Remember that bit of Back To The Future II where it’s set in the future? The futuristic* house has a massive TV screen where they can load a multitude of programs all at one time? Well that’s what we are offering you now – it’s like the Back To The Future TV but in glorious Matt-Cutts-o-vision…
Should Googlebot Be Shown Optimised Pages?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFOgZjbX9NU[/youtube]
‘Cloaking’ is a bit of a big deal for search engines and webmasters alike. Search engines can be understandably suspicious of a site that appears to be trying to trick the search engine by ‘sculpting’ its content based on who views it. Webmasters who find that their site has been hacked into can also find that their site is suddenly using Cloaking techniques – it’s a technique used to mask the compromised state of the site. A normal user visiting the site (including the webmaster) won’t easily be able to spot the changed content.
Either way its something I would steer WELL clear of – just say no!
‘Nofollow’ Attribute On Internal Links?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SAPUx4Beh8[/youtube]
I think people get far too caught up on tuning-and-pruning Page Rank sometimes. If your site has decent navigation then you will probably be just fine – nofollow on internal links just isn’t necessary. As Mr Cutts points out, if you don’t want some sections of your site to be indexed then this could be a valid reason to use it, but personally I’d be using my robots.txt file to highlight (or is that lowlight?) these sections of my site.
Google Search Engine Results Pages (Serps) The Same On All Browsers?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNvswKFY17E[/youtube]
The reference to ‘being logged in’ is an interesting one for many people in the SEO community. This idea of user specific search results may, in the future, make the notion of search rankings very difficult to audit – if everyone receives different search results then potentially there will be no ‘baseline’.
Another point with much wider application is the idea of testing. As Mr Cutts alluded to, Google is running tests on various aspects of their systems. This can be to track usage and response or even the technical impact of proposed changes. This methodology is exactly the sort of thing that online companies need to be using as well – ecommerce businesses should always be testing small layout changes (eg. Do you get more/less conversions by changing your ‘buy now’ button to red?) to ensure they are always moving forward.
*= I’m still unsure as to why the futuristic house featured a fax machine…
- Search The Human Body With Google Body Browser - December 21, 2010
- Has This Site Been Hacked? - December 20, 2010
- How Do Twitter & Facebook’s 2010 Trends Compare With Google’s? - December 14, 2010
- Google Zeitgeist 2010: What Have You Been Searching For Planet Earth? - December 10, 2010
- Google Chrome Gets Store And Talks Chrome OS - December 8, 2010
- Google Issues Security Email For Website Optimiser - December 7, 2010
- Google Launches AdWords Global Market Finder - December 7, 2010
- New Android Phone Promises A Pure Experience - December 7, 2010
- Google AdWords Wants Your Products! - December 3, 2010
- Know How Mobile Internet Affects Your Website? Google Analytics does… - December 2, 2010
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