Special Characters, Smileys in Meta Description – Helps or hurts

How many of you have seen sites which use special characters / smileys in their title and meta tags. I have personally come across a lot of sites doing it .

Having smiley’s in title and targeting a commercial audience IMO is not a great idea. when people are looking for professional company to do service for them its better we stay away from all those playful stuff in titles but if its a site servicing a crowd that likes stuff like that we can definitely do it.

Whether it affects ROI or not is a question we never tested it if someone has tested please post your experiences here

Yahoo Open search to support Microformats

Yahoo’s Amit mar has mentioned in their official Yahoo search blog that Yahoo will be supporting Microformats in their opensearch

According to yahoo
“By supporting semantic web standards, Yahoo! Search and site owners can bring a far richer and more useful search experience to consumers. For example, by marking up its profile pages with microformats, LinkedIn can allow Yahoo! Search and others to understand the semantic content and the relationships of the many components of its site. With a richer understanding of LinkedIn’s structured data included in our index, we will be able to present users with more compelling and useful search results for their site. The benefit to LinkedIn is, of course, increased traffic quality and quantity from sites like Yahoo! Search that utilize its structured data. “

So what is Microformat According to wikipedia

A microformat (sometimes abbreviated μF or uF) is a web-based[1] data formatting approach that seeks to re-use existing content as metadata, using only XHTML and HTML classes[2] and attributes.[3] This approach is intended to allow information intended for end-users (such as contact information, geographic coordinates, calendar events, and the like) to also be automatically processed by software.
Although the content of web pages is technically already capable of “automated processing,” and has been since the inception of the web, there are certain limitations. This is because the traditional markup tags used to display information on the web do not describe what the information means.[4] Microformats are intended to bridge this gap by attaching semantics, and thereby obviate other, more complicated methods of automated processing, such as natural language processing or screen scraping. The use, adoption and processing of microformats enables data items to be indexed, searched for, saved or cross-referenced, so that information can be reused or combined.[4]
Current microformats allow the encoding and extraction of events, contact information, social relationships and so on. More are being developed. Version 3 of the Firefox browser,[5] as well as version 8 of Internet Explorer[6] are expected to include native support for microformats.

Several microformats have been developed to enable semantic markup of particular types of information.

hAtom – for marking up Atom feeds from within standard HTML
hCalendar – for events
hCard – for contact information; includes:
adr – for postal addresses
geo – for geographical coordinates (latitude, longitude)
hReview – for reviews
hResume – for resumes or CVs
rel-directory – for distributed directory creation and inclusion
rel-nofollow, an attempt to discourage 3rd party content spam (e.g. spam in blogs).
rel-tag – for decentralized tagging (Folksonomy)
xFolk – for tagged links
XHTML Friends Network (XFN) – for social relationships
XOXO – for lists and outlines

[edit] Proposed microformats
Among the many proposed microformats,[9] the following are undergoing active development:

citation – for citing references
currency – for amounts of money
geo extensions – for places on Mars, The Moon, and other such bodies; for altitude; and for collections of waypoints marking routes or boundaries
species – For the names of living things.
measurements – For physical quantities, structured data-values.

[edit] Uses of microformats
Using microformats within HTML code provides additional formatting and semantic data that can be used by applications. These could be applications that collect data about on-line resources, such as web crawlers, or desktop applications such as e-mail clients or scheduling software.

Several browser extensions, such as Operator, provide the ability to detect microformats within an HTML document and export them into formats compatible with contact management and calendar utilities, such as Microsoft Outlook.

Microsoft expressed a desire to incorporate Microformats into upcoming projects;[10] as have other software companies.

In Wikipedia – and more generally in MediaWiki – microformats are used as part of templates like {{coord}}.

[edit] Evaluation of microformats
Various commentators have offered review and discussion on the design principles and practical aspects of microformats. Additionally, microformats have been compared to other approaches that seek to serve the same or similar purpose.[11] From time to time, there is criticism of a single, or all, microformats.[11] Documented efforts to advocate both the spread and use of microformats are known to exist as well.[12] [13] Håkon Wium Lie has said we will see “a bunch of microformats being developed, and that’s how the semantic web will be built.” [14]

[edit] Design principles
Computer scientist and entrepreneur, Rohit Khare stated that reduce, reuse, and recycle is “shorthand for several design principles” that motivated the development and practices behind microformats.[8][15] These aspects can be summarized as follows:

Reduce: favor the simplest solutions and focus attention on specific problems;
Reuse: work from experience and favor examples of current practice;
Recycle: encourage modularity and the ability to embed, valid XHTML can be reused in blog posts, RSS feeds, and anywhere else you can access the web.[8]

[edit] Accessibility
Because some microformats make use of title attribute of HTML’s abbr element to conceal machine-readable data (particularly date-times and geographical coordinates) in the “abbr design pattern”, the plain text content of the element is inaccessible to those screenreaders that expand abbreviations.[16]

[edit] Intellectual property
As part of the open participation model of the microformats community to require that all contributions be placed into the public domain. This means that any page created, or any content added to microformats is placed into the public domain for maximum possible reuse.

[edit] Alternative approaches
Microformats are not the only solution for providing “more intelligent data” on the web. Alternative approaches exist and are under development as well. For example, the use of XML markup and standards of the semantic web are cited as alternative approaches. [8] Some contrast these with microformats in that they do not necessarily coincide with the design principles of “reduce, reuse, and recycle”, at least not to the same extent.[8]

One advocate of microformats, Tantek Çelik, characterized a problem with alternative approaches:

“ Here’s a new language we want you to learn, and now you need to output these additional files on your server. It’s a hassle. (Microformats) lower the barrier to entry.[4] ”

For some applications the use of other approaches may be valid. If one wishes to use microformat-style embedding but the type of data one wishes to embed does not map to an existing microformat, one can use RDFa to embed arbitrary vocabularies into HTML. An example of this would be embedding domain-specific scientific data on the Web like zoological or chemical data, where no microformat for such data exists. Furthermore, standards such as W3C’s GRDDL allow microformats to be converted into data compatible with the Semantic Web.[17]

Another advocate of microformats, Ryan King, put the compatibility of microformats with other approaches this way:

“ Microformats provide an easy way for many people to contribute semantic data to the web. With GRDDL all of that data is made available for RDF Semantic Web tools. Microformats and GRDDL can work together to build a better web. [17]

Microsoft offers more for yahoo – 34$

According to Citigroup Microsoft has offered a share price of 34$ a increase of 3$ per share. Previous offer of Microsoft was 31$ which yahoo and its share holders denied. It seems soon it will be YahSoft or you can say MicroHoo

Facebook more attractive than google – :-) ***8

Google looses another senior employee to social networking start up facebook. Is facebook going to a be a powerful social networking place in future. Facebook is only next to Myspace I feel it has a long long way to beat myspace but definitely seeing the effort taken by facebook people it seems to going in the right direction

“Facebook on Tuesday confirmed that Ethan Beard, the former director of social media at Google, will join the privately held company as director of business development. Mr. Beard is the second high-profile executive this month to leave Google, a company that was widely considered one of the best places to work in Silicon Valley.
“

Though google is rated by fortune the No.1 company to work recent drop in its stock value might be an other reason its employees are panicking. From over 700$ google’s share value has dropped below 500$. If it continues this way they might end up with a share price of 300$ which is not good for a company like them,

About Facebook:

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

Anyone can join Facebook
All that’s needed to join Facebook is a valid email address. To connect with coworkers or classmates, use your school or work email address to register. Once you register, join a regional network to connect with the people in your area.

Discover the people around you
Facebook is made up of many networks, each based around a company, region, or school. Join the networks that reflect your real-life communities to learn more about the people who work, live, or study around you.

Do more
Facebook’s Platform enables anyone, anywhere, to build complete applications that you can choose to use. The possibilities are endless. Define your experience on Facebook by choosing applications that are useful and relevant to your world.

what is the future market share of Google in US?

Many predict google will have in excess of 80% , Even after US going on recession google has started investing heavily on various products. Recently they acquired Doubleclick a leading paid advertising company. They are now doing better in wireless market possibly stealing a share from Verizon in future. Back in the early 20th century many said Ford would be the dominant car manufacturer forever too. However, I think today GMC and Toyota would have something to say about that. Now, considering that Internet technology moves at light-speed compared to automotive technology… it should be a fair assessment that while Google is dominant now, 90% is pretty far fetch.

milliondollarhomepage.com still going strong

milliondollarhomepage.com one of the greatest inventions on Modern .com era is still going strong after 5 years. Alex the founder of million dollar homepage has promised publishers of hosting the ads for upto 2010. Its going strong and should be long enough

Yahoo now supports google’s effort on Open social networking

Yahoo we announced today that it has joined forces with Google and MySpace to create the OpenSocial Foundation, and will also begin supporting the OpenSocial standard. Industry consortiums such as this often start slowly and evolve over time. So far, OpenSocial is rapidly growing and adapting, but still in the early stages.

According to yahoo press release

“OpenSocial addresses an emerging problem for developers who are eagerly building applications people can enjoy with their friends: before OpenSocial, if a developer built a “favorite photos” application to work on one social network, it would have to be built all over again to work on another site. OpenSocial tackles this problem at its technology roots, providing common “plumbing” that lets social applications run on many different websites without requiring duplicate work from either developers or the websites.
The result is a vast distribution platform for social applications, whether they are for sharing photos or playing games or arranging real-world meetings or any number of other activities – everything is more fun, interesting, and useful when users can involve their friends and contacts.”

This video gives a better understanding on how opensocial works and to find more resources

Self expression and communication are often fun and entertaining alone, but OpenSocial is also a platform that can be leveraged to solve real world tasks where the social graph assists us in making decisions. For example, while some might be prone to grab a book at random off the shelf, there are many who appreciate a good recommendation from a friend. With a variety of possibilities in entertainment and interests, it can be useful to facilitate meetings, purchases, recommendations, information management and learning to create a richer, more lasting experience across your application.

Christophe Bisciglia former hacker now a google employee

Christophe Bisciglia was a former hacker who hacked into his boss’s company and flood his customers with 1000s emails he was pissed off when a argument with his boss turned out to be a violent one for him.

Bisciglia, who graduated from the UW in 2003, went to Lazowska with his idea in October, and they worked with engineers in Google’s Kirkland office to develop a syllabus for 15 undergraduates selected to take the five-week class, which recently wrapped up. No proprietary Google software was used, no internal secrets revealed, Bisciglia said. Bisciglia enjoys his job in google now when asked he said there is no chance of dropping his job as of now. His highly paid google job gives him lot of great vacations.

I hope google doesn’t piss him off 🙂

Britney still leads in searches – beats Jolie and paris

Britney the troubled celebrity mother still leads 2007 celebrity searches compared with Angelina Jolie and Paris Hilton. Google trends a cool new tool shows graphics of the 3 celebrities
how often they were searched around the world for the past 4 years

Google Trends , Google trends comparision software

What is real keyword competition in SEO?

How many of you have searched google and found results showing more than 10,000,000 million pages. We at Search Engine Genie have worked on sites where the competition is more than 25,000,000 and still gain No.1 position in Search engines. So how come we rank a website page better than 25,000,000 pages. Actually the no of results showing up is not the real competion you will be facing when it comes to ranking a website.

When you are looking to rank in niche markets make sure you first do a complete research on your competition. You use a keyword and find millions of results I recommend go through the top 10 pages after 10 pages you will see results that are not exactly competing with you but random pages that are there just because keywords you searched somewhere occur on that page. This is true in many cases most of the time competition to get your site ranked is not more than 1000 websites. Competing with 1000 websites will be one of the most of difficult task to do. So most of time when we are doing regional search engine optimization we are competing with less than 100 sites even if the results show millions of pages.

Most of the sites that are there in internet today are not optimized for search engines so that eliminates majority of the websites from competing with you, even if they are optimized they need lots of links to compete with competitive industry. So you get good links and you eliminate most of your competition. Also never stop adding quality information for your site if you are going after a niche industry you are supposed to run a website that even evolves. It usa to evolve by itself or you need to make it evolve.

We at search engine genie make sure we add atleast 2 pages of content to our website everyday. So 6 months down the road we have a website with atleast 1000 new pages of contents. This is a major step when it comes to tackling competition. So I recommend don’t worry what google shows in millions keep working on your site eventually you will be on top of Major search engines