Google Improved SWF Content Indexing Technology
Posted by: thejungleseo on: December 15, 2010
Whenever someone starts developing a websites, people are thinking whether to have a website for google good website rankings or a website which is good looking with flash contents. As you all know, flash site indexing has always been a problem for search engine optimization. Because of this reason people are neglecting flash content even though flash improves the site design and visibility. So, people who think about google rankings are choosing user friendly and SEO friendly websites.
Here is the good news for Flash developers. Recently, Google has announced good news for flash developers about SWF indexing technology. Two year ago google announced that collaboration with adobe, google flash index technology has been improved. Also laser year they followed up with a good news that they added external resource loading to SWF indexing capabilities.
Last month again google has expanded SWF indexing technology. So now google robots are significantly better at recognizing and indexing sites that uses JavaScript to embed SWF content. Google has improved video indexing technology also. So, now google SWF indexing technology allows robots to see content from SWF files.
Google is working to improve the ability of indexing deep linking i.e. content with in a flash technology based application that is linked to form the same application and also further indexing technology of SWF files executed through JavaScript.
Well, Google gave happy news to SEO people and website designing people also, now we can expect all our web pages can indexed by Google robots.
Posted By
Ramya
Google Real Time Search: Relevant & Fresh Results From Social Networking Sites
Posted by: thejungleseo on: September 9, 2010
Google Real Time Search, a new tool from Google which is integrated in to search result pages provides relevant and fresh updates from social networking sites on topics of your interest.
Okay, let’s understand how to use this tool and what features helps to provide relevant and fresh updates from social networking sites.
Google has created a new home page for its real time search feature, where users can view the fresh search results from services like twitter, facebook, myspace and many more.
Here it is, http://www.google.com/realtime
Google Alerts: Real Time Alerts helps you to stay informed about topic of your interest. Google alerts allows you to get the email updates of the fresh and relevant search results the moment it appears on the web. You can also manage your email volume by setting alerts to email you once per day or week. The option called “Type” helps you to monitor the search results to find related news, blogs, video, discussion or everything.
Geographic Refinements: Want to know what’s going on around you? Now its very easy to find out through “Custom Location” feature in Google Real Time Search. Geographical Filtering allows you to see the recent updates near you or in a particular city you specify. The below screen shot shows how the Real Time Search Results are displayed for Climate with location Bangalore.
Conversation View: The option called “Full Conversation” which appears near the tweets lets you to see the discussion associated with them. This new feature helps us to view the retweets and replies in a single glance. Here is an example,
Once you click on Full Conversation option, you can see the below thread.
As we all know, Real Time Search Results displays the latest updates by default. This feature sorts the information by date and time. If you are interested in results ranked by their relevance to your search query, then go for “Any time” option in the left panel. This option lists the most relevant updates regardless of date and time. You can also check for only results with image thumbnails by clicking on “Updates with images”.
So let’s make the best use of Google Real Time Search, which helps us to refine and understand the search results.
- Posted by Rajeshwari
Google Rich Snippet Features
Posted by: thejungleseo on: September 8, 2010
Everyone knows snippet in google results, google provides small sample content of your webpage in results called “Snippets”. Same way google has “Rich Snippets” which provides summary information about search results including reviews and people. When users are searching for some services, then users can easily view reviews and ratings. These Rich snippets are now available only for social networking sites and review sites, business listings and events. For example Rich snippets will appear in google results like marked in the below picture.
To display rich snippets, google needs mark up i.e. HTML content in microdata, micro formats or RDF format. To prepare markups for your business or webpage’s please see Rich Snippets and Structured markup .Once you are done with your markup of your website, you can test you snippet using the new google rich snippets testing tool, which is announced recently.
Once if you added your markup for appropriate pages across the website, google will not display the rich snippets as soon as you added, to show your interest in rich snippet you have to fill this form. If you have any videos in your page, you can mark up that to help google.
Well, Google has announced recently some improvements in Rich Snippets to support Breadcrumbs and Events.
Recently Google has added Breadcrumbs markups format, so that you can tell google how the Breadcrumbs should display, again it is not guarantee to display your markup, but it will increase the chances to display. See this to create Breadcrumbs for your webpage. Same way google added rich snippet for events also.
These three are the new features of Google Rich Snippets, make use of these features to dive more traffic into your webpage.
Posted By
Ramya
Enhance Your Google Places Listing with Tags
Posted by: thejungleseo on: September 8, 2010
Want to enhance your local business through Google Map listing? Go for Google Places Tags, which offers small and mid-sized business listing to stand out on Google and helps to grab attention of the potential customers.
Recently Google has added a new service in Google Places called Tags which is basically used for advertising purpose. Now, with the advent of Tags, Google Places is not only providing free local business listing but it also serving as an advertising platform for SMB’s.
Tags are nothing but yellow markings appearing below the business listing. You can make use of these Tags to highlight the uniqueness of your business by promoting specific information about your business such as special coupons, menus, discounts, promotions, photos, videos, link back to your website, custom messages and much more on Google Maps as well as Google.com.
To get Google Tags for your business listing just follow the below easy steps
- Add your business for free by signing up for Google Places
- Provide complete information about your business to claim listing and then validate listing with Google Places
- Visit to your account dashboard, create and activate your Tags (costs a fee of $25/month once after 30-day free trial is up)
You can track the efficiency of Google Tag for your listing on Dashboard. One more important feature of Google Tag is that you can create custom messages Tag, which can be changed at any time based on your business new services and promotions. If you want you can also remove Tag, this will deactivate the Tag from your business listing and you will be charged only for the portion of the month the Tag was active.
Visit http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=171905 and http://www.google.com/help/tags/ links to acquire more information about Google Tags.
Let us see an example for Google Tags. If you search for “Resorts near Napa, CA, United States”, you can see that Milliken Creek Inn & Spa has created Google Tag to endorse their promotional offer Free 75-minute Massage (a $160 value).
Considering the attitude of most of the customers, you can notice that, when you highlight special discounts, offers and promotions directly on the search result page there will be more chances of attracting and making the customers to click over your business listing. However activation of Tags doesn’t have any effect on ranking or order of your business listing in search results but if you rank better it will surely assist in your CTR.
To conclude I can say that if you have your own business, then listing it in Google Places with Google Tags will help to promote features that make your business distinct and also add value to your online presence.
Posted By
Smith
Google Street View – An Amazing Google Maps Feature
Posted by: thejungleseo on: July 30, 2010
As we all know, Google Maps helps to view maps and get driving directions of local businesses.
Google Maps has added an awesome feature called “Google Street View”, which provides panoramic views from various positions along many streets in the world. This amazing feature which was launched on May 25, 2007 allows users to explore the world through Street View.
Google Street View is not only about finding local business, the functionality of this wonderful feature is one of the fascinating function of Google Earth. Through Google Street View, anyone can see the actual view of the historical places, capital cities, and many more from various positions. It is the easiest way to find any particular area or address with all details on your screen.
Is Street View an amazing experience? Still wondering, look at the below image.
Diving a bit deeper, let’s understand how we can use this feature.
Using this tool is fun and easy, simply drag the orange “Pegman” icon on the left-hand side of the map onto location of your interest. The navigation controls on the left hand side of the map helps you to customize your view, zooming and tilting.
Take a look at the below image to see the actual view of the street.
Congrats to the Google Team for their fabulous work. Google Street View is no doubt an excellent tool for location views and hope you all enjoy this tool.
- Posted by Rajeshwari
New Google Image Search Makeover – The Usability & User Experience Issues
Posted by: thejungleseo on: July 22, 2010
The next renovation area for Google is Google Image Search. Google in its blog mentions about the new features that it has incorporated. As a user, let me analyse each and every feature/functionality listed with their pros and cons.
1. Dense Tiled Layout:
Google says: designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for
Actual Experience: Yes, of course you can see many images in a single glance – but as some images has a white background it makes users to mix up two images – couldn’t find the borders easily unless we hover.
Pros: Seeing many images in a single glance serves the purpose of any user.
Cons: As we are used to clear bordered well-organized image results, this output page looks cluttered.
Google Image Search - compare look
2. Larger thumbnail previews
Google says: Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.
Actual Experience: Yes, when I look high resolution images it is more appealing and impressive
No pros or cons as such.
3. A hover pane
Google says: A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”
Actual Experience:
As many webmasters weren’t concerned about image file names in the past, I can see images named 3347367209_0903f5a3be.jpg or as “400_F_13367266_3qpGXFwW0dBwDGgn0p4QStOEtccs9ru2.jpg” where only “400_F_13367266_3qpGXFwW” is shown (we miss to see the file type here) – which means if the image file names are longer, the hover pane will not be able to show you the file type. This could be a major usability issue, as looking at the file type gives a greater understanding.
Google Image Search - Hover Feature
One odd feature I observed and wondered with this was – after hovering over an image if I select the image file name, it keeps selected when I do consecutive image hovers and keeps continuing until I deselect. Give a try yourself 
I don’t think this could be done for Usability – any thoughts??
"file name" selected once works for consecutive hovers
Pros:
It gives a compelling reason to name an image file SEO friendly. So webmasters in future will make sure the image file names are descriptive and not long.
Cons:
And this hover pane highlights the image file name which will serve as token to impress users. And as SEO experts we all know whichever has the potential to attract visitors will have a SPAM world and now let’s Welcome a new SEO spam world – In future, you can see more and more keywords stuffed into the image file name.
4. A new landing page
Google says: Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you’re right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.
Actual Experience: A large image context comparatively gives good user experience than what it used to be in older Image Search.
upgraded Google Image Search landing page
And above all if you are not happy with this new Image Search, Google has also given an option to “Switch to basic version” – but again that is just buried right down after several scrolls. It could be good if you can see them on the left menu or at the top (as how usually Google used to offer “switch back” option for any new feature introduced)
But the major improvement (Google claims it as improvement) is the Image Search Ads.
Google says: And for our advertisers, we’re launching a new ad format called Image Search Ads. These ads appear only on Google Images, and they let you include a thumbnail image alongside your lines of text.
Oh, yes here comes one more colorful world open for Ads.
“Google Image Search Optimization” or “Google Image Ads Experts” could be the buzz phrases soon.
Posted by: B
Search
- pete maben: Thanks for your interesting post. I shall be investigating . .also the places and realtime search API's that you mention elsewhere. I'm doing much e
- AJD: I just wanted to note that google does indeed still penalize sites with apparent duplicate content. My case in point. An individual decided to point t
- 3 Most Noticed Google Places Bugs – Most Annoying Google Places issues « The Jungle SEO's Blog: [...] now with Google Places Analytics you can work wonders for your business – it allows you to take top level business decisions [...]
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