Search Engine Optimization News Blog

Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday’s Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.

Lessig, a professor of internet law at Stanford and keynote speaker at last week’s SES Chicago, explained how the Journal got their ‘facts’ scrambled:

I distinguish between “zero price regulations” (such as Markey’s bill (which I say I am against)) and what I called “zero discriminatory surcharge rules” (which I say I am for). The zero discriminatory surcharge rules are just that — rules against discriminatory surcharges — charging Google something different from what a network charges iFilm. The regulation I call for is a “MFN” requirement — that everyone has the right to the rates of the most favored nation.

This is precisely the position that the Journal breathlessly attributes to me today. It represents no change — no “softening” no “shift” in my views.

Being against regulation for search advertising and for regulation regarding net neutrality is a fine line to walk.

Lawrence Lessig has now been quoted in Newsweek, calling for the demolition of the FCC, stating that the FCC curries favor for monopolies which keeps big business and big bureaucracy in power. Lessig wants the FCC replaced by a government regulation agency called the iEPA, the Innovation Environment Protection Agency, which would be established by Congress and could keep a check on monopolies and the government. Supposedly this would spur innovation.

The current FCC is actually already enabling the same goals that Lessig desires, such as open spectrum. This year’s spectrum auction was won by Verizon but requires, due to a big enough bid by Google, to keep the spectrum open. Will Lessig’s friendship with the President elect sway the powers that be?

SES stands for Search Engine Strategies and this is one of the top-rated global conference and expo series that is determined to teach webmasters the latest SEO trends and strategies. SES expos are run in various places through out the year featuring many prominent SEO experts and guest speakers.

The first SES event for 2009 is scheduled for 17 to 20 February. This expo is hosted by Mike Grehan. He is the global KDM officer of Acronym Media and a known search authority. He was named as one of the United Kingdom’s top 100 influential people in Internet marketing. You will be able to get real-time practical information that you need to promote your business through search engine marketing.

As usual like all the other SES conferences, the participants will have the opportunity to interact with fellow marketers and SEO professionals. These interactions have been found to be highly beneficial both in terms of social networking and also in terms of learning powerful SEO insights that can change the entire course of your businesses profit graph.

Besides the other common SEO and SEM topics, February 2009 SES expo will teach its participants how to purchase listings that will bring sure rank your company on the top of the search engine results. The participants will also be able to learn how to calculate the SEM ROI from tracking the visitors to the conversion. It will also teach effective link building strategies that will bring real traffic to your website without eliciting penalties from the search engines.

Latest SEM and SEO trends will also be discussed along with the coping strategies to profit from the ever-changing web world.

Opening Keynote and Orientation will be given by Matt Mattson, the author of Pirate’s Dilemma. The last day of the session, that is 20th of February is reserved for SEM training sessions. Some of the prominent speakers in this expo include names such as, Kevin Ryan – SES Chair, CEO, Mike Grehan – Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media, Matt Mattson – Author, The Pirate’s Dilemma, Ross Barnes – Head of Digital Media, Response One, Mathew Bailey – President, Site Logic, Jon Myers – Head of Search, Media Vest and many more.

Some of the interesting topics discussed during the expo include – Search Around the World: US, Europe & Asia, Universal & Blended Search, Measuring Success in a 2.0 World, The State of Search Integration, Online Video Update – The Next Wave, Search Advertising Tools, Searcher Behaviour Research Update, Ads in a Quality Score World, Advanced Paid Search Techniques, Brand & Reputation Management, Landing Page Testing & Tuning, Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues, Local Search Marketing Tactics and much more.

The list of training sessions on 20th of February include, Reaching Your Audience Through Blogs, Mobile Marketing 101, Link and Reputation Workshop and Site Architecture Workshop.

Those who register by February 2 can save £100. The total package costs £995.

Other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the sole competitor for Mozilla’s Firefox, a new yet strong competitor has emerged for Firefox. The competition is expected to be real tough as this new product, Google Chrome, is a creation of Google who are already ruling the search engine world. Though there are other browsers like Safari and Opera, this open source browser is considered more serious and competitive as the probability of users who are already fond of Google trying the product is more when compared with other browsers. This would of course include users who are using Mozilla’s Firefox. This would obviously be a loss for Firefox to loose its valued customers. But Mitchell Baker, the chairman of the Mozilla foundation, says that she is not worried.

She has mentioned that Mozilla receives revenues from Google for shared advertising. This amount is generated when Mozilla Firefox’s users use Google’s built-in search engine made available in the home page of Mozilla’s Firefox. In this case, Mozilla just acts as an advertising partner for Google like many others over the web. Ms. Baker, though not satisfied, does not seem to be threatened about the market share of Google’s Chrome. Ms. Baker in an interview with ZDNet (a sister site of CNETNews.com) has spoken about Google, Google’s Chrome and the revenue generated from being their advertising partner as well.

Answering to a question raised on whether it is true that the browser search box and the start up page default to Google and about the revenue generated through this, she has replied saying, “That’s correct. But one thing most people forget is, we have an arrangement not just with Google but also with Yahoo.
The combination of Google’s market share and the default piece means the vast majority (of Mozilla revenue) comes from Google. We also get a small amount of revenue from Amazon.”

Explaining more about the basis on which revenue is generated by Firefox through Google advertising, she added, “It’s analogous to what you see on Web sites with Google Ad Sense (in which other sites show Google ads, and Google shares the resulting revenue when people click on those ads). It’s a mechanism for ad distribution.”

She agreed saying that Mozilla is mainly funded by ad revenue but she also made it clear that they are not worried about Chrome and its possibility to dry up the revenue generation. However, she explained that they are careful and are watchful. She added saying that they are happing about their growth in the share market and that they consider the growth to be healthy. She added saying, “The relationship between Google and Mozilla is good, in a business sense, for both organizations.”

She also said that Google’s Chrome has not affected the way Mozilla works. However, she said that they are eagerly looking for more innovative inventions from Chrome as this would benefit all other browsers in general.

Google truly ran the gamut this year. More features, more applications, more products – high intrigue and corporate wrangling vied with a swing of over $450 in their market share and the near destruction of their arch rival Yahoo.

The year started with the search giant watching the drama unfold between Yahoo and Microsoft. By the end of the year, Google had managed to derail the proposed deal with one of its own – which in turn bit the dust under too much DOJ scrutiny.

YouTube has been a hotbed of debate, actually turning a few nickels profit for the first time ever, as Google figured out how to (finally) deal with the problems of piracy and monetization all in one blow. Several big names have split away, however, seeing the opportunity for more profits elsewhere – but YouTube is here to stay. More ads are in evidence, but so are more features such as the long awaited HD.

The gambits by Google that were expected to have much more impact than they did were surprising. Chrome, the Google open platform browser, was viewed with suspicion. Knol, the more personal and user friendly Wikipedia, experienced a flurry of interest that as quickly faded. Most shocking of all was the much awaited G1 phone, which has not quite lived up to sales expectations – prompting Google to use them as Christmas bonuses for staff and employees worldwide.

One the good news front, Google still reigns supreme, with a monster’s share of the search and market shares. Their search is refined even more, and the indexing of flash sites has improved. They can now offer many new features in the search results themselves, including improved snippets, thumbnails and options to jump to inner pages. AdWords also received a revamp, to the initial dismay of some advertisers but the ultimate good of the program as a whole.

The penalty questions still abound, and Google has attempted to clarify search relevance without completely revealing their algorithm, so SEO is bound to be around for a while yet. As the search giant continues in its quest to gather all the information in the world under one roof, the competition will only get stronger.

What is in store for 2009? Google hints at even more plans for increasing search capabilities and new features for webmasters. They are still number one, and the whole world knows to ‘Google it’!

Google is using JavaScript as its key tool to enter into the market of embedded systems. Though it is still not sure how successful the search engine giants would be in offering what the embedded system market is in need of. The development process would however be not so very easy. It is expected that the process would avail many services available over the internet in order to make the developmental process of the embedded systems much cheaper. The softwares would be developed and implemented as web applications and run through the web browsers. This would be much simpler a solutions as this would not require the software to be installed, rather, the application would require only the web browser and a network connection so that application can be operated without having the system dumped with softwares. This would also be helpful in having the application updated on timely basis. Whenever there would an update in the application or if any bug has been rectified, then changes would be required to be made only in the server. This would assure that all the systems connected to the server would also be updated with the changes.

JavaScript is the scripting language used to write the programs for the web applications. In case of traditional embedded systems, interpreters are used and are executed in machine language. The execution speed in case of machine language depends on the processor. Machine languages are used as it is a fundamental language. JavaScript on the other hand is the fundamental language for web applications. The execution speed in case of JavaScript depends on the processor as well as the JavaScript engine which is used to execute the JavaScript codes. Google’s senior vice president, engineering has specified “Equipment in the cloud computing* era will have to be able to execute JavaScript.”

JavaScript, the fundamental language of the web applications, is used to develop all the applications required. The applications are programmed to integrate with other systems like GPS (global positioning system) whenever and wherever required. These applications can be used in car navigation systems. This would certainly simplify the complicated process of car navigation systems. Other on-hand examples include Google Earth API (Application Programming Interface) and Google Maps API. These are best examples of 3D map display and 2D map display correspondingly. These APIs are called from JavaScript codes. This would also make it possible to top-up the application with high level or more complicated applications easily.

Google has at least 50 types of APIs that can be used for various applications. Though many APIs are written in programming languages that do not support JavaScript, major APIs like Google Maps API and Google Earth API are written almost completely in JavaScript. ‘Gears’ offered by Google to users when they are not connected to the internet can be called an auxiliary engine as it guides the user like JavaScript engine in attaining the results expected using the desired application.