Category Archives: Google

Discussion surrounding the world’s most popular search engine

Google settling down again at last

July 21, 2008 – 9:12 pm

Having been away for a much needed holiday I’ve been catching up with developments for the last two weeks with fairly intensive search ranking analysis. Google’s recent bout of volatility in their results finally seems to be starting to even out. Since early May there have been some very strange results being reported on the [...]

By bill | Also posted in SEO | Comments (0)

Was your search really for what you entered?

May 29, 2008 – 10:29 pm

There has been some speculation recently that searches are no longer isolated from each other in Google but that the previous search that you made may influence the current one, even when you aren’t logged in to any form of account. This follows an interview by Danny Sullivan with Google’s Marissa Mayer in April. This [...]

By bill | Also posted in SEO, personalised search | Comments (0)

All change in the big three

May 19, 2008 – 6:55 pm

Search rankings have been fluctuating even more than usual recently. First we had Yahoo doing a major algorithm change, so they were changing quite a bit. Then we noticed that MSN/Live had dumped most pages from its index and was respidering everything; and of course that meant that rankings disappeared for a few days while [...]

By bill | Also posted in SEO, Yahoo | Comments (0)

Google Webmaster Tools problem

April 11, 2008 – 9:02 pm

And the wider issue of communicating with the search giant
For most of the last month or so there has been a problem for some sites in accessing the useful tools that Google makes available for site administrators. This manifested itself as a failure to verify the “ownership” of the sites using either of the two [...]

By bill | Also posted in SEO | Comments (0)

The New BBC homepage

March 2, 2008 – 10:51 pm

Some of you will by now have seen the new BBC home page with its movable and customisable sections which can be tailored to your preferences. Fiddleability rules!
When I first looked at the beta version I wasn’t convinced; it looked a bit “play-school” and some of the option weren’t too well thought out. But it’s [...]

By bill | Also posted in SEO, Yahoo | Comments (0)

When getting hacked hits your rankings

February 24, 2008 – 2:54 pm

Earlier this year I wrote about the rankings that this blog had enjoyed dropping substantially despite the main site holding on to its positions. Yesterday I discovered a possible cause. A correspondent on one of my other blogs notified me that his anti-virus program had alerted him to an attempted trojan link when he visited [...]

By bill | Also posted in SEO, Wordpress | Comments (1)