Google

An excellent tutorial from G: AdSense Optimization Demo

A day or two ago I was pinged by a co-worker from my previous job. He wanted to know why, during its recent redesign, I didn’t include keywords in the URLs of the pages on a site I originally built a long, long time ago. I told him that there was no concrete evidence anywhere to support the theory that search engines give any weight to keywords in URLs. He then pointed me to an article at Search Engine Land that begins by stating that, “Keywords in the URL can help rankings,” and, “Hyphens are better than underscores when separating multiple words.”

First I noted that I don’t include keywords on this site, either, and it’s been doing just fine. Then I argued that I find it very, very hard to believe that Google (or any other search engine) has some sort of negative bias against the underscore character but that hyphens are just fine. So basically I completely disagree with the single piece of actual “advice” in the article.

Am I saying that it is wrong to include keywords in your URLs? No. I don’t think that at all. I just don’t think you should be stuffing keywords into your URLs in an effort to boost your pages’ rankings in search engine result pages. It makes great sense to use words in your URLs if you’re doing it to improve the usability of your site or to make it easier for people to link to your site. Unfortunately most site designers and blog engines — WordPress included — fail to effectively do this.

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Whoa. I don’t know how I haven’t seen this yet. Google lets you target specific sections of your page as more or less relevant to AdSense. This should be required reading for all bloggers and — hell — should be part of the default WP install …

What is section targeting and how do I implement it?

US President George W. Bush has been Google bombed. A search for “miserable failure” on the popular search engine Google brings up, as the first link, the official biography of Bush provided by the White House.

This can be done because Google does not only search the contents of web pages, it also counts how often a site is linked to, and the words which are used.

Hence it possible for a group of net-savvy individuals to influence the result of a Google search - a process called “Google bombing” - by linking any number of sites to a chosen one.

“Google is beginning to have a subtle, but noticeable effect on research. More and more scholarly publications are putting up their issues in PDF format, which Google indexes as though they were traditional Web pages. But almost no one is publishing entire books online in PDF form. So, when you’re doing research online, Google is implicitly pushing you toward information stored in articles and away from information stored in books. Assuming this practice continues, and assuming that Google continues to grow in influence, we may find ourselves in a world where, if you want to get an idea into circulation, you’re better off publishing a PDF file on the Web than landing a book deal.

from Digging for Googleholes

If you haven’t installed the Nutshell Toolbar yet, do it today. This is one of the most useful things on my computer and I use it probably fifty times each day.
(I linked to it many, many months ago. I just gave it to a friend today and thought I should hand out some extra props.)

Simply incredible: If you do a Google search for You Never Give Me Your Money - without even putting it in quotes! - the number one result is a page right here at DavidGagne.Net™! I wonder if Paul is upset about that … One of these days, Mr. Google, I’m going to learn what it is that makes you tick.

I’m also the #1 result if you search for Bathroom Master, which is slightly annoying.

This is quite funny. From Robyn came the idea to do a Google search on “David is“.
Here are the top ten eleven things David is, according to Google:

1. David is … the devil.
2. David is … burning.
3. David is … triumphant over Goliath.
4. David is … currently a hot property in the character actor business.
5. David is … science editor for Parade Magazine, and writes the column “Science on Parade.”
6. David is … currently hard at work, creating another sonic universe for Ascension, Karim Hussain’s upcoming feature film.
7. David is … kind to Mephibosheth.
8. David is … the symbol most commonly associated with Judaism today.
9. David is … presently on secondment to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he is Director of the Information Technology Office.
10. David is … a big WWF and WCW fan and enjoys the company of Kevin Nash.
11. David is … considered by peers to be the world’s leading authority on raw food nutrition.

Wow! I am going to have to check out Dave’s Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar. It looks ultra-groovy.

Yes, I redesigned again. This time I had a good reason though, I promise. Mostly I *really* wanted to make the site validate. It does now. (That means that it’s all standards-compliant code, mom!) And I wanted the CSS to validate, too, so that prompted a new color scheme. Then I found a link at webgraphics to an awesome idea from scottandrew.com: Google-ize your posts. So I had to redesign the individual pages and the “blogdata” bits at the bottom of each post so I could implement that nicely. I also fixed several things that have been bugging me.
<heavy sigh>
I wish I was going to SXSW …

I think I have reached nerdvana. From UnBlinking:

“Greeble’s Heisenwhack Principle
What to call a self-immolating Googlewhack (one that ceases to be unique after Google spiders a site where the whack is reported)? Kudos to Ray Greeble for coining the excellent term “Heisenwhack.” He based the term loosely on the jargon entry for HeisenBUG.
Paralleling Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, clearly the observer (of a Googlewhack) alters the reality being observed (of a Googlewhack). Heisenberg himself might observe (…get it?), or perhaps Bohr would note, one benefit to web surfers: when measuring Heisenwhack Phenomena, timelines may be expressed in hours or days, rather than femtoseconds or attoseconds.
As a verb, one may ‘Heisenwhack’ a unique result by displaying it for Google to find (thereby spawning a second result). The noun ‘Heisenwhack’ refers to the page or citation that causes such dilution.
The Heisenwhack Compensator … is easy to use. To find pages that contain your word pair, while excluding other pages that mention this topic, add ‘-googlewhack’ to your query. Google will exclude pages containing that ’subtracted’ term from your results.”

If it’s possible to fall head-over-heels in love with a meme, I’ve done it.

Googlewhacking: The Search for The One

It took me a few tries. I’ll admit I sat staring at the screen for a bit. Google found thousands and thousands of what I considered to be incredibly strange juxtapositions.

• esoteric amplitude? 2,250 hits
• escalator mustard? 766 hits
• amphibian euthanasia? 680 hits
• angina astrophysics? 147 hits
• tumescence draconian? 15 hits

Until … finally …
I present you with my personal Googlewhack:
kleptomaniac ovulating! 1 hit!
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10 things Google has found to be true

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.

With more than 150 million queries per day, Google offers a unique window into what is happening in the world on any given day, as well as a fascinating retrospective on the peaks and valleys of popular culture.

It was cool to see that the Beatles ranked #1 in the Most Searched Music Groups this year.