SEO and common sense

So I went out and read a couple articles on Thursday about SEO and got some fairly interesting advice. I had planned to write this right when I was done with my assignment for the class, but instead Jeff wanted us to read an article written by google and the post was due Saturday. Well, obviously I postponed writing the blog post and eventually forgot about it. So today when I realized I hadn't done it yet I hopped online and read the google SEO article. Now this might be because I did a bit of html coding back in middle school, but almost everything in that article seemed like common sense. For most of the article the only thing that wasn't taught in this class or didn't seem like common sense was meta tags, and honestly meta tags are a very basic concept which every webmaster should already know about.

There was one thing I enjoyed reading in the google article was the robots.txt file. I had heard of a way to do that kind of stuff before, but this was the first place that explained it in detail and in plain english. Well, now that I look the article over one more time, rel="nofollow" and the list of free webmaster tools at the end are fairly helpful as well.

I found a couple new articles today because I couldnt find the links from the ones I read last week.

http://www.blog-maniac.com/blog-seo.htm
I liked this one even though it still had a lot of things that seemed like common sense again. It talked about some useful things like link exchanges and trackbacks. Things you might not necessarily think about but are still quite easy to do.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/new-interesting-insights-into-google-rankings-spam-from-pubcon
This article was actually quite interesting because it tells you how to keep of the "naughty list" essentially. It basically just lists in detail a bunch of ways search engine crawlers classify malicious or spam sites. While there are a couple on there you might have legitimate reasons to do the opposite, chances are you can do them all fairly easily and avoid bringing negative "search engine vibes" to your site.

Twitter, Facebook set the pace

The recent announcement of bing to establish real time updates with facebook and twitter is a temporary advantage over google at least for now, google is expected to follow suit and they are even rumors that google is going to acquire twitter. Check this link for the story: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/174076/bing_lands_deals_with_twitter_and_facebook.html
Bing may also end up acquiring faceebook it has already invested 240 million on it, but neither twitter or facebook have signed exclusive agreements with either bing or google. The winners of all this are twitter and facebook because they are the ones who came up with real time innovations. Something to keep on mind for users or website administrators is that information posted on information networks became their property and it will be shared to third parties, there is no such thing as privacy on the web. All of this is something to think about when posting information that may possibly have adverse consequences, it’s like when a police officer said when they make an arrest: anything that you say can and it will be used against you in a court of law, as always use caution with what you share, this is just common sense.

SEO the trick behind website design

I never did fully realize how it was that search engines work. An interesting note is that currently my dad works for a search engine department called Fast search. They specialize in searching for parts of a site within that particular site. However, this SEO that we are discussing is much different. This pertains to the larger search engines that search the web to find you the closest match for what you requested. These include the obvious big ones such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing however there are other search engines out there that are a little less remembered such as AskJeeves.

As far as both social networking and bookmarking are concerned, I thought that they article that Jeff assigned really addressed this well. The article discussed some issues that were very obvious when thinking about the issue while also addressing several more complicated ones that I certainly did not know about. An example of an area that I was familiar with was to create accurate page titles. This would help the person searching to find it easier as well as allow the search engine to locate your site easier. An example of something I was unfamiliar with was that of the description meta tag. I found this particularly very interesting and informative. When I was searching on Google, I would often see these snippets at the bottom, however I really did not understand what it was these were. Now I am beginning to see the whole picture much better.

http://online-social-networking.com/the-long-tail-and-social-media
This website discussed several different advantages that you get from combining your social networking sites with SEO. I found this to be an interesting concept that I would not have actually thought of. Now I better understand what was meant for the combination of the two features. Using the combo of the two really seemed to get your site much better recognition and also at a much faster rate.

http://www.deondesigns.ca/blog/top-social-bookmarking-sites/
This site lists out the top social bookmarking sites that are available online. I found this interesting as well because again, I was not very familiar with this concept. Scrolling through these sites I notice a few examples of sites that I am familiar with which include iLike, Google bookmarks, and Twitter. Surprisingly enough I am also not the most familiar with any of these sites either so I plan to look through a few of them to get a better grasp on these. Anyone have a brief summary of this concept that might clear it up for me?

SEO is here to Stay

Search Engine Optimization(SEO)....not the first thing I think about when I set out to design a website. I want to be creative and have fun. Make the site look any way I want it to. The reality is, my efforts would all be for nothing is I didn't make my website searchable. The main way to find a new site is through searching.

http://www.networksolutions.com/online-marketing/index.jsp
The first site I looked at (using Good Search) was a business that makes websites more searchable. Most of what I could see, without signing up, involved figuring out based on the type if business how to make it more searchable. I never thought that what your business was trying to accomplish would make that big a difference. It does make sense though, considering a business looking to sell products need to approach advertising differently then websites trying to get views or clicks.

Bruceclay.com
The second site I looked at was more informative about SEO. The website reduced SEO to basic keywords and the ability to have as many keywords on your pages. The site also started by saying that there is no one secret, that SEO is something any site has the ability to do.

I thought the google article was interesting, how it showed SEO as being tweeks on the website and shouldn't change the site too much. I always wondered by websites made their titles so long, but that is the first thing looked at for SEO apparently. I also th ink metatags are interesting. It isn't something that would take away in the design of the website, rather just ad to the coding.

SEO Ranking

SEO is the process of enhancing the volume and quality of traffic of a web site through search engines. I found an interesting article titled "New Techniques Help to Boost Blog's Ranking in Google," (http://www.prweb.com/releases/SEO/linkwheel/prweb3210134.htm) According to the article, professionals those who make their living online, treat SEO like a sport. Michael Smith of metafever.com, intorduced LinkWheel.net, an invention that re-defined internet marketing especially to people who used this innovation as a factor of the optimization strategy. The structure of the linkwheel is well written in content and then a series of blogs that created on a high PR web 2.0. Overall, "linkwheels are an exciting new prospect and one you must consider if you are targeting a long term SEO strategy.

The Google article on improving SEO ranking is really helpful to web designers. I am new to web designing so I learned a lot of useful and helpful tips in web designing such as robot.txt, the use of images and tags, and so on.

SEO/Social networking

After researching SEO and taking a look at what may optimize search results for your site, I found that the best results are not only in the keywords you use in your page title, but also the positioning of keywords in the 1st paragraph of the body text. Editing the content of your page and the html is also influential to search engine results. One other idea that I found which I didnt know existed was the use of consultants and consulting agencies. They have the expertise to get your site ranked for terms that matter in your pages industry/areas of interest. Linking your site from others sites also can drive traffic to your own site. Here is a site that I found that lists a few tips:
http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/checklist.htm




SEO and social networking sites work best when you use content in your page relevant to social networking sites, myspace, facebook, etc. Building relationships between your page and social networking sites . Using social networking sites in you SEO efforts requires you to find out what sites are most appropriate for you to frequent. It is useful to become familiar with the culture of the sites, including what kind of content people publish, what’s popular, and how people interact with each other. A site I came upon that has tips for business entrepreneurs is here:

http://yourwebchick.wordpress.com/

SEO

Search engine optimization is the practice of tweaking your website to work with a variety of search engine algorithms and the natural users of your websites to create something that both “floats to the top” in organic searches and that users find easy to find, use, and link to. This is, in some ways, the opposite of SEM, or search engine marketing, which leverages paid inclusion in search engine result sets.

At one point, webmasters were in the habit of “stuffing” websites with keywords, repeating the words that they thought would increase their rankings. As early as 1997 search engines began to rewrite their algorithms to disregard such artificial inflations of rank. Since then, in order to achieve an optimized state for your website it is recommended that website designers make good use of all of the elements of the web page and use human-friendly naming conventions in their page URLs.

In practice, utilizing titles, friendly URLs and the tag will achieve better results in overall search-ability than paid inclusion, which cannot guarantee rank, or keyword loading within the body of a document. Following these guidelines in the development of web pages seems to be good advice.

S E O

Search Engine Optimization is a very good and useful tool to increase hits and make your site more widely known. The Google SEO Start Guide was very helpful and informative. There were obvious know-hows such as the title tag but others like the description meta tag were new to me. I didn't know that Google showed the description meta tag. I always thought Google just showed snippets of text from the website. Also, having a good URL structure was also a good tip. Other tips like the breadcrumbs navigation and the customized 404 page are also great ideas. This entire guide had tips of subtle changes but when utilized all together, I bet the search can be greatly optimized. I never really knew how important the individual title, anchor, h1, etc tags were in a website. Honestly, I kind of found it tedious to have all of those individual tags. But after reading this article, I realize that there is a reason for all of the extra work. For example, I used to avoid or be too lazy to put the "alt" in the image tag but the article states that it is also a good method for optimized search.

As for ways to promote my site, I would say that methods would be different depending on what kind of site you have and what demographic group your site targets. But for the general population, I think social media sites such as facebook and twitter are your best bets. After I launch the site, I would try to make maybe a facebook event on the launching or even a facebook group that people can join. Facebook groups are good for discussions and even posting pictures and events within it. For twitter I would maybe make an account for my site and start following people that i think would be interested in my site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
http://www.seochat.com/

Search Engine Optimization

“The objective of search engine optimization (SEO) is to increase a Web site's traffic counts, and ultimately conversions, by ranking very high in the results of searches for the keywords in the search query. It is the mission of SEO to make the site's content worthy of higher search engine ranking by being more relevant and competent than the competition's. This SEO process is often viewed as a struggle to rank well for just a few keywords, instead of a struggle to satisfy the needs of those entering the query. If you search on your best keywords you will see the leading sites in the rankings and to obtain traffic for your content you will need to rank higher than those top sites. Our free site and full services optimize and improve your search engine rankings (traffic and profits) via our books, classroom SEO training, search engine optimization tools, site assessments, services including placement advice, tips, information and hints to improve your search engine marketing relative to the existing leaders. After all, better keyword ranking is the first step to increased Web traffic.” (http://www.bruceday.com) Obviously, the best way to increase traffic on your site is to use the correct wording in your title and choice of keywords, and to use a variation the keywords like synonyms because not everybody thinks of looking for a business or other sites the same way. Just the same way a phone book is organized is kinda the same way search engines are organized. If you were to look for your favorite restaurant and looked for it by name, somebody else might look for it under restaurants in a location and somebody else might look for it by what they offer on their menu, so the key to optimization is to select all the keywords that relate to the most popular ways that people search for your site and put in a few of the non-popular ways also to optimize the search engines’ capabilities.
“As far as traffic generation is concerned, there are very few techniques and channels that will beat social bookmarking promotion.
That being said, there are a couple of things that you should know. First of all, social bookmarking traffic is very peculiar. It does not click on ads. It does not stick around on your site. And it rarely subscribes to your RSS feed.
Secondly, not all types of content will work on all social bookmarking sites. SEO and blogging related topics tend to perform really poorly on Digg, for example, while political coverage receive good attention on Reddit. Over the time you will need to find what is the right social bookmarking site for your content.” (http://www.dailyblogtips.com)
Social bookmarking is a good way to get your site out there but with the difficulties it poses it is not always the right choice to make for your site promotion. If certain sites do not perform well with your related topics it is sometimes not worth the trouble if people cannot view it. So to better optimized your site, sometimes social networking would work better, it just all depends upon your content and desired audience. Jenn Powless

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is basically what helps specific sites get out to the user through a process that is free. In other words, there is no advertising required to make a site get a lot of hits or to make it profitable. SEO helps search queries receive the most relevant sites just by reading simple elements of HTML code.
In the process of creating a site it's important make sure thee is a title for each page that is short and sweet. When someone reads the title it should be instantly recognizable what each specific page is about. Similar to title tags, meta tags also come in handy. They are more specific than title tags as they give a brief sentence pertaining to the content of each page. It's important to make them clear and concise so that they will appear as part of the search results when someone types in a query.
Some people think that social networking should be used instead of SEO as sites can be even more specifically directed to the user (http://online-social-networking.com/social-media-vs-search-engine-optimization). Social bookmarking also applies to this as it enables users to tag websites and keep them organized in a sort of directory. It enables fast access to heavily traffic sites or site that are visited frequently by the user (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking). The metadata is used to mark the site. SEO is great to market one's site without having to spend any money. Using SEO is great with social networking as many people are interconnected and care share different sites with one another. It's probably the fastest way for a site to become big. The inclusion of bookmarks also allows for these sites to not only be passed on throughout the Internet but to also be remembered thus building a solid foundation for a specific website and it various deeper content.

SEO-Caution to Beginners

For web developers and online businesses alike, three little words equate to a very strategic and crucial principle: search engine optimization (SEO).  This is the practice of employing a variety of strategies in order to get a particular website ranked higher in search engine results.  According to A Discussion on SEO Strategies by Scott Johnson, “it is true that all of the websites that you may view on the Internet are after this very thing to get a better ranking, and who are already on the topmost position are on to remain in that very position. The reason behind this is that the better the ranking a website is having the better are its chances of getting the maximum number of visitors to their website, which would ultimately make their business more profitable.” The higher a website or business ranks in search engine results, the more traffic it will have, the more business it will have, the more it will be able to charge for advertising, etc.  SEO, if properly pursued, can have grossly beneficial results for any website or business.

            There are a litany of methods by which a developer may improve the SEO of a website.  According to the article SEO and Website Optimization “these site optimizations can be spread across metrics like site accessibility, URLs, meta-tags, site architecture and many others.”  The key is to knowing which tweaks to make where, and how often.  For those, like myself, who are completely in the dark as to how these matters work, the handy dandy guideline published by Google called Google’s Search Engine Optimization Guide alludes to many of the manners in which SEO may be achieved.  According to this guide, “Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic search results.”

            It then goes on to elaborate on ways in which a developer may achieve these small modifications.  First, the title is of utmost importance.  The more specific keywords placed in the title, the more likely it is to turn up higher on relevant searches.  Do not make the title just the title, make it the title and a short description of it in pertinent keywords.  The guide offers “The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings.”

            Another way to capitalize on website exposure is to properly employ the usage of meta tags.  A meta tag, if used properly, gives Google and others such search engines a brief summary on what the website is about.  Meta tags are different from title tags in the realm of SEO in that search engines may use the meta tag as a brief description when the page turns up in a site.  Therefore, not only are meta tags used to rank the site in terms of relevance in a search engine result, but it gives the searcher a rough idea of whether that particular site is what he or she was looking for.  This fact makes meta tags that much more important.

            A third manner in which someone may employ SEO is to improve the structure and composition of URLs.  According to SEO and Website Optimization, “If the number of dynamic parameters exceeds two, the length and complexity of the URL increases. With this, user readability as well as search engine comprehension will diminish. Wherever possible use human readable links.”  The way to go about this for beginner to intermediate SEO-ers is to simply make the URL simple, easily remembered words.  For advanced SEO-ers, rewriting a dynamic URL to a static one can be greatly beneficial.  However, this task should only be attempted by experts because the guide states that “while Google is fine with this, we'd like to note that this is an advanced procedure and if done incorrectly, could cause crawling issues with your site.”

            Once a developer begins to delve into these basic procedures, he can hone his SEO skills an continue onto the more complex methods associated with SEO.

http://www.selfseo.com/story-19722.php

A Discussion on SEO Strategies by Scott Johnson

http://losangelespublicrelations.com/seo-website-optimization/01466

SEO and Website Optimization by Los Angeles Public Relations Firms

SEO Rankings

The Google article on SEO Rankings was very interesting. It pointed out many new ways of increasing a site's ranking that are actually quick and easy to do. I knew that the title section was important but I did not realize that unneeded words can actually hurt your website. So therefore it is better to include a brief and descriptive title instead. This logic can also be applied to the URLs for your site. By having words in the URL that describe the page, search engines are able to find your website faster and easier. It is very interesting how something as simple as the way you structure your URLs can be the difference between having your site come up on the first or last page. The main message from this article is that there are a lot of small things that go into websites, and all of these parts are typically quickly overlooked. So by taking your time to make sure these small parts are done correctly, you will be able to greatly increase the SEO rankings of your website.

Organization seems to be another main theme of the article. Even though you main think your organization makes sense or is good enough, the search engine may not. If you do not use a simple organization structure that can be easily identified by the search engine, it will either skip over your site or you will fall very far behind other sites because it takes too long to go through your site. This includes the way the site is coded and how the navigation overall is structured. A very complex and hard to understand navigation system will not help your SEO rankings. Also it is important to understand that when creating the site, make sure that everything is done when necessary and appropriate. Do not just add in extra parts for the purpose of trying to increase your SEO ranking. These extra random parts will only have the opposite result for your website according to the article.

I was reading a similar article in the New York Times the other day. It was talking about how with the growing number of websites on the internet, it is getting harder and harder to bring people to your website. So this article from Google includes very valuable information in terms of solving this growing issue. I found this article very helpful and I think developers should pay close attention to it in order to improve their websites. The times are changing and it is time to change the ways that websites are designed. This change is actually good because it will lead to better organized and clearer websites.

search engine optimization

The search engine optimization refers to the process of improving quality of traffic to any website. Basically this means that the higher website appears in the search result, the more users it will receive. In term of the Internet advertising, the search engine optimization reflects on how different search engines work and what different users search for. Web developers usually edit the content and the codes of the website in order to increase the relevance of some keywords so that the website would appear in search result more often.

One of the ways that web developers can used to promote their sites, which have been discussed in the Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, is creating a unique and accurate page titles. In this way, each time your website appear in the search result the contents of that title tag will appear in the first line of the results. This step is a one way that developer used when they are coding the site, yet after launching the site there are many different ways as well to promote the website. One of them would be blog posts, where you can blog about new content or products.

In term of promoting a website on social networking sites, I believe that many people create a user in those sites to represent a company or a website. For example, they use facebook or twitter to update the latest information or products of their sites. So users of that social networking site can get an idea of what’s going on. In this way, they are marketing their sites in those social networking webpages for free.

SEO and gaining Traffic

Like many web designers and others who make websites, they just want their page to be noticed and used. A successful site is one that not only gains the attention of it's users but also helps them with something that they set out to do by visiting your site. The search engine optimization article that we had to read for class contains a lot of valuable information on this type of topic. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of finding the targeted keyword phrases related to a website. The article points out that many people try to get their website out there by gaining popularity over search engines such as google. They work to achieve high rankings in the search results by a number of different processes. Some processes I already knew but I did not consider many others that important, whereas this article, did.
For one, I knew having grammar errors and not well-picked keywords in your title code could affect your search results in google. However, I had no idea about meta data and tags and robot tags that could be used to help find your page or could even prevent you page from being seen on a search engine like google's or bings. Also, by writing cripser and cleaner code, your website would be more likely to show up on a search engines results. There are many different ways people gain popularity to their site but a key way of doing so would be to use a social networking site. Networking is everything. If you know a lot of people or know a person who knows a lot of people, using a social networking site to gain publicity to your site will be a lot easier. Using facebook or my space would be a great tool in this case to gain creditably for your site.

SEO, Website Promoting

Search Engine Optimization is not something to be over-looked or taken for granted. We have already used some simple methods in our class. I found the following site that describes many methods to improve SEO for your site. First and foremost is to select keywords that are appropriate for your site. For us, the foucs is on optimizing the webpages themselves within the content and tags. Things to make use of is the title in the head section and the alt attribute for images, links, other media. Using the keywords effectively in your content, such as headings and navigation links is a good way to add searcable content. I consider the site map to be one of the best methods that basic users might not create or know about. A site map is like a index that makes it easy for search engines to find all the sites pages. As for methods outside of the website content, there are options for getting on directorise and getting you and your company's name out there. Many of these methods are becoming more focused on the owners of the site doing the work.

Social networking sites are a great way to connect with people, but until I read this article, I never thought of using them to market/promote my websites. I do use LinkedIn, and they have a section of your profile where you can enter up to three website links. Using other sites like Facebook or Twitter can be effective if you highlight products, services, etc on a periodic basis.

Social bookmarking can be used to promote your site in a similar fashion as social networking as described here. One very important technique is to make sure that your bookmarks include interesting content, and not simple promoting your business. For the web developer, the advantage here is to highlight websites that you have built. Not only will people be able to see your work, like a portfolio, but it will also make you customers successful to the point where they might continue to use your services. Particularly for social bookmarking is grouping your links in sites of similar interest. It should have some general theme or industry.

Chuck

SEO

The search engine optimization article contained lots of best practices and things to avoid for search engine optimazation. Much of it seemed like basic good website building strategy, such as not having spelling/grammar errors, and creating a good hierarchy within the website. Some things that I didn't previously know about were meta tags and robot tags that can be used to help find your page or prevent your page from being searched. Following this guide and utilizing the free web developer services that Google offers would be great ways to start promoting websites that we create.

In addition to utilizing code, when creating a new website we should utilize any means available to get the word out. One such way is through social networking sites. This article here discussed some basic ways to promote your websites using social networking sites. The simplest way would be to set up profiles in social networking sites such as Facebook or Myspace, and provide information about our webpages in there. Adding friends, especially others with similar interests, and letting them know about our webpages may not be the most effective means of promotion, but it is a simple way to get the word out.

This blog post here talks a bit about using social bookmarking websites to promote webpages that we create. Its very simple to do. Basically, submit material about your website to the bookmarking website. If users like and rate your content, it can move up through the bookmarking site, gaining more and more viewers. If your content makes it to the homepage, you can gain thousands of viewers within hours. This seems like a very effective way to promote your website, provided you provide your best content on the social bookmarking website and that you post your content on social bookmarking sites featuring topics relevant to the topic of your webpages. I would definitely utilize all of these strategies when creating websites.

Moving up in the ranks

Search engine optimization (SEO) deals with the rank number of a website when searched for something related to a website. For example when you search for laptops the Dell, Gateway and Hp websites come up (because they are big in the sales of laptops). Optimization is a very important tool in website promotion because if a person needs information on a given topic they most likely will use a search engine to find desired content, and if your website is on of the top results in a search your name will get to be well-known.

One way of promoting your website is to use Google AdWords. This service gives a person managing a website the option to increase result rank and pay by the amount of clicks per ads. You basically give Google keys words you want to associate to your website and having your site appear when those words are searched, and the website is charged every time someone clicks on their website after a search. Making sure you are specific in using key words and in setting a reasonable budget is something one must take into consideration as described in this New York Times article

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/business/smallbusiness/15adwords.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=search%20engine%20optimization&st=cse

Social bookmarking is another way of promoting a website. This is where people can search organize and share websites they have bookmarked. This is people referencing other people's websites and is also a way a website can get its name out there. Instructions explained of this process are explained in three steps in this article http://www.ehow.com/how_4687770_use-social-bookmarking-effectivley.html

Google AdWord seems to be the best way to go in promoting a website because Google is such a household name and has such a wide audience. Another essential way a promotion is word of mouth. It may seems prehistoric in this day and age but it still is effective and can help in promotion efforts.

SEO

In today's computer-centric economy, search engine optimization is extremely important no matter what business you are in. In brief, SEO is the soliciting of web traffic using search engines. The most common form of this is trying to obtain a higher ranking on the major search engines (google, yahoo, bing).

While few understand how the google ranking algorithm works, resources such as http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization explain some of the things a web host/designer can do to raise your ranking on search engines. Some things include keyword placement, meta data and tags, and making sure your web design code and content is clean and efficient.

Here's an example of how SEO can be crucial for businesses. I had a teacher who wrote a fairly prominent blog on the internet. She had a poor experience at one of her local car dealerships (lets call it Bob's Cars), and decided to post about it on her blog. Since her blog was fairly popular (and had existed for over 10 years), whenever someone searched "Bob's Cars" in google, her blog (containing the negative opinion on the company) came up higher in the search ranking than the actually dealership's website. The dealership ended up giving my teacher a great deal on a car, as long as she took the post down.

Companies are also using social networking sites to promote their businesses. Even though this may seem unnecessary or 'tacky', I feel it can be very successful for promotion. The age old marketing slogan, "any publicity is good publicity" really comes into play here: Social Networking sites pull in record amounts of internet traffic. Companies that host advertisements on these sites are getting their name out, which is important for a business.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of finding the targeted keyword phrases related to a website, and to ensure that the website places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search. "http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/search_engine_optimization/" Being able to search for the website on Google/Bing/Yahoo is similar to free advertising especially if the website contains all the keywords for that particular search. When there are more people that searches under the same keywords, it will lead a particular site to be read the most and is then put under the first 10 search results.

According to the article "Ten Tips to the top of the search engines", i've learned that the best websites can easily make it up to Google/Yahoo/Bing and one of the "tip" is that when creating a website, one should be creating for their target audience -- for people's possible needs instead of focusing for the search engines. It is very simple but I am sure it is something that many web developers forget/lose track of during the web designing process. Also one should design and categorize the site based on the possible keyword searches otherwise it will be difficult for researchers to find the information they want. One last important point i learned is that one must make sure that the site is "link-worthy" so that other sites e.g. facebook/twitter and other social networks/popular sites will find your site useful and then link to it and ultimately boost visitors.

As for the site "Set it but don't forget it", I learned that developers must create a website as un-defective as possible so that there will be less re-creating to do. For example, the website should be made under high usability so that it wont be difficult for web developers to later on implement extra information/changes.

Both articles gives web developers some quick tips however i think the second site could have added additional things since the article is relatively new. I think the search helps me to think what and how I should design my sites in the future for optimal use by users/researchers.

SEO

I used Google for my research. According to Wikipedia "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO)is the process of improving the volume of quality of traffic to a website from search engines via"natural" or "organic" search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. This is free publicity if you will. This tracks and promotes the traffic of your website. As an website designer it is important for when you code that you put as many keywords in the coding as possible.

Strategies for promoting your website on social networking sites and bookmarking sites is to build an audience. According to the article The Web Marketing Checklist: 37 Ways to Promote Your Website. the best way is to be keyword rich when it comes to coding. Have keywords attached to images, hyperlinks, site maps, promote on social networking site such as Facebook by having your website as a link, and bookmarking sites. On the blog of Website Traffic Series Part 16: Promoting Your Content on Social Networking Sites gives insight on how you can further promote after your have launched your site. I think that the first article is the most effective, because it is tracked and doesn't really rely on you personally asking visitors to visit your site.

I would really know where to begin with trying to promote a website that I designed or try to help the person I created it for but both articles gave me insight on where to try to begin.

The new CNN

To be honest I rarely use the internet and if I use it is to check my e-mail or to submit assignments on blackboard, I read the news either on the USA today or The New York Times, but I don’t read the news on the internet. So, when on this assignment I was asked to check the new CNN and read the article about the new changes made on the website, or in other words to compare apples to apples I can’t tell the difference, because to me pretty much it seems the same apple, except for one big difference that sets apart the information found in the printed world versus the digital: infotaiment.
Television, cable, movies, internet is a big circus where all kinds of valuable and useless information is mixed with reality shows, magicians, soap operas, cartoons, violence and all kinds of useless garbage, reading in printed form like books, journals, magazines etc. is on serious decline on this country. It was believed that with the advent of the internet, people will be more informed with the abundance of information but it turn out not to be the case. The movie The Network explained this phenomenon and it is as accurate today as it was back in 1976 when the movie was made, check this link to see what I’m talking about:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTN3s2iVKKI

Search engine location, location, location

Although many people might think so, Google is not magic. The search engine and ones like it need a way to actually scrounge up results when users are looking for something. They parse through the title, content, and code of the sites to find the most relevant to a searcher's query. Publishers on the web can take advantage of this process through Search Engine Optimization.

Effective SEO will take a site to the top of search results when it is relevant, and thereby drive traffic to the site and make it more profitable or effective. A recent article in the New York Times discusses the new jobs that are developing as companies working on the web try to utilize this strategy. The article says that, most importantly, SEO includes "identifying appropriate keywords for search engines like Yahoo or Google to home in on, and adding them to a Web site’s programming code."

Social Bookmarking sites, according to Wendy Boswell of about.com, are "sites that allow users to post their favorite sites, using tags (or keywords) to categorize and organize them; then other users can take these bookmarks and add them to their own collection or share them with even more users." Basically, they are "look what I found!" services for people to mark sites that are worthwhile for others to look at (and comment on, in the case of digg).

If someone picks up on your site through social bookmarking, there's the potential for it to explode. This is a lot more promising than social networking like Facebook and Twitter. On sites like these, you'd be required to either make a page and try to reach out to individual people, or just hope that people tell their friends/followers about your site. This is a pretty big "if" if you're a corporation looking to get people to start talking about your site. This will happen if you have unique, buzz-worthy content. No amount of social self-promotion will help you if your site sucks.

Ideally, a great strategy will incorporate Search Engine Optimization from the get go, using strategically planned terms and keyworks in the code in order to get the site to come up in search results. Worthwhile content will power the social movement, although a little shameless self promotion through Bookmarking sites, Facebook, and Twitter can't hurt.

Beyond Just Googling

With today's technology, it is essential that companies stay on track with the ever growing developments of the internet. It is no longer just about television commercials and newspaper ads, it is about connecting to a global audience through the internet. There is now a whole psychology behind what initial words we think of before typing into a search field. Companies like BruceClay* help generate more traffic through Search Engine Optimization. In their front page, they describe SEO as a "process... often viewed as a struggle to rank well for just a few keywords, instead of a struggle to satisfy the needs of those entering the query." In short, they stress how important it is to target specific keywords in order to optimize traffic-- meta tags.

In today's New York Times, an article titled "How to Market Your Business With Facebook"* mentions the process of how to market a business through social-networking. Since Facebook has millions of users of various demographics, it is extremely quick with mass exposure. For example, the article tells the story of how a wedding photographer managed to generate thousands in growth in profit with just $300 for Facebook advertising.

If I were to personally promote my own company, I would first try to consult a SEO company to help me with searching. Depending on what my company specializes in, I would try to use words that are related to it while trying to generate as much traffic as possible. After that, I would try to reach a broad audience by using Facebook and other social networking sites. Like the wedding photographer, if I were say, a veterinarian, Facebook would link me with those users who have pets or have interests in animals. I would also use Twitter to keep people up to date with any information concerning my company.

Also, in terms for the design of my website, I would choose specific colors that is modern and contemporary. I would like to have a clean design that would attract a universal audience through simplicity and design. I think it is important to have a good name for your company and also to brand it as an image you would think would attract as much customers as possible.

*BruceClay

http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm

*NYT Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/business/smallbusiness/12guide.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=facebook&st=cse

SEO your way to world domination

The first thing that young adults do when they want to find out more about ANYTHING is Google it. How do I know? Google told me. Plus I've actually done primary research on the subject. According to subjects in my focus groups, Google is a great and easy way to visually rank website sources. What does this mean? It means, the higher the item in the results list, the better that website is for your search. Or, at least, young adults think so. My research also concluded that young adults view websites as the first and most important face of a company. So what does this mean? SEO is everything, if you're a company trying to catch the eye of the younger generation. And if you're a company, you should be trying to catch our eye. We're growing up quickly.

But, according to a blogger on a web design and development blog, SEO can fail businesses if they don't use the rest of their online resources effectively. Some of these other actions include:

• Blog commenting,
• Article writing,
• Forum involvement;
• Social media presence and;
• Backlink building.

The writer says that using these resources often helps to outrank bigger competition. It not only helps to spread keywords around and raise awareness, but people actually are more likely to trust the word of bloggers and forum writers than websites, necessarily.

A blogger on MyCheapTravelGuide.com points out the importance of SEO in guaranteeing traffic to a website (something that no other medium but the internet can guarantee), but also in targeting. People searching these keywords are interested. This is another benefit of social networks. Involvement on topic-based forums and blogs allow targeting according to specific interests, of people who are actively searching out more information on these topics. Facebook very cheaply allows advertisers to narrow their target down to even their favorite movie (I am always amused by all the ads I get "For Labyrinth Lovers"). This way companies can be in the space that their target is, without coming off as intrusive or interrupting the flow.

The gist of what I'm saying is, whether you're planning on taking over the world with your giant, billion-dollar evil corporation or just by your poor college-student lonesome, there are a lot of free options online for sneakily promoting yourself where people are most trusting. Woohoo, power to the people. And companies.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is very important in order to get your Website noticed and out there. When you are creating your site you would use keywords in your title of your site or in your code. The more keywords you use the better chance you have of getting searched more.

You also want to self promote your website after it is launched and there are several great ways to do that. I think the most effective way to promote your website would be to use a Social Networking site. The top 10 Social Networking sites are http://social-networking-websites-review.toptenreviews.com/.

The top Social Networking site is http://www.facebook.com/ You can use the site by to creating your own group or posting a comment about your new website on your own page and on all of your friends' pages. You can also create your own free Ads http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?src=advf2#/advertising/?src=advf2 that will be displayed on the right side of the pages. The ads are displayed depending on what you list as your targeted audience. You can list keywords and really narrow your target audience.

Another good tool would be to use a Social Bookmarking site like http://delicious.com/help/learn by bookmarking my website so other people can add the link to their bookmarks.

Do all of these things and I think you will be well on your way to getting noticed! :)

Wanna be on top?

Search Engine optimization (SEO) refers to a process of aligning a website’s code and content with strategic keywords phrase targeting. The goal of SEO is to assist a search engine algorithm in understanding a website’s keyword focus and ultimately achieve high natural search engine placement for those keywords and keyword phrases. This is achieved by various techniques such as submitting the website to directory services, careful placement of words and key phrases, hyperlinks, Meta tags, images, links and HTML and other forms of coding.

Web developers and managers should continuously improve search engine optimization by improving content, making sure that the pages are able to be indexed correctly, and ensuring that the content is unique.The better optimized the page is, the higher a ranking it will achieve in search engine result listings. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. Internet users don’t usually bother to click through pages and pages of search results and that is why it is so important for a website to come out in the top returned search results, preferably the first page.

I found two interesting articles Search Engine Placement Tips and 37 Ways to promote Your Website that discuss various SEO strategies and provide some useful tips on how to help your web page appear in the top search results.

Besides improving natural placement of search results, social networking tools are a great way to promote a website. Becoming active on social networking sites will bring traffic to your site as well as develop back links. The best thing about social networking sites is that they are free and they give you free access to huge potential client base. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Digg.com, Delicious.com, and Technorati.com represent the most popular social networking and bookmarking sites that can be utilized to promote your own websites.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is basically what is done to your website to make it pop up more often in popular search engines. This will increase the traffic on your website and help you to gain more popularity. It is very important that the web designer comes up with a optimization strategies or hire somebody to do that for them. It will influence how I make my sites because I will have in mind how it can be searched. It makes you think carefully about what you name the site so that it will pop up more often. In order for this to happen the tags you put on each page have to be unique and the site description should be brief but very informative. For promoting on social networking sites I would have ads on that site or fan pages and groups with will promote my site. It will have an easy name so that it can bookmark easily.
http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/successful-website-marketing/222/here is a brief article on how to successfully market a new website. http://www.searchengineguide.com/scottie-claiborne/successful-website-marketing-needs-more-than-great-search-listings.php This is another more in depth view on how to market successfully. The second article has more things that aren't usually thought of. For example it explains why sites that are unique or for a unique product do not often get searched.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is defined by wikipedia as "the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion." To increase your SEO for google organically, unique and accurate page titles are required. The example that google gives of a good title is one that includes the business name and three main focus areas of the website. Google recommends to accurately describe your page's content, create unique title tags for each page, and use brief, but descriptive titles. Another aspect that google's bots check for on your sites content are your meta tags. Meta tags "gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about." Meta tags are longer then the pages title, and they are what google often uses as the snippet description of your website. Google recommends overall good coding, including having good anchor text, appropriate headings, optimizing use of your images, and using robots.txt effectively.
All of this information is extremely important to how I am going to code my websites in the future. It is essential that I code my websites using methods that will be good for search engine optimization so that there will be a lot of traffic drawn to my site. Some other ways to promote your site, besides for having good code is by paying to advertise. A very effective program is using google adwords. Google adwords is a program where google uses keywords that you give them for your site, and puts your website at the top and side bars of a search listing. Google charges you a set rate for each key word that is used, the rate varies, the price increases for more popular key words. Some other advertising that is very effective is advertising on social networking sites. The most popular social networking site is facebook, and advertising on facebook may be the most effective method to draw traffic to your website. A good article about this is http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/business/media/14digi.html. That article tells about how large advertising companies such as procter and gamble are using sites such as facebook as ways to advertise. Another good article about advertising on social networking sites is http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/10/social-network-advertising-annoying-effective.html. That articles tells about a study that shows that "1006 people with broadband access who spent at least $200 online in the past year, used a community site such as MySpace and consumed or made some type of digital media including videos and music." That information is very valuable as a website designer, and possible ebussiness owner because it is good evidence that it is essential to spend money advertising on social networking sites to maximize the traffic that is drawn to your site. Even though it is vital and essential to have good back-end coding of your website, there is no getting around advertising.

The powerful bing

The fact that a person's status can be searched for doesn't really scare me. I think the press this is all getting should just be a warning to everyone. WHAT YOU PUT ONLINE IS PUBLIC! I have all the privacy settings on my facebook, but I still don't put things online that my parents couldn't see.

Bing is just making it easier to find things that anyone could find if they tried hard enough anyway.

Bing Status Search

This new feature of real-time status updates on the Bing search engine is a bit much. People already have to be cautious about what they put out on social networking site today pertaining to current or potential employers and this is just another reason to delete your profile. Not to mention most statuses are random and not really worth putting them on a search engine. Then some people may get the wrong impression from a status (you can't hear voice or tone in text).

If you take a look at status updates our your friends on these sites do you think these people would want this information tagged to them for the whole world to see? These websites such as Twitter and Facebook are supposed to be a way to communicate, have fun and act silly with your friends. Now that employers, colleges and other notable institutions do "background checks" on these sites it really makes you question who is watching you.

B'itter Goo'book?

The coup here for Microsoft is not that they have secured a deal with Twitter and Facebook but that they have gotten it to press first. First counts for quite a bit in advertising, and evidently in operating systems as well, yet the internet seems to favor the "latest" ever so slightly over the "first" and only a hair less than the "best".

So while Bing is new and bing has the latest deal with these giants of social networking, it seems clear that it has not and will not soon eclipse Googles hold on the fine art of searching. In fact, the entire issue of whether or not MS has gotten one over on the competition is beside the point. The winners here are Twitter and Facebook, hands down, the amount of free press that they are recieving is priceless. Couple that with their names popping up in search results for the forseable future every time a results set is conjured up and you have to have some pretty happy heads of marketing in Palo Alto and San Fransisco.

One thing in the article does hint at is the potential for Microsoft to profit from this deal on both ends. Having made an extremely modest ($240M) investment into Facebook before any of their competition managed to any exposure that FB gets through Bing, or Google, means more $$ in the pocket of the Hydra of the personal computing world.

While this news does not seem to be rocking the foundations of online society it does imply that juggling tweet, blog and website is going to become even more vital as having an active microbloggin presence will now equate to even greater exposure through search results. So, the message of the day? Make some [more] noise!! ...and embed your tweet-stream on your site somewhere.

Web Stalker 2.0

As if it wasn't bad enough that one's facebook status is shown to every "friend" they have, now it could be on search engines? I can deal with people I know seeing my statuses and whatnot, but for any old Joe Schmoe to know my current status by searching my name? I can't say that I am a fan of the idea. Personal rant aside, I should give my thoughts on the questions posed in the email.

I think it may have a slight impact on Google's market share at first, but the article said that both Facebook and Twitter have been talking to Google too, so once Google gets it up and running I don't see much further impact. As for benefitting Twitter and Facebook, this would definitely give them a lot more visibility, as people's tweets and status updates may pop up during typical searches, but I can't really see them gaining a lot out of this. I don't really see how this would impact my future ventures into web design. Perhaps I may have to find better ways to rank higher in the search engines.

This whole thing to me just seems like a "Hey, look what we can do!" adaptation of technology, at the compromise of people's privacy. I can't say that I see any real benefits to it, but I suppose I'll have to see this in action in order to know the impact of it.

Bing - Search Rounding Out

Microsoft grabbing the rights to the real time status updates and tweets for Facebook and Twitter is a huge deal. We talked about Google a couple weeks ago now and how they have the significant market share over all of the competition. The one way that competition could catch up to Google is to offer something important that Google cannot. This is that something. If this new idea takes off, soon more and more users will learn about the idea of bing searching (something I did not previously know). Google should be careful here not to allow this competition to branch out too far and develop too many features that separate it, and maybe even make it better than what Google has to offer. Honestly, I do not totally see the appeal of this from the standpoint of twitter and Facebook. However, they certainly see something that I do not as they have clearly been active on this front. This is a way of spreading their name and an additional feature to what you can do with their sites so in that respect this is a content boost. As far as developing my own websites, this would not greatly affect how I designed my site unless I was designing something for a social networking site. If that was the case, I would have a few concerns and priorities. Those would be that first, security and privatization now become even more important for the individual user. They have to have the types of options that Facebook allows for so that the user can decide who can find them in a search result. Also, you would want to design a specific status or update or recently changeable post section that you could have search-able on a major search engine like Google or Bing. This would allow for your site to spread its influence and be picked up more frequently. In the long run, I do not think that this will significantly affect Google or their market share. However, this is something to look out for in the future. I suspect that Google will counter with a move of their own or at least come up with a similar idea. I don't think they will let Microsoft make a move like this alone. This certainly opens the door for a more competitive market share though down the road.

Prepare for Even more Cluttered Search Engine Results

The web offers a wealth of information; some of it is easily accessible, and the rest is untapped.  According to Cnet News, Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, may have found a way to tap into a large  component of that wealth.  Microsoft is supposedly forming a partnership with Facebook and Twitter in order to enable status updates on each of these sites to come up as Bing search engine results.  This means that every useless update about a favorite type of coffee, what someone's child's first word was, and a random person's current location could all be popping up as answers to inquiries.  However it also means that political status updates, pertinent world events, and celebrity sightings could be popping up, too.  To me it seems as if Microsoft is just throwing unnecessary logs into a  blazing fire; at some point too much wood suffocates the flames.

As far as benefits go, I don't think that Twitter, Facebook, or Microsoft will gain too much from this deal.  If Facebook and Twitter users even take notice of the fact that Bing turns up user posts, very few of them will actually take that into consideration while updating statuses.   The only real benefit that Microsoft might come away from this with is publicity; people may start using Bing more frequently than Google just because of the buzz this deal could potentially generate.  People who are actually interested in what Twitter and Facebook users have to say already have, or will create, an account for one of these sites.  I think this partnership is a poorly planned publicity stunt that will, in the long run, benefit none of the parties involved.

I'm not sure how much of an impact this will have on future web design.  In the capacity of search features on any given website this new realm of status updates may need to be taken into consideration, but outside of this field I highly doubt this potential partnership will have any significant change on the manner in which websites are actually designed.

Bing vs. Google: Search Engine wars continued

Given that “real-time” search has been on Microsoft’s and Google’s agendas for a while, the recent announcement about Bing’s partnership with Facebook and Tweeter that promises to integrate real-time status updates and tweets into search results is not surprising. In fact, Twitter was in independent discussions with both companies earlier and Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, talked about the importance of real-time search not long ago:

“I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real time search. At first, my team laughed and did not believe me. Now they know they have to do it. Not everybody needs sub-second indexing but people are getting pretty excited about realtime.”

Real time data could enhance a search engine by identifying current hot topics, improving search results and delivering more targeted advertising. While Twitter and Facebook both have talked to Google about similar arrangements, Microsoft was first to announce the deal. Microsoft finally had something Google did not have. However, that did not last long. Just a few hours later Google was back in the game. The company announced a nonexclusive deal with Twitter to include updates on its search engine (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html ).

Microsoft might get an advantage since its Tweeter search feature in beta has already gone live while Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer said: “we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months”. I think that even if Bing will gain an advantage, it will be short-term. Rather sooner than later Google will launch a search service that would index content from Twitter and I believe it will do it better than Bing does now. In a long run, Microsoft's deal will not have any significant impact on Google's market share.

Twitter and Facebook will certainly get some benefits from the deal. First of all, potentially Bing or Google can do a much better job at searching tweets and Facebook status updates than the sites’ own engines. Twitter’s search engine, for example, is slow and search results are hard to navigate. In addition, the two sites will gain even more attention and popularity. Finally, the companies get an undisclosed amount of money in exchange for their data.

As a website manager I would follow the trends and if possible incorporate real-time data into my websites. I would also add "Follow Us on Twitter" and Facebook links.

Search deal

It is interesting to speculate how this deal will affect the results of the Bing search engine. The article mentions changes to Facebook by allowing users to set options for what information of theirs is public. So I can see this using people's names, schools, colleges, etc to increase the search results in Bing.
I'm not quite sure how I see this being used for Twitter. Twitter has their own search right now at http://search.twitter.com/. I tried this out, by searching a few keywords. It gives you twitters updates where the keyword shows up, but I am not seeing how this will help me find useful information or research topics. Other sites like LinkedIn and Orkut are likely to jump on board with search engine as well. Maybe search engines will change to allow people to filter results by the source that the information comes from. For this I mean, static pages, major news sites, social networking sites, etc. Taking search engines to this level would allow users like me to filter out extraneous search results.

Chuck

BING!!!! OOHHH!!!!

I have read the article about Microsoft having a stake in the Bing empire. So will google jump on board? Most likely I don't see why they wouldn't. I think the live updates from twitter and facebook is awesome. Currently yahoo.com has this already. I think it is a great idea. Google already has millions upon millions of users. They wouldn't have to find the twitter or facebook website, they can just click and log on. This would have a huge impact on Google it will give their users more access.

I think this will benefit twitter and facebook tremendously. While someone is web surfing they can also check their status. As manager of a website it will give you more to manage, code, and maintain. But all in all I think it is a great idea,considering that Google is already huge.

B I N G

Bing is currently trying to make a deal with Twitter and Facebook so it can get the real-time status updates and tweets on it's search results. Personally, as an ardent user of both twitter and facebook, I don't like the fact that my privacy would be compromised. I know there are settings in which you can privatize your account but even so, I think it is going a tad overboard with Bing trying have this deal. Why not just use the search functions in both of the actual sites? Perhaps this is beneficial to those who do not have twitter or facebook accounts. Well then, if they are so keen on finding out certain people's tweets or status' why not just sign up for an account. Crimes committed through Internet social media networks are alarmingly increasing: sexual predators on MySpace, robberies through Facebook, stalkers, etc etc.

To put a temporary halt on my opinions and to answer the questions for class, if this deal does go through I do believe it would impact the market share for Google. Since Twitter and Facebook are immensely popular social networking sites, I think a lot of people would utilize this function on Bing to search for whatever they want/need. Would Twitter and Facebook benefit from this deal? Like I said before, if this happens, people will not necessarily need to sign up for accounts on these sites to search for/look at other people's accounts. Wouldn't that be a disadvantage for them? But also, having this search function may increase exposure for both these sites and encourage more people to sign up.

As a website manager, if this deal is successful, I'd probably want to build a website that has real-time update functions. So if people search for something, there is a chance that my website will pop up on the results as well. If Bing does incorporate this function, as a website manager, I would want a separate search page- one for the real-time results and one for just the normal results. That way, my webpage has less of a chance of being smothered and hidden by all the other updates/tweets that may contain the same search words as my webpage.

There are so many people who update or tweet about useless, pointless things. Let's say you wanted to search for a really insightful, meaningful update about something you are thinking of or a certain current event. I'd say there are loads of useless, spamming updates/tweets and it'll be a headache to sift through the results, trying to find one decent update. Is this really a good idea...?

New Bing deal

I think that this deal is a very interesting move on Twitter and Facebook's part. As I read through the article they did not say they were going to make a deal exclusively with Microsoft. So they will receive benefits from the deal with Microsoft and can turn around and make a deal with Google, and receive even more benefits.

Many may view this as Microsoft trying to take over. In reality, these deals with Microsoft and Google just allow us as a society to view more information and do not necessarily give either company more control. The real companies that are coming out of these deals in great shape are Twitter and Facebook. They are able to give their websites even more view in the online digital world. Future websites may have more Facebook and Twitter parts inserted into them in order to come up on searches.

I read a few articles last week about how people are becoming more worried about privacy in terms of their Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace accounts. Many people are actually getting rid of their accounts due to this fear. So by Bing and Google creating this deal, these people will have even more to worry about. This will put everyone using these sites at an even greater risk of having their privacy violated. Both of these companies have walked the line of what is giving out too much information about their users. It is very obvious that both companies do not really care about the privacy of their users. They are just looking to see how much money they can make off of the vast amount of information they have accumulated. If these deals successfully go through, web developers will be making Facebook and Twitter a bigger part of their sites and have them become functional parts.

Badda Bing Badda Boom

Microsoft's astounding executive Qi Lu has recently announced that they have made a deal with Twitter and Facebook. The deal consists of posting real-time status updates on Microsoft's Bing search engine. Creepy right? When you think of this you automatically assume, where is the privacy? Facebook will without a doubt implement a new privacy policy. But in the years to come how will this new deal affect Facebook's popularity as well as Bing's monsterous search engine competitor Google?

For one, I believe not much will change in a short period of time. Privacy issues will arouse and lawsuits will probably be made but how will this affect the popularity of Facebook, bing, and google? I think this is Microsofts weak attempt at competing with google. Google is the number one search engine on the web. It will remain that way for an extremely long time unless something drastic happens. Sorry Microsoft, I guess you'll just have to deal with being number 2 in something on the web.

Twiitter Bing vs. Google Wave

The partnership of Twitter and Bing to allow searching of Twitter "tweets" is interesting more for its conception that the way in which users will actually likely employ it. While Bing will undoubtedly see growth in their popularity as a result of the link, the actual benefits to people who use Bing will probably be marginal. The rationale given by Bing for the decision to offer closer integration with Twitter reflects the superficiality of the approach, which it seems primarily offers the opportunity to keep up with real-time internet rumors about Taylor Swift. While the seemingly frivolous starting point of this collaboration may engender more interesting possibilities in the future, Microsoft is not yet taking seriously the possibilities of connecting social networking with its search engine. I don't envision Google seeing this partnership as much of a threat, given that their own product along similar lines, the Google Wave, is currently under development. Wave has a much more serious ambition of creating a powerful internet forum that Google envisions as a replacement for email, a much more ambitious goal that shows that Google is far more serious about innovating in the area of online communication that this new offering from Bing suggests Microsoft is.

Bing and Google

Personally, I don't like the idea of social networking information being published on Bing, or any other search engine for that matter. The first obvious issue that it brings up is privacy. Anyone world wide being able to search for your status update seems a little too open ended to me. Yes, there will be extensive privacy settings that will limit this, but does the average user of facebook and twitter actually manipulate the possible privacy settings on their accounts? I can see this being a problem when, for example, a company looking to hire searches the applicant's name on Bing. They then see the applicant's status concerning how wasted they got the other night. One might say that this is the user's fault for even publishing that information, but still I don't like the fact that that situation could in fact happen.

Yes, this might push Bing up in the search engine market, but I don't think that they will make a dent in Google's share of the market. In fact, I like the idea of google's take on social search more: The search you perform is based on your gmail contacts list. This, I feel, would help curb privacy issues. http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html

What's the point?

Mainly I believe this an attempt for Microsoft to gain some form of legitimacy into the search engine market. Bing itself will not take over or even have much of an impact on Google so Microsoft is trying to find any little feature they can tack on to Bing to make it a more desirable site to browse. It's better for Microsoft than to not do anything at all, but quite frankly the whole idea seems, for lack of a better term, stupid.
I don't have a Facebook account or Twitter myself, but I could imagine that people don't want their profiles to open to everyone on the Internet. This will just make way for more creepy online stalking like there's not enough of it already. Who needs all these live update to appear each time someone makes a search query? It'll just clog up webservers with unnecessary information. Some people just want to find out information without knowing what a person is doing at given moment. Interms of this having a effect on Google's maret share, I don't think it will since Google is already in talks with Facebook and Twitter about a potential deal. It really all depends on if this idea catches on or not. It might or might not benefit Facebook and Twitter depending on whether people become attracted to these sites or just find them utterly annoying and cumbersome to deal with. I personally feel it will detract from the appeal of these sites. As a web designer I don't think this will have any affect on websites I design. I don't condone social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter and would not make any effort whatsoever to incorporate real-time live status updates or any other aspect of Facebook or Twitter into any site I design.

Bing vs. Google

Wow, it appears that Bing is really giving Google a run for their money! I think if Bing did in fact "ink" this deal with Facebook and Twitter it will be a major improvement to both social networking sites. Facebook and Twitter are widely used and the fact that Google did not get the deal will hurt their market share because this deal will bring more traffic to Bing.

Having a internet search box is useful for users when they visit websites. With Bing's "real-time status updates and tweets into search results" and the vast amount of people that use Twitter and Facebook, I believe that this will bring more types of information to more people! This will prove to be a very profitable move for Bing as well as bring more users to other websites and be profitable for other website managers.

Another silly convergence - Bing and Social Networks

I always thought the point of social networking was to keep in touch with people that you care to keep in touch with, hence the ideas of "following" people on twitter and "befriending" people on facebook. You do not see what's going on in the lives of people you aren't connected to, and this is obviously how it is meant to be. This begs the question as to why live status and tweets need to be searchable with a separate search engine. As has been said before me, if I "bing" George Clooney, I want information on George Clooney, not someone's grammatically incorrect 140-character opinion on him.

This is another dangerous example of conglomeration. I talked about this in my blog about google a while back - when a brand stands for too many things, it doesn't really stand at all. Bing is not a strong brand as is, associating it with stronger, much different brands can hurt its livelihood and may even effect Microsoft.

Will Google's market share be hurt? Probably not. But this is probably moreso because Google will continue to be innovative and will have something to counter this new aspect of Bing soon enough. Either that, or searchable real-time statuses will be as useless as they seem and Google won't even have to counter. Regardless, this seems like a half-baked scheme whose benefits probably won't be realized.

Privacy Invasion

I personally don't like this idea. I think that it is a risky investment for Microsoft to have Bing partnering with Twitter and Facebook. I mean who would want to have their statuses public across the world wide web now. Now everyone have access to your daily lives. It is very a creepy thought. It is a new and somewhat fresh idea but definitely not a smart move to make. So, it wouldn't affect Google in a big way.
It would definitely be a huge privacy issue. I just read an article on CNN.com titled "Facebook, Twiitter crooks just a click away": http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/24/tech.social.networking.crimes/index.html. If everyone's personal information is on search engines now, then it would be setting up the users to be victims of these cybercriminals. These users are more likely to expose their information on the internet. It would be much more easier to hack in to their accounts. It would definitely be an advantage for cybercriminals.

"Stacibeth is currently posting a blog!"

I really don't see how this new adaptation of the Bing dyno could make a huge change to Google's market share. Firsties, the whole idea of having status updates in search results is creepy. Who would be attracted to that? People's statuses (stati?) aren't exactly credible resources. Honestly, if I'm searching for a celebrity, why would I care about what random people have to say about him or her? Also, I don't understand how it would work search-wise. On Google, search results turn up in order depending on search engine optimization. I assume this is how other search engines work (although I really don't know). How would this work for status updates?

Secondies, the article itself says that "According to AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, neither partnership will actually turn into a product for 'weeks, if not months,' and that both Twitter and Facebook have also been talking to Google about similar deals." To me, that's kind of a "we're reporting this, but it could not mean anything" statement. The article says that Facebook and Microsoft both aren't commenting about the deal. AND, Twitter is also looking for connections with Google. What does this mean for Google's future? Probably not anything horribly negative.

Bing deal with Twitter and Facebook

I think finding real-time status updates on Bing search engine is a pretty interesting method. It means that I can get the latest updates of my friends on twitter or facebook without having an account on those sites, which going to make more people be in sync with the latest information of whatever they are interested in. however, I believe there will be a huge privacy issue.

This deal could benefit Twitter and Facebook because real time status updates would be easier to find. In addition, it would be available in multiple places and easy to access. So, more people can access the same information. But again what if the user doesn’t want to share his/her updates “privacy”.

I believe this deal will have some impact on Google’s market share but not by that much. Google will continue to be the best on market especially because they already have something similar, which is Google Social Search http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-google-social-search-i.html

Bing Deal with Facebook and Twitter

It is expected that at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft executive Qi Lu will announce that Microsoft has struck a deal with Twitter and Facebook to post their real-time status updates on Microsoft's Bing search engine. This will change the dynamics of search engines, especially the dominance of Google, because never before has a search engine been able to post real-time status updates. Facebook and Twitter are amongst the most popular websites around, and including their live-feeds in the Bing search engine, will add a new dynamic that will give users a new reason to use Bing instead of Google.
Up until recently Facebook has never allowed user profile information to show up in search engines, but now with this new deal they are going to have to change a lot of their privacy settings, as well as user profile settings. With these changes, users can pick what can show up on search engines and what will remain private. It is also speculated that Twitter is looking to make a deal with Google as well. I do not know what impact this will make on Twitter and Facebook because they are entering unchartered territories. I think that this change may increase their popularity because their visibility will be increased, however on the same token I think that Facebook may lose a lot users who do not want to deal with the new privacy settings. This change may affect the way I design websites in the future because if Bing becomes more popular than Google then I will try to get my website to come up earlier in Bing's search engine rather then Google's.

Bing Search - Tweet - Facebook

After reading the article, i dislike Bing even more than before. Bing isn't as good a search engine as Google and now they want to include people's status updates as part of their search results, what is the sense in that?
Many of my friends do not like using tweeter nor do they plan on using it any time soon. However Facebook is loved by many but because cops and school officials can find your pictures uploaded/notes/wall posts and may hold it against you, which have caused quite a few amount of people to stop uploading.
Here's a current case regarding students uploading pictures to facebook and is now in trouble with the school -- http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/teen-pics/
Therefore would anyone want to be charged with underage drinking or any criminal charges simply because you posted your night of fun and mayhem on Facebook as a way of expressing yourself and updating people around you? And now that Bing is going to search your status updates and give it out as search results will definitely cause more people to get in trouble with the law. Granted that there's the privacy function where you can avoid being searched by privatizing everything but like that teen's case (above), their friends found those pictures and they sent it around and was ultimately sent to the school principal -- Would you want that to happen to you? I would hope not.
I guess I wouldnt use facebook as much anymore...