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"Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clark, 1972
Rank Magic is a division of Treloar Associates. More information about Treloar Associates can be found at TreloarAssociates.com.
The Rank Magic Blog
See You Next Year!December 22, 2005 ::: Our office is closing for the holidays (a bit late for the Winter Solstice, bit it'll have to do) and we'll be back on January 2. Happy and Safe Holidays to you all! -- Bill
A Word About "WWW"December 22, 2005 ::: You can often navigate to a site by using the prefix "www." or by skipping it. For instance, http://www.GellnerPolymer.com/ and GellnerPolymer.com both point to the same place. However depending on the server configuration, they could point to different locations, so search engines can't assume they're the same. The folks at Sitemaps have a helpful article on this, albeit a bit technical for some. Matt Cutts, the "Google Guy has a simple suggestion on his Google Blog: "The only thing I’d add to that answer is one recommendation: check your internal links and to make sure that they’re consistent (either all to www or all to non-www). That will also help search engines pick the root page that you prefer." In other words, pick one or the other (I like using the www) and make sure all the internal links on your web site -- and as many incoming links from other web sites as you can influence -- all use the same version. That way your web site will get proper credit for all those links.
And Now, Google Transit!
For now, Google Transit only covers the Portland, Oregon area, but they plan to roll it out to your neighborhood RSN! <real soon, now>
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Google
Catalogs|
Google Catalogs helps you browse and search merchant-provided catalogs right on your computer. You can flip through any catalog to find what interests you, or simply type in what you're looking for, and you'll find every place that your search term appears in the catalog. If you're not sure what catalog to look in, just search all of the catalogs in our index. |
How to Survive Future Google Updates
December 5, 2005 ::: If you want your website to survive future Google updates without painful swings in your ranking, it's important to understand what Google is trying to do. Google wants to present high quality web sites that are interesting and valuable to web surfers in its search results. Whenever Google updates the ranking algorithm, they try to give those sites more relevancy.
If you want to survive future Google updates, you have to make sure your web site has certain characteristics.
Your web site should have a certain ageThe older a website is, the less wildly it will fluctuate with each algorithm change. If your website has been around awhile then search engines know you'll probably still be around tomorrow. Your web site should have good contentSearch engines want to redirect web surfers to web sites that provide useful information. The more content your website has, the higher you'll rank. It's tougher to get good search engine rankings with a website that has only a few pages. Links from other sites are still importantThe more websites that link to you, the higher your link popularity, and that's a critical part of your ranking in Google. Links from sites that are related to your topics carry more weight than links from non-related web sites. Consider why the link popularity principle was devised: another website thinks your site is a great resource and so they link to you. If you get links like that, you'll get solid search engine rankings. See our article on how to improve your site's link popularity. Make sure your web site is search engine friendly, and easy for them to indexMany websites have great content but it is nearly impossible for search engines to index them. If you want high search engine rankings, you should make it as easy as possible for search engines to index your site. As a start, see our article on 5 critical mistakes that can make your site invisible to the search engines. We can expect many more ranking algorithm updates from Google and the other search engines. If you prepare your web pages as described above, you don't have to be afraid of upcoming changes. |
83% of Holiday Shoppers To Shop Online
December 1, 2005 ::: More than eight out of ten holiday shoppers (83%) said they would shop for holiday gifts online, and a similar number, 80%, said they are likely to purchase gifts online from small businesses, according to a new survey commissioned by Yahoo! Small Business and conducted by Harris Interactive. <More ...>
Firefox 1.5 Released
December 1, 2005 ::: In only about a year, Firefox has gone from relative obscurity to being the second most popular browser in the world. It's got only about 9% of the Internet browsing market, but that's incredible for a version 1.0 product, especially since the top browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer, comes bundled with new PCs. And the number of Firefox users is growing steadily and rapidly. The release of Firefox 1.5, the first major upgrade since Firefox 1.0 came out in November 2004, is almost certain to drive adoption rates even higher. <Full review by PC Magazine>
December
2005
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