Long Posts versus Short Posts

Once upon a time, the conventional wisdom was that Google wouldn’t index, and therefore rank, any thing shorter than 300 words. I wrote an article about how 300 words is basically nothing, noting that an introduction and conclusion could take up 100 of those words fairly easily, leaving just 200 words of content. Then, people … Read more

Social Search Fools Gold

These days, it seems that technology pundits and enthusiasts can’t clamor loudly enough for social network signals to be included in search engine ranking results. It isn’t hard to see why. Your friends probably like a lot of the same things that you do. That is why they are your friends. Furthermore, the people you … Read more

Google Knowledge Graph Big Deal or Not?

There are two ways to watch what Google does with its search engines. One is through the eyes of the average user, and the other is through the eyes of an online publisher who is concerned about search engine traffic getting to his or her websites. (By extension, the SEO industry, which purports to help … Read more

How Google Panda 2 Update Hit eHow and Others

Earlier this year, the webmaster, online publisher and SEO communities were abuzz with news of a major Google algorithm update. Although Google claimed less 15 percent of websites were affected, legions of web publishers and search engine optimization experts took to forum, blog posts, and Google help pages to decry what they saw as unfair … Read more

NY Times Exposes More Google Spam

The New York Times has another high profile article exposing how Google is broken.  The article notes that JC Penny ranked #1 in Google search results pages for numerous terms during the lucrative shopping season thanks mostly to numerous paid links. Both the writer and Matt Cutts quickly lose sight of the real issue and … Read more

Why New Search Engine Blekko Will Fail

A new search engine has launched. Chances are that unless you are a member of the techie community, and spend a fair amount of time reading about online internet services on techie blogs, you have no idea that it happened. That’s fine, because the new search engine Blekko is doomed already. The truth is that … Read more

Google WonderWheel Tool Gone Restore It Fast

If you are a fan of the Google WonderWheel tool, either for finding related searches that might better fit what you are looking for, or for checking to see if there are other keywords or search phrases that you should be including in content you publish to the web, you may have notices that the … Read more

Google Command Line Tool

Google announced today, and that announcement was re-broadcast via unofficial Google spokesman Matt Cutts to make sure people actually noticed, that the company had released a long-awaited command line tool for accessing Google. Well, sort of. If by accessing Google, you mean accessing everything except for the core Google service of search. Ready made for … Read more

SEO When SEO Wasn’t Cool

Most companies not founded in the last five years, and those with a long-term eye on the future focus their branding efforts on differentiating themselves from the key words that describe their business, not the other way around like SEO demands. But, these companies managed to create search optimized brands without any SEO at all.

A Question of Greatness

Pondering the questions that make the Internet move. What do Technorati, WordPress, Google, and more do right or wrong to make my life better or worse?