Google webmaster tools update and survey

Posted by multippt

Google has always been pretty silent with the updates and all that. This time it’s with Webmasters tools. First up are some minor visual changes. The blue “fill bars” that you see in certain pages like Crawl Stats are now more fatter. Colors used are also now more lighter, making the panel a lot more easier to look at.

Google has also made a survey available as well. You can access the survey via the webmasters panel. Looks like Google wants to improve, so this is your opportunity to vent your complaints and annoyances.

Live search more popular than Google according to Alexa

Posted by multippt

That’s Interesting… for months Google has stayed at the 2nd position, until today where it fell to the 4th position (taken from 15 Feb). Seems like Google had a fall in traffic in their main page, relative to other pages. Though, knowing Alexa to be pretty inaccurate at times, the rankings may not really hold true.

Live search overtakes Google?

Strange. For a long time, Live.com has been far below Google. Now, it has shot up to have more traffic than Google.com, could be due to Microsoft’s recent offers to buy Yahoo (which Yahoo rejects). This is pretty surprising, given that if Internet Explorer 7 cannot support the Alexa toolbar, it means that much of the Alexa rank comes from Firefox and Internet Explorer 6 users, so only 30% of the Internet is capable of determining the ranking of Live.com. It’s also even more interesting to note that Firefox users are less likely to use Live search, while Internet Explorer users are more likely to use it, due to the way Microsoft advertises its site.

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Predicting Super Tuesday results using Google trends

Posted by multippt

Google seems to have a nice tool that is pretty accurate at predicting future election results. Google trends, which collates the total number of searches for a specific term has a nice little ability to predict stuff, accurately too.

Using Google trends, you can search for “clinton, obama, romney, mccain” (they are the top 4 candidates), and you get a nice chart showing you who’s more popular. Apparently, Obama is in the lead, while Clinton is second. Sure enough, BBC is reporting that Obama is currently in the lead.

It’s worth noting that Google trends has been fairly accurate in predicting results for past elections (of course, it can be inaccurate at times).

Google stocks fall below $500

Posted by multippt

It looks like bad news for Google as Google stocks hit to a new low. The value of Google stocks has fallen steadily for the past month, appearing as the top 10 losers in Nasdaq several times in a row. Microsoft’s purchasal of Yahoo came at a time most punishing for Google. Of course, it goes without saying that Microsoft does have a few problems trying to buy Yahoo - it may need to borrow a little cash.

Just last month Google stocks are valued at about $700 a share, and has steadily declined in January. Yahoo on the other hand faced a similar decline. It would have kept declining, if not for Microsoft’s offer. Thanks to big Microsoft, Yahoo stocks not only recovered, but actually shot up to become much higher compared to that of the last quarter in 2007.

Though, it will take more than falling stocks to beat Google.

Google criticises Microsoft’s attempted acquisition of Yahoo

Posted by multippt

In response to an (not so) unexpected offer by Microsoft, Google has decided to counter Microsoft’s attempt at becoming a dominant presence on the Internet. Earlier a few days ago, Microsoft offered Yahoo an interesting $44.6 billion to acquire it. Google was playing along silently until 2 days later.

What Google says

“The openness of the Internet is what made Google — and Yahoo! — possible.” - Basically it’s trying to say that Google and Yahoo are very “open” in their approach towards users unlike Microsoft, and has acknowledged that controlling the net is not possible given the freedom of the net.

“Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?” - Google fears that Microsoft’s takeover will mean that Microsoft will exert monopoly strength and controversy on the Internet as what it has done to computers.

“Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft — despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses — to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet?” - Seems like Google is saying that Microsoft is not trustworthy and has resorted to practices that go against fair competition.

You can read all about it from the word of the vice president of Google through their blog.

Google fears 

Though, all these claims, though true, are kind of biased. While Google is trying to inform the public that Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo is one that may bring about competition problems (i.e. monopoly and anti-trust), in reality Google is probably afraid that Microsoft Yahoo will be much more formidable than its original opponent, Yahoo. Microsoft has the money, Yahoo has the tech. So, both combined will give them the edge Google will have trouble trying to compete.

Of course… Google can’t simply buy Yahoo

Given Google’s encouragement on “openess and innovation”, Google will unlikely offer up any bid to buy Yahoo, because it doesn’t want to show that it is going against its own words. If Google were to bid for Yahoo, it will cause controversy, because this means Google will be controlling and monopolizing the net. Sure, Microsoft has this problem as well, but in Google’s case it has become an Internet giant unlike Microsoft which has so far been unsuccessful. This makes it all the more harder for innovative Google to acquire Yahoo, especially if it doesn’t want to get hit by anti-trust cases.

Webmasters tools - crawl stats update

Posted by multippt

Google has updated the crawl stats for PageRank allocated in each site, viewable via Webmasters tools. Well, that’s about all the news, nothing much really. Though, an interesting point of note is that Google hadn’t done the January update in the way it used to. It might be a tiny update, probably separate from the major ones, but it is still an update, nonetheless one that is done incompletely.

Despite all that temporary rush about the latest PageRank 2 weeks ago, it does seem that the PageRank of most sites will not change until the next update. Though, Google seem to do hit-and-miss, as apparently it didn’t update the PageRank of a large pool of sites. Some sites like Technorati got it by the hit-and-miss bug, causing it to be not ranked at all (it should be PR7-8 depending on the Google directory).

Seems like the only place where you can get an updated score is via the Google directory, which is more transparent at showing PageRank results (i.e. no penalties included). Though, that would only work for a handful of sites that didn’t get rejected by Open directory editors (the irony?).

Sloppy PageRank update?

Posted by multippt

Seems like Google had it all half done, probably one of the very few times you get to see Google make a few mistakes here and there. The last known change in PageRank was in 10th January 2008. I was hoping this update to continue, but it stopped right there - exactly half-way through. Then again, this whole “update” may not be the real update yet; it might be a prelude to the major one.

Hit-and-miss

The update is like a barrel of machine gun rounds. Not all your pages get hit by it. If you are lucky, your main page gets updated, if not, then you’ll see newer PageRank on your least expected pages. It’s all totally random. So, it’s not too surprising to see higher PageRanks in internal pages compared to the main page, as much as a difference of 4. About 10% of pages get hit, so you have a few pages with a new PageRank, while most of your other ones keep the same PageRank (or have none).

As the new PageRank takes values from links, Google only update pages with an updated “link” report (i.e. via the not-so-reliable “link:” command). The update in the link command is also yet another hit-and-miss, except that more pages experience updates in the links displayed.

Nuked PageRanks

Google hasn’t stopped with the penalties. Certain sites are getting further penalized, notably blogs dealing with paid reviews. Strangely, Search Engine Roundtable is penalized as well (and to think that the official Google blog is actually linking to the site in its blogroll). Technorati is another example with its PageRank nuked off; no it’s not just a normal penalty, Technorati now no longer has any PageRank (not even PR0 for the main page), even internal pages are not spared from Google’s wraith, or maybe all that could be a mistake on Google’s part (ah, brings backs memories when Google accidentally penalized its own Youtube).

The average site gets Google praise

Well, that’s for high-profile pages. Fortunately, small sites with established PageRanks get to benefit from this small update. Unfortunately, small and new sites which do not get established PageRanks do not get the same kind treatment. Remember hit-and-miss? Seems like Google is more prone to “missing” your main page, and prefers to hit your inside pages instead.

Covering up mistakes?

Toolbar pagerank is no longer telling the truth. Instead, let’s now refer to something more accurate, Google directory. For some strange reason, Google did not reflect penalties in the directory, so the directory should contain the most accurate values. Technorati for example, is supposed to have probably PR7. Engadget and Gizmodo is supposed to have approximately the same PageRank as well.

Though, this sort of method for checking PageRank works only on sites who have been listed with the Dmoz directory. While Dmoz is supposingly “open”, it seems near impossible to get entered into Dmoz, and even if you managed to make the cut, delays will come. In addition, the PageRank shown is probably newer than the ones dished out in this update.

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Don’t forget that PageRank is just a number.