Using a robots.txt File

What is a robots.txt file?

A robots.txt file provides restrictions to search engine robots (known as "bots") that crawl the web. These bots are automated, and before they access pages of a site, they check to see if a robots.txt file exists that prevents them from accessing certain pages.

Does my site need a robots.txt file?

Only if your site includes content that you don't want search engines to index. If you want search engines to index everything in your site, you don't need a robots.txt file (not even an empty one).

Where should the robots.txt file be located?

The robots.txt file must reside in the root of the domain. A robots.txt file located in a subdirectory isn't valid, as bots only check for this file in the root of the domain. For instance, http://www.example.com/robots.txt is a valid location. But, http://www.example.com/mysite/robots.txt is not. If you
don't have access to the root of a domain, you can restrict access using the Robots META tag.

Getting Out of Google Supplemental Results

Getting out of the Google Supplemental Results may be possible by improving your website navigation system. To get more pages fully Google indexed, the prominence of important website pages can often be boosted by linking to them from pages within your domain having the highest Page Rank, such as your homepage. The reason for this being that Page Rank is passed from one page to another by links and the most common cause of Supplemental results is lack of Page Rank.

Start by determining your most important web pages which have been made supplemental - for example those promoting lucrative products and services, and then improve your website internal linking by adding links to these pages from more prominent fully Google indexed pages of your site including your homepage. At the same time, ensure that your website navigation system is search engine friendly using a website link analyser.

Important Information about Google Buzz Class Action Settlement

Google rarely contacts Gmail users via email, but we are making an exception to let you know that we've reached a settlement in a lawsuit regarding Google Buzz (http://buzz.google.com), a service we launched within Gmail in February of this year.

Shortly after its launch, we heard from a number of people who were concerned about privacy. In addition, we were sued by a group of Buzz users and recently reached a settlement in this case.

The settlement acknowledges that we quickly changed the service to address users' concerns. In addition, Google has committed $8.5 million to an independent fund, most of which will support organizations promoting privacy education and policy on the web. We will also do more to educate people about privacy controls specific to Buzz. The more people know about privacy online, the better their online experience will be.

Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation. Everyone in the U.S. who uses Gmail is included in the settlement, unless you personally decide to opt out before December 6, 2010. The Court will consider final approval of the agreement on January 31, 2011. This email is a summary of the settlement, and more detailed information and instructions approved by the court, including instructions about how to opt out, object, or comment, are available at http://www.BuzzClassAction.com.

Google Algorithm Updated

Everyone wants top rankings for their website and most people use search engines to find what they are looking for. We all know that if your website is not in the top of a search engine that you will miss out on prospective clients, however as you also know getting these top ranks are not easy. We almost all know in some form what SEO (search Engine Optimisation) is, even if we have not got a clue how to do it. But whether we have done it ourselves or got someone to do it for us you will know that a one of hit will not fit the bill especially when search engines make changes make changes to their algorithms (this is the special formula that SE’s used to rank your site in the search engine results pages [SERPs]). Sometimes these tweaks are minor while other times they are huge and the impact is far reaching for all online users.

Google has made an algorithmic change, which, looks for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. Apparently this is not a flyby night minor change either as Google have stated it is a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which suggests that sites getting less traffic will still be indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic. Google have said they will not be rolling it back.

So where does this leave your average small to medium sized business owner? Well if you have an ecommerce site using a structure that has longtail keywords for pages less viewed, you need to check your stats and see if you were in fact impacted by the update (did you lose traffic from some long tail phrases), also check out your linking practices ensure all links have been obtained using whitehat techniques. Another very important thing to do to help yourself now is check your link strategy out and ensure you are passing link juice to your internal pages.

Make sure all pages have unique good quality information (if you do ecommerce, this is definitely for you do not just use the manufacturers materials) and if you do not use them currently or have not used your social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for a while now is the time as this will help you to build links to internal pages and get traffic throughput to them. Most savvy Business owners realise they can not rely purely on Google or any search engine for that matter for traffic and that social media sites can help boost their business’ exposure. Finally do not go mad do not change everything in the hopes of fixing something that may not even affect you, use your stats and above all common sense.

This is not the end of Long Tail Keywords however good optimisation is really important to your continued online success now, forget how to change, manipulate or find a way around the algorithm changes instead work with it and fix your SEO efforts accordingly by making consistent updates to your content, posting high quality articles that have been optimised on to a well designed site that has also be optimised is the winning game plan here. This does not mean that your rank will be the same indefinitely it does mean that you do work a bit harder and a bit differently to consistently keep you business in front of potential customers.

Google Latest Update Provides Best Results

At the end of May, Google released an update to their search algorithm-dubbed “Mayday” by most-that affects natural search engine rankings, especially for what are known as “long-tail keywords”. In looking at this Mayday update, we will ask the question: Are these Google updates “fair and balanced”?

The “Mayday” moniker for this Google algorithm seems altogether appropriate. We picture people on a sinking ship yelling “Mayday”. And there are many people on this proverbial sinking ship. People from around the Internet are saying that they lost about 80% of their traffic since this update and many of these people are referring to pages that focused on long-tail keywords.

As you know, Google frequently updates their algorithm to improve search results. The Mayday update carries with a significant change for how Google returns search results for “long tail keywords”.

An example of a long-tail keyword would be something like this: “Apple iPod Touch 32gb 3rd generation review.”

Deal between Facebook and Microsoft

Today's deal between Facebook and Microsoft, which allows Microsoft's Bing search engine to incorporate your Facebook "like" data into its relevance rankings, illustrates how the balance of power on the Internet is shifting from search to social networking.

Microsoft got interested in search in 2003 for a lot of reasons, not least because it saw how Google was shaping the behavior of Internet users.

In user testing and from various data collection systems like the MSN toolbar, Microsoft noticed that a lot of users started each Web surfing session by entering a search term into Google, and returned to the site throughout the day. Google's blank white page was becoming the de facto start page for the Internet.

For a lot of people, that's changed.

For instance, a reporter at a major daily paper recently told me that her company no longer spends a lot of time on search engine optimization – that is, trying to get stories to show up high in Google's search results. Instead, they've found that a ton of traffic is now coming from Facebook (and to a lesser degree, Twitter).

So now they're focused on trying to write the kinds of stories that will get lots of people to post them on their Facebook pages. (Which is what they should have been doing anyway – writing interesting stories that appeal to lots of people. Imagine that.)

Today's deal brings the power of that anecdote home. Google's algorithm will continue to be great when searching for pure information with no particular agenda. But what about figuring out what movie to see this weekend? Or finding out when Neil Young has a cool new video and accompanying album? Or getting instant recommendations on a plumber to fix your suddenly broken water heater? In each of those cases, I got the answer from my Facebook friends.

These are the kinds of commerce-related questions that power Google's revenue today, as they're most likely to get users to click on related advertisements. But as more users turn to Facebook to answer these kinds of questions, advertisers will follow. Microsoft gets this transition, and is more than happy to speed it along.

Google Analytics via New Status Dashboard

"Google Analytics processes huge volumes of data for websites around the world everyday, thanks to Google’s globally renowned infrastructure," Yi Wang from the Google Analytics Product Team, wrote.

"While we never stop focusing on system reliability and scalability, we also want to make sure our users have an easy way to get the latest updates from us should there be a problem," he added.

"Today, we’re pleased to announce that we have launched the Google Analytics Status Dashboard. Now anyone can visit this Status Dashboard to check on the current status of components of the Google Analytics system," he announced.

The new Dashboard should give an overview of the main components of Google Analytics, Data Collection, Web Report and the GData API.

Data Collection indicates whether the analytics data is being gathered correctly from the websites. The Web Report indicator shows if the users can log into their Analytics account and view the data being gathered. Finally, the GData API indicator shows whether the Analytics APIs are working.

Like with the similar Google Dashboards, there are some caveats. The data is not real-time, and is likely updated just a few times a day. What's more, it only shows global availability so it's only of use in the event of a major failure.

"The Status Dashboard is the best place to check for service availability of Google Analytics anywhere in the world," Google says, indicating that the data may be localized in some way, though.

Still, while the global Dashboard may show that everything is working properly, there may be issues locally preventing Analytics from either gathering or displaying the data at any one given time.

source: softpedia

About Google Instant Search

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.

The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Benefits

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.
Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.        

Top 25 Free High Rank Backlinks and Profile Sites

Here is a list of 25 high page rank web sites where you can post your content, create profiles, and link-up your site’s URL without any reciprocal link from your site. Once you create these high page rank backlinks, profiles, and accounts, they will be a source of web traffic for you. These sites are also great for reputation management campaigns. The sites will normally create a good ranking profile for your company name that in most cases willl appear witin Google’s search results pretty fast.

1. eHOW.com Write how to articles or videos. Post your link in your profile. Also a good source of information if you want to know how to do something.

2. WikiHow.com Same as eHow but you can edit existing wiki pages or create your own. Cleverly put your link in “Sources and Citations” section

3. 43Things.com You have to sign up for participation. Post your own goals or reply to posted “to do” list. Occasionally, insert your own link as a resource.

4. Squidoo.com This is one of my favorite. Build your lenses and you can add links to your site, embed your YouTube videos and flickr photos.

5. AssociatedContent.com You can add your link in your profile. Not a favorite of mine.

6. HubPages.com Another site like Squidoo and AssociatedContent. You can put links to your sites in the content you create here.

7. Digg.com The most popular news ranking site. If you have good blog posts you can post them here. If your article goes to the home page, you will attract thousands of high page rank backlinks and tens of thousands of visitors for a short period. Be prepared for handle the load otherwise you will bring down your server.

8. Reddit.com Another news popularity site. Same as Digg. Post your blog articles here but don’t submit your entire site.

9. Answers.yahoo.com Ask questions and post answers to others questions. You can post links to your site in your answers.

10. Xanga.com A community blog. Crete keyword rich contents and links to your sites in the posts.

11. Kiva.org A microfinance site. You lend to and borrow from individual entrepreneurs. Create a profile page and link to your site from your profile page.

12. Geocities.com One of the oldest site. Create a few mini websites and links to your web sites from the geocities pages.

13. Twitter.com Create an account using a keyword and post your link in your profile.

14. Propeller.com Another news popularity site. Put you site’s link in your profile page.

15. Tradebit.com A site where you can buy and sell digital contents. If you ebooks, your own recorded music, etc., put your keywords in listing pointing to your site’s URL.

16. Angelfire.com Another old site like Geocities. Create your mini sites and put links to your site on the mini site pages.

17. Weebly.com A web 2.0 site where you can create your own mini sites like Geocites. Use the same technique you use for Geocites and Angelfire for back links to your sites.

18. Blogowogo.com A blog aggregation site. If you are running a blog, add your RSS feed to their site and any time you post new articles in your blog, your page at Blogowogo will be updated.

19. Tumblr.com Post and share your photos, articles, links, music, and videos. Use you site’s link in the profile page.

20. StumbleUpon.com Discover great web pages and share with your friends. You can submit your site and individual pages to StumbleUpon.

21. eZineArticles.com The most popular article directory. Submit your articles with author’s box under each article. You can use up to two links to your site in each article.

22. Flickr.com The most popular photo sharing site. You can drop your site’s link on the profile page.

23. MyBlogLog.com Share your online activity on a single page. Link to your sites from the profile page.

24. FastCompany.com If you are passionate about business idea, you should sign up with this very respected site. You can use anchor text in your profile page to link to your web site.

25. YouTube.com The most popular video sharing site. If you don’t have an account with YouTube, you should sign up immediately. Upload interesting and funny videos. Create your profile and link to your site

Link Building SEO: Correct way to use links to your site

Link building is the gasoline that powers Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Its job is to build a site's value in the eyes of a search engine.

There is a lot of misunderstanding around the subject of link building. As a result, most people build links that don't help improve their search engine ranking.

SEO Link Basics

A link is a connection between one web page and another. A person who clicks a link on one web page will be taken to the page being linked to.

Search engines regard a link from one web page to another as a vote in favour of that page. As a general rule of thumb, the more links a web page gets the higher it will rank in search engines.

In a search engine's 'mind' links are not created equal. The value of a web page that links to your site is taken into account. If your site has nothing but low value links, it won't necessarily help you rank higher in search engines. Of course, it won't hurt either.

Link Tips

A link will normally only convey SEO value to your site if it's a one-way link (from them to you). If you're merely swapping links with friends, the two links will essentially cancel each other out.

To gain SEO value, you'll need to find ways to generate one-way links to your site. Click on my author profile below for 66 different link building ideas.

It's also worth noting that links between different pages on your site also count. In fact, I recommend you examine your site structure and look for ways to increase the links you send to key pages.

2 Ways to Convey SEO Value through Links

There are 2 ways to convey SEO value through links. They are...

1. Link juice
2. Contextual links

Link juice is a term that imagines SEO value to be a liquid, and describes its flow from one web site to another. For example, imagine that the BBC linked to you from its homepage (we all live in hope).

Link juice is said to flow through the link and land on your site. The more valuable a site is in the eyes of a search engine, the more link juice it has to send to your site. This directly impacts on your own search engine ranking.

A contextual link is one that contains a keyword phrase. That is, the clickable text in the link is a search term. For example, the following is a contextual link: Dental Root Canal Treatment.

A search engine creates an association between the keyword phrase in the link and the web page its linking to. This association helps the web page being linked to by improving its ranking for that particular keyword phrase.

The best kind of link is a contextual link from a high value site because it sends plenty of link juice (i.e. SEO value), and it creates a keyword association for the page being linked to.

Think Deep

Most non-professionals think about link building in terms of a site's homepage. But search engines are interested in the entire site, and assess its overall value. If you only get links to your site's homepage you'll struggle to fully realize the potential of SEO to send visitors to your site.

Each key pages on your site should have its own keyword focus. This then provides the keyword phrases required to create contextual links.

When generating links to sub-pages on your site helps improve the SEO value of the entire site. This is partly due to the principle that 'all ships rise on a rising tide', and is also the result of the way link juice flows throughout your site.

If you do happen to secure a link from a high value site such as the BBC, the resulting SEO value arrives at the page on your site being linked to. If that page links to other pages on your site (as it should do), link juice will spread to those pages and benefit your entire site as a result.

Where to click next on Google Wonder Wheel

I have found the new Google wonder wheel as a useful tool to use. The application which shows you the related searches to your term and navigates you all the way to the right term is easy to use and different. Sometimes small change to display the same things on another way is everything that is needed.

This is why when I’m using the Google wonder wheel I’m facing some problems, to understand where to click next. As a new user to this Google option and from Emails I’m getting from other users, the main issue to face is “where to click next”?

When you are using this application and searching via the terms Google offers, you don’t really know where to click next on Google Wonder Wheel or on the side results.  Maybe you need to click back to the origin Google page? How to go on and navigate via the other Google options? All these questions came to the table when people tried the Google Wonder Wheel for the first times.

After a while, anyone can learn Where to click next on Google Wonder Wheel since the real results are on the right hand side of the page. Navigating on the Wonder wheel is addictive, but it will not take you to where you want to go. After every new wheel you open, search for the right result for you on the right hand side.

This example shows that even after few clicks on the Google wonder wheel, its still hard to know Where to click next on Google Wonder Wheel next, because the true results are on the right hand side.

Optimization for Google

Search engine optimization is not just to rank in search engines but mainly to achieve a good click through rate from the targeted visitors. This means that your web site should come up in the search results of the search-engines with targeted keywords that are related to your content or theme of your site.

Not surprisingly, Google optimization is becoming increasingly competitive as more and more companies realize the importance of getting a high ranking here, but it is also one of the most ‘user-friendly’ search engines to work with! Google updates frequently, deep indexes many pages from a website, and is also good at ignoring sites that try to ’spam’ the listings through the use of unscrupulous techniques.

Points to achieve Higher Google Rank:

Place keywords in URL:

The most important elements to insert keywords into are the URL (domain name + path + filename) and title of your web page. Also, a low-level URL is considered more important than a higher level URL.

Page Titles:

Pay a lot of attention to the titles of the pages you are trying to get ranked. Don’t target more than two or three keyword phrases. Worry about the proximity and prominence of the main keywords. By that, I mean put your more important words closer to the beginning of the title, in the right order, next to each other and make sure the target keywords are a high percentage (but not 100%) of all the words in the title.

Google Site Submission:

Great, you’re all set. Now you should submit your site to Google, right? Not necessarily. Let Google find you. HOW Google finds you can affect your page rank. I don’t mean that there is a standard penalty for submitting to Google. There’s been speculation on that for a while but I have yet to prove it matters.

Increase Quality Back Links:

Back link helps our site to be indexed by Search engine faster. That is the first thing for you to know. No matter how good your site is, without any back link from other site, it’s like your site is a great mall in the deep jungle. So hard for people to find and visit your site.

Google Analytics:

Using Google Analytics as the only information of the campaigns effect can create a distorted and incorrect picture of what really is taking place. The Urchin software, that is used by Google for their Analytics program, is stripped of many features, the output is delayed and as in forums of webmasters widely discussed full of flaws. Most well known draw-back is the slowing down of the web site, because the JavaScript offered by Google is connecting each time to the Google Server. Well, it is for free, so no claims can be made. So when you have performance problems check also this fact.

Beating the Recession With Affiliate Marketing

A recession is now inevitable. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently predicted that the current recession in the United States will last for at least the whole of 2009. It is of global proportions and it will not discriminate and thus will affect each and every single market. Moody's stated that China is in for its most serious economic downturn in two decades and trade figures have been described as just awfully dreadful. All is far from well in the Euro region, already said to be plunging headlong into recession, with the UK economy being the fastest to contract. Developing countries will also feel the crunch with growth predicted to slow to an abysmal 4.5% for the pre-developed. Shades of the Great Depression seem to be colouring the present global economic crisis so the big question of how to safeguard our financial well-being is springing into everyone's mind.

For this I offer a simple straight-forward answer. Start one or many low investment, high return businesses! Cynical readers will be tossing around expletives at this statement as it is common knowledge to everybody that doing this will ensure profitability, even in the worst of downturns. It is the method of what businesses we should be starting that is this article's concern. My advice is, start an affiliate business! It possesses low initial investment and at the same time maintains high yield characteristics that I believe we should all take note of.

The cost inherent in setting up an affiliate program is fairly paltry. Simple things like hosting, domain name registration, and pay-per-click advertising, are all fairly inexpensive. Compared to traditional physical commerce, affiliate marketing offers a host of benefits with the most useful characteristic being never having to ever stock up on the wares that you are marketing! It also does not require having any physical office, storage or operations space. This translates into never having to pay rent or a mortgage installment! Estimates put US spending on affiliate marketing channels at $2.1 billion dollars for 2008. In terms of your audience however, you are not just marketing to the US. You are marketing to the entire world!

If you have diligently marketed your affiliate products, you stand to make ludicrous sums of money. Since low operating costs are coupled with opportunities to generate extremely high returns, affiliate marketing is the ideal way to generate more income during economic slumps!

Google AdSense by Considering Content as King

Google AdSense provides you the possibility to produce earnings with no making whatever thing different than maintaining a fine site. The major essential aspect in determining the victory with Google AdSense is the quality and amount. Note that web sites that are content-affluent have been quite victorious with the Google AdSense marketing program. The advertisements should not be random; it should be directed in the direction of the content of the web site. That typically enhances the click via ratio and additionally the earnings of the web site.

Some may feel that fine content has not anything to do with, in developing their site. However, what we consider cannot be right every time. Google this moment utilize students as human being reviewers, and in case they come crosswise sites with poor contents, they will simply ban that from the programmed and one time banned it will not be that quite simple to get that account back.

Boring, old, musty and fusty contents will produce fewer guests just. Interesting and enlightening content attracts more guests to the site and thereby it enhances the earnings to your site.

Therefore, the content in AdSense plays an extremely essential function in the quality of your web site. Major care should be given at the same time as preparing the content for your AdSense. It is not needed that your content should be massive, usually little and trouble-free content is found to magnetize many viewers. Your content should be enlightening, factual, appropriate, and genuine and focused. You have to make your advertisements look as if you have placed them there deliberately as though they were something essential relating to your production, matter in addition to your service. There are sites accessible on the net to aid you produce more traffic by improving the nature of your content in the AdSense. They just supply you the vital hints in developing a content affluent AdSense. Another perfect way to advance a fine content is to put you in the guest’s shoes. That might aid you to realize the weaker side of your content and assists you to enhance much.

The keys utilized in the content of an AdSense additionally boost the quality of the content. These keys put the advertisements in the peak place and that in turn will produce more clicks for you. This way having content with the right keys will make your AdSense site a gainful one.

From all that, it is quite clear that the content has a remarkable function in making of a fine Advertisement site. In addition, it could be rightly stated that the Content is the King in Google AdSense.

Google Chrome PageRank Checker

I was just trying to find out the PageRank of a couple of sites using Internet Explorer’s Google Toolbar, but something was broken. Google Chrome has a nice PageRank extension, though.

As you can see in the screenshot, it’s helpful by immediately showing the actual value instead of just a green bar. A couple of times it reverted to zero after loading, but otherwise the values it was showing looked like they were the correct ones. (Considering it doesn’t look like it’s an offical extension, I’m not sure though how accurate the values are now, or will be in the future.)

What Is Bounce...

Do you hear that?

That is the sound of your website rejecting potential customers.

Bounce… There goes another one.

You've probably seen the term 'bounce rate' before in your analytics reports, or heard someone mention it in conversation.

But do you really know what a bounce is?

Do you really understand the importance of this metric?

More importantly, do you know how to fix a high bounce rate?

Bounce Rate Defined

The Google Analytics Help Centre sums it up best with "Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page)".

Or, to put it more plainly, "Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors."

I have highlighted the key phrase in bold and if you only remember one thing, this is it.

What is a "high" bounce rate?

Everybody will have a different opinion on this, and of course there are variables such as seasonality and industry that come into play, but in general I feel that any page with a bounce rate higher than 25% needs attention.

25% still means one out of every four people who arrive at your website leave without looking further.

A retail store owner sure wouldn't be happy if one out of every four people who set foot in their store left without investigating different isles – it should be no different online.

How to Reduce a High Bounce Rate

There are a couple of things you can do to pages with high bounce rates, and in fact should be applied to all landing pages.

These two things should be simple to apply and believe me, if you do them well, you will notice a difference.

Relevancy

If I had to bet on one thing that was the cause of a page's high bounce rate, it would be a lack of relevancy.

Ensure your landing pages are relevant to your sites visitors. Landing pages are usually found via a search engine, so ensure your landing page talks specifically about the keyword the visitor used to find your website.

Call to Action

Any landing page must generate or maintain the visitors buying momentum through to a conversion goal such as a sale or an enquiry.

You must make it obvious to the visitor what you want them to do next by ensuring one primary call to action is prominently placed in the active window and above the fold.

Don't ask your visitors to make decisions. It is your job to guide them, you are in control.

Measure

After making changes to your landing pages, it is essential that you measure the effect those changes have.

Depending on your traffic volume, you may start seeing results in as little as a few days.

If you want to get really clever with your analysis, segment a page's bounce rate by traffic source to see how different sources of traffic react to landing on particular pages.

Bing Adds Recipes to Search Results

Bing is now giving special placement to recipes in response to some food-related searches:

Bing pulls from a number of popular recipe websites (delish.com, MyRecipes.com, epicurious.com.com, etc.) to bring you correlating recipes that you can sift through by holiday, meals, ratings, and my personal favorite, convenience (with a 10 month old at home, quick is key) and much more.

Plug in a potential ingredient, such as sausage, or a food item such as chocolate chip cookies, and you’ll see links to recipes embedded within the regular search results, within a special section:

Clicking on any particular recipe or the “recipes” link above the section takes you to a new “recipes task page,” where Bing provides nutritional information and calculates the relative calories and fat content of recipes. You can see an example of this deep dive here:

The page also allows you to narrow recipes by star rating, by main ingredient and other options including for some, if they are “kid friendly.”

Want to access the recipe search feature directly? That’s not possible, at the moment. You have to hope it appears in response to an ordinary search. However, to increase the odds, add the word “recipe” to your search. For example, searching for macaroni and cheese doesn’t trigger the box — but macaroni and cheese recipes does.

Even though this seems like a minor thing, it’s an appealing and useful feature that may attract loyalty, frequency or some new usage.

Here’s a video from Bing that explains the feature more:

Bing Maps Steals The Cool Crown From Google

Microsoft has had a collection of mapping tools and assets that haven't been fully utilized or received the play (or usage) of Google Maps. But in an announcement today Bing Maps breaks new ground in online mapping even as it plays a bit of catch up with Google.

First, Bing Maps is introducing "Street Side" in 56 US metro areas, with the ambition to go global eventually. This is the Microsoft answer to Google Street View: immersive street-level photography that, like Street View, allows users to "walk down the street" and explore neighborhoods in cities. Microsoft began Street Side at roughly the same time as Street View but hadn't released anything (to date) other than this limited demo site.

The environment that Microsoft has created is richer than Street View and brings "augmented reality" into Maps in a compelling way. Microsoft has also utilized its 3D mapping assets in creating the new experience. Here's how the Microsoft press material describes the technology behind the new Maps experience:

Photosynth and Silverlight are the underlying technologies in Bing Maps that connect everything and help provide the more seamless experience. Based on Seadragon and Photo Tourism concepts, Photosynth lets us literally "stitch" together photographs to provide more realistic view of locations as they appear in real life. Photosynth-enabled Streetside imagery is built on geometric models that are reconstructed underneath the imagery to provide a truly 3D experience that shows locations as they are in real life.

The one "catch" is that you need to install Microsoft Silverlight to make it all work. But once installed the new Bing Maps beta site enables a wide range of experiences, search and discovery tools that haven't been available (or maybe possible) previously.

In addition there's an "apps gallery" that enable data overlays directly on the map. All of the current modules are Microsoft created but the company will enable third parties to integrate their content into Bing Maps (e.g., Yelp reviews) in the near term.

Google Gained Market Share in China in Last Six Months

Google has been closing the gap on Chinese search engine leader Baidu over the last six months according to web analytics company StatCounter. The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that at the end of 2009 Baidu held 56% of the Chinese market compared to Google's 43%.

"Google has made impressive gains in China since July last when it was at 30% compared to Baidu's 68%," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "Our analysis suggests that given Google's recent strong performance, market share is certainly not the reason behind its threat to leave China at this time."

At the end of 2009 Yahoo! and Bing's combined share of the Chinese search market stood at just 1.18%.

Despite significant gains in China in the last six months, Google's market share there still lags its global penetration where it has over 90% of the market.

The analysis is based on 24 million search engine referring clicks from China which were collected between July and December 2009.

SEO Tip – Optimize Your Images for Better Rankings

You have all been told for years that you must add lots and lots of images to your sites. You’ve learned that visitors enjoy looking at pictures of houses, that blog readers are pulled in by having large images at the top of a post.

But is it possible to bring more traffic in from the search engines because of how you use images on your sites? The answer is yes. Today we’ll cover a few ways to help your site rank better using images.

Before we continue, take six minutes and watch these three Google Webmaster videos:

1. Should I expect increased traffic if I optimize my images?
2. Matt Cutts Discusses the Importance of alt Tags
3. Does Google consider the URL of an image?

That pretty well sums up this post…oh, you want more? Fine, keep reading.

Use Descriptive File Names for Images

In video 1, Matt flat out tells us – YES OPTIMIZING IMAGES WILL INCREASE TRAFFIC. What else do I need to say to convince you?

Matt suggests using descriptive file names for your images. Don’t keep the bland,boring name your camera created, what good is a name like “dsc00234.jpg”? You should use a carefully thought out descriptive name. You shouldn’t get too carried away with long file names, but I do suggest using multiple words. Of course, keep in mind our tip from last week and use dashes to separate the words in your file name. Possibly use something like: “3576-lakeview-street-homerville-tennessee-kitchen-1.jpg”.

Use ALT Tags for Images

In Video 2, Matt reinforces something I and others have already told you – ALT tags for your images are important. However, he does tell us something new; it’s OK to use slightly longer, more descriptive text instead of just “cat”, “house” or “motorcycle.” So what does that mean for you? It means that when you take pictures of a house you are listing, you have an opportunity to really do a good job of describing the property through photos, in a way the search engines not only understand, they want. Consider putting something like this in your ALT tags: “123 brookehaven road, Jasper, Wyoming – master bedroom – MLS 123456″. Be creative in your description, use words people will be using when they search the web.

Image File URLs

In video 3, Matt reminds us that the URLs of files help the search engines figure out what is in the picture. Depending on how your site is constructed, this might take a little bit of planning. Rather than just drop all you images in a generic folder named “images”, or named for the date you uploaded them (like WordPress does by default), perhaps you should consider creating a special structure to store them in. You could get pretty detailed if you wanted to take the time. You may want to create a folder structure like what’s shown here, based on your state, county & city names. Of course, YOU should know your web traffic better than I do, use names you KNOW people use in searches, based on your keyword research.

BONUS Information

How well did you listen to video 3? Go back and listen to it again, starting from about the 25 second mark, ending at about the 40 second mark. OCR and Meta-data for the images? Now we’re talking.

OCR?

OCR, if you don’t know, stands for Optical Character Recognition. Matt’s comment implies that Google is able to READ and understand the text with in your images. How can you use this? Start adding a crisp, clear title to all of your images. Make it easy for them, place the text on a plain background and use a simple, non-swirly font.

Meta-data?

OMG! Not more meta tags! Take a deep breath, relax. It’s not more geeky tags. Image meta-data is often added automatically by digital cameras and it can be edited by many image editing tools to add all sorts of information. The image to the right is a screen shot taken from within Adobe Photoshop, but the software that came with your camera may also allow you to edit your files like this. Place your descriptive text within these fields before you upload them.

I know this was a lot of information, but I’m confidant you can manage it.

When working with images, keep the fortune cookie in mind; how it looks on the outside is important, but sometimes it’s what you can’t see that is more important.