2009 March « Understanding SEO With Aedig

Blog
About

Wikia Search Fails Due To Poor Economy

March 31, 2009 at 9:39 am | Posted in search engines | Leave a Comment
Tags: search engines

Wikipedia has been one of the biggest successes in the history of the Internet. Unfortunately, Wikia Search has not enjoyed the same success. The wiki-style search engine started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is closing down.

But the biggest factor in his decision to shut it down was apparently the economy. “In a different economy, we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely,” Wales writes. He goes on to state that he believes in the power of search on the Internet and makes a General MacArthur-esque vow to return to the field in any way he can.

Wikia Search worked like other search engines, except that anyone could alter the results, like they would an entry on Wikipedia.

When Wikia Search launched, some touted it as the “Google Killer.” Hype doesn’t get much bigger than that on the Internet, and not surprisingly, Wikia Search could not live up to it. Google Search has simply gotten so dominant that not even the other big players, Yahoo and Microsoft, are able to compete with it in a meaningful way.

I Love Revamped Google StreetView

March 25, 2009 at 8:26 am | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

googlestreetview

Google Street View is a feature of Google Maps and Google Earth that provides for many streets in the world 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic views from a row of positions along the street (one in every 10 or 20 metres, or so), from a height of about two metres.

Google StretView was launched on May 25, 2007, and is now bigger and easier to use. It is gradually expanded to include more cities, and in these cities more streets, and also some rural areas. These photographs are currently available for countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Coverage is shown by dragging “pegman” from its position, on a map of any scale. Here are the Top 15 Google Streetview Sightings. By the way, Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher is thought to have been captured on Google Street View enjoying a pint at his local pub. Check them out.

Small Business Owners Focus On Web Traffic

March 15, 2009 at 1:12 pm | Posted in SEO, search engines | Leave a Comment
Tags: SEO, traffic

A user-friendly website design, memorable company logo and small business branding tactics are just the start of what many small business owners are doing to drive traffic to their ecommerce sites.

According to a report in U.S. newspaper the Charlotte Observer, one kid’s clothing boutique has been enticing 6,000 online shoppers a month to their website – up from 2,000 one year earlier.

The store credits its work at optimizing its placement in Google searches with the business success. The small shop of just eight employees has one person dedicated to search engine optimization efforts, says the news source.

The company, Moxie Kids, says that its sales are not limited to the U.S. Thanks to its global reach on the web, the clothing boutique is shipping products to Sweden, Spain and England.

Given the amount of time that Canadian online users are said to spend on the web – checking email or using social media sites among other activities – small retailers could benefit significantly by improving their web presence.

eMarketer has reported that nearly 70 percent of the Canadian population is online.

Avoid Splitting Efforts Across Many Domains

March 3, 2009 at 1:37 pm | Posted in SEO | Leave a Comment
Tags: backlinks, links, SEO

If you’ve found 10 reliable sources to get links, don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can register 500 domains, get them all links from your 10 sources, then link from those sites back to your main domain and suddenly appear to have a diverse domain backlink profile.

Splitting up your efforts on multiple domains is, in my opinion, rarely advisable and can seriously detract from your goal of gaining rankings on a single site.

The days of link farms and link islands are long gone – with link acquisition, quality is slowly but surely getting the upper hand on quantity, so use strategies that will get you the right links, not just any link.