Who Is Failure = Obama :: According to Google

I always remember the old days when Google bombs worked fine and we use to see irrelevant or sometimes funny results for various search terms.

Recently, many experts reported a similar incident that proves Google is still not completely bomb proof.

Search for "who is failure" in Google or just click here and you will be amused. : )

Incase you are wondering what Google bomb is please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb

Also, if you miss it; because I am sure that Google will take the necessary steps to clean up the mess, below is a screenshot that I took for archival purposes ;)

Click on the image

And here are a few amusing rankings as mentioned on SearchEngineLand

Google: “Failure,” “miserable failure” and “who is a failure” bring up neither Bush nor Obama in the top 50 results, but “who is failure” ranks Obama #1.

Ask: “Failure” doesn’t find Bush or Obama in the top 50 result. For “miserable failure,” Bush ranks #45. For “who is a failure,” neither ranks. For “who is failure,” Obama ranks #1, as with Google.

Bing: For “failure,” the Bush bio ranks #2 for me. It ranks #3 for “miserable failure.” It ranks #2 for “who is a failure” and “who is failure.”

Yahoo: For “failure,” Bush ranks #11. Bush ranks #5 for “miserable failure.” His bio ranks #16 for “who is a failure.” For “who is failure,” neither Bush nor Obama rank in the top 50 results.

I have very little enthusiasm to actually verify them all but can give it a try I hope you won’t be disappointed.

Do post any such funny fact that you come across in the comments.

Enjoy!

User Interface For Keywords Updated on Webmaster Tools

Google recently announced updates about the keyword and Webmaster tools.

Now there is a better way to compare the frequency of a keyword to the frequency of the most popular keyword on your site. Also, you will get a list of up to 10 URLs which contain the keyword that you have selected from the list displayed in your webmaster tools.

In short Google will:

1. Tell you how often a keyword is found.
2. Displays top URLs that contain the keyword.
3. Data updated daily.

Also as suggested by the team at Google; this will also help you identify which URLs may have been hacked. (This is a possibility and some of my friends this problem frequently.)

You can just look for key words such as ‘casino’, ‘Viagra’, etc which you believe don’t relate to your site and are getting you unnecessary traffic. Short list the source URL and clean them up if required.

Here are few images related to the updates.

Its the Webmaster Tools' Team ;-]

Google Chrome OS will be Reveled This Year

Google has made it intensions clear to bless the computing world with a new open source OS named “Google Chrome OS”

According to the Google's latest blog post the Google Chrome Operating System is Google’s attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

The open source, lightweight operating system will be initially launched for Netbooks. And these Net books will be available for the consumers in the second half of 2010.

The Key aspects of the Chrome OS will be speed, simplicity and security. Completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS will reduce users’ intervention required to deal with viruses, malware and security updates; thus improving overall experience.

The OS will be designed to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get user onto the web in a few seconds.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and Google is working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

With this said about the Google Chrome OS I can wait to get my hands on the source code and hopefully make some useful contribution to the OS world.

SEMPO Asia Tour - Search Engine Marketing Event in Mumbai

SEMPO Asia Tour - Search Engine Marketing Event in Mumbai

Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) Chairman and Board Members are touring Asia through 9-15 June, 09 to foster awareness, educate, and promote the search industry in Asia.

The India visit is on 15 June 09. The event would consist of a Workshop and a Roundtable for Digital Agencies & companies having a Digital Marketing Division. The event will bring together leading global and Indian practitioners from the Search Marketing discipline on a single platform. The event is an opportunity to:
• Gain insights on Enterprise SEO for large business ventures
• Learn how Global PPC Campaigns & SEM strategies accelerate growth businesses
• Discover the impact SEO, SEM & SMO can have in increasing the reach of businesses

Convonix has sponsor the ‘Search Engine Marketing Roundtable’ Event in Mumbai on Monday, June 15th 2009.

I believe they will be tweeting live from the event. So just follow Covonix on Twitter - http://twitter.com/convonix to get live updates from the event.

Google Suggest - Funny Side :D

A Friend of mine, a Googleholic sent across these images that show the funny Suggestions that Google gives when you try to search some specific terms.




















I tried out a few of the above and a few of my own they are true... :D Google Suggest is Funny.

Try some of your own and leave comments on what search term gave you a funny suggestions.

Facebook Connect from Digg is Now Live.

Facebook Connect for Digg is now Live. Today Digg rolled out the much awaited Facebook connect.

As the name suggests Facebook connect is a bridge that connects two biggest giants in the Social Networking Universe. It will allow Facebook’s 200+ million users to instantly login and start Digging and commenting. The present Digg users can now easily cross-post, share Digg activities on Facebook, etc.

Also, care is taken that privacy of the user is maintained and user is always in control of the information that is published in public. Sharing the Digg activity isn’t currently automatic, so the setting allows publishing only the actions that a user wants to share. However, Digg will soon be offering an option to the users that will publish all of their Digg activity if they wish to avoid the prompt.

The service is very easy to use and Digg’s FAQ will answer any questions that you may have also they have a feedback system in place where your inputs will be considered to improve the overall experience.

Let us see how my surfing experience is improved :) by this connect. Also, leave your comments if you have to share your views on the Facebook Connect.

Google Cuts Grass, Cost And Goes Green

In their effort to cut cost and grass, weed and other vegetation that grows around their office. Google has come up with an ingenious idea “Goats” (Not Kidding). According to the latest post on Google’s Blog the company has turned to the natural grass cutters, the goats. Their Mountain View headquarters has some fields that require occasional maintenance such as clearing out weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. They have rented some goats from California Grazing to get this job done.

It is the implementation of such out of the box ideas that keep Google ahead….!!

Below is the Actual image from Google Blog:

Go Goats...!!! Go Google....!!!!

General And SEO Checklist Before Launching a Website

Couple of days back I came across this article on some important and necessary checks before the official launch of a website on This website. Just for quick reference I decided to summarize the important points mentioned in the article.

The webpage elements that should be doulbe checked before launch of the website are:

1. Titles And Meta Data

Page title is the most important element for SEO and is also important so that users know what’s on the page. Make sure it changes on every page and relates to that page’s content.

Meta description and keyword tags are somewhat important for SEO, so it is a good idea to include them. Change the description on each page to make it relate to that page’s content, because this is often what Google displays in its search result description.

2. Links on the Webpage

Make sure all the links on the website work. Add “http://” to links to external websites. Make sure the logo links to the home page.

The links should be distinguishable from the plain text of the webpage. Also, use a different color for the links that user has already visited.

It is a good practice to use W3C Link Checker to check for any broken links.

3. Sitemap

Add a sitemap.xml file to your root directory this allows the major search engines to easily index your website.

It can be easily generated using http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Also, add your website and sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. This tells Google that you have a sitemap, and the service provides useful statistics on how and when your website was last indexed.

4. Custom 404 Page

It’s a good practice to use a custom 404 page. If a user requests a page that doesn’t exist, a 404 page is displayed. You can read more about this topic on http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/08/make-your-404-pages-more-useful.html


5. Form validation

Test all the form fields to make sure that if there is an error, the user is provided with enough feedback to be able to fix it.

6. Analytics

Use some sort of analytics such as Google Analytics to see how the website performs and how successful the conversion rates are. Track daily unique hits, monthly page views, browser statistics and more.

7. Back Up

Back as frequently as possible cause a day will come when you regret not having one. If you search, you will find plugins for auto backup. USE THEM.


8. Cross-Browser Checks

It is important that the website works across browsers. It doesn’t have to be pixel perfect, but everything should work, and the user shouldn’t see any problems. The most popular browsers to check are Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Chrome, Opera and the iPhone.

9. Functionality Check

Test everything thoroughly. If you have a contact form, test it and copy yourself so that you can see what comes through. Get others to test the website, and not just family and friends but the website’s target market. Sit back and watch how a user uses the website. It’s amazing what you’ll pick up on when others use the website differently than how you assume they’d use it. Common things to check for are contact forms, search functions, shopping baskets and log-in areas.

10. Proofread

Read everything. Even if you’ve already read it, read it again. Get someone else to read it. There’s always something you’ll pick up on and have to change. See if you can reduce the amount of text by keeping it specific. Break up large text blocks into shorter paragraphs. Add clear headings throughout, and use lists so that users can scan easily. Don’t forget about dynamic text too, such as alert boxes.

Hope these points prove to be useful to you in some way. Please don't forget to read the SEO Guideline, these guidelines are extreamly important.

SEO Expert Summarizes Google's Guidelines for Better Search Engine Rankings.

It has been more than a year that have been optimizing sites (worked on more than 50 websites including some fortune 500 companies) for better user experience and search engine performance. There have been countless experiments and tweaks that I have tried and all of them have worked, as I always took care that under any circumstances my site is neither fooling the user or the search engine.

For the past few days I was trying to document all the points that a SEO expert should be aware of, before he starts optimizing a site. Below I have mentioned points important from Google’s perspective. I personally believe, you get it right on Google and things will fall in place for other search engines.

There are many sites that give tips and tricks for improving rankings on Google. However, I have found the following resources exceptionally important and they happen to be from Google itself.

Most of the other sites were just trying to re-invent, the same points described in the documents below.

The content on following three URL must be read and memorized by every SEO expert.

URL 1: Webmaster guidelines- http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&topic=15260

URL 2: Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide - http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

URL 3: Creating a Google-friendly sites - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8522

1. Summarizing the Webmaster Guidelines:

The Webmaster Guidelines consist of guideline for Design and content, Technical aspect and Quality of the website.

The Design and content guidelines suggest the following:

1. A site should have a clear hierarchy and text links.


2. Create a Sitemap.


3. Make sure that <title> elements and alt attributes are descriptive and accurate.


4. Avoid dynamic URLs, Broken links and excessive links on a single page (fewer than 100)
   
   

The Technical guidelines suggest:

1. Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. A helpful add-on on Mozilla Firefox would be: Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1944


2. Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site.
   

The Quality Guidelines suggest:

1. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.


2. Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.


3. Avoid all the Black Hat SEO techniques, such as hidden text or hidden links, cloaking or sneaky redirects, automated queries to Google, load pages with irrelevant keywords, etc.
   
   

2. Summarizing the search engine Optimization Starter Guide:

This document informs us about the best practices to be followed while optimizing the SEO elements of a website.

Some basic and important SEO Guidelines from the document are:

• For Page Titles: make them unique, accurate and descriptive for all the pages of the website.


• For Meta Description tag: Accurately summarize the page's content and also make them unique for each page.


• For URL’s structure: Use words (keywords) in URL’s, Create a simple directory structure and provide one version of a URL to reach a document to avoid duplicate content.


• For Easier Site Navigation: Use text for linking, breadcrumb navigation, use an HTML sitemap page and a custom 404 page.


• For search engine friendly content: Create fresh and unique content, stay organized around the topic and write easy-to-read text.


• For anchor text: Write short but descriptive text and use it for internal links.


• For heading tags: Use headings carefully across the page. Use the main points and sub-points (usually our keywords) of the content on the page as the heading tags.


• For image optimization: Use descriptive filenames and alt text, store images in a single directory and Use commonly supported filet types.


• For Robots.txt: Use methods other that robots.txt to hide your confidential information.
  
  

3. Summarizing the guidelines on creating Google friendly website:

This section of the Google Webmaster’s Help gives links to all the documentation covering all the factors important from search engine as well as user perspective.

Few of the very important topics on http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8522 are as follows:

• General guidelines


• Site Management


• Site Design and Content


• Potential Problems

With this I have tried to summarize the aspect important for Google. I will continue this study and keep everyone posted on any new updates that I come across.

I would also like to thank Namrata Yadav for all her help in compiling this information.

SEO Add-ons - Firefox Addons for SEO purpose.

Hi All,

As my days affiliated to a SEO company are numbered. I wish to spread the tools that helped me with the SEO process till date.

Below is the list of Mozilla Firefox Add-ons that I have running on my copy of the browser.

If not all you have to try the ones marked (Must Have)

1. FEBE (Must Have)
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2109
Description: FEBE backs up your extensions, themes, and (optionally) your bookmarks, preferences, passwords, cookies and just about everything else Firefox offers (it can even backup/restore your entire profile).

2. FireBug (Must Have)
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
Description: You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

3. Firefox Universal Uploader (fireuploader)
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4724
Description: This extension allows to upload/download files from your favorite websites using a simple interface.

4. FireFTP
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/684
Description: FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers

5. FoxyTunes (Must Have)
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/219
Description: FoxyTunes lets you control almost any media player and find lyrics, covers, videos, bios and much more with a click right from your browser.

6. GA? Is Google Analytics Installed
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5631
Description: Checks to see if Google Analytics is installed on any given page.

7. IE Tab (Must Have)
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419
Description: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox

8. InFormEnter
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/673
Description: InFormEnter adds a small, clickable icon next to every input field in a web form, from where you can select the item to be inserted - no typing required.

9. Interclue
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4999
Description: Interclue tells you everything you need to know before you open yet another tab.

10. Mouse Gestures Redox (Must Have) (Must Have) (Must Have)
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/39
Description: Allows you to execute common commands (like page forward/backward, close tab, new tab) by mouse gestures drawn over the current webpage, without reaching for the toolbar or the keyboard.

11. Popup ALT Attribute (Must Have)
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1933
Description: Popups alternate texts of images.

12. RankChecker (Must Have) (Must Have) (Must Have) (Must Have)
URL 1: http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/
URL2: http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/RankChecker.xpi (Direct Download)
Description: Allows you to easily check your website rankings in Google (US and international), Yahoo, and Microsoft Live search.
Video Overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X__ngJcrOYU

13. RSVP Reader
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2149
Description: A rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) tool that some research suggests may allow people to read text on the web up to 3.5 times faster.

14. SearchStatus (Must Have)
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/321
Description: Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and more.

15. SeoQuake SEO extension
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3036
Description: Seoquake allows obtaining and investigating many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly, save them for future work, comparing them with the results, obtained for other, competitive, projects.

16. ShowIP
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/590
Description: Show the IP address(es) of the current page in the status bar. It also allows querying custom services by IP (right mouse button) and hostname (left mouse button), like whois, netcraft. Additionally you can copy the IP address to the clipboard.

17. Tab Mix Plus (Must Have)
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122
Description: Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager.

18. Web Developer
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60
Description: Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

19. Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool (Must Have)
URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1944
Description: You can see what what a page will look like when viewed with Lynx, a text-mode web browser. It is also presumably, how search engines see your site. In addition, it can help determine if web pages are accessible to the vision impaired.

20. SEO for Firefox (Must Have) (Must Have) (Must Have)
URL1: http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html
URL2: http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo4firefox.xpi
Description: SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market directly in the search results.
Video Overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kc4NiQDkjQ

I hope some of these add-ons make your SEO process more effective.

Please leave any more SEO tools that you may have in the comments. :-)

About the New Blog....!!!

Creating a more Personal Blog at http://hrishikeshs.wordpress.com ; I' Will be blogging in this Space too ... however, this blog is usually used up for more professional Stuff... !!