Google Takes the Wheel on Self-Driving Car Concept

The whispers are developing into murmurs from automakers on plans to follow Google’s lead and develop self-driving car concepts. While Google has already successfully auto-piloted its test car through traffic in Silicon Valley, major automakers start to ramp up. Nissan unveiled a futuristic driverless car at a tech show – while Ford, Audi, and BMW are in a testing phase. The end game: Down the road, the technology could be developed to automate simple driving in places such as college campuses or business complexes before hitting mainstream roads.

Via New York Times, Googe Auto, and Seeking Alpha

Open the Car Door HAL

Google’s Eric Schmidt continues to hype the development of a self-driving car, this week taking up the case at the annual Allen & Co. media confab in Sun Valley. According to the exec, the innovation works splendidly as drivers equipped with a “Google Maps on steroids” and computer-powered lasers can increase safety and fuel efficiency. Automakers quietly back the technology, with Ford going on record as saying self-driving cars of some variety will be here within five years. Increasingly, the question on the tech is not why or if, but when? Race on: GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, Tesla, Volkswagen, Daimler, Hyundai, and BMW.

 

via SeekingAlpha.com and AutoNews.com

 

Pinterest Sets the Internet World on Fire

Internet hotshot Pinterest blows past Twitter and closes in on Bing in a ranking of the websites that produces the most referral traffic. The visually striking manner of presenting user photos prompted Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to “like” the Friendsheet app that aims to produce the same results on the social networking site. (Related: Why Google should buy Pinterest)

via Seeking Alpha Market Currents

Internet Wars: St. Louis vs. Kansas City

Kansas City appears set to easily beat St. Louis in one important category – fastest Internet speeds. The city was selected by Google as a site for an experimental broadband network infrastructure using fiber optic communication, with a launch date set for sometime in 2012.

According to Google:

We plan to build an ultra high-speed broadband network in Kansas City on both sides of the river. Our network will deliver Internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit (or 1,000 megabits) per second. That’s more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today

So Kansas City will soon be flying around the Internet at the same speeds currently seen in Asia and Europe, while most of the rest of the U.S. (including St. Louis) trods along.

From the BBC:

The average broadband internet speed across the US is 12.84 Mbps, according to Netindex.com. That makes the US 31st in the world (the UK is 32nd with 12.4 Mbps speed).

Collateral damage from Google’s search algorithm changes to SERPs

Almost all of the announced changes to Google’s algorithm cause a lot of sweat and worry for site owners, webmasters and web producers. This time around some of the agitation is justified as a number of sites have been swept lower on the search engine results page due to their association with content farm sites and content aggregators.

 

 

A number of published keyword studies have shown that original content sites have taken a hit, in many cases without merit. The working theory is that many of the algorithm changes punish sites for off-site, as well as on-site factors. It’s great that content scrapers and cloners are being addressed by Google, but what about original content that has been reproduced on other distribution channels? Is Google penalizing the original sites for republished content? There is some data suggesting that this has happened.

 

 

The solution?

 

 

Use page-by-page, browser-by-browser, keyword-by-keyword analysis of the before-and-after ranking factors. Compile the data and place them in a spreadsheet. Fine tune the content on the pages that have dropped on the SERPs and check any republication of content that could be an adverse ranking factor.

 

 

If your content is republished in any form (intentionally or unintentionally), consider the butterfly effect of being associated with the wrong sites (content farms). Even popular press release sites and content submission sites should be looked at carefully for possible adverse effects.

 

 

Finally, don’t worry too much. What goes down, can go back up again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will Google’s New Search Algorithm Penalize Content Sites?

The New York Times published an article over the weekend about the new changes to Google’s algorithm that determine search engine rankings. According to the article, 12% of websites could be effected. This sounds scary, but if your site has original, fresh content with good site architecture and high-authority inbound links – you have nothing to worry about it.

Certainly, the new changes will penalize or even eliminate many blatantly cloned or scraped sites. This is great news for site owners.Let’s hope that sites with nothing but stale content and massive Adsense are truly pushed down the SERPs.

But the real question remains: How will the Google algorithm revision effect the large well-known content farms like about.com, ehow.com or associatedcontent.com? Does the enormous amount of Google Adsense dollars generated on these sites factor in to the new math behind the algorithm?

To the credit of these content sites, they do produce original content that address search queries directly. But if Google is truly looking for high-quality content over articles produced in massive quantities by mostly non-experts, these sites come up lacking. Will high quality niche sites or blogs get a rankings boost over the content farm sites?

We should know the answers to these questions within a few weeks as the data is assimilated from the new search engine results. If Google’s algorithm has truly been improved, ehow.com, about.com and associatedcontent.com will take a hit at the expense of higher relevancy sites. If your site or blog has excellent content, white-hat SEO and good links – you may be one of the winners.

Behind the Google Search Algorithm Changes

There has been some talk about new changes to Google’s search algorithm. A few people have asked me about it, some even in a panic. The changes, as best can be discerned from Google PR, speeches and blogs, seem to be pretty basic:

 

1. Content Duplication

 

It is pretty clear that changes to the Google algorithm that reward original content and penalize duplicate content have been made or will be made shortly. Of course, this is nothing new. The question is how far Google will go to clean up spam sites. Google actually makes money off of many spam sites because they are loaded to the hilt with Adsense. Their motivation to remove blatant scraped or cloned content from the index probably exceeds these profit considerations, but Google seems to usually wait until criticism or competitive pressures from search companies mounts before tweaking the algorithm.

Sites worried about category pages, tag pages, archives, etc. being deemed as duplicate content do not need to panic. It looks like the target is not the source site, but the scrapers and cloners. Still, it is a good idea to have a proper XML sitemap indexed by Google. Stay with the simple strategy of original content, link building and authority.

 

2. European Union

 

Google has been facing regulatory battles in Europe over the search market for a few years. Now Google has hinted via comments by execs that the search engine algorithm could be changed to appease regulators and settle the case. This comment has been overblown (by some) to imply radical changes to the algorithm and search engines results pages (SERPs). As if one day we will wake up and the SERPS will be all topsy-turvy.

Not likely.

Google will placate the regulators, but in the end – you can expect that the algorithm will survive as a pure mathematical formula and not a toy for regulators to politicize.

 

 

What is the Best Blogging Platform for Your Business?

Relevant keyword-rich blogging can be an excellent SEO tool for small companies to use to improve organic search rankings. An important question to answer though is: Which blogging platform or software is best for your business? Each platform is unique and has potential advantages or disadvantages for your business. Here is a look at a few:

WordPress

Very widely used and the best choice for most companies looking for a self-hosted blog. Plug-ins, widgets, and SEO tools are all easily available, in addition to thousands of developer themes. Self-hosting options keep developer options wide open including sophisticated e-commerce solutions. Easy to create a blog that actually looks like a normal website or embed a blog within a company website.

Google Blogger

Extremely simple, but somewhat limited upside for a growing site. Integrates easily with other Google accounts and very easy to establish custom domains. Somewhat tempting from a SEO-perspective because it seems logical that a Google-hosted blog is more easily indexed by Google, but Blogger has limitations for developers that are hard to overlook.

TypePad

Offers free hosted accounts or paid-hosted accounts. Easy to learn with more tools, widgets, and development opportunities than Blogger. Search industry data seems to indicate that WordPress blogs rank better than TypePad blogs in general. TypePad is larger and more established than other blog hosting platforms like Posterous, Tumblr, and Squarespace.

Movable Type

Open source blogging platform from the same company that offers TypePad. Good solution for a company with skilled developers who want more control over their blog than the options offered by Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress and have the time and resources to develop their blog.

Drupal

The blogging platform that makes sense for open source and coding gurus. Tight-knit community of developers who trade tips and code to solve problems. Very few limitations for companies with skilled developers. This platform is more code-intensive and less artistic than other options. Excellent choice for companies looking to manage multiple websites from one platform. Not the best option for sites with intense multimedia integration.

Joomla

Another open source content management system with a more friendly bias towards themes, navigation, plug-ins, and asthetics than Drupal. Requires more CMS or development skills than WordPress, but also has more community support than Drupal.  E-commerce and useful commercial extensions can be easily configured. Excellent theme otpions.

Posterous

Micro-blogging service that offers cross-posting by e-mail. An excellent alternative or a nice addition to Twitter and Facebook social media campaigns. Very limited from an artistic perspective, but offers a clean and simple look-and-feel. A significant time saver for companies wanting to deliver daily marketing messages. SEO considerations of duplicate content should be considered before cross-posting across too many platforms.

Tumblr

Another micro-blogging service with less plug-ins options and developer themes than Posterous. Hosted Tumblr blogs can easily handle large traffic spikes, which make them a good option for companies trying to create a viral buzz with their blog. Cheap and easy.

Squarespace

Offers an core platform to convert a website to a blog or start from scratch. Not as many plug-ins an developer options as WordPress, but a cleaner more modern platform than Blogger and TypePad. A good option for a company looking for a hosted cloud-based website instead of self-hosting. A straight-forward and easy-to-lean blogging service.