On October 14, 2004, Google announced the beta launch of Google Desktop. http://desktop.google.com/ "It's like photographic memory for your computer -- if you've seen it before, you should be able to find it. For users who are frustrated with losing track of files, this could be the solution. Industry experts see this is as a direct move to preempt Redmond-based software titan Microsoft who has touted new and advanced search features in their upcoming but often delayed Windows operating system codenamed Longhorn. Analysts and investors suggest that Microsoft is ultimately the largest threat to Google due to the sheer market dominance of the Windows operating system. Google's strategy is clear: rather than wait for the advanced search to become part of the operating system, they are making the desktop part of Google. Some of the best features of Google-Desktop 1. Ability to index every webpage you visit through Internet (the application works only in Internet Explorer). 2. Capable of indexing text contained in many proprietary document formats, including MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook data files, as well as Adobe PDF documents 3. enables Google to truly personalize your search results by using documents and web pages you have viewed in the past as criterion to evaluate your personal habits. 4. Catalogs your previous searches to build up a reference of your personal habits. 5. Instant messaging conversations and music are searchable. All of this is about add revenue, my opinion is deliver effective targeted marketing to a large community you will succeed guaranteed. Search engines will survive by generating unique content internally. This is good for us because unbiased search is here to stay.This was talked about in class several years ago. Google Browser going head to head with Microsoft? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's a search engine friendly structured website to spiders? To get a good ranking in search engines, a good understanding of the fundamentals of SEO and how search robots crawl web pages (structure) is essential. The Core Elements for Page Relevance & Structure Title Tag - The title tag should contain a title relevant to the page, not just "Home Page" or "Contact Us". The title should be used up to 65 Charcters. Headings - Search engines view tags as terms of emphasis, meaning additional weight is given to terms that appear inside them. Keywords should appear in tags. Bold - Also viewed as terms of emphasis, but with less weight than headings. Alt Text - Brief descriptive sentences should be used in image alt attributes. At least one keyword should appear in each alt attribute. Keyword Meta Tag - Some engines use the keyword meta tags directly, some use them as part of a validation process ensuring that the keywords closely match the page content. The latter is the more typical scenario for modern engines. Keywords should be chosen carefully and be specific to the page they appear on. Description Meta Tag - Most search engines use this tag in a similar fashion as the keyword tags. Each page should have a unique description. The description should contain a few keywords and briefly summarize the content that appears on the page with a high degree of accuracy. Keyword Placement - Terms that are higher up on a page are more heavily weighted. Keyword Proximity - Terms that are close together are probably related, and thus the site will show up in searches for those terms. Page Structure Validation - Proper coding is likely to be of better overall quality, and thus rewarded. Traffic/Visitors - Search engines keep track of how many people follow their links. The more a link is followed for a given search, the more relevant the link is assumed to be. Link Popularity - Also known as PageRank, this is a measure of how many web pages on the Internet link to your site and the relevance of those pages to the page they are linking to. The popularity of the linking site is also evaluated. Anchor Text for Inbound Links - This is a measure of the relevance of the anchor text from the referring site. Page Last Modified - Newer content is regarded as "fresh" and is treated as more relevant. Page Size - Engines tend to weigh content at the start of a document more than content further down. If a page is too long, typically more than 450 words, only, then it should be broken up into multiple pages. Keywords in URL - URLs are considered important by engines. Use of underscores or hyphens in filenames and using keywords in filenames and directories improves a pages potential relevance. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Negitive Variables The next set of variables weighed by search engines are Negitives. These will negatively effect the performance of a page on a search engine without exception. Avoiding these items is crucial to reaching and, more importantly, maintaining a high rank on a search engine. Broken Links - Internally or outgoing, search engines do not view pages with broken links as pages with fresh content, and are going to be scored as less relevant for their keywords. Frames Shock Flash Spam - This 1.using irrelevant keywords to draw extra hits , Placing invisible content on the page to boost keyword density, Using meta eyeblink refreshes (often in combination with irrelevant keywords) to draw a user in for an irrelevant search and then direct them to the page you want them to see. Cloaking Doorway Pages Hallway Pages Key Word Stuffing in Title & Body Text Link Farms & being associated with them. These techniques can result in a ban from search engines if they catch them. Excessive Search Engine Submittal - Over submitting a site to a search engine will likely result in a ban. Submit no more than once every three months, according to Google. I recommend not submitting to Google. Empty Alt Attributes - Empty alt tags is a major accessibility issue as well as just poor coding, and will affect a page negatively. Excessive Punctuation - Excess punctuation in the Title and Description tags wastes valuable space and may cause a problem with the engine. These negative factors could greatly effect an otherwise relevant page, of course some of them preclude the page actually being relevant, particularly spam. The biggest pitfalls for an otherwise optimized page is simple typographical errors, broken links (usually due to stale content) and oversight in markup. Simple mistakes could mean the difference between top ten and top fifty for a search on an engine, a difference that could mean thousands of dollars per day in lost revenue for many websites. Imagine if a site like Amazon.com failed to use alt attributes and stopped using tags (replaced by images, for example). Searches that would typically show the site as a number one result could start bringing the site up as a number fifty result. Conclusion Themes in Content: Hub And Authority Sites ( Page 1 of 4 ) It is almost universally agreed by search engine optimization (SEO) professionals that Google and probably the other search engines are using themeing to evaluate the relevance of incoming and outgoing links. Many also agree that themeing is used to measure the relevance of both on and off page content as part of the search algorithm. The question for most SEO experts is to what degree that themeing is indeed being employed by the search engines. Themes are thought to be used by the search engines to determine search engine rankings. With that in mind, website owners should be conscious of maintaining the theme relevance on their sites. With the rise of hub sites and authority sites to prominence in Google, the need to maintain relevance of theme became much more important. In order to properly evaluate hub and authority sites, both on page and off page content factors have become much more important than ever before. Incoming links gain more value if they arrive from similarly themed web pages. Sending pages containing entirely irrelevant content will be awarded less weight. The methods used in the search algorithms to determine relevance of theme are not publicly known, but the implications of the theme basis in the algorithms are obvious in the search results. More than ever before, search engines are developing techniques to determine the themes and topics of websites, and their individual pages. Failure of a webmaster to pay attention to the changes will cause the site in question to drop far down in the search results. Web pages that are relevant to the search are what a web searcher wants displayed in any search engine results. The search engine algorithm designers understand that desire on the part of their users. Failure to provide good search results will send users to another search engine. The search engines take themes and relevance seriously. So should you. If you want to turn your site into the very important hub and authority sites, attention to page and site wide themes is a must. As search engine algorithms are modified and changed, for better or worse, the requirements for achieving high rankings are altered. While that is a given, in the minds of most SEO professionals, the subtle differences in the algorithm can mean major changes in the search placements. One of those rather innocuous sounding algorithm alterations involves content themes. In fact, it’s not a small change, and it can definitely cause some tectonic plate level shifts in the rankings, for your most important keywords. Avoiding an earthquake type disaster swallowing up your non-themed content is essential for any website owner. Fortunately, an understanding of what makes the Earth move can go far in preventing your site from falling into a bottomless pit. Two important developments in the Google algorithm signalled the arrival of theme-based calculations. One is the propelling to the top of the rankings of authority sites, along with their cousin, the hub site. The other major change was in the addition of Topic Sensitive PageRank (TSPR) to the Google PageRank tabulation. Hub sites and authority sites are the very definition of strongly themed content. Google ranks both types of sites very highly, as they are considered by the search engine giant, as the most important for their respective themes. In fact, hub and authority sites are perhaps the best evidence that topics and themes are taken very seriously in search algorithms. An authority site for any keyword theme is considered by Google to be especially important for that keyword or keyword phrase. A hub site has multiple incoming and outgoing links, to similarly themed websites and web pages. The common denominator, with both classifications of sites, is their heavily concentrated theme based content. That themed content can be both on and off site. While authority and hub sites are largely a Google creation, the same sites tend to also rank highly in Yahoo! and MSN Search, making the phenomenon of themeing sites and pages valuable for all search engines. Topic Sensitive PageRank is also part of the trend towards themes. PageRank is Google’s numerical measurement of the importance of a web page on the Internet. That measure is a tabulation of the number and quality of incoming links to a web page. In the past, all incoming links were apparently weighted in the same manner, regardless of relevance to the receiving page. Over time, that has changed drastically. While all web pages still transfer PageRank, in accordance to the original formula, those pages sharing a similar theme pass along more RageRank. In essence, pages sharing a common theme, share Topic Sensitive PageRank. That common themed page passes along PageRank at a higher level than non-themed page. By understanding the importance of theme based content to your website, you can make its principles work for you in the search rankings. The place for any website owner to begin the examination of site themes is taking an overall view of the site’s subject matter. Looking closely at the topics under discussion at the site is the first step. Start by determining what areas of business and information are the site’s principle subjects. For most business websites, the main theme area is the company and its products and services. Often, sites will provide additional information on related topics, as a service for visitor traffic. Those subjects are also themes for the site. A large site might have many interlocking, and mutually supporting themes and topics. By means of adding more relevant web pages and links to the site, the important authority site status can be achieved. Note that the many topics and themes are related to one another in some way. For example, a section on flowers, one on local churches and other houses of worship, and one on limousines, would collectively add relevant theme support to a wedding site. Links to and from other sites, covering the same topics would also add theme related value to the site. When adding incoming links from theme related websites, be sure to ask for keyword rich link anchor text. Link anchor text is the wording that appears on a clickable link to another website. Anchor text is one of the most important components of the search algorithms and easily the most important off site content consideration. Often, the sending web page will only use the business name, but many will use your requested keywords instead. Don’t hesitate to ask for it. You can even offer to supply the copy and paste html script. You might be pleasantly surprised with some powerful keyword anchor text that will provide a powerful boost in the search rankings. Along with the upward bounce in the search rankings, a relevant web page will pass your site some extra Google PageRank. That extra influx of PageRank will score well, as part of the Topic Sensitive PageRank alterations to the Google PageRank formula. The new calculation method makes theme related links even more valuable than ever before. Along with the link popularity boost in all of the search algorithms, Google provides an additional jolt to the site’s rankings with the PageRank portion of its algorithm. For many website owners, the ultimate goal is to develop a hub or authority site. Some webmasters hope to achieve both levels. The importance of the hubs and authorities is based on themes. Because of that dependence upon a site wide theme relationship, it’s important for your site to concentrate on its themes. While a site can be an authority for many different themes, the common link is the fact that the website owner created that theme orientation in the first place. It’s entirely possible for many sites to move to the exalted status of hub or authority. It will take some work on the part of the webmaster though. Hub sites tend to be larger sites with many pages. Most, if not all, authority sites are large sites, often encompassing thousands of pages, and sporting thousands of incoming links. Well, no one said it was going to be an easy job. Constantly adding theme related and keyword rich content will start a site on the right road. As more fresh keyword laden content is added, then more incoming links will be pointed toward the information provided on the various new and enhanced web pages. More links mean better search engine rankings, as does the additional fresh content. The additional incoming links will pass along more Google PageRank to the receiving pages in particular, and indirectly to the site itself in general. There are many incremental benefits accruing to the site, even as they work their way toward hub and authority status. To develop theme-based sites worthy of authority or hub status, the place to begin is with the most important keywords and keyword phrases for the site. Domination in those search terms results in authority status for those themes, following an increase in links to the site and total number of content pages. By continually adding more keywords phrase pages and by proper site map navigation and internal linkage, the first important steps toward higher authority status are initiated. Larger sites, with several dominant themes, should find ways to make the various themes related to one another. Building bridge type pages, that incorporate both themes and effectively fusing them together, might be one possible solution. Over time, the additional theme-based incoming links, and their accompanying keyword employing link text will develop a hub site. The incoming links must be part of an outgoing linking arrangement to similarly themed sites as well. It is a slow and ongoing process that must be continually improved. By making linking to and from theme related sites, the road to a hub site stature will be well on the way. Conclusion The common theme for creating both hub sites and authority sites is the development of a powerfully theme oriented website. Constant attention to a site’s most important keywords and keyword phrases is important. The very concept of creating hub and authority sites depends upon it. All of the content and linking strategies must relate to the site’s theme or themes. Combining all of those keywords and search terms into fully integrated themes is essential to elevating a site higher in the search rankings. This concentration of themes is vital to successful rankings in very highly competitive searches. By keeping themes first and foremost in your mind, they will result in the sweet symphonic sounds of the hub site and the authority site.