Duplicate Content Penalty?
Posted on November 29, 2008, under SEO.
Copyright © EMPICS
There’s a lot -a hell lot- of misleading SEO information out there. Really. There’s a huge misconception on what SEO principles are. Today I just realized that, as many bloggers out there, I happen to be one of the many victims of all this.
Google’s Duplicate Content Penalty is probably one of the most debated SEO topics in the last few years. One one hand, there are some affirming that republishing the same contents on many different sites leads to penalization. On the other hand, others say that there’s no such thing as duplicate content penalty. Who is right? (more…)
Introducing Google Chrome
Hi peeps,
From today, Google is entering into the battle of browsers: Google Chrome is in the house! While Internet Explorer -yuck!- continues to lead the market, having it competing with Firefox and now with Google Chrome should be something interesting to see.
Google directives Sundar Pichai -VP Product Manager-, and Linus Upson -Engineerging Director, announced yesterday the launch of the beta version of this new browser in more than 100 countries around the world. Chrome has been built thinking about all this new technologies and web apps that are currently making the web - and also leaving some room for the next generation of web apps.
There are a few remarkable highlights from Google’s browser Chrome:
- Google Chrome is open source, which means that its code will be available to everyone and other web browsers developers can take whatever they like from Chrome and use it. Hopefully, this will help make new standards and make all browsers better.
- Security matters. Chrome will continuosly download lists of phishing sites and malware. We have already seen some of this on Google’s Search engine - you’ll get a warning if you’re entering a site with suspicious scripts.
- Tabs goes first. Unlike Firefox and Internet Explorer, Google Chrome will display tabs on the upper side of the window. Also, each tab will work as an independent process on your system, so whatever happens to one of them won’t affect the rest. A question popped up in my head: how come no one thought about this before?
- Built to run fast. Google Chrome will make use of a new Javascript engine called V8. This new engine will add more power to current web apps and also support those yet to be invented. This should improve Javascript’s speed and responsiveness, making web apps faster and also opening new horizonts to invention and creativity. We’ll surely witness the rise of new, and more powerful web apps in the near future.
- A better address bar: Omnibox. Omnibox will not only work as a traditional address bar but also will include a more powerful suggestion tool based -naturally- on Google SE.
Here are some screenshots that have slipped into the public and republished at several websites in the last couple of hours:
Google Chrome screenshot
Google Chrome's Omnibox
A view into Google Chrome's Taskbar - Monitor sites and plugins causing problems
[images are courtesy of Google]
Google Chrome should be launching today within a few hours from now. What should we expect from it? To be honest, I don’t know. Being a web developer I can only hope that it will comply with Web Standards so I don’t have to use hacks while coding websites to make it look good on Chrome… too - I already have hard times hacking my coding to make sites work on IE.
UPDATE: Google Chrome has been launched about one hour ago! Get it here! [This update has been published using Chrome :P]
What do you expect from Google Chrome?
Googlebot and Flash?
Posted on July 1, 2008, under Gadgets, Technology, Web Development.
Hi peeps,
Yesterday, Google’s Software Engineers Ron Adler and Janis Stipins posted at Google’s blog some shocking news: Googlebot has learned to index Flash contents!
As incredible as it might sound, apparently this is possible now thanks to a new library developed by Adobe known as Searchable SWF Library. This library delivers improved web search capabilities for SWF applications and provides web crawlers the logic that chooses how to walk through a SWF. All of the extracted info is indexed for relevance according to Google’s algorithm. Neat, huh?
All that glitters is not gold
While these are good news for all the web developers and flash coders, Google still has some technical limitations:
- If your website loads a Flash file via Javascript, Google may not have it indexed since Googlebot doesn’t execute some types of javascripts (I didn’t know that Googlebot can execute Javascript scripts until now!)
- If your Flash file loads external contents (HTML, XML, TXT, FLV, another SWF, etc) they won’t be considered as a part of your contents in the Flash file. Instead, these contents will be indexed separately.
- If contents in your Flash file are in Hebrew or Arabic they won’t be indexed. Apparently, there are some technical issues that prevents Google from reading those languages on Flash files.
- Embedded images will be ignored by Googlebot for now. Only textual contents will be crawled.
What Should I do to have my Flash files indexed by Google?
Nothing at all. Google will crawl your sites and if a Flash file is found they will try to index its contents up to their technical limits.
I believe that we’ll start to see some changes in the upcoming months. I wonder how this will influence on everyone’s SERP. I guess that all we can do for now is wait and see!
Check the rest of the info here: Improved Flash Indexing | Google’s Webmaster Central Blog
Cheers!
SearchMe - Search Engines evolving!
Posted on March 25, 2008, under Technology.
Hi peeps,
Have you ever heard of SearchMe.com? It’s what I would call the next-gen Search Engine (or SE v2.0 maybe?) 
Take a peek:
A group of ex-googlers have launched SearchMe, the first visual search engine ever! SearchMe lets users view images of the webpages while browsing the results. No more long lists of text-links results. No more I-don’t-know-where-this-really-leads-to links. What you see is what you get. That’s what their slogan states: “You’ll know it when you see it“. (more…)
Get listed on Google!
Posted on March 11, 2008, under Internet, SEO, Web Development.
Hi friends,
As you should know already by now Google is one of the search engines giants on the web nowadays so getting your site listed by them is a huge step to get loads of visitors from all around the world.
Now, I’ll share with you all some simple steps you must follow to get your site indexed in a blink of an eye 
(more…)
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