Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Technology Blog

Privacy Battle Between Google and Spain Turned to European Court of Justice

March 1st, 2011 by Evoba

Earlier this year, Spain’s data protection authority (DPA) had asked Google to remove nearly one-hundred articles from search results. The articles threatened the privacy of the subjects mentioned and complaints were generated.

In the name of freedom of expression, Google has been determined to fight against Spain’s orders. Now, the case has been turned to the European court of justice, “which will offer guidance on whether Spain’s demands comply with European law – potentially setting a controversial precedent for Internet publishing in the country.” (The Guardian).

The high courts will need to decide if Google should remove the links to the articles in popular newspapers such as El País. Google believes that the publishers of the articles should be questioned rather than the search engine itself. However, Spanish authorities believe that the only way to keep the public from accessing private material is to rule against major search engines. The final outcome in this race for freedom of expression has yet to be determined.

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Chief Executive of Alibaba.com Resigns After Fraud Investigation

February 22nd, 2011 by Evoba

After nine months of internal probing, more than 2,300 vendors using Alibaba.com for business were found to be engaged in fraud. Consequently, CEO David Wei and chief operating officer Elvis Lee have resigned. The investigation claim suggests “Wei and Lee were not implicated in wrongdoing. But it revealed it took senior management at the online marketplace at least nine months to take action after a noticeable increase in fraud claims against verified vendors by foreign buyers from 2009.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/21/alibaba-chief-resigns-over-frauds).

It has been noted that the sales staff of the e-commerce company allowed the activity to take place either “intentionally or negligently.” The storefront of the 2,300 Gold Suppliers involved in the case are now closed. Their sites offered popular electronics at very low prices and used less reliable payment methods.

According to senior management, the fraudulent activity is against the company’s core values and integrity. The company will be announcing Jonathan Lu, Chief Executive of sister company TaoBao.com, as the replacement for Wei. Despite the loss, management claims that they will not be directly impacted in terms of financials. They may, however, feel some pressure on revenue growth as the term nears once the fraudulent accounts are cleaned up.

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Google Introduces Place Search

October 28th, 2010 by Evoba

Yesterday, Google introduced “Place Search” as part of their dedication to improving relevant results for local search.  Place Search organizes search results around specific locations so that users can get all the information they need and compare places more easily.

According to Google, the new Place Search will be “dynamically connecting hundreds of millions of websites with more than 50 million real-world locations. [Google will] automatically identify when sites are talking about physical places and cluster links even when they don’t provide addresses and use different names.”

One of the major changes is the way the results page looks: only local results take up the page, the map has moved to the right, there are reviews of places along with images and relevant third party sites are clustered with the listings. Google will automatically provide results for obvious queries, but a new “Places” mode is available if Google does not know when users want local information.

Now that Place Search provides only local businesses on the first page, this makes it harder for third party publishers to be on the first page unless they are featured in the clusters that appear with each listing.  Those businesses that depend on organic listings may need to make some important changes in order to be fully optimized for Google’s Place Search.

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/place-search-faster-easier-way-to-find.html

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Bing Shutters xRank

October 4th, 2010 by Evoba

Bing’s has finally decided to pull the plug on xRank – their take on the Google Trends idea. Described as “a cultural snapshot of who’s hot and who’s not” the tool tracked the most popular searches on Bing as well as Live Search with sections divided up for politicians, bloggers, celebrities, etc. This was especially handy for anyone monitoring the popularity of two different individuals of the same category and compared their number of searches over a period of time.

A hold-over from the old Live Search days it seems as though what started out as a highly-promoted feature just sort of lost its steam over time. Now the old xRank URL just directs to the Bing homepage. No word yet on if or when a new replacement product will surface for those interested in Bing search trends.

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Google Putting Together Its Team for Upcoming Social Network

August 27th, 2010 by Evoba

A couple months ago, it was revealed that Google will actually be launching a new social network of its own.  Now, the search engine giant is moving forward with the plan by buying out Angstro and hiring the founder of the company, Rohit Khare, to help build Google Me.  What made Khare the perfect candidate for Google?

For starters, he has been a leader in building several relevant social network features and products that will be of great use for Google.  According to the LA Times, “his vision for an ‘open, interoperable social networks,’ [makes] Khare a good fit for Google, which has championed that approach over Facebook’s ‘walled garden.’”

A message posted on the home page of Angstro by Khare late this week confirmed his transition to Google.  Angstro is a company that builds services that help Internet users get the right information on their friends and other contacts.  The stories these users get are directly related to their own friends, rather than strangers with the same name.  Although the plans for Google Me are still being developed behind closed doors, we can get a sense of what initially attracted Google to Khare.

What Khare will be doing while sitting next to Max Levchin from Slide is still in question, but it won’t be long until the public can finally participate in the next social network that Khare has helped build.  The focus, however, appears to be on a more open platform for communication.  It is also clear that Facebook is in for a major battle and will soon compete for the spot for the most popular social network on the web.

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Is the Google and Verizon Net Neutrality Agreement All That Neutral?

August 13th, 2010 by Evoba

Google and Verizon have finally revealed a proposal that, according to Google, will defend net neutrality while also allowing a broadband network of premium services.  Net neutrality is the idea that Internet providers, like Verizon, should not be able to restrict traffic on the web based on the traffic’s content.  The proposal can ultimately change what open Internet is all about, despite Google’s aim for protecting users.

For one, the proposal will allow wireless networks to be exempt from the net neutrality regulation.  They can maintain their own private Internet and allow companies to pay for faster traffic. Second, according to PC World, the proposal “would also create a two-tiered Internet with a net neutral public Internet (the World Wide Web we use today), and a private non-neutral Internet for premium services.”  Many are questioning what will happen to regular Internet as we now know it considering the exemptions.

Opponents of the agreement say that net neutrality will not hold up as long as wireless networks are involved.  Google defends its case with an argument that open Internet for the public is not going to change.  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will have the authority to enforce neutrality and intervene when service providers fail to comply with nondiscrimination rules, including any attempts to reduce broadband capacity.  These nondiscirimination rules, however, have yet to be determined.

What you can get with premium services is going to be different than content available on regular Internet.  This includes gaming channels, secure banking, medical services, education services and, of course, entertainment.  The costs for premium services and how they are going to be bundled into packages are still in question.

The ideas laid out in the proposal appear to be problematic according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and “threaten to completely undermine the stated goal of neutrality.”  The EFF has further broken down what they believe are some of the issues with the proposed ideas in the Google and Verizon net neutrality agreement.  The proposal is available for review on both Google’s and Verizon’s public policy blogs.

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10 Persistent Search Engine Optimization Myths

July 14th, 2010 by Evoba

An increasing number of people are calling themselves search engine optimization (SEO) experts every day.  Most of these so-called experts start a website dedicated to SEO, publish an e-book to boost their authority and get into hour-long discussions about what SEO tactics are actually effective.  Do they really know what they’re doing?

Part of the reason for this surge in SEO experts is that there are dozens and dozens of search engine optimization myths floating around on the web.  These are myths that any average Joe can pick up, learn about and continue promoting as if it’s the next best thing to butter.  The reality is that some tactics and strategies that worked before are no longer effective today.  Free your mind of the following myths in order to really see how SEO works.

Myth #1: Submitting your URL to search engines is the number one way to get indexed.

This may have worked five years ago, but what’s important is getting quality links to your site from relevant sites, not linking out.

Myth #2: SEO is a one-time task that you can set and forget.

So many “experts” will optimize sites and consider it a done deal.  SEO is an ongoing process that can never be finished.  Considering how much SEO has evolved over the years, people need to utilize new strategies as search engines evolve.

Myth #3: Keyword density is a surefire way to up your rankings.

While having keywords is helpful, having content that is dense with awkwardly-sounding keywords that don’t make sense does not work with search engines.  It’s considered spammy.

Myth #4: Every site needs a Google Sitemap to boost rankings.

As long as your website can be easily crawled, you don’t need a sitemap.  Google doesn’t give URLs more value just because they are included in the Sitemap.  Sitemaps are simply helpful for being discovered, not necessarily increasing rankings.

Myth #5: Any content will increase rankings.

At one point, content was king but people abused the way content works for a site.  Having relevant and fresh content on a consistent basis on your site certainly helps with SEO, but just pilling on poorly written content for the sake of having content will not improve your rankings.

Myth #6: Quantity of incoming links is the most important link-building factor in ranking.

It’s the quality of links pointing to your site, not the quantity—thought it would be great if you can have quantity on top of quality.  Relevant and high quality links contribute to the ranking potential of a website in a noticeable way, whereas large numbers of low-quality links are a waste of time and could even hurt your rankings.

Myth #7: Higher PageRank means better rankings.

Having a higher PageRank simply reflects the fact that a website has links pointing to it; it does not speak of the quality of the links (see myth #6) or the value that Google assigns to those links (and consequently your website).  PageRank, however, does not have a direct effect on your website’s rankings (anymore).

Myth #8: A Flash page means you can’t boost your rankings.

A website that is all Flash will have drawbacks when it comes to SEO.  But, if you have a flash page and utilize other SEO strategies, you can still get good results.  The challenge is that you will have fewer options for optimization.

Myth #9: Keyword meta tags are important for search engine rankings.

Filling up meta tags with keywords will not impact SERPs (search engine result pages) in a noticeable way, and overdoing meta tags may even hurt rankings. Search engines no longer give any weight to keywords in meta tags in their ranking algorithms thanks to spammers.

Myth #10: Higher rankings through SEO can be guaranteed.

By focusing on the right SEO strategies consistently, you can get improved results, but nothing is ever guaranteed.

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Rumors On ‘Google Me’ Ring True

June 29th, 2010 by Evoba

A recent rumor that simply started as a tweet from Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, has it that Google is developing a social networking site called Google Me.  The speculations circling Google Me are actually true and that means that Facebook is in for a scare as Google Me will be the ultimate rival.

According to CNET, “former Facebook executive and Quora founder Adam D’Angelo took things a little further by declaring on Quora that ‘this is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.’”

Kevin Rose’s exact tweet from late Saturday night read: “Huge rumor: Google to launch Facebook competitor very soon “Google Me,” very credible source.”  Kevin Rose has a reputation of spilling the latest technology gossip and he seems to be right again.

What Google Me could be exactly is still unclear, but some say that it is an extension of Google Profiles, which is basically a representation of the user.  Others are saying that the prospective social network in question could combine Facebook’s news feed with Google Profile, status updates, pictures, etc.

What is interesting is that Google hasn’t been investing a lot of its time into social media.  Google Buzz was one recent attempt, but that did not catch on to the general public and proved to have major privacy issues as well.  Although Google fixed these issues, Buzz has not been all that popular.

Unlike Google Buzz, Google Me would probably have improved privacy controls and all new features.  According to Infosyncworld, Google Me could potentially appear on cell phones, including Google’s Android OS.  It shouldn’t be too long before we see the development of Google Me really take a leap.

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China Asks Google To Stop Redirecting China Users to Hong Kong Search Engine

June 29th, 2010 by Evoba

Recently, Google has been redirecting mainland Chinese users to the Hong Kong search engine to allow access to unfiltered search.  The Chinese government, however, is no longer accepting the redirect and has asked Google to put an end to it all. Should Google refuse, China will not renew the Internet Content Provider license and that means Google must shut down Google.cn for good.

To tackle this problem, Google is planning to redirect a small percentage of mainland China users to a landing page on Google.cn which will link to Google.com.hk.

According to Google, “this approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page…As a company we aspire to make information available to users everywhere, including China. It’s why we have worked so hard to keep Google.cn alive, as well as to continue our research and development work in China.”

The Chinese government has yet to speak out about the new strategy and if they do not like the idea, it may be the end of Google in China.  Currently, mainland Chinese users can only search for certain topics, but cannot access the websites that come up on results pages.  Google continues to stand behind its commitment to making information available to everyone, but China’s push towards censorship is continuing to present challenges for Google.

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Federal Court Rejects Viacom’s $1 Billion Lawsuit Against YouTube

June 24th, 2010 by Evoba

Viacom, one of the world’s most widely known media giants, recently attempted to file a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube only to get rejected by the U.S. Federal Court.  Viacom, like many other similar companies including Disney, NBC Universal and Time Warner, are trying hard to prevent TV clips and movies from being available on the Internet for free.

Louis Stanton, a district court judge, said that YouTube cannot be held responsible for individuals who post videos from popular productions, including Viacom, without getting approval from YouTube itself.

Viacom’s argument was that YouTube makes it “easy” for users to post video clips and difficult for copyright owners to monitor those clips that get posted without approval.  Judge Stanton simply rejected this argument based on the fact that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act eliminates the responsibility for websites of having to check user-generated content before it gets posted on the site.

YouTube has a reputation of removing clips that in violation of copyright laws immediately after they are posted, a fact confirmed by the judge.  Two years ago, YouTube actually removed 100,000 videos that violated Viacom copyright laws.

Viacom agreed to appeal the ruling in that it goes against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as the views of Congress and the Supreme Court.  According to the ruling, individuals post 24 hours’ worth of video every minute to YouTube.  For Google, this ruling was an important win considering the number of people who turn to the Internet for information, content and communication.

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