Google is phasing out support for older browsers from 1 August. Those using IE7, Safari 3, Firefox 3.5 and their predecessors to view Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites will then lose some functions. Eventually, it warned, these web services will stop working for those sticking with older browsers. The move is part of a trend to stop the use of ageing browsers which can be insecure and not sophisticated enough to handle the latest web technologies.

Code malfunction

Statistics on browser versions gathered by StatCounter suggest about 17% need to change in the light of Google’s decision. Google made its announcement in a blogpost saying its engineers were keen to make use of the latest capabilities in browsers, and that required support for HTML5 technology. As a result, from 1 August, Google will only support what it calls “modern browsers”. By this it means the latest versions and major prior releases of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. As new versions of these are released, Google will get its web services working with that and then drop support for the third-oldest version. Support in this sense means that Google will only do compatibility testing with more up-to-date browsers. It will not carry out tests with older programmes and can make no guarantees that web services will work with them.

Concluding the blogpost, Venkat Panchapakesan, vice president of engineering at Google, wrote: “These new browsers are more than just a modern convenience, they are a necessity for what the future holds.” In mid-May, Mozilla, which oversees development of Firefox, kicked off a plan to get the 12 million or so people using version 3.5 of its browser to update. It said it was “frustrated” with efforts to get people to upgrade and had taken a series of steps to force change. It used pop-up screens, adverts, re-directs and updates to steer people towards more recent versions of Firefox. Figures gathered by Mozilla suggest the campaign has had some success as the number of users on Firefox 3.5 has now dropped to about one million.

Microsoft’s campaign to stop people using Internet Explorer 6 is one of the longest running upgrade efforts. The software giant has used its automatic update system to get newer versions of its browser out to many users. However, many companies prefer not to use this system and that has meant IE6 clinging on in some firms and nations. Globally about 11% of browsers are IE6, suggest figures compiled by Microsoft, and there is a wide variation around the world. About 34% of Chinese net users are on IE6, as are 22.3% of South Koreans and 11.6% of Vietnamese people.

The Royal Wedding which took place in London on April 29th may have been watched by 24.5 million on terrestrial TV but social networks such as Twitter and Facebook had its fair share of users.

Tweeters mentioned the royal wedding around 70 times per second, while Facebook users commented on the big day around 78 times per second. According to the Daily Telegraph over one million status updates on Facebook UK mentioned the Royal Wedding with over two million mentions in the US.

Google reported a number in the range of 400 million global viewers of the YouTube live stream, which never crashed but had slower response times and lower average availability than normal.

Yahoo had its busiest day for some time, over a 24-hour-period, the search engine witnessed 50,000 requests per second about the event and 400 million unique page views.

The BBC news site was so popular on the day that it experienced technical difficulties, which affected live streaming of the event.

Many questioned if the Royal Wedding would take the Internet down or how it would compare to other recent big Internet events like the World Cup. Data from AlertSite shows that many sites were able to maintain uptime and good response time levels during the entire ceremony, while others did feel the impact of the Web traffic.

Google Page rank is based on back links. Back links are Links pointing to your website from another website. The more back links you have the higher your PR will be.

1. Join forums, forums are a great way to achieve links to your website. In most forums you are allowed to have a signature and in your signature you can put a link to your website. But another important note to look on is making sure the forum is somewhat related to your website. You will still get credit if it’s not, but if it’s related to your website than you will be accomplishing two tasks at once.

You will be advertising for your website (bringing in targeted traffic) You will also be building your websites presence.

Your websites presence is very important to your survival. The more people see, or hear about your website the more credibility you will have and this increases your chances of having these visitors come back and possibly become leads.

2. Submit to search engine directories. Search engine directories are a good way to get a free link to your website. They also increase your chances at being listed higher on popular search engines like Google, and overture.

Most search engine directories allow you to submit to their website for free. This will allow you to increase your web presence by being listed on another search engine, and it will also be a free link.

Remember the more links you have the higher your PR will be

3. Using ezine ads (or newsletters). Creating an ezine will probably be the most beneficial step you can take to increasing your web presence. When you create an ezine you will be able to keep visitors coming back to your website for more by using signatures and giving special deals.

Ezine’s will also allow you to increase your back links. By creating an ezine you can submit your information about your ezine to an ezine directory. This directory will than link to your website(thus giving you a free link).

4. Creating and publishing articles. Articles are an easy source of generating new traffic. You can include your signature in your article. This will bring in more traffic from article submission directories.

Your signature usually consists of 4 to 8 lines. Usually the first line would be the title of the website that you are trying to advertise. The last line would be the link to the website and the lines in between these would be a sales pitch to draw your viewers into your website.

5. Links from related websites. Gaining links from related websites can be one of the most frustrating tasks you can attempt.

They are very easy to find, but can be somewhat difficult to obtain links from.

To find related websites, all you have to do is go to a search engine… say Google… and type in your subject. Maybe your website is based on ford mustangs.

You go to Google and type in ford mustangs, than you look around for pages that are somewhat related to your website. After you have done this (which should be very easy) you have to contact them in some way to get your link posted on their website. This can be the most difficult task because a lot of webmasters ignore e-mail’s from people requesting links because they don’t see the importance of it at the time. Some other reasons could be that they are rarely online, or they delete spam mail and sometimes delete their important emails in the process.

Important note: When looking for link partners don’t just link with websites that have a page rank of 4 or higher. Link with anyone and everyone you get a chance to. If you link to someone that has a page rank of zero, this will not hurt your page rank. It will only increase it because you are getting a link back to your website. Google doesn’t look at your back links page ranks to determine what yours is going to be. It simply looks at how many back links you have.

So if Google one day decided to link to a website that was just created and this website has a page rank of 0 and has a domain that goes something like this: mywebsite.geocities.com it’s page rank wouldn’t increase even though Google’s page rank is 10, it’s rank would still be zero because it would only have that one back link.

By Charles Nixon

Well it’s taken me three years and I’d still like to be number one but I have finally managed to get my web site into the top three of Google for the search term “web design plymouth”. Not bad for a freelance web designer competing against some big web design agencies.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) writing, as a distinct style, was born in the Internet era and has matured before our very eyes in a relatively short span of time. Although it is evolving and maturing still, and will continuously do so, we can define some of the tried and tested steps of content optimization to help unique pages place at or near the top of search engine rankings.

Some experts go on to say that the goal of SEO is two-fold, with the first objective to put out the appropriate "bait" for search engine spiders and the second to serve up useful information to people who want and need it. Debates about priorities continue among SEO professionals, but it is never a good idea to devalue the human factors in any success formula. The singular goal, then, would be to develop, position and refine content in such a way as to satisfy all visitors to the page and/or site, both human and bot alike.

Rethinking Search Engine Content Terms

"Content is king," goes the old saying – and not only is good content king, it is becoming more important with every passing day. But the term content is best taken in its broadest sense. Content is not simply the written copy placed in a document, assembled on a page, or aggregated at a site. It includes all this, of course, but content actually comprises titles, headings, tags, intra-site links and external links, as well.

All of these components need to work together and form an interconnected whole so that both search engines and humans find the right things, come to the right conclusions and, most importantly, make the right decisions. Good writing is always targeted to the audience, and you are writing for an audience of two readers, human and software. Remember these two components of the audience and find creative ways to reach both of them at the same time.

First Things First

Titles are critically important – they are usually the first thing read by both real and virtual visitors. A title is the "primary topical identifier" and, as such, has an invaluable function – again, a dual-purpose one. It must contain keyword targets at the individual word level while stoking interest in potential readers at the phrase level.

When a person performs a search, the title is both their first indication of your relevance to their needs and your first opportunity to compel them to click through. Search engines, more clinical and objective, give the title importance because they see it as an indicator of the page’s main idea.

Yet many pages on the Internet have no title at all, or share "Home" and "Untitled" with several million others. There is no excuse for this oversight. The ignorant cousin of these mistakes, making the company name by itself the title of every page, is just as bad. Keywords relevant to the page should be part of every page’s title.

Heading tags carry some importance too. Simply put, heading tags define the headings and subheadings of your article to both readers and spiders. By default they appear larger than normal text and are bolded. While not a magic ranking bullet, they are looked at with more importance than average text and are an opportunity to show spiders the themes of your content and what keywords you wish to rank for.

The H1 tag is the main heading of your article and carries the most importance, like a headline in a newspaper article. It should clearly convey the article’s topic to the reader and main keywords to the search engines. H2 tags are one level down in importance and structure. Use them to define subtopics under your main topic, and again use keywords where descriptive and useful. If you needed to break down your article to sub-sub-headings, you would use the H3 tags, and so forth.

For both human and robotic readers, it is vital to keep page content focused. The "one topic per page" rule is an unwritten one, certainly, and it’s followed by most professional content developers. This has less to do with the intelligence of the readers (either kind) than it does with several other considerations. For one thing, search engine "crawlers" have algorithms that tend to work best on one concept at a time, and most humans work best this way, too.

In addition, limiting the focus eases the task of placing keywords in the meta descriptions, page title, body copy, tags and links. Finally, dealing with more than one topic necessarily means using more verbiage, which dilutes the potency of a site-wide SEO program and may negatively impact ranking. Better to give these other topics their own content, strengthening your site’s overall informational authority.

SEO Copywriting Balance

Much ink has been spilled and many pixels propagated in discussing SEO techniques, analyzing strategies, teaching "web content" writing, and chasing changing algorithms. Mentioned less but encompassing everything is that SEO copywriting, like all SEO, is about balance.

While articles such as this one can be helpful, it is important to understand that SEO will always evolve, change, adapt and improve. Study and implement tested techniques, but remain flexible and nimble. Writing for search engines and people at the same time is tricky and challenging at best, and can be frustrating and time-consuming, too. Approach the challenges in a businesslike fashion.

SEO content writing at its best balances art with science, blending the craft of engaging the reader with the dispassionate analysis of keywords on a page. Follow best practices, but fill each article to the brim with information useful to your demographic.

In simultaneously targeting a subject, an audience, and an algorithm, a great deal of creativity must take place to get effective SEO results. And, of course, it all has to happen in an environment that encourages short attention spans and constantly tries to lure people elsewhere. It is a major challenge to craft article titles and copy so compelling as to make people stop and read – or, better yet, stop and then click where you want them to.

Basics, Opportunities, and Consistency

The basic approach to writing for such a dynamic, ever-changing environment is to get to the point quickly. The "USA Today" news style – which relies on short headlines, descriptive sub-headlines and a few concise paragraphs – is perhaps the best analogy for good SEO writing. The important points (keywords) should appear early and often, and within a short period of time the human readers should know what they are supposed to do, while the search engines should be able to tell what the page is about from a consistency between your page structure and your body copy.

In the eyes of the search engines, everything that it can possibly see counts. That is, using image alt-text not only helps blind readers and people using phone- or text-based browsers, it also gives you another opportunity to add more descriptive strength to the overall page for the search engines. Do not miss any opportunity to further empower and refine your content.

And always remember when writing for search engines – keep writing. Write write write. Search engine bots gorge on new information, and if you consistently update your site with fresh content they will come around more often. While this gives you more opportunities to display your value, more importantly it builds the foundation of information that obviates it.

There’s a lot to do, and it all needs to be done well. Use your numbers, metrics and analytics to point you in the right direction for creating more content. That’s some science. Your creativity and amount of useful information, on the other hand, will point site visitors and search engines in the right direction. That’s a touch of art. When both aspects of your SEO program are firing on all cylinders, you should soon be marching up the search engine rankings.

About The Author

Matt Tuens is a copywriter for Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization, Inc. Beanstalk offers expert SEO services, consulting, link building and SEO copywriting services. Visit online for more information.

Web giant Google has unveiled new products that it says will push search in a new direction.

Google is using so-called semantic web technology to leverage the underlying data on websites to enhance results.

"The race in search is far from over and innovation and continued improvement is absolutely pivotal," said Google’s Marissa Mayer.

Google said it could not afford to rest on its laurels in the quest to build the perfect search engine.

Google has over 63% of the US market compared with rival Yahoo, on 20%.

"I’ve said this many times but search is still in its infancy. Our engineers are worried about what is the next big thing in search and how are they going to find it," said Ms Mayer, who is the vice-president of search products and user experience.

She said that last year Google had released more than 360 products and in the first quarter of this year it had been 120. Ms Mayer added that this was proof that "Google gets better all the time".

Google has in the past said that despite its lead in the marketplace, users were "one click away" from switching to other alternatives.

Vanessa Fox of SearchEngineLand told the BBC that Google’s ability to constantly innovate gave them a leading edge.

"Google is saying: ‘We have to provide for all searchers and do things at scale.’ It means they have to launch all sorts of features while some companies can concentrate on just one thing. The key thing behind why they are still ahead is because they are able to innovate at such a pace," said Ms Fox.

Rich snippets

During the Searchology event at Google’s Mountain View headquarters, Ms Mayer and her team showcased four new products that she said would give users a "different way to look at the web".

Rich Snippets are search results that return more information in every listing.

For example, users looking for reviews of a new restaurant might get a "rich snippet" of average review scores, number of reviews and the restaurant’s price range.

"This is a step toward making the whole internet smarter," said Google product manager Kavi Goel.

Rich snippets use the metadata from web pages, such as address information, calendar information and semantic web mark-up specifications, called Resource Description Frameworks.

The use of these so-called microformats allows the search engine to better understand the meaning of data and to employ it more intelligently.

Google can understand the relationship between different sets of data, and so can pull the correct address listing of a shop without that information having to be specifically tied together.

Google Squared

One of the more experimental products was called Google Squared, which will go public in the next month or so. It takes information from the web and displays it in a spreadsheet in "split seconds", something Ms Mayer said would normally take someone half a day to do.

During the demonstration, a query for "small dog" was typed into the search box. Seconds later a table popped up showing photographs of various dogs, their origin, weight and height in a clear and simple layout.

While Ms Mayer described this product as "transformative", she would only hint at the specific techniques that Google uses to drive this feature.

"I think we can open the kimono a little bit without talking about the computer science behind it.

"What they are basically doing is looking for structures on the web that seem to imply facts. Like something ‘is’ something.

"Different tables, different structures, and then corroborating the evidence around whether or not something is a fact by looking at whether that fact occurs across pages.

"This is all in the secret sauce of what we are doing and it takes an incredible amount of compute power to create those squares," said Ms Mayer.

‘Refine, filter and view’

Google Search Options is a tool that is aimed at letting users "slice and dice" results so they can manipulate the information and get what they want faster.

They come into play after a normal web search and allow users to drill down into the results by offering an option for different genres like product reviews, forum posts or videos. Other choices include recently added blogs, images, timelines and so on.

Ms Mayer said this new feature should help people who struggled with the "vexing" problem of exactly what query they should type into the search box.

It is meant to give users the opportunity to "refine, filter and view results in a different way".

‘Skymap’

A final feature had Ms Mayer "reaching for the stars" with an app for mobile phones using the Android operating system.

"For a long time here at Google we joked could we actually find physical things like keys and now with the power and technology of Android, coupled with search, you can see we are starting to find some physical things like stars," said Ms Mayer.

Skymap displays the constellations. By using the smart phone’s GPS capability, it offers the user a dynamic star map that knows where they are standing and which way they are pointing

The feature came about as a result of Google’s 20% time, which allows engineers to spend one-fifth of their time working on pet projects.

The app is now available on the Android app market.

"Clearly Google is still pushing the envelope with all these new additions," said Rob Hof, Silicon Valley editor of Business Week.

"They are certainly continuing to improve daily. Whether it makes a difference and will stave off the competition, I don’t know. But they are not standing still."

Ms Mayer said keeping the user happy was at the heart of everything they did.

"There is a shoe company called Stuart Weitzman and their slogan is ‘a little obsessed with shoes’.

"Google is a little more than obsessed with search," confessed Ms Mayer.

by Maggie Shiels

Chinese internet users have reacted with fury after Microsoft launched an anti-piracy tool to combat the widespread sale of fake software. People have flooded blogs and bulletin boards to complain it violates their right to privacy – with one lawyer even reporting the firm to security officials for "hacking".

Microsoft dominates the Chinese market, and even the president, Hu Jintao, has said he uses its products. But with software piracy estimated at more than 90%, the firm’s profits fail to reflect its popularity.

The new version of its "Windows Genuine Advantage" program turns the background black every hour if the installed software fails a validation test.

But the software giant’s attempt to protect its intellectual property sparked angry denunciations. " The computer is mine!" one angry blogger wrote on the web portal Sina.com. "Microsoft has no right to control my hardware without my agreement."

Dong Zhengwei, 35, a Beijing lawyer, has complained to the public security ministry, describing the software giant as the "biggest hacker in China, with its intrusion into users’ computer systems without their agreement or any judicial authority". He told the official China Daily newspaper he believed the measure breached China’s criminal law.

The China Software Industry Association said it also planned to take action against Microsoft.

Critics said Microsoft was putting their information at risk by accessing their computers. But the software giant argues that counterfeit programs pose a far greater risk to information security.

by Tania Branigan