Google has taken its latest step to provide ever more customised search results to its increasing user base.

According to Hitwise; 87% of UK searches were performed on either Google.com or Google.co.uk in May 2008, Up 12% year on year.

Google’s latest offering SearchWiki now includes the ability to Promote or Remove a search result for a given query. Limited to users that have signed into their Google account, SearchWiki even allows a user to suggest a URL that they feel should appear within their Search Engine Result Page(SERP) for that particular query. In addition a dissatisfied user may now complete a form explaining the content that they expected to see for their query along with an example URL that they deem relevant.

So what does this mean for SEO?

Customised Search is nothing new, Google has been tracking a users Web History since April 2007 (viewable under My Account when signed in). Ever since Google has been keeping track of the Search Queries performed, the Search results delivered, the link actually clicked, the time spent on each site (if the user clicks the "back" button) and future searches related to a similar topic.

Users that visit individual websites on a regular basis begin to find Google preferentially returning their results for other queries the user performs.

As a result whenever Keyword ranking reports are compiled or talked through, it is important that neither party are signed into their account.

SearchWiki is just the latest step to the same end. However it may become increasingly important to Search Marketeers if it becomes evident that Google incorporates customised search results to the general search algorithm. Arguably this may be seen as Google’s first out-and-out foray into a "Social Search" Folksonomy driven by the "Wisdom of the Crowds" and the potential spam this may entail. As it currently stands anyone thumbing up or suggesting their own website’s are only going to be fooling themselves.

Its yet to be seen whether Greg Sterling from SearchEngineLand.com is proved right about users behaviour regarding SearchWiki:

"Most people are not going to engage with it and think about where the results should be - if it’s above this one or below that one,"

"This is really for a motivated or elite core of user who really wants to participate in the process."

Eitherway it’ll be an interesting development for Jimmy Wales and people over at Wikia Search who are yet to see their social search engine take off in the same way as their social encyclopedia better know as Wikipedia.

Following weeks of rumours the latest software update has hit the iPhone today (21st Nov) as expected.  This is Apple’s 2nd major release for its device that has sold over 10 million units to date.

The iPhone 3g went on sale on the 11 July bundled with the major improvements that software version 2.0 had over that of the first generation model. Following 2 small Bug fixing updates (version 2.01 and 2.02) Apple brought out its first major release (Version 2.1) 9 weeks after the launch date on the 12th September. A further 10 weeks later see’s today’s release including:

• Ability to download podcasts directly to the iPhone whilst on Wi-Fi and Cellular using the iTunes app
• New Categories added to the App store
• Enhancements to Google Maps- including Street view and the ability to get directions whether you’re walking or travelling by car or public transport
  • Ability to email your location to friends
  • Ability to display the address of dropped pins
• Fixes for the on going ‘Calls Dropped’ error suffered by many users
• Enhancements to Mail:
  • Issues with fetching of email - some users that cant “push” their mail (e.g a Google mail account) have scheduled “fetching” at given time intervals - These should now be adhered to.
  • Improved formatting of wide HTML email - Emails from Blackberry users often appear “zoomed out” and small. Zooming back in has meant horizontal scrolling necessary to read the message in full..
• Improved stability and performance of Safari
• Improved sound quality of Visual Voicemail messages
• Preference to turn the auto-correction feature On/Off - available through Keyboard Settings — Go to: settings >> General >> Keyboard 
• Pressing the Home button now displays the first home screen page

Interesting Apple continue to shun calls to include a “copy and paste” feature, this is something the newly launched Blackberry Storm has made a feature of and is something that iPhone owners have requested from the very outset. No stranger to working to the their own timetable, Apple seems content to offer users features they feel they need.

Blocking or No indexing of RSS feeds can be done in a similar way to  standard HTML documents. Whereas HTML documents contain a statement within the document <head> i.e:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow” >

RSS (a form of XML) can also contain a “meta” tag usually located before the first <item>.The directive can be seen below:

<xhtml:meta content="noindex" name="robots" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" />

Interestingly the “noindex” directive is currently followed by Google and Yahoo! only.

Utilising the Robots.txt is often an easier option. It also has the added benefit that the RSS feed will be blocked by those Search Engines that do not yet obey the RSS Noindex meta tag.

Publishing all the feeds under a sub-directory will make blocking straight forward.

For example if all feeds are published within the sub-directory: /feeds/ i.e.:

http://yoursite.com/feeds/rss.xml

Then the following Robots.txt statement:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /feeds/

Will block the RSS feeds nicely…

Alternatively for sites that run multiple content management systems (i.e. blogs, forums, photos and articles ) or simply don’t have a single directory for all their RSS feeds. Then Robots.txt allows pattern matching of URL’s using simple expressions. For example:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /*.xml$

Will block all XML file types from being crawled and indexed. Be careful not to block unintended content i.e. your XML sitemap!.

For more information refer to Google’s Pattern matching webmaster help. Note: Robots.txt pattern matching is an extension to the Robots.txt directive and is currently followed by Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live only.

Now just to put the cat amongst the pigeons I shall ask the question; is there any real benefit in going to the effort of blocking or no indexing RSS or XML feeds in large?

Do the Search Engines consider such feeds as duplicate content?

Do they indeed use feeds as a means for content discovery? After all a Search Engine sitemap is actually a large XML file.

The answer is that it may not be worth it. Google’s Adam Lasnik suggests the issue isn’t even on Google’s radar and that XML based results are unlikely to ever appear within general search engine results pages. Eric Enge from WebProNews also concludes there is little risk in letting your feeds be indexed.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts…

Notice the Meta no index statement in situ below. Just before the <item> tag.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	>

<channel>
	<title>searchideas.co.uk</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.searchideas.co.uk/blog/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.searchideas.co.uk/blog</link>

	<description>Search Ideas is a blog all about SEO, PPC and Online happenings...</description>
	<pubDate>Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:00:30 +0000</pubDate>

	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5</generator>
	<language>en</language>

	<xhtml:meta content="noindex" name="robots" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" />
	<item>
	...
	</item>

</channel>
</rss>

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I have heard a number of myths about registering a Chinese domains:

Don’t you have to live in China to register a .cn or any other Chinese top level domain?!

Don’t you need an ICP licence?!

In fact registering a domain is a surprisingly simple and cheap process. ".cn" domains cost as little as £15 per year. You can also pay in currencies including US dollars, pounds sterling via card and even PayPal.

China recently liberalised their domain registration requirements so that anyone including Western businesses can now register any .cn or .com.cn domains.

China also has numerous 2nd and 3rd level domains which are widely recognized by the Chinese population.

Second level domains commonly refer to geographical regions or organization type

A UK example is ".co.uk" for a UK company or ".ac.uk" for a UK University or academic body.

China is comprised of many districts. Many of those have their own specific second level domain. Inner Mongolia for example is ".nm.cn", Quangdong province is ".gd.cn" and Taiwan is ".tw.cn".

All of these are freely available to register. A full list including prices can be found here.

Other examples of Chinese second level domains are:

• .edu.cn
• .mil.cn
• .ac.cn

However these Can Not be registered without confirmation. In the same way that only registered bodies in the UK can apply for ".ac.uk" or ".gov.uk". A company requiring for example a ".edu.cn" domain, will require confirmation from the development of China Education and Research Networks (CERNET). More information about registering .edu.cn or .ac.cn domains click here.

Hope this is useful to anyone interested in setting up an online presence in the rapidly expanding Chinese Internet Market!

flightglobgggal

Report Viewer is a free to download standalone client for WEB CEO that enables reports on site rankings and links to be shared with other team members and/or external clients.

Report Viewer is free to download and allows reports generated by WEBCEO to be manipulated to suit the clients interests.

Report sharing is controlled within the Client Manager (currently still in Beta with version 7.7) in WEB CEO. Report access can be granted for Keyword rankings, submission, links, auditor as well as Hitlense and Monitoring if those services are subscribed to.

Multiple client accounts can be defined with different levels of access within the Client Manager. Each account is then linked to Report Viewer using a standard username and password login procedure.

Another strong positive of Report Viewer is the ability to work offline, requiring an Internet connection only to synchronise data in the first instance.

Report Viewer also gives clients access to view results over a given time period and thus view trending data for keywords, number of links etc etc. Any individual report can be exported and saved in the standard WEB CEO report standards including .xls (Excel) and HTML.

You can download WEB CEO’s Report Viewer from here. I found this particularly hard to find through Search. The page doesn’t rank for "Download Report Viewer" or "Web CEO report viewer" so i hope my link above helps!

flightglobgggal

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