Search Engine Optimization News Blog

According to a hearsay report on Wired,, Jobs thinks Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ mantra is ‘Bu****it’. According to rumours from those who attended the ‘Town hall’ meeting, Jobs ripped Google and Adobe.

First, he discussed Google’s growing antipathy towards the iPhone and plans to enter the mobile market full bore, starting with the Nexus. According to the account:

We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.”

Then Jobs moved on to Adobe:

They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

According to Guardian.co.uk, Schmidt isn’t above a little finger pointing himself – at his Davos interview the Google CEO reportedly had a few things to say himself:

His opinion of the iPad? He never commented on other companies. Though he couldn’t quite resist a lateral jab: “You might want to tell me the difference between a large phone and a tablet.” Beam.

Someone asked about competition from Apple and Facebook. Answer: he doesn’t think about them. He only thinks about Google. “Though I noticed you didn’t ask about Microsoft, by the way.”

Can the big boys play nice? Or is Google out for world domination of every pie they have a finger in?

Ballmer and Gates have started actively blogging, as well as commenting to major media about the Google/China problem and the thrust of their first statements seem to be concerning China.

Over the last few weeks, there has been much said about issues of security, privacy, and censorship as it relates to the Internet in China and around the world… Microsoft is committed to protecting and advancing free expression throughout the world, even as we work to comply with local laws in the 100+ countries in which we operate. In many countries throughout the world, Internet and technology companies must comply with laws that impact privacy and freedom of expression, particularly peaceful political expression… Engagement in China and around the world is very important to us, in part because we believe it accelerates access to 21st century technology and services and helps provide the widest possible range of ideas and information. We have done business in China for more than 20 years and we intend to stay engaged, which means our business must respect the laws of China. …At the same time, Microsoft is opposed to restrictions on peaceful political expression, and we have conversations with governments to make our views known. In every country in which we operate, including China, Microsoft requires proper legal authority before we remove any Internet content; and if we remove content, we give users notice.

Gates was quoted by the NY Times as being skeptical of Google’s stance on the whole China situation:

Mr. Gates declared himself unimpressed and a bit perplexed by Google’s recent threat to drop its search business in China to protest Chinese censorship of search after attacks apparently intended to spy on Gmail accounts of human-rights activists. “They’ve done nothing and gotten a lot of credit for it,” Mr. Gates said.

One may or may not agree with the laws in China, he said, but nearly all countries have some controversial laws or policies, including the United States. “What point are they making?” Mr. Gates asked. “Now, if Google ever chooses to pull out of the United States, then I’d give them credit.”

Gates is also blogging, although his blog seems buriesd in search results. Ballmer also commented on Google’s action on the China incident, as reported by Forbes:

Ballmer suggested that Google’s decision to no longer filter out internet searches objectionable to the Chinese government was an irrational business decision. After all, Ballmer said, the U.S. imports oil from Saudi Arabia despite the censorship that goes on in that country.

“The U.S. is the most extreme when it comes to free speech,” said Ballmer, noting however that even the U.S. bans child pornography, while France bans internet access to Nazi imagery.

Vanessa Fox at Search Engine Land has a fabulous post on Google’s proposed crawling of AJAX (click the link at the end of this post to read her definitive step by step outline of how to make your own pages more crawlable) but here we are just going to recap the Google journey to AJAX crawling:

October, 2009: Google announces at the SMX East conference they are attempting to develop a way to crawl AJAX:

Today we’re excited to propose a new standard for making AJAX-based websites crawlable. This will benefit webmasters and users by making content from rich and interactive AJAX-based websites universally accessible through search results on any search engine that chooses to take part. We believe that making this content available for crawling and indexing could significantly improve the web.

While AJAX-based websites are popular with users, search engines traditionally are not able to access any of the content on them. The last time we checked, almost 70% of the websites we know about use JavaScript in some form or another. Of course, most of that JavaScript is not AJAX, but the better that search engines could crawl and index AJAX, the more that developers could add richer features to their websites and still show up in search engines.

Some of the goals that we wanted to achieve with this proposal were:

• Minimal changes are required as the website grows
• Users and search engines see the same content (no cloaking)
• Search engines can send users directly to the AJAX URL (not to a static copy)
• Site owners have a way of verifying that their AJAX website is rendered correctly and thus that the crawler has access to all the content

Google had previously warned against excessive use of AJAX:

Many webmasters have discovered the advantages of using AJAX to improve the user experience on their sites, creating dynamic pages that act as powerful web applications. But like Flash, AJAX can make a site difficult for search engines to index if the technology is not implemented carefully. There are two main search engine issues around AJAX: Making sure that search engine bots can see your content, and making sure they can see and follow your navigation.

While Googlebot is great at understanding the structure of HTML links, it can have difficulty finding its way around sites which use JavaScript for navigation. We’re working on doing a better job of understanding JavaScript, but your best bet for creating a site that’s crawlable by Google and other search engines is to provide HTML links to your content.

Google provides tips on how to optimize AJAX, but Vanessa’s post is better. Here’s a snippet – go here to get the whole breakdown:

(Search Engine Land:) This implementation basically requires that you:

• Modify your AJAX implementation so that URLs that contain hash marks (#) are also available via the hash mark/exclamation point (#!) combination (or, as I recommend below, that you replace the # versions entirely with the #! ones).
• Configure a headless browser on your web server that processes the ?_escaped_fragment_= versions of the URLs, executes the JavaScript on the page and returns a static page.

Confused yet? So is everyone else, but Vanessa does have more info for the code monkeys among us.  She warns that everything is not working as smoothly as Google would like yet, so full scale modifications and AJAX built web sites are not quite the way to go just yet.

Rumor has it that Facebook and Microsoft are taking a step back from their previous closeness.

In October, 2007, Microsoft announced they were partnering with Facbook to launch an ad platform for the social networking site:

Facebook and Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft will take a $240 million equity stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation, and the companies will expand their existing advertising partnership. Under the expanded strategic alliance, Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the United States.

According to Inside Facebook:

Now, Facebook is running its own performance ad inventory  in certain countries outside of the US, as we’ve heard and as the company has confirmed to us. These self-serve ads let most any advertiser provide their own ad copy and target ads to a wide range of very specific demographics. The format also includes call-to-action items such as the ability for a user to like an ad and see who among their friends have already liked it. Advertisers pay for these ads either based on the number of impressions (CPM) or by the number of clicks (CPC) that the ad is projected to receive.

Business Weeks reports:

Palo Alto, California-based Facebook is interested in handling more of that work itself, said Keith Lorizio, a Microsoft vice president who works for Domeniconi.

“We are in discussions with them on adjusting it or changing it as we go forward,” Lorizio said of the companies’ agreement. “They have a desire to sell their own advertising.”

…and on Paid Content, the word straight from the companies’ spokespersons:

Here’s Microsoft’s full statement: “Microsoft no longer represents Facebook’s display advertising in several global markets, however our contract for display advertising with Facebook in the U.S. remains unchanged at this time.”

A Facebook spokesman, meanwhile, tells us: “After talks with Microsoft, we have recently decided to stop running their banner ads on Facebook in some international markets. Ad formats that feature social actions perform better and provide a better user experience since they are more consistent with the look and feel of Facebook. Facebook ads can also be targeted to people based on the information they provide. This combination of targeting and social relevance is the primary driver behind the shift in strategy.”

Looks like the love fest is over – and MSN is left with egg on their face after yet another failed attempt to compete as a major advertising company.

Apparently Bing is changing the way foodies at least search the web.

According to the Bing Community blog:

Bing makes it easier by providing cooking recipes and details in our new detailed recipe results.

Bing pulls from a number of popular recipe websites (delish.com, MyRecipes.com, epicurious.com, etc.) to bring you correlating recipes that you can sift through by holiday, meals, ratings, and my personal favorite, convenience (with a 10 month old at home, quick is key) and much more.

According to Search Engine Land (where you can read all about the new feature):

Clicking on any particular recipe or the “recipes” link above the section takes you to a new “recipes task page,” where Bing provides nutritional information and calculates the relative calories and fat content of recipes. You can see an example of this deep dive here:

The idea is that many people looking for food information are doing it for recipe purposes and nutritional information. Google attempted something similar but it tanked when they shut down Google Base.

Is this the new trend? Relevant but unasked for results from niches? it will be interesting to watch and see what Bing does next.