РB&Q seem to be very innovative and internet savvy with their url: www.diy.com. Their SEO strategy needs a review with their title tag for the Garden page simply being a long list of keywords (much too long for a title tag) and the one for d̩cor too short and not descriptive enough.
– Guardian.co.uk is rated as the 59th (most important basically) website in SEOMoz top 500 sites however when you type “news” into google.co.uk they are all the way down on page 4. They are definitely missing a trick.
– Google is the classic example which funnily doesn’t show up in the organic listings for the search “search engine” while all their competitors do.
David Talbot of Technology Review has posted an article about the ranking of real time search and Twitter with the help of Amit Singhal who is a lead engineer at Google. See below for a quote from the article:
“The tweets are a mainstay of Google’s real-time results, but Google has not previously discussed how it ranks them. A fundamental Google strategy for identifying tweet relevance is analogous to that used by Google’s PageRank technology, which helps find relevant Web pages with traditional Web search. Under PageRank, Google judges the importance of pages containing a given search keyword in part by looking at the pages’ link structure. The more pages that link to a page–and the more pages linking to the linkers–the more relevant the original page.
In the case of tweets, the key is to identify “reputed followers,” says Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow, who led development of real-time search. (Twitterers “follow” the comments of other Twitterers they’ve selected, and are themselves “followed.”)…..”
Related Links: Technology Review Article
Twitter is looking to recruit a number of staff whose main focus will be to generate cash for the microblogging service.
Twitter’s website says it is looking “for new members of our technical staff to work on cutting edge monetization projects”.
Four jobs have been advertised on Twitter’s website directly relating to generating cash including product marketing manager for monetization as well as three software and systems engineering roles….
Related Links: Brand Republic Article
Vitamin Water conducted a competition on Facebook to find a new flavour and they have announced the results of the competition. The new drink is to be called “Connect” (named after Facebook) and will be a black cherry-lime flavoured drink. See below for the official announcement:
“unlike the never-ending debate over whether it’s rock-paper-scissors or paper-rock-scissors, based on your votes and your designs, the latest flavor of vitaminwater has FINALLY been decided… introducing the black cherry-lime flavored vitaminwater named… connect! check out this new package- flavor & ingredients, name & label design- all inspired by you- our fans. it’s got 8 key nutrients plus caffeine. thanks for all your help- especially to the grand prize winner Sarah from Illinois and the four other finalist http://budurl.com/q27w. vitaminwater connect will be available in stores nationwide in march this year- so until then, stay hydrated- and keep your eyes here for news, updates and special offers for connect, including a possible sneak tasting opportunity. and btw… it’s rochambeau!”
Related Links: Facebook Competition Page, Vitamin Water Website
The BBC report that France are considering charging Tax for Google, Yahoo and Facebook. See below for a quote from the BBC website:
“Google and other net firms could be taxed under plans being considered by the French government.
A report, commissioned by the government, suggests firms such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook should pay a new tax on their online ad revenues.
The money could be used to fund legal alternatives for buying books, films and music on the internet.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has taken a tough line on the increasing dominance of digital content….”
Related Links: BBC Article
Joe Hewitt, developer of Facebook for iPhone and an in-house Facebook employee, has vowed never to develop for iPhone again. Widely considered the most popular app in the iTunes Store, Facebook for iPhone set benchmarks for UI and interaction design on the phone.
“My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies,” he told TechCrunch. “I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.”
Related Links: FastCompany Blog
Twitter have announced that they are testing out a new ‘Retweet’ feature on a limited number of accounts to see if people use it. See below for a quote from the Twitter Blog:
 “We’ve just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild. Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy. In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know.
You may remember that we shared the mechanics of this feature with developers a while back so they could think about how to work it into Twitter apps. Now we’re ready to start trying it on Twitter. The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we’ll know right away. If things look good, we’ll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%…“
Related Links: Twitter Blog, Twitter
The Telegraph have reported on a new survey that says Twitter costs the UK economy £1.38 billion. They say this is due to people at work twittering away when they should be working. The survey also reports that people are tweeting sensitive company information which could also potentially cost companies more money. See below for a quote from the article:
“Three quarters of the office workers surveyed said their employer had not given them any specific guidelines on how to use Twitter, but 84 per cent believed it should be up to them what they post online.
Last month staff at PC World and Currys were found to have posted offensive comments about customers on Facebook groups.
Some posters who said they were employed by the shops’ parent company, DSG, said some customers deserved to be punched, and asked if they should be allowed to “cattle prod†them…..”
Read the full article here. Do you agree or think its just a load of old Twoddle?! Tweet us your view @tugsearch
Geocities marked a point in time when the internet first began to gain popularity, more and more excited computer owners were getting connected in their homes with the power of 33k modems clogging up their phone lines. Geocities granted literally anybody the ability to create their own site…with varying degrees of success. Whether learning HTML from scratch or using their shockingly poor web-builder tool, for many this marked the beginning of a web design career and the start of a journey into SEO. How else would people find their amazing Rugrats fansite in Yahoo!? People finally had the freedom to create sites about their favourite subjects, or even themselves. Groups of fans could come together and join web rings to link their sites together.In many ways, Geocities provided a precursor to blogs, profile sites that we now label “Web 2.0â€.
As Geocities closes its doors, if we learn anything let it be that if you give people design freedom, they will never steer clear of giant, glittering animated gifs and irritating music.
We’ll miss you, Geocities.
