They new concept falls within the existing concept of Google Maps Favorite Places, but incorporates the use of QR Code stickers (those crazy looking black and white speckled squares of code unreadable to the human eye).

These Google Maps QR Code stickers are plastered onto the windows of selected outlets chosen by the Google team due to their popularity within the Google Maps application, and can be scanned by any internet enabled device with an internet connection (such as an iPhone) to gain more information about the store.

To see the QR codes in action, it’s probably easiest to watch the video below.

If you want a chance of receiving a  Google Maps Favorites window sticker from Google, you must first make sure you are registered in the Google Local Business listings registry. If you’re not, I suggest you click here now to register your business with Google!

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Google Wave is one of these complex applications, and it’s all over the news at the moment.   And with all of the hype surround the release off the app, it’s difficult to work out exactly what the original point of Google wave is!

I’ve come across a great description of what Google Wave sets out to achieve.  It’s a YouTube clip, narrated by a chap who sounds like his day job involves cruising the beach in Southern California.

It’s a great video, and I think this style of information delivery should certainly be adapted by other application developers, as it’s certainly a more effective way of getting a message across in an engaging and entertaining way.  Check it out by clicking play on the movie below….

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There has been a lot of debate in recent months about how different the new Google Caffeine will be to the current Google algorithm.  Apparently, the new Google will be faster, and reach even further into the beast we know as the internet.  This means that social media channels will become more prevalent than they are currently, in Google’s search results.

This is all well and good, but how does the new Google affect my current search rankings?

Well, I’ve been told that if you’re using white hat search engine optimization methods, you won’t have too much to worry about.  But I wasn’t satisfied with that, so I went and did a bit of research and came across these two handy tools.

Choose your weapon for the battle: Google Caffeine up against the current Google

1. Split screen comparison tool

This is probably the most straight forward method of measuring the impacts of the new Google algorithm versus the old Google algorithm.  It splits the screen into two sections, one with SERPs (search engine results pages) from the old Google, and one with the SERPs from the new Google.  It’s very handy, as you can compare the results of each algorithm side by side.  I typed in the keywords “bread digital” and was pleasantly surprised to find that I ranked in the first page of the new Google, but not in the old. Thumbs up Google Caffeine

2. Keyword comparison tool

For those of you who have optimized your website (or individual pages within your site) based on specific keywords, this tool will be of interest to you.  Like the previous split screen comparison tool, this one returns results for both the old and new versions of Google on-the-fly.  The difference with this tool, is that it displays your ranking for each version of the search engine straight up, rather than returning the full set of search engine results for you to have to painstakingly search through .  As I mentioned earlier, this makes it a great tool if your sites are currently finely tuned for specific keywords and you want to validate the effects of the new Google algorithm.

If neither of these tools float your boat, you can always do your own analysis of the new Google Caffeine algorithm using the old and faithful method of opening two separate browser windows.  If this is your desired approach, here is a link to preview the new Google Caffeine – http://www2.sandbox.google.com. You will notice that the User Interface is almost identical to the old version…it is behind the scenes that the big changes have apparently taken place.

If you have any more insights about the new Google, I’d love to hear them, just leave a comment below.

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Admittedly, being a real lover of the ocean, the name Google Wave immediately struck a chord with me.  That, coupled with the fact that I’m also a huge fan of  Google’s existing collaboration and communications applications including Google Talk, Google Video Talk, Gmail and Google Docs – and this break through in collaboration and online chat appears as though it will combine elements from all of these handy Google applications.

Google Wave is due out later this  year.  It could well be a great tool for both personal and business use, allowing mixed media communication to occur seamlessly through a single collaboration channel.

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Amongst the topics covered in Matt’s presentation were:

• What is Pagerank, and how is it distributed?
• How to identify and incorporate keywords into your posts
• How to write compelling blog posts
• Building a reputation

Not only does this presentation from Matt cover the fundamentals and best practices for optimising WordPress for Google search engine rankings, but is a great resource for any budding internet marketer who wants to learn or confirm the basic principles of SEO.

 

View Matt Cutts’ WordPress presentation here

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To search Google Images by colour, visit the site below, and scroll down the page until you see the gray form (alternatively, if you’re feeling a little bit geeky, instead of using the form you can follow the instructions which involve appending a bit of text to the Google search URL – but this reeks of unnecessary effort to me!). Either way, click on the link below to find out more….

" target="_blank">Click here to check out the Google Image search form.

The form allows you to enter your search term, and select your desired colour/s.  Once you hit the “Search” button,  magically, only images of your selected colour will appear. Amazing!   That picture of a pink elephant you’ve been seeking for months can now be found in an instant….

Credit for this discovery goes to Blogscoped.

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Instead of trawling the web to produce every single possible piece of web content, in order of relevance (as does Google), Wolfram Alpha aims to provide just one page of relevant information.

Wolfram is “computational knowledge engine” , based on studies by Stephen Wolfram. It aims to provide contextual data related to your search (in the form of statistics, graphs and data analysis based on your search query), rather than simply spitting out a whole bunch of links to potentially relevant information, like traditional search engines do. It will be very interesting to see how Wolfram Alpha progresses, and how this new concept impacts internet usage in the future.

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Unfortunately, this is not yet a feasible approach for online design, as Google loves words. Words allow Google to do what it does best – index information. So at the moment we are being pulled in two separate directions when creating appealing interactive website designs that also rank well in search engines….perhaps one day this will change (are you reading this Mr Google?).

When it comes to considering the best practices for the design of interactive web applications, the ongoing challenge, is to create something that feels tangible and alive when you interact with it, despite the fact that the end user will be staring at a flat, 2 dimensional monitor. Just to make matters more challenging, the design must also appeal to Google.

This Web Trends Map, below, manages to achieve the balance.

This Map of 2009 Web Trends shows a great ability to create a ‘tangible’, interactive experience despite displaying a completely intangible set of data related to website usage.

* * * *

Here’s a brief explanation of the concept, from the creators of this eloquent interactive design:

The Web Trend Map is a yearly publication by iA Inc. It maps the 333 most influential Web domains and the 111 most influential internet people onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains are carefully selected by the iA research team through dialogue with map enthusiasts. Each domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, age and the company that owns it. The iA design team assigns these selected domains to individual stations on the Tokyo Metro map in ways that complement the characters of each.

* * * *

For those of you out there who are trying to represent intangible items, such as company finacial data, or internal web usage trends, to an audience who generally cannot conceptualise anything more than a map of their local street, perhaps you could explore this concept further….of mapping intangible data against an existing familiar and tangible interactive application.

You can interact with the Map here:
http://www.zoomorama.com/2477f0e8b447bb6570493cdac464c41f

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Concepts covered include:

• The Google business model
• Google’s purchase of satellites
• Google’s goals with voice capture
• Where, how and why Google monetizes only some of its services
• Google and mobile devices
• Google’s potential upcoming advertising channels (such as offline media, including TV, radio and billboards)
• The future for Google while the rest of the economy dips

The presentation can be viewed in pdf format for FREE by clicking the link below. Honestly, as a business owner or internet marketer, you really owe it to yourself to read this. Enjoy!

World’s best overview of Google business model

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Read below for a brief description of the most exciting new features.

Or if you have a short attention span, scroll down a bit further and watch the official video describing Google Earth 5.0′s new functionality.

Google Earth 5.0 – The Hottest New Features

• Historical Imagery: Until today, Google Earth displayed only one image of a given place at a given time. With this new feature, you can now move back and forth in time to reveal imagery from years and even decades past, revealing changes over time. Try flying south of San Francisco in Google Earth and turning on the new time slider (click the “clock” icon in the toolbar) to witness the transformation of Silicon Valley from a farming community to the tech capital of the world over the past 50 years or so.

• Touring: One of the key challenges we have faced in developing Google Earth has been making it easier for people to tell stories. People have created wonderful layers to share with the world, but they have often asked for a way to guide others through them. The Touring feature makes it simple to create an easily sharable, narrated, fly-through tour just by clicking the record button and navigating through your tour destinations.

• 3D Mars: This is the latest stop in our virtual tour of the galaxies, made possible by a collaboration with NASA. By selecting “Mars” from the toolbar in Google Earth, you can access a 3D map of the Red Planet featuring the latest high-resolution imagery, 3D terrain, and annotations showing landing sites and lots of other interesting features.

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Google Flu Trends is not a revelation in concept, however it certainly does show the power of the collective data of the world’s most dominant web search engine,

Google Flu Trends

Google Flu Trends works by monitoring individual searches made by potentially flu-ridden folk. Google started by identifying a likely set of search terms that were typical of those infected with the influenza. The individual searches are tracked by their physical location, and then aggregated to show which states in the U.S. currently have the highest rates of flu searches on Google, and which states are trending towards or away from epidemics. Of course, it’s not a fail-safe measure of flu infection (I’ve Googled ‘flu’ before just to get an image of a snotty-face little kid for a hapless Powerpoint presentation), but it does offer at the very least, a vague indication of flu out-breaks.

Google Flu Trends is probably a conceptual analytical project Google developed to illustrate the power of Google Trends and geographical web analytics data. But it really does get you thinking doesn’t it – Big Brother Google is always watching.

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If you are partial to belting out a few tunes with your mates, accompanied with a microphone in hand and the song words bouncing across the screen, you will fall in love with this innovative website.

Online Karaoke will have you Dancing on the Ceiling

Currently the Lucky Voice library has over 6,300 tunes in it, enough to keep you going well into the early hours of Saturday morning.

Registration will get you access to 1,000 tunes for free, with access the remainder of the tracks incurring a small subscription fee.

I can see this idea being applied to viral campaigning quite easily.  If your company has purchased rights to a particularly catchy tune or jingle, why not create a downloadable ‘karaoke’ version for your target audience to download and sing along to at home?

Better yet, you could create an entire karaoke album distributed via email and downloadable online or streamed straight off the web . You can even take advantage of the ‘music video clip’ media style to promote your brand without looking too tacky, by placing your logo in the top right corner of the screen, just like the MTV branding consumers are already used to.

A night’s worth of fun for home-stricken punters looking for a cheap and fun Friday night. And a light-hearted and potentially extremely viral way of getting your brand right into the lounge rooms across the world!

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Well one of the first things you need to get right are your meta-tags. Meta-tags are pieces of text that are hidden in the HTML behind each page on your website.  Meta-tags are used describe the information that is on each webpage.

Meta-tags are important for several reasons.

1. Some search engines rank your web pages based on the information in your meta-tags. The more accurate and refine the meta-tags are, the more chance you have of ranking high in Google
2. The text stored within the meta-tag is used by many search engines in your search results.  Think of it as the textual “preview” of your website’s content that appears on the search results page of Google.
3. Meta-tags allow you to target certain keywords

The most common issue I see with website meta-tags, is that the meta-tags are not individually set for each individual page on the website.  I’ve seen websites and blogs with thousands of pages, each page using exactly the same meta-tags. It’s not rocket science to work out that by tweaking the meta-tags to suit the content of each of these individual webpages, your ‘reach’ in Google could be far greater.

So how do you check how Google is currently indexing your meta-tags? It’s easy, simply type go to Google.com (or your local version of Google) and type:

site:www.yoursite.com

For example, for my test blog sneakydevil.com I typed site:www.sneakydevil.com .  Here’s an example of the results that appeared for Sneaky Devil.

Sneaky Devil meta tag listing in Google

You will notice several aspects (some good, some bad) in the screenshot above that will contribute to SEO.

Firstly, the meta-tag description text  (the black ‘description’ text under each page heading)  is the same for most of the individual pages, which is not ideal at all for SEO.

Secondly, the URLs are not considered Search Engine Friendly.  If you look at the URL underneath the black description text, you will notice that the URL is not something that you could not remember easily, nor would it make sense to you if it was written on a blank piece of paper with no accompanying information. URLs must be a short, concise representation of what is contained within each page. This helps not only the search engines interpret what is contained on a webpage, but just as importantly, humans!

Thirdly, the page titles. Again a failing of many websites our there is to have the same Page Title hard-coded for every single page within the website.  The page title is represented in the above screenshot, by the large blue Title text. In this specific case, the page titles for Sneaky Devil are considered optimised, however the home page title could do with a little bit of work due to the unconventional method of writing one long string of words separated only by full stops.  Think of search engines being like your grade 4 english teach -   strict and conventional.  Google is programmed to interpret ‘natural’ language, so anything which deviates too much from your standard words and sentences may be misinterpreted by Google.

Go try out the site:www.yoursite.com command in Google now. You’ll be surprised what you find as you trawl through the results.  Stay tuned, soon I will show you how to update and fine-tune your meta-tags so that your website is one step closer to SEO bliss.

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