Wikia Search launched today and while there has been much criticism, their principals make total sense:

Transparency – Openness in how the systems and algorithms operate, both in the form of open source licenses and open content + APIs.

Community – Everyone is able to contribute in some way (as individuals or entire organizations), strong social and community focus.

Quality – Significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results and the searching experience.

Privacy – Must be protected, do not store or transmit any identifying data.

Google gives “guidelines” on how to make Web sites more SEO friendly, but why not offer complete transparency to their algorithm? The first reaction is because the algorithm is very, very complex and that an open source algorithm could be abused by those that find loopholes. Well it is already being abused by Black Hat SEO practices and that is exactly why it should be socially driven and open source! It is the very reason why open source solutions like Linux and Apache are a success: Open and engaged communities have much more combined knowledge than closed communities can ever have – even more than the smart Google engineers. For now Google is riding the wave that Microsoft did in the nineties, but sooner or later they will come under pressure and will be faced with the decision to open up their algorithm or not.

To me, the four principals of Internet search that Wikia Search has identified defines what Google means by “don’t be evil” and while their alpha release may be disappointing I applaud Wikia for doing this. Just like open source supporters have fought Microsoft, I believe the social computing community will be fighting Google some day. An ungrateful irony.

Website Analysis Tools

1. Google Analytics

This should be your starting point, it doesn’t have to be Google Analytics, there are many other Web analytics tools, but you have to have a good Web analytics tool. Using your Web analytics tool you can see what keywords or phrases people are searching for to find your site, which search engines drive the most traffic and what content users are finding. There are advanced Google Analytics tricks that you can use to get more out of the tool.

2. Google Webmaster Tools

This is where you create a Google sitemap and get to see how often Google indexes your home page. Webmaster Tools offers pretty much everything that Google is willing to tell you about your site and how it’s indexed. Google recently added the ability to set the geographic target of your Website and you can also opt-in to enhanced image search which can improve indexing and search quality of images on your Website.

3. Yahoo! Site Explorer

Yahoo’s version of Webmaster Tools. It doesn’t provide as much information as Google’s, but you can add a sitemap or RSS feed and get some information from Yahoo! about your site. Yahoo doesn’t display cached dates like Google does, but Yahoo! Site Explorer shows you when each page on your site (and other sites) was indexed or cached.

4. Xinu

Provides a dashboard view of key SEO indicators of a Web site, including PageRank, number of pages indexed and backlinks. The Diagnostics pane provides details on things like domain name, page size, HTML tags and gives you a thumbs up rating. It even tells you how long your site has existed and the blog owner.

5. Poodle Predictor

A good search engine simulator tool. Enter your URL, click on “Poodle Search” and then on “Diagnostic View”. There are many other search engine simulator tools, but I like how this one displays the results.

6. SEO for Firefox

A Firefox plugin that provides easy access to SEO related information about a page or link. When enabled it highlights “nofollow” links in red.

Keyword Research Tools

7. Google Trends

Search engines don’t share detailed search statistics, but you can use Google Trends to get a good idea of how popular search terms are. If you have a keyword that ranks #1 then you can use that as a base for comparison against other keywords to get a gauge for how much traffic one could expect from those keywords. Since the main purpose of the tool is to see trends it is of course very useful to see if keywords are growing in popularity. There’s also a section called Hot Trends that lists the current 100 “hot” keywords. These keywords offer good AdWords opportunities.

8. Microsoft adCenter Labs

As described in a previous post on keyword search funnels and demographic predictions, adCenter Labs gives a very interesting perspective on keywords and helps you to better understand what your users look like and the thought process that they go through when doing searches. The Search Funnel and Keyword Forecast tools are particularly cool.

9. Yahoo! Buzz Index

A service by Yahoo! that resembles Google’s Hot Trends. The Yahoo! Buzz Index shows the day’s top 20 searches in various categories including actors, movies and sports.

10. Keyword Discovery

Search term suggestion tool. They offer a free tool that lists up to 100 top keywords for a given keyword or phrase ranked by the number of searches over the last 12 months. The premium version of Keyword Discovery has a lot more functionality and a much slicker interface than Wordtracker.

11. Wordtracker

Probably the most popular subscription based keyword research tool, but like Keyword Discovery they also offer a free keyword suggestion tool that lists the top 100 search terms ranked by searches.

12. Google AdWords Keyword Tool

The tool is really intended for paid search research, but it is a useful keyword suggestion tool.

The Search Funnels tool offers another very interesting Web analysis. It answers the question: What do users search for after they searched for the keyword in question. E.g. what did users search for after they first searched for flower power? adCenter helps you visualize and analyze your customers’ search behaviors.

These kinds of Web analytics tools are very useful for effective paid search campaigns. Some of the other tools that they offer are:

• Keyword forecast: Forecast the impressions count and demographic predictions using one or more search terms.
• Seasonal keyword forecast: Forecast the seasonality patterns of search queries
• Detecting online commercial intent: Find out if your customer intends to buy, sell or complete another online transaction based on their search queries and/or other sites visited

So I am pleased to say that all three keywords traced rank better now. What I also learned in the process is that Google seriously penalizes certain changes to pages and that it can take a few weeks to months for the rankings to return.

Indexed

It’s interesting from an SEO perspective because the site does not have much indexable content, but it has original content in the form of images. It’s the originality through creativity and simplicity that attracts users and that is more valuable than SEO.

The idea was to give keywords more importance in title tags by placing them first, e.g. a page formerly titled “Da Vinci Planet ›› Blog Archive ›› Essential Portable Apps” is now titled “Essential Portable Apps | Da Vinci Planet“. Google’s search results pages have since updated and are now showing the “SEO friendly” page titles. The results are somewhat surprising!

For the search term “essential portable apps”

Before: Positioned 2nd of about 1,370,000 results

Now: Positioned 2nd of about 1,390,000 results

Result: Position unchanged

For the search term “remove popcorn”

Before: Positioned 3rd of about 1,140,000 results

Now: Positioned 5th of about 1,260,000 results

Result: Position down from 3rd to 5th

For the search term “Top Web Analytics Tools”

Before: Positioned 94th of about 18,100,000 results

Now: Positioned 280th of about 23,400,000 results

Result: Position down from 94th to 280th! Total indexed Web pages increased by about 30%.

Conclusion

My position went down for two of the three search terms. Especially the last one, from 94th to 280th! Not that 94th was any good to start with: ) The number of pages that Google has indexed on the Web has increased for all three search terms – as one would expect – and that may have an effect. It’s possible that my page rankings were affected simply because Google detected that the pages were modified. I’ve heard that old is good when it comes to search engines. If that is true then it’s possible their rankings will improve over time. For now I’ll hope so and I will be checking from time to time how they are doing. Either way I’m sticking with the new title format because it looks better. Blissful ignorance?

Add your RSS feed to the Google Toolbar

1. Install the Google Toolbar if you don’t have it.
2. Browse to your site or the site that’s feed you would like to add.
3. Right-click in any textbox on the Web page and click on Generate Custom Search…



4. Click on Add in the Google Toolbar Custom Button Generator window. Click on OK to accept.





Add your RSS feed to the Google Toolbar

5. Click on Options in your Google Toolbar Settings.



6. Select the Buttons tab. You should see your button in the Custom Buttons list.
   Highlight your button by clicking on it and click on Edit



7. Click on the Use the advanced editor… hyperlink. This opens the Google Toolbar Custom Button Editor page in your browser.



8. Add your feed's URL in the <feed> and </feed> tags:

   http://feeds.feedburner.com/DaVinciPlanet

   The refresh-interval is in seconds and specifies how frequently the feed should be reloaded.



9. Before hitting the Save button, copy the entire XML text in the textbox and paste it into Notepad. This is needed if you want to submit your button to the Google Toolbar Gallery.
10. Hit the Save to Google Toolbar… button.
11. Your RSS feeds are now displayed when you hit the down-arrow next to your icon.





Submit your button to the Google Toolbar Gallery

12. Save the button XML that you copied into notepad into a file on your Web site, e.g. http://www.davinciplanet.com/google_toolbar.xml
13. Submit your button to the Google Toolbar Gallery.
14. In addition you can also add a link or button on your site to give users an easy way to add your site to their Google Toolbar by linking to:

http://toolbar.google.com/buttons/add?url=http://www.davinciplanet.com/google_toolbar.xml

What is Windows Live?

Your online world gets better when everything works simply and effortlessly together. That’s the basic idea behind Windows Live. So the things you care about—your friends, the latest information, your e-mails, powerful search, your PC files, everything—come together in one place. This is a brand new Internet experience designed to put you in control. And this is just the beginning—you’ll see many more new services in the coming months.

Here is a list of some of the services that Windows Live is offering (all still in beta).

live.com
The main site which is basically a search portal and allows customization similar to Google’s personalization.

Windows Live Ideas
Lists most of the initiatives they are working on.

Windows Live Local
Microsoft’s answer to Google Maps. They have a “Road”, “Aerial” and “Bird’s eye” view. Search Engine Guide has an article comparing the services and they prefer Live Local.

Windows Live Favorites
Save your favorites on-line. You can synch your Live Favorites with your IE Favorites and you can share them on-line. Doesn’t seem to try and be a del.icio.us.

Microsoft Office Live
The name implies that it’s an on-line version of MS Office, but it really seems to be more about creating and hosting Web sites. With the basic service you can register a domain name (new domain), create and host the Web site, get 5 email accounts and traffic reports for FREE! Not bad You are required to give your credit card information, but you don’t get charged.

Microsoft Gadgets
Gadgets for Windows Sidebar will run on your desktop or dock into Windows Sidebar, an upcoming feature in Windows Vista alongside other applications. Gadgets for Start.com (a.k.a. Web or Server-based Gadgets) provide a fast, customizable homepage with a clean user interface.
You may, as I have, also wonder what start.com is and what the relation is to live.com. sanaz’s space has a good description, but basically start.com is a testing area for live.com and ideas are tested there first before being implemented on live.com.

live.com blog
A blog maintained by the live.com development team where you can get the latest info on updates.