Matthew Steven Kelly » SEO

Google Patent

Matthew Steven Kelly — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:11:27 +0000

Some amazing information about the Google algorithm can be found here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/google-historical-data-patent

All the information is from these sources:

The patent from US Patent and Trademark Office - US Patent #20050071741 – Information retrieval based on historical data
From SEOChat Forums - Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data – Sandbox Explanation, Aging Delay?
From Threadwatch - Google’s War on SEO – Documented
From SearchEngineWatch Forums - Does New Google Patent Validate Sandbox Theory?
From HighRankings Forum - New Google Patent, Must Read
From SERoundtable - Sandbox Explained by Google? “Information retrieval based on historical data”
From Search Science (Xan Porter) - New Google patent proves “sandbox” exists

Web Standards

Matthew Steven Kelly — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:34:50 +0000

I, like most developers love the idea of one day having all web browsers display content in exactly the same way, not just because of browser standards, but because of HTML/XHTML standards as well. So this article on A List Apart really intrigued me.

Molly makes several arguments that I think we would all agree with. If you found that article interesting, I would suggest checking out a couple other of the “A List Apart” articles. They are all very well written and meaningful to read.

So many well thought out insights that we come across in our daily work lives – like the separation of content and form argument.

This could keep me busy for a long time.

Search Engines Webmaster Support

Matthew Steven Kelly — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:12:38 +0000

According to research by Hitwise, as of December 2008, the top four search engines are (in order) Google (72.07%), Yahoo (17.79%), MSN (4.10%) and then Ask (3.15%). Each of these search engines provides a method for you to track how your site is doing in their results.

The first step is to make sure you have a robots.txt file and that it allows search engines to index your site.
The next step is to setup a sitemap, based on the sitemap protocol. This gives the major search engines a list of what pages you would like indexed and how you would like them to be indexed.

With those two steps complete the major search engines will be able to better find and index your content. To track how your site’s indexing is going for each engine, the steps are pretty much the same. Create a login, verify you own the site through either creating a file on your site or updating a meta tag, submitting a sitemap, and then tracking results:

Google: Google.com by far the most popular search engine, provides Google Webmaster Tools. I like Google’s tools the best, as it not only provides statistics, but lets you view how individual pages, if there are any indexing errors, and allows you to diagnose your site. I think it provides the most information and I use it in combination with Google Analytics to track my traffic results.
Yahoo: Yahoo.com provides Yahoo Site Explorer for its users to track their sites indexing. This tool provides a method to submit a sitemap and see your site indexing statistics but not much else. I still have an account registered to track how I am doing statistically.
MSN: MSN.com provides Webmaster Tools to access indexing information. They provide a cross between Google and Yahoo tools as far as depth of information goes. While they have more information than just the statistics offered by Yahoo, it is not to par with Google’s offering.
Ask: Ask.com does not provide a webmaster login but states that simply creating the appropriate robots.txt and sitemap files are all you need to do to help your listings. More information about Ask.com sitemap submission here.

Using these tools, why it will not increase your search ranking, will help you see how you are doing and diagnose areas of improvement. They are great tools to see how different SEO techniques are improving how your site is indexed.