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Out of my Gord - By Gord Hotchkiss
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/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Sunday, August 29, 2010
Google Local Search Gets A Bit Confusing
From: google.com
I found this rather interesting bug over at Google today.
When doing a search for Victoria BC Lawyer, in the Local Business results I found that only one of the seven results were actually for law offices! The remaining 6 were for doctors as well as a government publishing office.
One would think that Google has been doing this long enough to not make such a big error “ 1 out of 7 results relevant to the search? Thats pretty poor if you ask me.
CommentsRead Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/searchnewzlatestnews/~3/5F1tUC6jFX0/sn-4-20100518GoogleLocalSearchGetsABitConfusing.html
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Sunday, August 29, 2010
Bing Rolls Out Global Action Atlas
From: google.com
Via way of the Bing Maps team we hear about a new resource The Global Action Atlas “ the application allows users to peer into areas where our planet needs help and recognizes efforts across the globe to help people in need, protect plants and animals, preserve diverse cultures (Source: Bing Maps blog). The actionable themes availble from the Atlas include:
- Conservation: Includes categories on animals and plants; fresh water; landscapes; migrations and corridors; and oceans and coastal areas.
- Climate Change: Focuses on projects having to do with forest conservation and management; renewable energy; reforestation; and ocean impacts.
- Cultures: Features projects focusing on preserving endangered languages; cultural preservation; archeology; and indigenous rights.
- Energy:Focuses on technology; energy efficiency; and energy investment.
- Exploration: Focuses on taking action to help preserve our planet; to explore its mysteries through sustainable travel; and to raise awareness about cultures and environments, and science and adventure projects.
- Humanitarian Affairs: Includes projects focusing on water and sanitation; emergency relief; health; education; empowering women; and poverty and hunger.
For more information about National Geographics Global Action Atlas, visit the National Geographic site.
CommentsRead Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/searchnewzlatestnews/~3/tf4GaHUD8Zc/sn-4-20100511BingRollsOutGlobalActionAtlas.html
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Sunday, August 29, 2010
Google Gets A Special Visit From Conan O’Brian
From: google.com
Hat Tip to Andy Beal on pointing our direction to this hilarious video of Conan O’Brien’s visit to the Googleplex. Apparently Conan has been making his rounds in the tech space - as he was at Twitter/Intel a couple of weeks ago.
<iframe class="embeddedvideo" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/u7TwqpWiY5s&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="280" width="500"></iframe>
Comments
Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/searchnewzlatestnews/~3/FLW6WvJrqnc/sn-4-20100510GoogleGetsASpecialVisitFromConanOBrian.html
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Sunday, August 29, 2010
7 Different Visualisations of Link Profiles
From: google.com
Posted by Tom_C
We all love backlinks. We all love visualisation. Boom! Let’s mash those two things together. In this post I’ve collected a bunch of different techniques for visualising your link data. Some of these are useful for analysis, some are useful for management and some are useful for keeping Dr. Pete entertained...... 
Which Are My Top Folders
The top pages function of OSE is one of the most useful features ever. Ever since I saw the first incarnation in labs I’ve been a heavy user of this tool but Rich Baxter has taken things one step further yet again and given us a way to see the top linked to folders on a site. Here are the most linked to sub-folders and pages on www.google.com:
Get the step by step walkthrough to creating your own version of this over on seogadget.
Creating Geo Link Maps
Yes, I know that this involves a competitor. But the graphs are too super cool not to share! Take a look at the geomap of Distilled’s backlinks:
Anyone would think we have a presence in the US or something! To learn how to make your own version of this go check out Wiep’s wonderful article. You never know, one day this feature might be native to either OSE or Majestic.... I can but dream
Pretty Tag clouds
Ok, we can probably file this one under “not management friendly” but you never know. If you do SEO for a dinosaur website....
These are the top anchor texts for SEOmoz visualised as a keywordasaurus. Hat tip to Dr Pete and SeanWF for this tool: http://www.tagxedo.com/app. html which let’s you make the pretty pictures.
Visualising Directory Links
When quickly scanning a site’s backlink profile there’s a few different things that I look for more or less straight away. One of those is the split between quality links and umm non-quality links. It’s not that the non-quality links don’t work (depends how bad they are!) but the quality links are almost always the more interesting ones to analyse. These are the ones you really want to copy from your competitors. If you download an Open Site Explorer report into excel and then create a new column and paste the following formula in:
=IF(IFERROR(FIND("directory”,A2),IFERROR(FIND("directory”,B2),IFERROR(FIND("Directory”,B2),0)))>0,"Y”,"N")
This formula is a little messy but basically just looks to see if either the URL or page title contains “directory”. While this doesn’t catch everything I’ve found that it get’s you a long way there very easily. That will then let you create a nice little pie chart like this:
Venn Diagrams
Kelvin recently wrote a very interesting piece on creating venn diagrams between your links and competitor’s links that looks a bit like this:
Kelvin has a nice handy video that walks you through how to create these charts (which I think are super management friendly!) over here.
Broken Links
I know this tool has been written about before and it’s not technically a visualisation as such, more of a visual representation of your links but I love how quickly you can see which of your links no longer exist using Carter Cole’s chrome extension “SEO site tools”:
Of course, with yahoo site explorer not hanging around for much longer it’s useful that this tool also works with Google Webmaster Tools:
I like this view, especially when I’m looking at a particular page as it gives me an indication of how many actual links might be pointing at the page and how many might have dropped off recently.
SEOmoz Labs
While this tool has been around for ages some of you might not know about it and especially some of you might not know how awesome this is for sales and non-technical people! Our sales team uses these kinds of charts all the time to quickly and easily get an overview comparison of a brand new website that they might be on the phone to:
Get your own one of these over in SEOmoz labs.
Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/NmBjtDGHVQA/7-different-visualisations-of-link-profiles
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Saturday, August 28, 2010
Google adds regular phone calls to Gmail
From: google.com
Google has not let its recent setbacks (the closing of Google Wave comes to mind) stop it from launching new services. Google wants to be more than your search central. It wants to be your communication hub, becoming your one-stop place for interaction with friends and colleagues. This is why it launched Google [...]
Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pandia/vfbc/~3/6Cwnf4MK1zs/3095-google-adds-regular-phone-calls-to-gmail.html
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Saturday, August 28, 2010
Pandia Search Engine News Wrap-up August 29
From: google.com
Yahoo switches to Bing search results and more…
Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pandia/vfbc/~3/mKrrvGq9AK0/3110-pandia-search-engine-news-wrap-up-august-29-2.html
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Saturday, August 28, 2010
New Google Realtime Search with Realplay
From: google.com
Google has relaunched Google Replay as part of an improved real-time search feature.
Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pandia/vfbc/~3/qcxvIut0sCk/3097-new-google-realtime-search-with-realplay.html
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Saturday, August 28, 2010
Don’t forget about color
From: google.com
The airport in Minneapolis is expensive and reasonably thoughtful in its design.
But the signs are monochromatic. As a result, the tired traveler wanders in circles, looking for her destination. Imagine how much easier it would be to find out where you were going if every sign with the word TAXI on it had it in yellow instead of white. Once you knew the color of where you were going, you’d just naturally scan for it.
Google and our text-based low-res online world seems to argue against color as a signal, but it’s extraordinarily powerful. You don’t need to make a big deal of of it, subtle is enough. Make the button you want pressed green on every page. Soon, your users will naturally gravitate to green buttons…
This works in Powerpoint presentations and even contracts. A little goes a long way.
Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/uqwup4peKhE/dont-forget-about-color.html
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Friday, August 27, 2010
Social media and its effects on the intellect
From: sitepronews.com
The advance of social media discourse could be harshly described as a continual distraction, containing noisy encumbrances of rapidly-sampled psychotic diatribes from multiple silos. This, it is said, is one of the profound questions about the narcissism of the modern psyche.
In Nick Carr’s recent book, “The Shallows”, he explains how the printed book served to [...]
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
Social media and its effects on the intellect
Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/08/28/social-media-and-its-effects-on-the-intellect/
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Friday, August 27, 2010
A little out of sync
From: google.com
All those devices in your bag make it easier than ever to stay in sync.
You can reap what you sow in Farmville, keep up with your email, know what’s going on on every important blog, be in the right room at the right time earning badges, etc. You can synchronized at all times.
And if you get a little out of sync, just a little, it’s painful. One more reason you might want to stop reading this and check your feeds.
Building your success on being more in sync than everyone else is a sharp edge to walk on. You’ll always be near the edge of perfect sync, but never there.
The alternative is to be a lot out of sync.
People who are way out of sync with the digital maelstrom of the moment aren’t always bad followers. They might be great leaders.
Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/pe8SBenluCw/a-little-out-of-sync.html
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Friday, August 27, 2010
Brent Payne of Tribune Shares Some Social Media Link Building Tips
From: searchenginewatch.com
Last week at SES San Francisco, Brent Payne, the SEO Director of the Tribune, shared some of his social media link building tips during the News Search Optimization session.
Click to read the rest of this post...
Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/0So6YzKcaYQ/100827-130037
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Friday, August 27, 2010
10 Networking Blunders That Cost You Sales
From: sitepronews.com
Networking is a critical skill sales; after all, the more people you connect with the more you sales opportunities you create. However, many sales people make a variety of mistakes that prevent them from maximizing the power of networking. Here are ten blunders and mistakes you need to avoid. 1. Attending the wrong networking events. [...]
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
10 Networking Blunders That Cost You Sales
Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/08/27/10-networking-blunders-that-cost-you-sales/
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Friday, August 27, 2010
A Flaming on Your Blog
From: sitepronews.com
Flaming is something that every blogger will see from time to time. Basically flaming is when someone viciously attacks you or someone else that posts something on your blog. Typically a flaming is very personal and quite vicious.
It is important that you handle flaming, in fact you probably want to have a written policy about [...]
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
A Flaming on Your Blog
Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/08/27/a-flaming-on-your-blog/
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Friday, August 27, 2010
Dreamweaver Users Still Need To Understand HTML
From: sitepronews.com
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a simple markup language used to create documents designed to be accessed across the World Wide Web using browser software such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. The version of HTML in current use is known as XHTML, a stricter, rationalized version of the original HTML specification. One key thing to [...]
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
Dreamweaver Users Still Need To Understand HTML
Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/08/27/dreamweaver-users-still-need-to-understand-html/
/// Posted by Alexandre Brabant on Friday, August 27, 2010
Level Up Your Web Traffic
From: sitepronews.com
Increasing web traffic relies heavily on website optimization. These days, it’s more than just placing ads on various sites or making sure you have a lot of graphics display and information posted on your site. You need to know the right techniques that would get people’s attention and make them go through everything your site [...]
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
Level Up Your Web Traffic
Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/08/27/level-up-your-web-traffic/
