. You may also want to ask your developer about using a content delivery network such as CloudFlare. Going to town on your site's speed really can make a surprisingly big difference!

Summing Up

Making sure that your developer gets these basics sorted right from the beginning will get your on-site SEO running like clockwork, leaving you free to concentrate on building links and great content. None of them are optional!

Good Web Design for WordPress

The New York Times has a format for their articles that can be applied just as easily to good web design.  The first two paragraphs tell you everything you need to know about the issue you are reading. The middle paragraphs detail the information presented in the first two paragraphs followed by the final paragraph, which summarize the entire article.

Good web design will tell you exactly what the site is about immediately. Then it will guide you through the detailed information and move you to a point where you become a user of the site. The analogy works when you consider the average website visitor only spends 27 seconds on each web page and the average New York Times reader only reads the first couple of paragraphs. Good web design is needed to move the visitor past the average time on page. The best way to accomplish this is to start by defining the business and user goals realizing that good web design should help users accomplish their goals.

Rules of Good Web Design

At Halyard Consulting we follow some basic rules for good web design. First, it has to be easy to read. The majority of our clients are service industry professionals like lawyers, house painters, and payroll companies. So it’s important that the design of their websites be clean and easy to read. If we had game companies or maybe artists we could work outside the box and get a little messy. Next, it must be easy to navigate. Not only is it important to make clickable links noticeable with the standard format of blue underline but the site needs to contain at least two forms of navigation. One form of navigation needs to be for the user while the second needs to be specific for the search engines. This is not to be confused with cloaking, which is when a website redirects spiders to different information than what humans see on the site.

Wireframe by ChangeCase via Flickr

When a search engine visits your website they are looking for a site map page. Originally, these pages were also made for human visitors and looked like the wireframe to the entire site. Now, however the site map link often leads to an .xml file, which is easier for a search engine to read. If you want to create a good web design site you’ll need to go past these two requirements and include secondary links like breadcrumbs and internal text links. Breadcrumbs show you the path you’ve taken in relation to the home page (ex. Home Page > Category > Content Page). Internal text links reside within the body of the content and reference other areas of the website. Be careful though because overly aggressive internal linking mixed with external ads should be limited to approximately five per page combined. Otherwise Google might see your site as spam and remove it from the index. Also, taking the most popular posts on your website and displaying them in the sidebar of internal pages helps to keep interested visitors reading your posts.

The final rule of good web design is the ease in which you can find specific material within the search engines. While this rule tends to overlap with good search engine optimization it’s important to note that good web design instills confidence that the site is legit. The ability to find the site in the search engines remains the responsibility of the optimizer but having the most important content above the fold and the contact information easily accessible lies in the designer’s hands.

Testing for Good Web Design

The best way to test if good web design is equally matched with powerful optimization is the five second usability test. Sit someone down and give them five seconds to review the home page, or any page you are currently working on, and ask them to point out all of the primary keywords. If your site passes the test with several individuals you are on the right path.

You can take that same test subject and ask them several more questions:

1. Ask if the design enhances or detracts from the content.
2. Ask the subject to go to a specific page and then ask if the website is easy to navigate.
3. Ask what emotional state the design suggests.
4. Ask the subject to find a certain piece of information (ex. Owner’s Bio) and ask if it was easy to find.
5. Ask the subject if they feel the site is credible.
6. Finally, ask if the site has value.

These key questions will help you better understand your website and how a new visitor might perceive the content.

Good Web Design by Sara Al-Mudhaf via Flickr

Additional Technical Notes

Before wrapping this article up I want to add a couple of technical notes relevant to good web design.

• Search engines don’t read anything under the copyright statement so it is pointless putting anything there. In fact if you list out a bunch of keywords and link to internal pages Google could consider the site spammy.
• In the URL put the name of the blog post before the title of your website (ex. WordPress Design Knowledge Base | Halyard Consulting). In WordPress you can determine how your Permalink structure will look. I personally prefer URL/Post Name or URL/Category/Post Name.
• Never ever hard code content into a WordPress website. If you are doing this you are missing the point of using WordPress.
• Only use Flash if you absolutely must. Flash is not readable by the search engines. Yes, there are newer ways to add some information. It just breaks my heart anytime I see an entire homepage made in Flash. If you absolutely must have Flash on the page make sure you have quality copy before the fold and add footer with links.
• You can use Flickr Advanced to find Creative Commons Images, which range from attribution, whereby you can use, distribute or change up to attribution noncommercial noderivs, which requires credit of the owner and it can’t be changed in any way. If you plan to upload photos to Flickr for Creative Commons use make sure you use the Title Tags, H1, Captions, Tagging, Cross-Groupings, Comments, Sharing, Alt Text, and Optimal Linking.
• While this isn’t exactly and technical note. I find Wordle.net to be a cool fun tool that takes individual keywords and places them into good web design.

Finally, I want to use this opportunity to talk to the guy or gal that’s just starting off using WordPress. I’ve got a really important message for you. “Not everything needs to be a plugin”. There I said it. I’m sure I made a couple of people mad but hear me out. Every time you install another plugin it’s a further drain on your resources. There are some plugins that do such simple things you’d be better of just making it something you do instead of relying on a plugin to do it for you. Take for example Clean SEO Slugs. It removes words like “I” “you” “the” “this” “to” and “from” in the URL of the post. For example I have a blog post called The Tale of the 2,000% Return on Investment! WordPress starts you out with this URL /the-tale-of-the-2000-return-on-investment/. Now if I were using Clean SEO Slugs it would take out “the” “of” and “on” leaving the URL looking like this /tale-2000-return-investment/ but it used up resources to do that and it’s not even what I wanted. My point is it’s sometimes better to just go in and do the work yourself rather than bog down your server and slow down your site.