We’ve posted a couple different articles about the good and bad of search engine optimization. Here’s a couple articles on Google’s removal of thousands of malware sites from its index, courtesy of Slashdot.
“The attack was directed at Google in particular and resulted in tens of thousands of Web pages hosting exploits showing up on the first page of Google searches for thousands of common terms (PDF).”
Related Links:
The use of carefully selected words is one of the optimizers biggest challenges, because what do you REALLY know about popularity of words? Without the proper research you may just be flapping your wings. So what do you do?
Well, you have a couple different options. 1) guess… not usually the best method, 2) steal… well heck, your competitors are using those keywords so why shouldn’t you? again not the best method, but might be a good place to start if you are completely lost, 3) research.
That’s where GoogleDuel.com comes in. Use this site to see which words or keywords are more popular for the world of Google. Play around, I think you’ll like it.
Link:
http://www.googleduel.com/original.php
Whether we like them or not, we have all seen a custom Google Engine interface. Basically what these sites do, is use Google’s API and then take it to the next level. Here is a list of interesting, useful, and just down right weird ones.
You can create your own Google Custom Search Engine here… but the rest is up to your imagination.
1. LivoRobot - Dancing girl reacts to your searches. Try searching for “film.”
2. Google Black - Don’t like that silly white page you keep looking at? Try this.
3. Lijit - This is really interesting… create your own Custom Search out of your experiences and sites. Try it out!
4. JumpUp - More of an example… but you can use Custom Search for all sorts of things. How about a Small Business site?
5. Google Ultimate Interface - “I want to enter a ton of info before I search!” Yeah… we get it.
6. Black Google Search Portal (two) - Ok ok, I already posted a black Google site… but this one has a reflection! They claim it’s easier on the eyes and saves energy. Blah blah blah.
7. Groovle - No search bar that I could easily find, but uses Google Custom Search to to build a pretty sweet image directory. And you can make your own!
8. SoundClick - Artists search site for bands and the like. Browse artists, videos, music, etc.
See? And you thought Google was just plain vanilla. With so many new GCS sites popping up, you might have already used one, without even knowing.
Interesting Links:
* How to Hack Your Google Custom Search Engine
* Running List of Google Custom Search Sites
Did I say only SEO info? I might have… but here is a little “2.0″ info for you.
Google announced that they will be giving our favorite little email client a new look. Also, thanks to a JavaScript back-end rewrite you can also expect it to work faster. Too good to be true? Check out the screenshots below. It doesn’t appear as though there is going to be a major face lift… however the contact manager and Google app integration look promising.
Gmail engineer Dan Pupius:
“You won’t notice too many differences to start with, but we’re using a new model that enables us to iterate faster and share components (we now use the same rich text editor as Groups and Page Creator, and the Contact Manager can be seen in several Google apps). A few other things you will notice are some new keyboard shortcuts and the ability to bookmark specific messages and e-mail searches.”
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