Originally posted on September 8, 2006 @ 7:23 am
Google turns eight today. Happy Birthday! But so far no spiffy Google Birthday logo :(
Originally posted on September 8, 2006 @ 7:23 am
Google turns eight today. Happy Birthday! But so far no spiffy Google Birthday logo :(
Originally posted on August 3, 2006 @ 9:17 am
Yes, it’s true. Google is kicking some major butt for being the search engine of choice. Granted, Google’s stock price may have declined in recent weeks but its share of the U.S. search market continues to rise. Yay Google!
During the four-week period ending July 29, 60.2% of U.S. based Internet searches were executed at Google, according to Internet metrics company Hitwise. This is up from 59.3% in June.
In the same period, Yahoo Search also gained market share, moving from 22.0% to 22.5%. MSN Search saw a slight decrease, falling from 12.1% to 11.8%.
These top three search engines accounted for over 94% of all searches in the United States. Other search engines together accounted for just 5.5% of U.S. searches.
Moral of the story? Google rocks. Now if we can just get more people using Firefox instead of Internet Exploder.
Originally posted on August 7, 2006 @ 7:23 am
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), are collaborating to test an innovative video distribution model that will serve consumers, web publishers and advertisers. Google will distribute ad-supported content from MTV Networks to targeted website publishers, allowing publishers to showcase clips from premium programming like Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants and MTV’s Laguna Beach to enhance the content on their websites. As the first-of-its-kind offering from both companies, this new model will provide users with new ways to experience content and create targeted marketing vehicles for advertisers. It will also serve to promote programming that is available via cable, satellite and other distribution platforms carrying MTVN’s on-air channels. The companies expect to be testing the model later this month.
This venture marks the first time integrated video programming and advertising will be made available directly to Google’s extensive AdSense network, which delivers targeted text and image ads to its network of websites and blogs. This also represents the first time clips from MTV Networks’ kids and family, music and entertainment programming will be available to consumers widely across the Web on an ad-supported basis on sites outside MTVN’s proprietary sites.
“Collaborating with Google gives us a terrific opportunity to take our content and distribute it even more widely on the web in a seamless and targeted way,” said Tom Freston, President and CEO, Viacom. “This deal fits in perfectly with our strategy to deliver the best content to our audiences – wherever they are. We’re very happy to be working with Google, a true innovator in content distribution.”
“We’re excited to work with MTV Networks on new ways of distributing its content to consumers via the Internet and on Google Video,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO. “With the combination of our video technology, and extensive advertiser and publisher network, Google is in a leading position to help content owners, web publishers and advertisers generate interest and increase revenue opportunities.”
Source: Google Press Release
Originally posted on July 20, 2006 @ 10:12 am
Google is busy as always working on a project dubbed Google Accessible Search.
Accessible Search adds a small twist to the familiar Google search: In addition to finding the most relevant results as measured by Google’s search algorithms, it further sorts results based on the simplicity of their page layouts.
Heads up web developers. We need to pay attention to this. Why you ask? Well first lets learn how Google’s Accessible Search works, then you’ll know why.
In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully – pages with few visual distractions and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op’s technology, which improves search results based on specialized interests.
So what does this mean? If you’re not already doing it, you need to start building your websites with accessibility in mind if you want your sites to have even more SEO goodness.
How can we as web developers make our site content more accessible to the blind you might be asking yourself? I recommend you read up on the W3C Web Content Access Guidelines.
The W3C has a lot of useful information on the subject. Broad adherence to these guidelines is one way of ensuring that sites are universally accessible.
Some recommendations that I would personally make would be to add alt tags to all of your site images. Be sure to give them a descriptive name, example “photo of maple tree” and not something like “photo-001”.
If it’s a spacer image or filler image, I usually put an asterisk (*) or a period (.) in the alt tag.
Also, be sure to use title tags on all your links and be descriptive as well with them. You can check the links on my articles for examples of how I do it. Just mouse over a link or two and you’ll see.
Don’t forget to use acronym title tags on acronyms or abbreviations. They do help with accessibility. Happy coding.