Google has recently launched a new feature called SearchWiki. However, this feature gives an impression of a Bookmarking Site rather than a Search Engine. We recently observed a new feature while making a search on Google. This feature could be in the Beta testing phase and Google might roll-out this feature on Google worldwide soon.

Check out this following video and you will get to see SearchWiki feature of Google

Every single search result will show you listings with 3 image buttons as shown below:-

You will have the choice to move the search listing UP or DOWN. You will also get a chance to completely remove the listing from your search results. It will also allow you to add comments like whether you liked the result or not?.

This is quite similar to what we have been observing on Social Bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg and several others.

SEO Connection of SearchWiki
There are indications that Google might be using data such as Bounce Rates and Traffic logs of your website to decide actual rankings of your website. However, if this SearchWiki feature is used by Google to manually update search results then it will only open new doors for Black Hat SEO’s.

Some of the negative aspects of this feature are as given below:-

a) It could be used by Black Hat’s to pull down rankings of your competitor.
b) It could be used by your Black Hat’s SEO competitor to push you out of search result page for keywords.
d) It shows that Google is relying on a combination of automated algorithm and other data such as Bounce rates of your website, traffic analysis, and data from SearchWiki as well.

Further, this feature gives an impression of Google Social Bookmarking site rather than Google as a search engine. The problem of click fraud has been evident on Google for quite a long. There have been instances where black hat SEO’s exhaust daily PPC budget of their competitor’s website by clicking on their paid ads.

In a similar fashion, this feature can get exploited by Black Hat SEO’s in order to manipulate search engine results for their targeted keywords.

If Google is planning to use data from SearchWiki to decide future rankings of your site, then it will only create whole lot of complex issues related to Black Hat SEO in the near future.

I think this feature should be renamed as Googlicous rather than SearchWiki

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Search Wiki

There are approximately 3 Billion mobile handsets worldwide and Google is trying its best to provide wide array of new features to help mobilephone users. If your mobile has GPS capabilities, then you can avail several useful services like Urbanspoon (for iPhone) and Google App.

Urbanspoon (similar to Google App) on the iPhone is part Magic 8 Ball, part slot machine. You shake your phone and it finds a good nearby restaurant for you. Keep shaking it until it comes back with something you want to try.

Check out Urbanspoon search demo on iPhone.

Therefore, in the next 1-2 years, Google will consistently focus on providing wide array of search data pertaining to any single location to mobile users. Say for example, if you are located in Bronx, New York you can simply use Google mobile search to locate a good nearby restaurant.

Google is also focusing on Hyperlocal search. The consumer who is makes a search for a particular keyword like “Museum”(without specifying location), should be able to access various museums located nearby and not countrywide or worldwide.

Google search results will get segregate for the mobile users searching for anything using their mobile handsets. The key focus will be local data or Hyperlocal data which will enable several offline businesses (pizza, fast-food joints, restaurants) to make their presence felt on mobile online search. It will also help mobile users to access useful services directly through their mobile search.

Let us see a live demo of Google mobile search on Blackberry

Google has recently launched Google App for iphone, which has a built in voice search capability. It is quite similar to Urbanspoon shake, but it has advance capabilities of making google search using your voice. You can directly speak your queries to Google Mobile App without even pushing any buttons. Further, you can do local searches without even specifying your location.

Therefore, local restaurants, small shop owners will try to ensure that their services show up on the top shake or on the top voice query of Google App.

Check out live demo of Google app below:-

Therefore Google is providing useful local search capabilities to mobile users and thus empowering mobile users to make local search directly through their mobile phones. The mobile search community can easily overshadow internet search community (those searching on Google.com, Yahoo.com etc) in the next few years. More and more mobiles are available with latest technologies like GPS. Therefore, it can open new doors of marketing for your business or locating your potential clients on mobile search.

Now, let us watch Matt Cutts while he discusses the past, present and future of Google Technologies. Some of the things which were discussed are as given below:-

- a quick story about his own interview at Google in 1999
- The scope of Mobile vs personal computers
- Hyperlocal data
- cloud storage servers and storing your data in the cloud

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Subdomains and subfolders have their own individual benefits from business viewpoint. However, these day’s website owners and webmasters are more inclined towards SEO viewpoint rather than business viewpoint.

Whether I should use Subfolder or Subdomain for my Blog promotion?

If you are going for a blog, then using a sub-folder will yield better results. Search engines will distribute ranking power among other pages on the blog including home page. If your blog is popular and receives plenty of links, then your main domain will benefit from the activities on your blog.

When should I use Subdomain?

Subdomain can turn out as a powerful technique to host a blog or a different sub-site with a completely different business theme.

If your main site is about gaming, then you can create a Subdomain for educational purposes.

You can select Subdomains if you wish to start a new site (completely unrelated to your existing site), and you dont wish to purchase separate hosting or use some other domain name. If your main site is gaming.yoursite.com then you can create a completely different Subdomain as education.yoursite.com OR charity.yoursite.com.

If your Business Theme (for 2 different sections) is different then it is best to choose a Subdomain.

What are the Technical advantages (not related to SEO) of using Subdomain over subfolder?

One of the important things to note is that, if you use cookies/sessions in your site, they only work within one domain. Your subdomain cannot share your mainsite cookies or sessions (* just an example).

For security and privacy purposes, browsers will not transmit cookies to any site in a different domain from the one that set the cookie. They can be shared across subdomains and hosts within a domain, but not from one domain to another.

Subfolder or Subdomain: Which one is better from SEO perspective?

Subdomains have been exploited in the past. There have been several instances where one main site was hosting 1000 different Subdomains. Each of these Subdomains were specifically created in order to score higher rankings for any single targeted keyword.

Therefore, search engines have started to tighten their noose around Subdomains hosted within the main website hosting server. More or less, search engines are treating them just like a subfolder. Google has specifically tweaked its ranking algorithms so that pages from multiple subdomains have lower priority as compared to subfolders (for an existing high ranking parent website).

However, there are no fixed rules here. If you manage to make your Subdomain popular in terms of content and back links, then your Subdomain will score higher rankings. Take for example, Google uses Subdomains for different set of services, for example maps.google.com news.google.com and blogsearch.google.com. Each of these Subdomains have their own content and focus on different services.

If you have 100 Subdomains hosted on the main site, and each one of these Subdomains are informative and useful (i.e. unique content, no spamming, good back links etc) then you can score higher rankings for each one of these 100 Subdomains for their respective targeted keywords.

SEO Definition for Subdomain – Subdomain is treated as a separate website, which is “TECHNICALLY connected” with the main site (Google considers technical connection). However, you cannot pass link juice from Subdomain towards Mainsite or vice versa. If you intend to do so, then you have to interlink your Subdomain with your main website.

SEO Definition for Subfolder – Subfolder can be used as a Subdomain catering to different related topics. Subfolder is very much “SEO connected” to the main site and any activity (good or bad) on the subfolder can have positive or negative impact on your main site’s SEO rankings. If you are pasting duplicate content on your subfolders, then it will lower the search engine rankings of the main site. Therefore you need to be careful while using subfolders for different sections.

Whether I should choose Subdomain or Subfolder for a multiple language website?

This is one of the most important SEO issues. There are several websites which intend to create multiple language sites hosted on the same web hosting server. We would not delve into details, but we will go through a live SEO example to see whether search engines prefer subfolder or Subdomain when it comes to Multilanguage sites.

a) Log into Google.fr (FRANCE) and search for keyword “Microsoft’. You will stumble upon http://www.microsoft.com/fr/fr/
b) Similarly, log into Google.de (GERMANY) and search for same keyword “Microsoft”. You will come across http://www.microsoft.com/germany/ on the top #1 place.
c) Log into google.jp ( JAPAN) and search for keyword “Microsoft”. This time you will spot http://www.microsoft.com/JAPAN/.

Therefore you can clearly observe that search engines (both GOOGLE and YAHOO) can easily perceive your subfolders as separate sections catering to any particular language. A user searching from France, will find France subfolder on the top #1 position, whereas user searching from Germany for the same keyword will spot “Germany” subfolder on the top #1 position of Google or Yahoo search results.

Conclusion of the above exercise: You can easily choose subfolders for SEO and there are no negative impacts. Search engines can clearly distinguish between different language sections on the main website and can grant them separate rankings.

If you have some specific business preferences of using Subdomains for Multilanguage site, then you can host your content on different domains. For example yoursite.de for germany and yoursite.jp for Japan.

You can also create Subdomains for different language sites, for example de.yoursite.com or jp.yoursite.com

Therefore, choosing Subdomain is more inclined towards business preferences and personal preferences rather than SEO. You have to decide yourself, whether you should choose Subdomain or Subfolder. If you are concerned with technical issues of “cookies” and “sessions” then you have to see whether Subdomain or Subfolder will perform better. If you are concerned with SEO issues then choosing Subfolder will save your time. However, any activity (good or bad) on your subfolder can have positive or negative impacts on your search engine rankings. Therefore you must analyze different issues before selecting Subdomain or Subfolder.

I do hope you liked this article. . If you have any comments or questions, then do post them below.

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1) Keyword Density – You need to have targeted keyword appear somewhere on your website. Meta Title and the Meta Description are two most important html SEO tags. If you place your targeted keywords in these two tags, then it can help you improve your visibility. ( Meta Keywords tag is often ignored by Google and Yahoo.)

(Watch Useful Video by Matt.Cutts )



In case you are not able to place your keyword in these two html tags, then you can include your keyword within the content itself. However, make sure that your web page is related to the targeted keyword. Any attempts to score rankings for a non-related keyword will not help to improve your visibility on search engines.


Meta Description is a small summary of your entire webpage. The text within meta description tag is also shown to the users whenever they search on Google or Yahoo. If you manage to include your important keyword or keyphrase in the description tag, then it will help your potential visitors to locate your site directly through search engine results. Once your potential clients sees their targeted keyword within the meta title or description tag, then your chances of receiving potential click will be higher.


Your ideal keyword density should be ideally in between 3%-5%. There are no fixed rules here but search engines are looking for a natural pattern. Search engines like natural content and unique content. However, on certain occasions it is observed that users almost forget to include important keyphrases within their content. This makes it difficult for search engines to rank your site anywhere near the top pages of Google, Yahoo or MSN.


2) Back Links – The best way to gain back link is to produce useful content. If you are an active webmaster then you can simply start with a blog and add useful content on regular basis. You can further submit your blog to various bookmarking sites. This will help users to locate your site and they will come back to your site again and again.


Keyword density and back links are the two basic models of any search engine whether Google, Yahoo or MSN.

Google looks at various parameters like quality of your back links, rate at which you acquired back links, natural or artificial pattern in back linking, and several others. Whatever you do, just make sure that there are no artificial patterns in your optimization efforts. If you are submitting 1 article to 100 sites, Google will only count them as 1 or 2 (Max) and not 100.

Lots of people have misconceptions regarding search engines, especially Google.

Some of them are as given below:-

a) You need to manually submit your new website to Google – The best way is to let Google find your site through related websites. If you are still not satisfied with the results, then you can go and submit url to Google or Yahoo manually. In 99% cases, Google will automatically crawl new websites.
b) Adsense can help to improve visibility of your website – Adsense is just a piece of javascript which Google can clearly distinguish from other sections of the website. Therefore, adsense cannot influence your rankings in any way.

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- There are lots of speculations about negative effect of certain SEO issues. However, most of these issues turn out as “SEO Myths”.

Matt Cutts (I would rather say Dr. Matt Cutts ) will answer some of your questions and will help you understand SEO better.

Some of the issues discussed in the useful video are as given below:-

a) Having multiple sites on the same server – There are lots of myths surrounding around multiple sites hosted on the same servers. Even if you have 1000 sites, but each one of them are informative but having unique content, then you won’t face any issue with Google or Yahoo.

b) Sharing same Javascript with several other websites. For example, google analytic javascript or any other javascript coding. If you are sharing your javascript with 1000 sites, it doesn’t mean that your website will get penalized in any way. If you are still scary about sharing javascript, then you can use external javascript which do not get embedded within website’s html.

c) Launching sites with millions of pages. Check out the best way to do so. If you are having a large e-commerce site and suddenly you plan to launch a new version of the same site in German, French or Chinese, then you must do so gradually.

SOME OTHER SEO MYTHS ARE AS GIVEN BELOW :-

a) Meta tags are useless – Meta tags are one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. Search engines are ignoring over-stuffed meta tags including keywords tag which get over-stuffed with unrelated keyword. However, META TITLE and META DESCRIPTION tags are extremely important, and can help search engines to perceive the content of your webpage correctly.

b) We can handle SEO ourselves – Most of the companies make a gross mistake by hiring a staff (internet marketing or web development) which has a very little information regarding complexities of SEO. If you are an owner of an e-commerce site having several thousand pages, then you need to keep in touch with a professional SEO or any company specializing in SEO.

There are several issues related to SEO which can lead to complex situations when combined with other issues of web development and internet marketing. Search engines are becoming more cautious while granting rankings for competitive keywords. Therefore, it is best to consult an SEO specialist or SEO company which will help you generate best revenues through search engine optimization and search engine marketing on Google and Yahoo. There are several instances where some established website lost its rankings due to some algorithm update on search engines. You must always keep yourself updated with latest happenings in search engine industry.

c) No need for Yahoo or MSN optimization – There is a considerable amount of traffic on Yahoo and MSN. There are several users who log into msn.com every single day. Similarly, there are users who log into Yahoo to search online. Therefore it would be too risky to completely sideline Yahoo/MSN optimization when compared with Google. Having a website which is ranking consistently on all major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN will yield best results. Although, Google has a majority of online search engine users, but still you cannot afford to ignore Yahoo, MSN and others.

Microsoft has recently launched Bing.com search engine which is picking up fast among search engine users. It is more interactive and has better user design as compared to Google or Yahoo. Therefore, if you are aiming for search engine promotion, make sure that your website appears consistently among various popular search engines within your target business niche.

Take for example, Baidu is more popular in China as compared to Google. Therefore, you need to formulate a customized strategy if you really want to gain a foothold in search engine marketing.

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Check out some cool new features offered by Google adwords. These features will help you improve your PPC Marketing campaigns, and will give you a better control over your target audience.

1) Build your Adsense ads in just few minutes - Nov 2008

Google adwords is offering new display ad builder allows you to create professional-looking display ads in AdWords (Adsense) without needing to hire a designer or start from scratch. If you were planning to expand beyond your text ad campaigns, or if you’ve been looking for an easier way to build display ads, this tool can help.

This new feature will help you create customized display ads with your own text, images, and logo. You can also select your own colors and backgrounds. The tool can create ads to be displayed on all possible placements across the Google content network (Adsense), including video and game placements.

Read more : http://www.google.com/adwords/displayadbuilder/

2) Improved views for search and content network statistics - Sep 2008

This feature allows you to check your search and content network statistics on the summary pages of your account. Use the new Statistics drop-down to see separate search and content rows for each of your campaigns and ad groups, or you can filter your display to view only the statistics for the network you choose.

Learn more : https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=93322

3) Demographic bidding available on selected sites in the Google content network - Sep 2008

Demographic bidding enables you to display your ads to specific gender and age segments on targeted websites in the Google content network or Google Adsense. This gives you a better control over who your audience is and greater insight into how your ads perform with those audiences.

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Both Google and Yahoo provide several useful tools and features which average internet users do not explore. These useful tools and features are provided freely on these search engines and still several users search for these services on different websites.

GOOGLE/YAHOO WEATHER:

Google provides a feature which can help you check weather of different regions across the globe. You can simply log into Google and type “Weather Vancouver”, and you can easily access weather update from Vancouver region, Canada. You can also type “Weather ( Zip Code)” which can help you get latest weather update from a specific location.

( Google Screenshot)

( Yahoo Screenshot)

GOOGLE/YAHOO WORLD CLOCK:

Google offers a useful world clock which can show you different time zones across the globe. Simply log into Google and type “Time New York”, and then click search.

(Google Screenshot)

(Yahoo Screenshot)

GOOGLE/YAHOO CALCULATOR :

Both Google and Yahoo calculators are great for relatively simple arithmetic calculations, including square roots, logarithms, order of operations, and trigonometric functions such as sine and cosine.

Simply search “6+4” on Google or Yahoo. You will get your answer.

Google Screenshot

Yahoo Screenshot

GOOGLE/YAHOO UNIT CONVERSION :

Both these search engines provide a useful feature which can help you perform any unit conversion.

Simply search for “1 foot = ? inches”, and you will get to know how many inches are there in one foot.

Google Screenshot

Yahoo Screenshot

GOOGLE/YAHOO CURRENCY RATE EXCHANGE :

Simply search “1 dollar = ? pounds”, and this feature will help you check currency exchange rates for every single currency worldwide. This utility will help you keep a close watch on latest currency exchange rates worldwide.

Google Screenshot

Yahoo Screenshot

GOOGLE PHONEBOOK

Log into Google.com and search “phonebook: Robert”. Once you click search you will get a directory listing of different persons named Robert and their phone numbers along with map information.

Google Screenshot

Similar services are provide by Yahoo through http://people.yahoo.com/ ( For U.S). Yahoo also provides dedicated Yellow page services for different regions.

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Bounce Rate: An Introduction

Bounce rate is widely used in website traffic analysis. It represents the average percentage of online visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site. (Read more about Bounce Rates at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_Rate )

Bounce rates are used extensively by online marketers to analyze users and their preferences. For example, you have a web design article site with more than 500 articles. However, if your bounce rate is higher then it implies that something is wrong with your site. Either visitors are finding your site hard to navigate, or your content is not being perceived as helpful by visitors. Also, it could be possible that you are unable to target potential customers. If your product is meant for kids, then you need to target age groups of 5-10 (depending on your product). If your bounce rate is high, it implies that either you are targeting wrong age group or your content / product is not attracting any attention by the visitors. (Refer to: http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/38069.html to know more about bounce rates, and other terms associated with it)

If you are using Google analytic or any other analytic then it will show you the bounce rates for various keywords ( organic or PPC visitors). You don’t need to sit with a pen and pencil to calculate bounce rate for every single click. Most of the analytic scripts will handle this aspect for you including Google analytics (Everybody loves free products ).

Bounce Rate and SEO Connection

Bounce rate was more inclined towards marketing/business aspect of any website. However, in the past few months SEO industry is getting some inside information that Google could be using bounce rates to determine top page rankings (especially on top pages of Google search results ranging from pages 1-10).

This technique could be used to ward-off black hat SEO sites which are artificially optimized for unrelated keywords. These websites will naturally display high bounce rates.

On the other hand, this same technique can be used by competitors to pull down other competitor sites on organic listings. This practice is widely common in Pay Per Click which is also termed as Click Fraud (http://blog.seohawk.com/click-fraud/). This technique is used to exhaust PPC budget of competitor sites.

Therefore, Google will use Bounce rate data carefully and it can be used for temporary period of time. For example a website with higher bounce rates might get pushed to pages 3-4 from Page 1 for duration of 10-15 days. This is all what any SEO can perceive from Google’s viewpoint. Google has not made this information available to anyone, but it could be using these sorts of techniques to promote genuine websites with genuine content.

The ultimate goal of any search engine is to present best information to any visitor who is searching for that specific keyword. Therefore Bounce rate can prove as a helpful tool in giving priority to certain websites over others.

However, Google cannot afford to grant permanent positions to any website (unless it shows consistent bounce rate over a period of 6 months – 1 year. This tool can be used to decide who will rank on the top page, but it doesn’t imply that every single site with higher bounce rates will be pushed to the bottom or will receive some sort of penalty .

Google can use bounce rates in following manner:-

a) If any website hasn’t installed Google analytic then Google can rely on number of separate I.P clicks received on a particular website over a period of time from within Google search results.

b) Once a user clicks on the site, and Google detects Google analytics, then it can use Bounce rate as a factor to decide whether your site is helpful to your visitors or not.

If Google has introduce this feature then it must be using a combination of other parameters to grant that “Temporary High Rankings” to websites with lesser bounce rates .

Therefore, Google will try its best to ensure that this ranking factor doesn’t get manipulated by Black Hat SEOs. Moreover, it could be possible that Google is only using websites listed on top 10 pages who have genuinely gained positions. Any new website trying to gain instant rankings will be checked by various parameters as compared to an established website.

Google has clearly distinguished keywords on the basis of their competitive levels. If a keyword is highly competitive then you need to pass several “TESTS” before gaining top positions. However, if a keyword is less-competitive, then you can score higher rankings quickly.

We conducted some experiments on different websites using Google analytics. Some of these websites were not using Google analytics. At the end of these experiments we did observe some changes in the ranking positions, but you cannot perceive the exact manner in which it was done by Google. We did observe some changes and this experiment was also conducted to gain higher rankings of a website which is ranking on Google.co.uk to a different geo location (Google.ca or any other).

If your website is genuinely helpful to visitors then Google analytic can help your site to gain higher rankings. However, if your website is not helpful, then Bounce rate within Google analytic could effect your rankings.

Therefore the best way is to make your website informative in terms of content and usability. Always target best audience and abstain from gaining artificial rankings. If your articles are helpful then users will automatically bookmark them and promote them on other social bookmarking sites.

You can also try to remove Google analytics, but it wont help you much. Even if you remove Google analytics, Google can still collect this data easily from Google toolbar. So all those users who visit your website and have Google toolbar installed can pass off some useful information to the Google search engine ranking algorithm.

If Alexa can collect traffic data from users who have installed Alexa toolbar, then why can’t Google use the same TRICK .

Google bounce rate can be a blind tool, if you are receiving 100 phone calls from potential visitors.

Therefore it could be more applicable to those genuinely ranking on top 1-10 pages of google or those who are indulging in heavy black hat spamming techniques .

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