The malware details tool is nice, and should probably be a standard item in the toolkit, but I think the more interesting development is the ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ tool. At the moment it is very basic, and only returns the header response of a page and the details of any redirects or problems with a page, but if this is the shape of things to come, this could prove useful. What I am imagining is a site header/redirect checker that highlights any 302’s, and allows you to submit a list of redirects that should be in place, and alerts you if they are broken. That would be nice, and I believe that these are the type of things that Microsoft’s IIS SEO Toolkit provides, but that is limited to people using Microsoft servers, as well as being comfortable changing their server configuration.

These new tools are obviously a first iteration of some potential new features, but it is good to see that the Webmaster Tools are still being looked at by Google, and there are new things on the way.

Post from: Connect

Fetch! Google. Fetch!

The new campaign will see Multimap launch a series of tailored creative executions that highlight specific use cases for target audience groups identified by research. Specialised ad-creative focused on promoting Multimap’s user functionality will be targeted at mums, business users, students and outdoor activity enthusiasts.

The campaign has been based around the insights gained through a social media audit. For example we found one common use of the service was to explore where an individuals could find routes for outdoor activites such as mountain biking. The creative has been targeted towards such groups.

…The story has been covered throughout the industry press, and although we don’t like to blow our own trumpets on this platform too much we thought we wouldn’t be doing the campaign justice without some examples of the great creative concepts in action.

So here it is…

Students

Outdoors

Mums

Business

Post from: Connect

Multimap display creative

Homepage size = 15k (code + 8.5k logo image)

15k x 38 million page views x 365 days = 209,020,900,000k

209,020,900,000k = 24.3 terabytes of bandwidth

This is just to display the homepage of google.com and does not include the 165 local domains or the 400 million or so searches Google receives every day.

Of course, the bandwidth figure above assumes (and they are big assumptions!) that there is no browser or ISP caching and that the number of visits remains constant. However, it does highlight how for Google displaying even a low sized webpage requires a huge amount of bandwidth. It’s no surprise then that The Google’s biggest expense comes from running and maintaining their servers and why they are looking at new technologies to reduce costs such as creating their own renewable energy (wind, solar & geothermal), super efficient server farms and even server farms based at sea. 

And if displaying Google’s simple homepage takes up so much bandwidth it’s not surprising that running YouTube has been estimated to cost nearly 1 million dollars a day and that the site uses as much bandwidth now as the whole internet did in 2000!

Post from: Connect

How much bandwidth does Google.com use?

I agree it’s a lot better than not indexing it, but, this has definitely sent the wrong message to Flash happy web-developers. If you think this opens the door for Flash in search, then think again.

Google has indexed, PDF files along with several other non-HTML file formats for many years, but you only see them in search results, when there’s a shed load of external anchor text pointing to the file or for a long tail query with little competition. Our e-Book on Social Media has ranked consistently in the top 3 for several  years, but it’s little to do with Google’s ability to index PDF, and everything to do with the 600+ links pointing to it with the words ‘’Social media’.

So why should this be?

1. Flash files won’t have the same HTML mark-up which in regular pages, Google use to judge relevance.
2. A lot of Flash navigation use non-text buttons, so no value from important internal anchor text
3. Deep links contribute heavily to Google rankings in regular sites. But most Flash sites are contained in a single file, and people generally link to the file and not to deeper pages

Add to these, clicking on a Flash listing in Google is unlikely to take you to the place returned in the search results, unless the file is broken into lots of unique URL sections – providing a very poor user experience. And let’s not get started about mobile.

Don’t get me wrong, it is great that search engines are trying to keep up with web technologies, but until they can provide the same opportunity for Flash files to rank as regular sites and provide a similar user experience, they must send the right message to the web development and creative community.

I’ll still continue to advice clients to use Flash only where necessary. But, for those stuck with their Flash site, at least we can make it a bit more search friendly.

But my concern is that a lot of traditional creative agencies will use this development as a blank Chequebook to continue building expensive Flash sites which may be search friendlier but has no real chance of competing with a regular website.

Post from: Connect

Google indexing Flash content – big deal?