Driving home the other day I saw a sign at a junction for a website called www.DoneADeal.ie
At a second glance I noticed at “a” admist the address, so the website wasn’t our friends in Wexford who run www.donedeal.ie but in fact a new site.

Maybe they are trying to do the same task i thought to myself.

So what ! you may say. . . We know they are trying to reach fame by using a similar name to the real site and good for them?

Maybe, but on doing a search online when getting to the office the new site can not be found and in fact is now just helping the real site.

Are the owners trying to fool or trick google? If do they are they have made a giant mistake.

Google is not stupid.

Google is now ignoring the ‘a’ in the middle of the new site and directing people to the original site!

When you are planning an online business we suggest getting off on the right foot so get the right advice.

For professional web solutions that work, talk to Cada Media today 053 9430748

Yes, is the answer.

The latest changes to the number one search engine in Ireland has finally come online. These latest updates to it’s functionality are pushing the ability of local search right down to the county level.

Before we were able to choose by the world or pages from Ireland. Now we can step even further into a search and breakdown our definition of what we hope to get as results by specifing our current localtion.

Google will then look for local information for your search term. Didn’t they always do this you say . . . I thought so too but apparently not.

Look at the new left hand column of a search to see the changes to the layout and options available. Then look at the results and see if they are more local local !

Great news for getting more precise results now all we have to do is tell google that some counties names are also towns in that county. So when someone googles “something in Wexford” do the mean the county or the town!

For more information on how we can help google find your business call Dave Jordan of Cada Media Ltd today, tel 053 9430748.

With all the bitching and moaning about the changes to the Facebook privacy policy we have to ask ourselves why are they now changing as they have always been one of the most private social medial websites for people to network and meet up.

We believe that it ultimately has to do with search engines now wanting to incorporate content from social media websites into their results. recently we have heard news of Twitter doing a deal with the business networking website “Linked In” to allow that website to bring in its content.

All the Major websites are doing it, MSN live chat now allows you to bring in your MySpace information into your account there. The use of a login system called Open ID allows you to have one account from facebook for example and that can be used on loads of other sites, making it easier to integrate larger and larger sites together.

Facebook is estimated to have nearly 1,000,000 users in Ireland by Christmas 2009, so now they have 1/4 of the population, they also have what all hungry search engines need. . . Content. We talked about content for web last week and how it will be needed more and more in the coming years.

Google Live Search

This is a new feature of Google’s algorithm that basically reads social media websites such as Twitter and uses its content as the results for questions searched for. So this is a big step away from google showing your websites it read through last night and showing you the “latest news”. Well if its from last night then its not the “latest” but if its from Twitter or F it is the latest. Facebook and Twitter are no strapped to a computer desk any more, we carry them around with us, they are now part of most mobile phones with all of us feeding them each time we click on a letter.

Doing a search today, google replied with a live twitter feed as the first results and then the normal listing from websites it would have indexed the day before. This is Google specifically pushing the social media websites as they have the “latest” content and this is why they need to read our content on Facebook!

For more information on how the interweb is changing call 053 9430748 to make an appointment.

Google Webmaster Guidelines are in Black and white.

I came across a website today for a company over in the west of Ireland doing surfing lessons and when I scrolled down the page i noticed that they have about 6 inches of nothing at the bottom. I click the mouse the tried to select and there it was . . . paragraphs and paragraphs or extra hidden content.

I think it strange it this day and age to be still pulling tricks like this and yet I also noticed that they are number one in google for the services they provide. So are they actually doing anything wrong, according to Google’s webmaster Guidelines we shouldn’t do this but on the other hand they still have an ok page rank of 4.

These hidden text guidelines go a little further and tell us that if Google find these they they can remove the site from their index. Yes, that means throw you out of Google. It happens all the time and business are there one day and gone the next. Not understanding that their webmaster has actually put their their business offline to google users.

For a quick glance of do’s and don’t in website design see the following google help and guidelines

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

I wonder how true this is for irish surfers. If you have moved to searching the internet and using bing, ping me back and let me know.

Would be interested to see how many people out there in Ireland are using it on a daily basis?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10354394-75.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Google’s listing, How do they work?

We have had a number of inquiries from companies this week asking us to help them get on top of Google.  It’s interesting to see how the “recession in the building trade” has pushed into many other aspects of life in Ireland.

One inquiry today asked if we could create a script to refresh a website so that I will appear higher in Google? Is this true If I write a script to refresh the page it will increase it Page Ranking in Google?

I don’t think so, is the simple answer.

Google has a complex algorithm that now consists of over 200 criteria that it rates a website. Google changes and alter this algorithm each day. Google is not a script that is the same each and every week. Google evolves, think of it like the stock exchange, it adapts to trends in the world and sometimes there are more focus on certain area’s than other.

In years gone by it could have been many things such as :

• your domain name
• your image content
• your video content
• the amount of links that pointed to you
• the amount of internal links
• the amount of good copy you have written on the site
• the amount of times the website was updated
• spelling
• grammar

Often business owners have their own idea of how Google works, but it is not always as simple as they think. We also has one company marketing director ask about changing the company domain name to AAsometing.ie as they assumed that Google lists is websites alphabetically.

Interesting so see how different businesses assume so much about how a search engines work and yet all be so far from the truth. Search Engine are a science, not rocket science but never the less a science, It’s called “Computer Science”

Many people are afraid to ask for help in business these days, we have found that if people let us work on the area of expertise that we specialise in we can help grow their business and grow their company.

Let Cada Media Ltd take your hand through the complex world of Search Engine Optimisation and put your business ahead of the rest. Call Dave Jordan on 053 9430748 for more information.

Bing.com

Microsoft have finally launched their new search engine to compete against the search engine giant of Google Launched in May 2009 this new search engine has a similar looks to Google simple looking one line to input your search term. It also has features similar to Googles Image Search and returns the results in a way that we are all familar with. I personally think it’s too late for Microsoft to get into this market as the Internet is not really a place for their technology (in my personally opinion, I’m a linux and Unbunto and Open Source type of guy!)

If you have an opinion on their stab at this type of technology, please let me know

www.Bing.com

We had an inquiry today (you know you are “T”!) asking for a website with an into page with flash animation and maybe some soft music. This is available to everyone but I had to steer the conversation around to a few questions that soon answered if she really wanted a flash intro page with soft music etc

• Who are you target market?
  • How old are they?
  • Men or women?
  • Irish?
  • European?
  • USA?
• What is the website for?
  • Information
  • Sales Leads
• What time are they online?
  • Mostly evening
  • online in work

The list of questions goes on and on, but our answer is, why are you putting another hurdle in front of someone who has been looking for your services or products.

Get to the point and give them the info, they will appreciate it and use your business!

Have a good weekend

Dave

Google has changed.

Yes, Google have changed their algorithm as we have been writing about since last year. It seems that many people came back to work this week to find their website gone from it’s usual place in the search engine.

Expect more of this in 2009 as “Rich Media” plays a bigger role in getting listed in Google.

See :

http://blog.cadamedia.ie/2008/11/google-changing/

http://blog.cadamedia.ie/2008/11/google-algorithm-changes-all-the-time/

http://blog.cadamedia.ie/2008/11/matt-cutts-from-google-interviewed/

Web Design Gorey

We have been looking at how Google is changing over the past few weeks and see that Goolge has definately started its changeover to the new listing method.

So I am writing this to see if it will appear in a basic listing for Web Design Gorey tomorrow. I will report back and let you know what happens.

Why?

Because if google is changing for us its also changing for the way they list you. . .  Our clients!