Smaaz's Blog » SEO http://www.smaaz.com Webmaster Blog with Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing related articles! Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:08:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 en hourly 1 December U.S. Search Engine Rankings http://www.smaaz.com/2007/01/16/december-us-search-engine-rankings/ http://www.smaaz.com/2007/01/16/december-us-search-engine-rankings/#comments Tue, 16 Jan 2007 15:12:58 +0000 Manuel http://www.smaaz.com/2007/01/16/december-us-search-engine-rankings/ comScore Networks today released its monthly Search analysis of activity across competitive search engines. In December 2006, Google Sites captured 47.3 percent of the U.S. search market, gaining 0.4 share points from the previous month. Yahoo! Sites grew 0.3 share points, maintaining its second place ranking with 28.5 percent of U.S. searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (10.5 percent), Ask Network (5.4 percent) and Time Warner Network (4.9 percent). 

Americans conducted 6.7 billion searches online in December, up 1 percent versus November. Annual growth rates in search query volume remained strong with a 30-percent increase since the same month a year ago.

Google Sites led the pack with 3.2 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (1.9 billion), MSN-Microsoft (713 million), Ask Network (363 million), and Time Warner Network (335 million).

]]> http://www.smaaz.com/2007/01/16/december-us-search-engine-rankings/feed/ 1 Image Optimization for Search Engines and Visitors http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/17/image-optimization-for-search-engines-and-visitors/ http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/17/image-optimization-for-search-engines-and-visitors/#comments Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:31:33 +0000 Manuel http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/17/image-optimization-for-search-engines-and-visitors/ Vanessa Fox posted some useful tips on using images at the Google Webmaster Central Blog:

  • Don’t put the bulk of your text in images. It may sound simple, but the best thing you can do is to put your text into well, text. Reserve images for graphical elements. If all of the text on your page is in an image, it becomes inaccessible.
  • Take advantage of alt tags for all of your images. Make sure the alt text is descriptive and unique. For instance, alt text such as “picture1″ or “logo” doesn’t provide much information about the image. “Charting the path of stock x” and “Company Y” give more details.
  • Don’t overload your alt text. Be descriptive, but don’t stuff it with extra keywords.
  • It’s important to use alt text for any image on your pages, but if your company name, navigation, or other major elements of your pages are in images, alt text becomes especially important. Consider moving vital details to text to ensure all visitors can view them.
  • Look at the image-to-text ratio on your page. How much text do you have? One way of looking at this is to look at your site with images turned off in your browser. What content can you see? Is the intent of your site obvious? Do the pages convey your message effectively?
]]> http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/17/image-optimization-for-search-engines-and-visitors/feed/ 0 Ask.com launched improved Local Search http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/04/askcom-launched-improved-local-search/ http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/04/askcom-launched-improved-local-search/#comments Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:15:45 +0000 Manuel http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/04/askcom-launched-improved-local-search/ Today the search engine Ask.com has launched its new Local Search “Ask City“. The new service replaced the previous Local Search, and merged it with some third party services offered by Ticketmaster, Trip Advisor, Evite and others. Like that, you can find movie playtimes at local theaters, events and restaurantes in your area, easily. Beside of that, Ask City also offers the option to take snapshots or add drawings to a map.

]]> http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/04/askcom-launched-improved-local-search/feed/ 2 Baidu.com expands to Japan http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/04/baiducom-expands-to-japan/ http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/04/baiducom-expands-to-japan/#comments Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:08:14 +0000 Manuel http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/04/baiducom-expands-to-japan/ The operator of the chinese search engine Baidu.com anncounced an expansion to the japanese market. According to the Wall Street Journal, Baidu started working on the japanese version of their search engine, about six month ago, and also opened an office in Tokio already.
Baidu.com, is the most used search engine in china and contains more then a billion websites and documents in their index. According to Alexa.com, it is also the fourth most visited website world-wide.

]]> http://www.smaaz.com/2006/12/04/baiducom-expands-to-japan/feed/ 0 Microsoft explains how to verify MSNbot http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/30/microsoft-explains-how-to-verify-msnbot/ http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/30/microsoft-explains-how-to-verify-msnbot/#comments Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:41:51 +0000 Manuel http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/30/microsoft-explains-how-to-verify-msnbot/ Microsoft has added some information, on how to identify the different types of their MSNbot Crawlers, on the Live Search’s WebLog. The different types of the MSNbot are:

MSNBot
Main web crawler (www.live.com)

MSNBot-Media
Images & all other media (images.live.com)

MSNBot-NewsBlogs
News and blogs (search.live.com/news)

MSNBot-Products
Products & shopping (products.live.com)

MSNBot-Academic
Academic search (academic.live.com)

They also explain a method, to verify the identy of the MSNbot. Might be useful, since a lot of spam bots are cloaking themself as searchengine crawlers.

  1. When you get a page view request, it specifies a user-agent and an IP address. As I described above, all requests from Live Search use a user agent starting with the word ‘MSNBot’.
  2. If you see the MSNBot user-agent, it’s time to check the identity of the bot. Starting with the IP address (i.e. 207.46.98.149), you can use reverse DNS lookup to find out the registered name of the machine.
  3. Once you have the host name (in this case, livebot-207-46-98-149.search.live.com), you can check that it really is coming from Live Search. The name of all live search crawlers will end with ‘search.live.com’. If the name doesn’t end with ‘search.live.com’, you know it’s not really our crawler.
  4. Finally, you need to verify that the name is accurate. In order to do this, you can use Forward DNS to see the IP address associated with the host name. This should match the IP address you used in Step 2 – if it doesn’t, it means the name was fake.
]]> http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/30/microsoft-explains-how-to-verify-msnbot/feed/ 0 Microsoft & Sprint cooperate for mobile search http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/16/microsoft-sprint-cooperate-for-mobile-search/ http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/16/microsoft-sprint-cooperate-for-mobile-search/#comments Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:03:36 +0000 Manuel http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/16/microsoft-sprint-cooperate-for-mobile-search/ The two companies plan the common development of new services for Sprints mobile customers. The windows live search service is immediately available for Sprint PCS vision and Sprint Power Vision and can be used on all mobile devices with appropriate technical equipment.

]]> http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/16/microsoft-sprint-cooperate-for-mobile-search/feed/ 0 Google, Yahoo and Microsoft agree on Sitemap standard http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/16/google-yahoo-and-microsoft-agree-on-sitemap-standard/ http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/16/google-yahoo-and-microsoft-agree-on-sitemap-standard/#comments Thu, 16 Nov 2006 14:54:19 +0000 Manuel http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/16/google-yahoo-and-microsoft-agree-on-sitemap-standard/ The three leading search engine operators Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have announced a common standard for their sitemap files. The new standard will make it easier ,for webmasters, to submit their content to the search engines. The sitemap standard is based on the Sitemaps service, which Google released one year ago.

For more information on the new standard visit http://www.sitemaps.org.

]]> http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/16/google-yahoo-and-microsoft-agree-on-sitemap-standard/feed/ 0 Microsoft will bring you the new dimension of search! http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/05/microsoft-will-bring-you-the-new-dimension-of-search/ http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/05/microsoft-will-bring-you-the-new-dimension-of-search/#comments Sun, 05 Nov 2006 21:50:59 +0000 Manuel http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/05/microsoft-will-bring-you-the-new-dimension-of-search/ On the Live.com homepage you can see an announcement for the “new dimension of search”, which will be released on November 7th. When you click the attached link, it brings you to the Live Local search page. So my guess is, it will include some improved localisation functions.

]]> http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/05/microsoft-will-bring-you-the-new-dimension-of-search/feed/ 0 Keep track of your directory submissions http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/02/keep-track-of-your-directory-submissions/ http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/02/keep-track-of-your-directory-submissions/#comments Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:54:47 +0000 Manuel http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/02/keep-track-of-your-directory-submissions/ Today I came accross this great web directory list. It contains more than 900 directories right now and new urls are added daily. You can also mark a directory, if you have submitted your website already. Absolutely worth a visit.

]]> http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/02/keep-track-of-your-directory-submissions/feed/ 1 Amazon started pay-per-click program http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/02/amazon-started-pay-per-click-program/ http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/02/amazon-started-pay-per-click-program/#comments Thu, 02 Nov 2006 15:55:12 +0000 Manuel http://www.smaaz.com/2006/11/02/a9com-amazon-started-pay-per-click-program/ Seems A9.com and Amazon are currently in the beta for a pay-per-click program called Clickriver, where you can buy links to your site, on the Amazon product pages.

“Clickriver Ads is an advertising program — currently in beta — that allows businesses to place sponsored links on Amazon.com®, next to search results and on product detail pages. Clickriver Ads presents a unique opportunity to advertise services and products that complement the selection on Amazon.com, an online marketplace with tens of millions of active customer accounts.

We welcome service providers of all types to apply to join the beta — in travel, finance and investment, training and education, entertainment, insurance, healthcare and physical fitness, IT assistance and consulting, photo printing and more. In addition, we welcome retailers who want to advertise products that complement those sold on Amazon.com.”

For more information, on the beta you should visit Clickriver.com.

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