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"It is a sad indictment on a webmaster's ability when he or she is dumped onto a black list because they cannot follow simple rules." |
Over the years Google has become one of the most used search engines and evolved far beyond just being a static engine. Majority of the users never get further than the homepage and therefore do not know what they are missing with all the added features Google has to offer. Take for instance Google Groups (
http://groups.google.com), how many users would have known that Google even had a Usenet site that currently dates back to 1981. It has around 800 million postings - which you can also post to.
Google Groups is a fantastic source if you ever need help solving a problem. It has an easy to use interface and can display your results as either a solitary posting or in its original thread. I believe that Google Groups is a terrific site especially for people like me who rarely post a message but always rely on its wealth of knowledge.
Another hidden extra that the majority of users normally overlook is Google's cache link. What the cache link does is it takes a snapshot of each web page it spiders and stores them in a cache as a backup in case anything ever happened.
For those of us who have nothing to hide and do not mind the occasional snapshot - this feature is definitely not a problem. You may even be thankful if some day your site does go down and an image is still available for surfers to see. However if you are not comfortable with a snapshot of your site being taken just add the following Meta tag to the top of your HTML document.
<META NAME=”robots” CONTENT=”noarchive”>
This will stop caching. There are other Meta tags that deal with Google bots (http://www.google.com/bot.html) that you may also finding interesting.
With over 425 million images referenced at http://images.google.com to choose from there is bound to be at least one page that will suit your needs. This huge image archive is brilliant for personal use, finding those hard to find pictures or even just finding a diagram or a chart you need for an assignment. But notice I did say personal use. Some companies still think that what is on the web is fair game and that anyone can use it but that is simply not true. Google clearly states that all the images it has 'may be subject to copyright' and from my point of view that should pretty much sum it up.
Now the Google tool bar is another great addition that Google has added over the years. It comes with its own pop-up ad blocker; fill in forms with one click, highlight search terms on a page and use the search country option which allows you to restrict the search to your preferred country domain.
Google is pretty much "spot-on" almost every time you go to search for something. In most cases, a relevant site can be found in the first 10 hits so you probably will not even bother going to the second page. From a website owners view Google is a little to good at hitting its mark, especially if his site does not even appear till page 20 let alone page 2. This fact alone can sometimes turn desperate site owners into frustrated promoters, tempting them to cheat by either spamming or using a link farming service.
For those who do not know what link farming is, it involves the process of exchanging links with other web sites to increase search engine optimization. Google rank sites, among other things, according to the number of links you have on your page. The theory behind that is supposedly the more sites you have linked on your page the more popular you must be among users on the Internet so therefore your ranking in the search engine will become higher. You pay a monthly fee to be linked to by a company who has sites only linked to paying members. The main problem with this method is that Google has since caught on and not only considers it a form of Spam but the Google bots will find out and your site will be blacklisted.
You will find that many of the services that offer to increase your search engine rankings magically overnight will no doubt use either or both spamming and farming. The cheapest method is to do it yourself. Now if your web site has a lot of links do not worry too much or think that you are farming, as long as the page and the links are user friendly. Even though Google like many other search engines calculate your position in relation to the number of sites you have linked to yourself, you do not have to have hundreds of links just a handful of quality ones.
If you can get your site linked to a well respected, highly ranked site, your ranking will soon be lifted far higher than if you used a dozen uncertain sites.
Some people may say that Meta tags are not needed or as important since search engines ignore them but that simply is not the case. The most important Meta tags are for description and keywords. Using search tools such as keyword density analyzer (http://www.keyworddensity.com) to discover that perfect word can be priceless.
Of course if you do not want to go through all the trouble of finding what word appears more than others, you can always turn to sponsored link boxes, you know the ones that appear to the right hand side of the screen after you run a search. The main concept is that you choose keywords you want to be associated with and when someone types in your keyword - your box appears.
The only downside to sponsored link boxes is that every time someone does click on your link you will get charged a fee depending on how much you bid for your keywords. You can set a limit however of the cost per click ranging from $0.05 to $50. This method is mainly targeted to companies who have an advertising budget or if a business wants to market a certain product for a week during its launch.
Whatever feature you choose one fact is for sure. Google being the world's largest search engine and with all its partners answers more questions than any other search engine. Its goal of making information available to everyone, anytime, anywhere has surely come a long way from its humble beginnings. As Google grows and improves even more you can be sure to see many more hidden extras that get overlooked by millions of users on a daily basis.
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