Google, who gave “search” a new synonym, launched Google 411, a free directory enquiry service today.

All you need to do is, dial 1-800-GOOG-411, speak out the location and the name of the business and Google gives you a list of businesses ready to be dialed!

Here’s the YouTube video:

(Source: vnunet.com)

Part 1 talks about “nofollow” tag and its origin while the Part 2 talks about Google’s new policies of using it.
In my post earlier about Google banning paid links in July, I’d shared similar thoughts on paid links.

I agree that humans should be informed if the product review is paid or not, if the promotion of the third party is being done because you’ve been paid to do it or because you really are recommending it.

But I do feel Google’s going a little overboard with this. Below is what I copied into Jennifer’s comment box as well:

Webmasters have been buying and selling links before Google was even born. It was the very exchange of links ( I’m surprised it was assumed all links were “unpaid for” links when PageRank was invented), including the buying and selling of links that resulted in an algo that is treating links as a voting mechanism. After Google, reciprocal linking became even more aggressive because webmasters realized how important these links were to Google. Soon, reciprocal linking changed to paid links and three-way linking, all methods of link bargaining for webmasters targeting Google rankings. And it worked. I’m sure it still works and thats why now Google wants paid links to be punished – but how exactly will this stop webmasters from running after the rankings. And really, its about rankings, not PR. There are many websites out there with excellent PageRank and no rankings.

There are rarely such cases who only buy links for PR – everyone wants traffic – the whole objective of wanting to rank on Google is to get traffic. Then when a website is getting traffic from another source, why will it not want to? If a PR 6 website is giving a text link for $50 on its homepage, and has some xxxxxx v/m, why should that website not charge. A usability study shows that a text link gets more the click-throughs than an image ad. Then why should ads be just converted to images?

Those who really do it only for PR and not traffic, will figure out a way to beat this too. Many of the genuine cases will suffer (ok, I posted “only genuine cases will suffer” in the comment – but sense has prevailed ).

Its quite understandable that Google doesn’t like it. Artificial inflation of links just doesn’t serve the purpose. The SERP results are then not in control of an algo but in control of the individuals who can build maximum links!

It hurts. But can reporting paid links help?

How do you find out if the votes are genuine or bought?
Is Yahoo directory selling links (its a paid directory – how do you know that people want a link from yahoo directory because of th PR value of that page and not really the traffic coming from there)?
What about other link building directories? How can you find out the purpose for paying for a link? Is text ad a paid link? What about directories that allow free inclusions provided a linkback is provided?

Thats brings us to SEM companies. Are they promoting paid links? Is reciprocal linking paid? No money is being exchanged between parties – only link swapping. But the SEM company is getting paid to carry out the link building campaigns. So, whose selling links and whose buying links here? And how will a computer program come to a conclusion that the link bought was with the intention of increasing traffic and not PR.

I believe one can argue that if traffic is the sole purpose, use javascripts, iframe etc for sending out the link. But why should a webmaster do that? For the sole reason that otherwise, Google “might” think that its a paid link created with an “intention” to increase PR?

Before Search Engines, links were the only source of traffic movement. Anyone today with a PR of 6 on the homepage is (assuming) getting good traffic. So if the webmaster decides to sell links from his homepage to make some money, is he violating Google’s quality guidelines? If another webmaster buys that link in hope of getting traffic from that website, is he too violating Google’s quality guidelines?

How do you know what the intention behind the buying/selling of the link was?

I’m curious to see if any website makes news for buying/selling links.

Can you have your competitor banned by going and buying links for their website on their behalf and then reporting them?

Despite it’s dwindling importance in Google’s algorithm, the event still does not fail to attract a lot of attention. The Search Engine Marketing community, for many years now, has been terming PageRank’s importance to be only of “entertainment value” – a fall from it’s yester years of glory. It’ll be a good idea to let the PR update settle in and be reflected in all data centers before either congratulating yourself or sulking.

For those who are new to this industry and are probably confusing PageRank (PR) with actual ranking of their website in Google Search Engine Result Page’s (SERP’s), please take a few minutes to go through the following links:

• Straight from the horse’s mouth – Google PR explained on Google.com
• Google PageRank (PR) explained in Wikipedia

Some of the features listed on SearchMash are:
- Start typing! You don’t have to have your cursor in the search box to start typing your query.
- URL menu! Click the green URL of a web result to open a menu of options for viewing the URL or refining your query.
- Image results panel You can see the top three image results next to your web results.
- Reorder results Click the number next to a result and drag it around to reorder. This is just for fun right now, but we have some ideas for how to use this.
- More results bar Click the “more results” bar at the bottom of the page (or hit the space bar) to load more results and automatically scroll down to view them.

It would be worth seeing what Google eventually does with SearchMash.

A search on “CueBlocks” shows some of the images of the CueBlocks team playing carrom – taken from our blog posting many months back.

This has been happening since the reported Google Pluto update of 24th August 06 – a back link update, with no significant changes in the SERPs.

To find the out-of-copyright books, make a search after selecting the “Full view” radio button. From the results, click on the title of the result which would take you to the page dedicated to that book. The right side panel has the option of downloading, apart from other useful information about that particular book. The books get downloaded as PDF files. I must add here that the quality of scanning they have done looks very high indeed!

Read more about this at the Google Blog.

• Matt Cutts on Cloaking and Dynamic & Static URLs.

• Should you make a website with focus on SEO or End User? Also talks about cleanliness of code, w3c, accessibility and validation.

• This is a good one on Google Terminology. Throws light on the difference between data refresh, algo update and index update. Matt gives a analogy of a car in order to explain these. Also talks about Everflux, the June 27th and July 27th data refreshes.

• How to structure your website.

• Matt Cutts on Data Centers. Talks about load balancing, scheduling and wraps it up with an advice to spend more time in improving the content on your site rather than chasing and trying to make sense of what the data centers serve

There are a couple of more good videos touching upon topics like SEO Myths, reinclusion requests, qualities of a good site, etc. You can see the links to these videos at Matt Cutts’ Blog. Happy viewing!

“Voicemail – The name of this feature doesn’t do it justice. Yes, you can now leave voicemails for any of your Google Talk contacts when they don’t answer a call, but I think the coolest thing is that you can easily record voice notes and send them to anyone you know by just adding their email address to your contact list — they don’t even have to be running Google Talk. This is a fun and easy way to just say hello, send someone a reminder, or even sing your mom happy birthday!”

Read more at:

• Google Blog
• Google Talk Blog

Aptly titled – “Accessible Web Search for the Visually Challenged” Google has done a terrific job by starting Accessible Search for making the search more friendly for the blind and visually impaired users.

One of the first things I wanted to do was to check how different were the results that Google gave in it’s regular web search and the ones thrown by Accessible search. The results for the same keywords differ significantly – Accessible search doing further fine tuning/processing and assigning ranking based on the evaluation factors of simplicity of the page, visual presence and here is the key “Accessibility” of the website

Taken from Accessible Search FAQ:

How do you decide which sites are “accessible” and which are not?
“Our methods for identifying accessible pages and content are always evolving; Currently we take into account several factors, including a given page’s simplicity, how much visual imagery it carries and whether or not it’s primary purpose is immediately viable with keyboard navigation.”

How can sites make their content more accessible to the blind?
“Some of the basic recommendations on how to make a website more useable and accessible include keeping Web pages easy to read, avoiding visual clutter — especially extraneous content — and ensuring that the primary purpose of the Web page is immediately accessible with full keyboard navigation. There are many organizations and online resources that offer Website owners and authors guidance on how to make websites and pages more accessible for the blind and visually impaired…”

- In case you are new to Accessibility and want to know more about it, read Avneet’s article on: “Website Accessibility – Why it matters”

Accessibility: We define website accessibility as the ability of a website to be used by all, irrespective of mode or disability. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging.

Accessibility Statement: In what specific ways (keyword shortcuts etc.) do you make your site more accessible to disabled people.
Sample the Accessibility statement of CueBlocks.

- All the proponents of Accessibility standards would be beaming with happiness and would feel vindicated . Since ‘what Google does’, resonates & has a far reaching impact on online world, “Accessibility” would be one of the words soon making inroads into the regular vocabulary of webmasters / designers / developers.

- The Impact on websites would be that the following phrases and techniques would now be “in” and more widely adhered to from here on:
- Accessibility
- Accessibility statements on sites
- Focus on content and proper coding to assist proper viewing in text based browsers and reading devices.

Overall an excellent initiative by Google and about time it happened!!

Recommended link:

• Website Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of W3C

A good time to run those ranking reports, check search engine saturation, link popularity counts and pat yourself on the back if you see improvements It is advisable to let the flux (google dance) settle in though as chances are that some variations in the count would be seen during this period.

Naach Google Naach – we are all watching!!

PS: Naach –> Dance in Hindi

From the Official Google Blog:

“One cool feature of Google Checkout is that you can buy from stores with a single Google login – no more entering the same info each time you buy, and no more having to remember different usernames and passwords for each store. To help you find places to shop, you’ll see a little icon on the Google.com ads of stores offering Google Checkout. It’s an easy way to identify fast, secure places to shop when you search. And after you’ve placed your order, Google Checkout provides a purchase history where you can track your orders and shipping information in one place.”

Google Checkout is closely synched with your Google Adwords account. For sellers it is only available for US residents & companies based in the US.

Read more:

• Find it with Google. Buy it with Google Checkout
• Webmasterworld

–
Want to find those IRS forms to get in your taxes on time? Need to figure out where to send your DMV fees, or find the phone

number for your local parks and rec department? Google U.S. Government Search launches today — it’s a site on which you can

1) search across a huge index of U.S. Federal, state and local government websites via a single search box, and 2) stay up to

date through personalized content feeds from government agencies and press outlets. Off you go.

For easy bookmarking, go to http://usgov.google.com.
–

The poor usability of the ‘Indian Government Websites’ is often a topic of discussion at CueBlocks. You would find that most sites only work in IE and have no cross browser compatibility.

This just makes me wonder if ‘We’ are ever going to get there…

The market domination of Paypal till now is poised to be challenged. Going by Google’s track record of very high quality products, Gbuy is being eagerly awaited by the online community.

Skeptics who think Google is heading the Microsoft way would be jittered by Google now even knowing where you spend your cents and dollars.

Read more about Gbuy at:

• Forbes
• Search Engine Watch