Search Engine Optimization Blog - Search Engine News

Google Sitelinks

admin@pixel4less.com (Paras Shah) — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:25:56 -0700

After having answered the same question repeatedly about Sitelinks I've decided that perhaps this is a good topic for the blog, at least this way I'll be able to direct people to a single location to find all the answers regarding this confusing area. Sitelinks is the name given to the links that appear below the #1 result for some Google queries.

An example of Sitelinks can be seen when we run a search on Google for "AOL":

Here we can see links to internal pages on the AOL website. So how do you get Google to do this for you? The answer, at present is, you don't.

Here is what Matt Cutts wrote about it:

For a small number of sites, we are not just showing our regular snippets: we try to expose useful links from within a site. In this Berkeley example, Google shows links for Berkeley departments, academics at Berkeley, etc. Pretty neat (and more importantly, useful) stuff.

People who know Google well will go Cool and move on. Other folks will ask things like Are sites or their links selected by handcan my site get in on this? Is money involved? And the answer is: its all algorithmic. The algorithms pick the sites where this could be helpful. Of course money isnt involved at all.

So it's an algorithm, much like the ranking algorithm but with more mystery regarding how to get it for your site. Here is the only "for sure", you need to hold a #1 position for a phrase. OK, that's easy enough right. Past that there is more myth than fact about what the "secret recipe" is. Guesstimates range anywhere from site age to the internal linking structure in how the list is generated and whether it is at all for a query.

Here is what Google has to say on this topic:

How do you compile the list of links shown below some search results?

The links shown below some sites in our search results, called Sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site. Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.

We only show Sitelinks for results when we think they'll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn't allow our algorithms to find good Sitelinks, or we don't think that the Sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user's query, we won't show them.

At the moment, Sitelinks are completely automated. We're always working to improve our Sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future.

The New Yahoo! Search Crawler (Slurp) Is Here!

admin@pixel4less.com (Paras Shah) — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:29:00 -0700

We launched a new Yahoo! Search Crawler, Yahoo! Slurp earlier this week. In addition to crawling the Internet faster, our new crawler is more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, site owners will notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler.

While transitioning to the new crawler over the past few weeks, we had been running both crawlers in tandem. In some cases, this increased the frequency of Yahoo Search requests to websites. Now, with the new crawler in full production, we have turned off the old crawler and site owners should see a much lower crawl load without a loss in content coverage.

With this change of behavior in the crawler, you may see some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index and some changes in ranking as well.

Let us know what you observe through our feedback form, or if you have any technical issues with Slurp please contact support.

Thank you to everyone who helped us with this update!

David Simpson
Yahoo! Slurp Team

Google rides the radio waves

admin@pixel4less.com (Paras Shah) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:55:15 -0700

Google-powered ads, which have become a mainstay on Web sites, are now being played on at least one radio station in Detroit. And like so many other Motor City radio products, it won't be long before they go global. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a conference call with analysts last week that the search giant plans to make its radio-ad business generally available within three months.

"We are in the process of introducing AdSense for radio, which is essentially the integration of the dMarc console and management tools into our advertising system. There are a number of very interesting deals being negotiated," Schmidt said. It's a typically ambitious effort for Google, which got into the radio business in January with its $102 million acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting, a company that had an automated radio advertising system.

So the million dollar question is, Is Google really going for Radio Ad Business? If that's true then it will surely turn Radio Ad Industry upside down.

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Google Search Preferred by Microsoft Employees

admin@pixel4less.com (Paras Shah) — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 17:22:38 -0700

Seems like Microsoft employees even prefer searching from Google. Google is top, and even Microsoft workers know that. Nick Farrell drops this interesting news over at the Inquirer.

Techwebs, Andrew posted Google analytics stats about visitors to his website. He said that there were over 80% of people from Microsofts domain reached his site through a Google Search, while only 20% used a Microsoft search engine.

Very interesting stats, but im sure that those Microsoft doods and dudettes were using Google just for research purposes.

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