by Dawn Wentzell on June 9, 2011
Last week, Google, Bing and Yahoo announced collaboration on a single standard for structured markup. Yes, I’m talking about Schema.org and utilizing Microdata for “Rich Snippets.”
Since then, many sites have posted about why Schema.org might be good, bad or otherwise for site owners; some balanced, some not. Personally, I think structured markup and machine-readable information is always good to have on your site, regardless of potential SEO benefits. I’ve had a love for structured markup (in the form of Microformats) since I first laid eyes on hCard several years ago. I could have written a whole post about why I think Schema.org is good for SEO, but instead I decided to implement it on a site of mine.
Read more >>
by Dawn Wentzell on May 17, 2011
When Google released their new Local search results format in October, 2010, SEOs quickly determined that the number of reviews and overall rating associated with a business were ranking factors. They also predicted that these would be quickly be gamed.
It was an easy ranking factor to launch the new integrated SERPs with, as they already had piles and piles of review data from their own properties as well as sites they’d partnered with. But Google’s algorithms are not static, and it couldn’t be too long before the Local algorithm included other ranking factors.
Now, it looks like they might be starting to think about other options. A paper submitted to the upcoming Very Large Data Bases conference, on Hyper-Local, Directions-Based ranking and written by two Googlers along with two other researchers, proposes a method for using direction queries…say, of the sort a user might enter into Google Maps…to determine interest in particular places that could possibly be used for ranking such places.
Read more >>
by Chase Granberry on November 23, 2010
After the latest local changes Google made to the search results we had a lot of updates to do with regards to how we process the local results. Those updates are now live and have been for a few days. Here’s an overview on how we parse each kind of local search result we’re getting served. We’re currently getting served three different types: the old style, the newest integrated style, and another style similar to the old style only the text that preceeds that pack starts with “Places for…”.
We’ve had a few questions on exactly how we plan on calculating rankings with these new results and why. Basically we try and make the “rank” reflect where that site would actually be located within a traditional search results page. Read more >>
by Brian LaFrance on September 28, 2010
by Chase Granberry on October 6, 2009
Ha … Google’s changed their logo to a barcode! I fired up the Barcode Scanner app on my G1 to decrypt it and guess what, it’s Google in barcode.
I’d been making some updates to the blog and loaded up Google (because it’s my default page). It’s hard to miss, but there 
Turns out the original barcode patent was filed October 7th, 1952 by Wallace Flint.
by Chase Granberry on March 2, 2009
‘Social media’ is the new craze because of how large sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are getting. The web has been social since it’s existence, it’s all about communication and getting information from one place to another. Forums were around way before MySpace. These concepts aren’t new they’ve just been implemented in a way that makes it easier for people to connect.
Read more >>
by Chase Granberry on February 13, 2009
The canonical tag is simply a way to silence webmasters.
Yesterday at SMX West it was announced that Google, Yahoo! and Live have agreed upon a method to help webmasters define original content within a site. The canonical tag is a meta tag used to tell search engines which page to list in SERPs when multiple listings of the same, or very similar content exist in their databases.
Read more >>
