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Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

At Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization we know that knowledge is power. That's the reason we started this SEO blog. We know that the better informed our visitors are, the better the decisions they will make for their websites and their online businesses. We hope you enjoy your stay and find the SEO news contained within this blog useful.

August 14, 2012

Vote Jeff Brandes for .. I really don’t know ..

I really don’t follow Canadian politics that closely, much less US politics, much less US political activity on a state level, but today I wanted to vote for Jeff Brandes after watching a YouTube video from his competition:

My apologies if the video is removed by the time you click on it.
It really is that bad.

Watching that video is like watching a really well polished piece from The Onion vs. a serious attack on a political candidate.

If you’ve been reading this blog for long you’ll notice a few articles about Google’s self driving cars, and Google Drive (totally unrelated, nerds!), so you know we don’t look at them as “Black Magic”.

The beginning of the clip is a quote from Forbes:

“Driverless Cars for All: More DANGEROUS Than Driving”

This is so misplaced that today Forbes even commented on the video pointing out the original article title was:

“Driverless Cars For All: An Idea More Dangerous Than Driving.”

.. and actually focused on the freedom to still pilot a car once they are able to drive themselves.

The video continues to ramp up the stupid by showing how old ladies that wander into traffic are risky, and repeats a clip of a Prius steering wheel spinning from lock to lock, as if that’s how we should think robots drive.

My guess is that someone neglected to tell the elderly who helped with this ad that a robot driven car is not only less likely to run over pedestrians, but also a solution to the elderly needing transportation.

Wasn’t it just last month they announced that Google’s driver-less cars have logged more than 300,000 miles of driving without a single accident? Are the folks that made this advert over a month behind in technology news?

The end of the video wraps up with how ‘out of touch’ Jeff Brandes is but this is a man who wants driverless cars which can avoid pointless return trips/parking, and to hire people to collect tolls on clogged bridges to reduce traffic, in a state with ongoing job cuts and pollution issues.

Yep, it’s like something straight from The Onion, but the tears are more pain than laughter. At least the competition is getting a load of attention/traffic sources from the video, far more than anything else they have put out.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 10:52 am

Categories: Google,just for fun,Technology,YouTube
Tags: Forbes, Google Selfdriving Cars, Jeff Brandes, politics —

August 9, 2012

New Conceited Search: Gmail in Google Web Search

I get plenty of me time doing my hair in the mirror each morning and seeing myself in store windows on the walk to work. I really cannot think of any good examples of a web search that would be better with my emails included in the results?

That isn’t stopping Google from offering this new search service to the first 1 million users that opt-in.

Here’s the link to the Gmail search field trial experiment.

Even the sample image from the Google signup page has a potential gaffe :

What if I was going to Tahoe for some biking to forget that Jenny broke up with me to date Jeff Teele (my ex-bike buddy) and totally forgot she spent a summer biking in Tahoe?

And that guide from Media temple? That’s one of a few spams, year after year, again and again, that GMail can’t seem to figure out!! Way to remind me at the worst moment Google!

Actually I suppose if I was searching for a solution I’d talked about in email, forgot I’d emailed about the solution, and then did a web search looking for the solution I’d already talked about, then I might appreciate Google showing me some old email in a web search.

Not to over-use HIMYM sayings, but that would be a long walk for a short drink of water.

I tried to come up with some worse examples, like accidentally sending someone a LMGTFY link for something like “fighting” and it loads up a ton of emails you should have deleted?

Nope LMGTFY actually adds the “&pws=0″ search parameter to the Google URL and this would obviously deter Google from including Gmail in the SERPS. At least one would hope they were that wise.

I’m still waiting for my request to be approved so I can offer more than some personal perspective and conjecture.

In the mean time I might want to delete some mail I’ve been trying to forget and reconsider all the keywords I send in my emails? Hmm..

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 10:45 am

Categories: Google,Privacy,Search Engine News,seo articles,Technology
Tags: GMail, Gmail search field trial experiment, LMGTFY —

July 26, 2012

SOPA Friends: Internet League of America

The recording industry, agents, and vendors of music aren’t the only ones spending way too much of their profits on lobbying the government. Major internet companies that see the harm of bills like SOPA/PIPA are spending the time and money to fight back against this lobbying.

Not to be confused with SuperFriends..

This organization is less about crime and more about reasonable expenses for making sure government is making informed decisions.

Google alone spent $3.9million in the second quarter of 2012, and $5.4million in 2012 total so far trying to help government see the internet as more than just a ‘series of tubes’.

Google isn’t alone in fighting for your rights, Amazon’s spending between Jan 2012 and June 2012 was pegged at $1.34million, EBay spent nearly as much at $827k, and Facebook also jumped into the fight for $650k of lobbying.

It stands to reason then that if they all had the same message a lot of time and money could be saved by joining forces, and this is how the Internet Association has come to be.

With Google, Amazon, EBay and Facebook already signed into the Internet Association it’s already huge and it’s still in the ‘coming soon’ phase of setting up.

This new group should not be confused with existing organizations like The Internet Defense League which are seeking other solutions to keeping people informed as to threats to online access/freedom.

A few sites (RIAA partners?) are panning this as ‘evil‘ and un-Google for companies to work together to support a shared message to the government, but I think anyone who knows the extent of SOPA/PIPA and other bills will see that spin for what it really is, fear and loathing of anything that stands in the way of an easy profit.

Google Fiber

Remember us writing about Kansas City dark fiber, Google’s plans to light it up, and the various media/recording industry fears/objections?

While I was composing this article on the new Internet Association I managed to eavesdrop on the details coming from the live broadcast at the launch of Google Fiber in Kansas this morning.

Here’s what I caught (again this was just details I overheard and not officially published):

Google Fiber is run right to your house
A fiber-conversion firewall appliance converts the optical signal
The Google fiber-wall has built in WiFi and 4 gigabit RJ45 ports
The WiFi radio is very fast (no specs given) and features a guest portal system
Google Fiber offers TV boxes that act as WiFi boosters
The TV boxes stream Netflix/Youtube in HD quality with more options to follow
Google’s TV boxes work with Bluetooth headphones and can be controlled by Bluetooth devices
Currently purchasing a TV box will including a free Nexus 7 Tablet that acts as a remote control for the TV box.
$300 is mentioned as the ‘construction fee’ to send a Google rep to your home to install the fiber cable.
$120/mth for the TV and Gigabit Internet package (on 2 year contracts the $300 fee is waived)
$70/mth for just Gigabit fibre internet (no install fee for 1yr contracts)
$Free/mth 5mbps down, 1mbps up, of capped fiber access to anyone who wants to pay the $300 install fee
The free service option is guaranteed for anyone in the service area for 7 years
You can pay the $300 fee off over time if you wish as an incentive to connect everyone regardless of income levels
1TB of Google Drive storage (directly linked to the Fibre) comes with the $70/mth and up packages
No mention of monthly data use caps, but they would need to be fairly generous

Apparently they are deciding which homes get fiber first by running a lobbying contest where they reward the communities that lobby other communities the most. The speaker tried to sell this as ‘doing it for Kansas’ and ‘spreading the word about what fiber really means’, but of all the announcements, there was no applause for
this.

Clearly most of Kansas is tired of waiting for Google Fiber and would like to start actually using it vs. running around ‘competing’ with other communities for the first chance to get hooked up.

It’s an odd move for Google but you have to respect that they had to find a fair way to select the first communities to get connected.

UPDATE: They have published the official Google Fiber data plans and yes, there’s NO DATA CAPS. Wow.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:25 am

July 24, 2012

Google Earth Engine and 40 years of Landsat data

As Apple and other companies continue to sue Google to slow/halt their growth into certain markets, Google is still finding ways to help the entire planet by sharing their technical infrastructure.

NASA started collecting images of Earth using the Landsat satellite system in 1972, and in the last 40 years the amount of data that has been accumulated is quite enormous.

The Landsat system is capable of mapping the entire planet surface every 16 days which means that there are 912 complete 1.7-terapixel images of our planet at a 30-meter resolution that not only need to be built/combined but the completed data maps also need to be compared over time.

Google’s infrastructure makes it possible to not only process the data much faster, but they can also make the information accessible to the public web where discovery and analysis can be crowd-sourced for free.

So far there’s been some very interesting work derived from the Landsat data using Google’s Earth Engine, and here’s three examples of human impacts on the planet that have been visualized by Landsat data analysis:

This time-lapse, built from Landsat captured satellite imagery from 1999 to 2011, shows the amazingly rapid growth of Las Vegas, Nevada. After watching the video it’s easy to see how Vegas is the fastest growing city in the United States for the past two decades.

Due to water diversion for irrigation and farming needs, the inland Aral Sea is shrinking at an amazing pace. Large portions were completely absent of water by as early as 2009 and these dry areas continue to grow today.

Providing land for farming, and clearing land for raising cattle, has caused the Amazon rainforest to shrink at a very shocking rate as you can see in this video.

For more time-line based Landsat data analysis you can go right to the Google Earth Engine page.

Sadly there’s zero examples of human activity improving the planet, which isn’t startling, but rather depressing. Perhaps someone wants to go take a look for something positive, like a rebuild of coral reef or something beneficial to the planet that humans have undertaken? I know I’d make a link to that.

UPDATE: Ahh speaking of 40 years of data, Greenland just hit a melt cycle that occurs roughly every ~150 years. The cycle this year will be the first time we’ve had satellite observation of the melt; all previous information is based on ice core samples.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:04 am

Categories: Google,just for fun,Misc,Net Neutrality,Search Engine News,Technology
Tags: Google Earth, Google Earth Engine, Landsat, NASA —

July 19, 2012

Warez between Google and DMCA

Google has published another transparency report, and thanks to the detailed removal requests info, it’s actually a decent index of pirated content on the web.

You want something from Microsoft? Sort the report by their requests, viola, a list of offending sites that Microsoft has verified as having options to download copyrighted content.

It’s like an all you can eat buffet for people who don’t know where to find warez!

In fact the report, warez aside, has all sorts of neat statistics for the curious among us to poke at:

Interactive traffic viewer for Google services broken down by Country
Top 5 report of Requests for Organizations, Owners, and Domains
Somewhat comical list of requests from Government bodies (Oh Canada!)
And user requests for content removal, including compliance stats.

It’s a pretty honest bit of transparency that is very informative and handy. If you didn’t know who the top sites are in terms of pirated content, this is a great resource.

Google News – More options?

To be frank, it’s another slow news day for SEO happenings, but it prompted me to hit news.google.com with my desktop browser for a change.

Since I’m logged into a Google account on my desktop machine the Google News page loaded up a preferences panel on the left hand sidebar which I’d never known about because I use my phone for browsing Google News (usually all about world headlines if you’re not logged in).

With these options you can:
- Choose how much of each type
- Remove news types
- Add news types (ie: Women’s Sports)
- Add/Remove Sources
- And more..

Personally, I was quite impressed by this as Google seems to really want to handle the customization and learn from your habits, vs. letting you tell them exactly what to show you.

I suppose in the long run this is a lot less of a control and more of a suggestion, like how Google bot reads a canonical tag.

If you don’t use Google for News, perhaps you aught to go take a look at what they have been working on?

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 1:56 pm

Categories: copyright,Google,Internet Law,Net Neutrality,Privacy,Search Engine News,Technology
Tags: DMCA, Google News, takedown requests, transparency report, warez —

July 17, 2012

Google’s Mayer tries to save Yahoo

Poor Marissa Mayer, she’s the 5th person, this year alone, to try and helm the sinking ship that is Yahoo, I hope she’s ready for the challenge!

Massive layoffs and constant stream of competition await Yahoo’s new CEO.

Marissa did an excellent job managing the public image of Google’s search innovations, and in the 13 years at Google she made a name for herself as both an innovator and leader.

In terms of awards, and accolades, Marissa is a very successful woman in business, making Fortune magazine’s yearly list of America’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business for 4 years in a row from 2008-2011.

That level of success wasn’t entirely recognized within Google, and after recently getting passed up for the role of senior VP of Google Local and Commerce, Marissa started taking on roles outside the company, notably landing a seat on the Wal-Mart board of directors in April of this year.

Even with all that behind her, taking on the role of CEO for Yahoo is a huge undertaking, not just because they are in the midst of laying off thousands of employees, but also because the company seems to be failing to match the offerings of it’s countless and ever growing list of competitors.

To top things off, last night Mrs.Mayer announced on her twitter feed that she is expecting a baby boy with her husband of 3 years, Zach Bogue. According to Marissa’s Wikipedia profile, the baby is due in October which indicates she took the Yahoo deal knowing she was pregnant.

Early word from interviews with Mayer indicate she’s going to focus on the core strengths of Yahoo services like Yahoo Mail, Sports, and Finance, which all have a loyal following due to the company’s long history.

If this translates out to a focus on the users, then it’s a solid strategy since Yahoo’s strength is in the users who have stuck with them through all the offerings of competition. If Yahoo can reward that loyalty and gain some fresh users in it’s strongest products, they stand a chance at regaining some of their lost user base, which is a critical first step to saving the company.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 10:34 am

Categories: Search Engine News,seo articles,Technology,Yahoo!

July 11, 2012

Google Puts Smack-Down on Infographics

Whether you know what they are called or not, most of us have seen those wonderful images that depict information in a pleasing graphical format and usually span 20 pages vertically. Infographic are visual representations that display information, data or knowledge. For some time now, these infographics have been used as link bait and are all the rage because they offer content in an easily digestible format.

In a recent interview by Eric Enge, Matt Cutts stated that Google feels they are being abused as a link building tactic and will be soon be discounted. Mr. Cutts when on to state:

"This is similar to what people do with widgets as you and I have talked about in the past. I would not be surprised if at some point in the future we did not start to discount these infographic-type links to a degree. The link is often embedded in the infographic in a way that people don’t realize, vs. a true endorsement of your site."

"In principle, there’s nothing wrong with the concept of an infographic." Cutts told Enge. "What concerns me is the types of things that people are doing with them. They get far off topic, or the fact checking is really poor. The infographic may be neat, but if the information it’s based on is simply wrong, then its misleading people."

Of course this is indicative of a much larger problem of trying to obtain accurate information and statistics from the internet. While it is unlikely that the value of Infographics won’t be completely abolished, the same rule apply to content on your website; if you expect people to link back to your site based on your infographic, you will need to ensure that it is:

Relevant to your industry and to your visitors.
Offers accurate sources for acquired information/statistics.
Gives the viewer new information, tells them how to do something, or describes a process.
Free of spammy content and meta information.

"Any infographics you create will do better if they’re closely related to your business and it needs to be fully disclosed what you are doing," Cutts advised.
Similar to what happened with Squidoo lenses, we are seeing another web-trend that has been over-used and abused by online marketers and now we are seeing the resulting smack-down from Google.

Like all other web trends, it is not so much a question of the usefulness of the trend, but how long it will take Google to devalue the tactic once it becomes abused. Any tactic that attemps to garner backlinks must always relevant to the user, rich in content, and be free of nefarious ploys to abuse the tactic.

By employing only white-hat tactics, any strategies or tactics you employ will allow you to weather the storms of any Google updates. It is this practice that has allowed Beanstalk SEO Inc. to pass through barrage of Panda & Penguin updates unscathed to consitently maintain our rankings.

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 12:03 pm

Categories: Google,Google,social media
Tags: infographics —

July 3, 2012

Chromecraft? Build With Chrome!

I’ve always said that Minecraft is like digital LEGO® that you can save and share with friends. Sure Minecraft is increasingly fun to play and actually ‘collect’ the bricks, but at it’s core it’s a lot like LEGO®.

The problem with Minecraft is that we don’t all share the same map. Some servers try to accommodate everyone, but I don’t think there’s any way that a single map could support everyone playing on it. This means that you could build something incredible, like Castle Black from Game of Thrones, that nobody ever comes across. Bummer.

Enter the new Build With Chrome website from Google and LEGO®! That’s right! My favourite browser mixed with my favourite game!

Right now the ‘world map’ is limited to Australia and New Zealand, but each tile of the map becomes ‘owned’ by the first person to build on it, so they will have to make the map bigger soon!

I gave it a go and started to get used to the controls pretty quick, but really found some polish lacking, at least on my work PC which isn’t rigged up for 3D graphics.

What’s this got to do with SEO opportunities? Well web presence is all about putting your company on-line, and when the whole world map is available to build on, you can guess what’s going to be built on our square?

Already this morning there’s a land rush and the tiles are all getting claimed. So if you wanted to plant your flag in Australia, you better hurry up before all the shrimp are gone from the BBQ.

Heck you can just sit back and watch as people’s published ‘builds’ are approved and start popping up on the map. Really neat work from Google!

As the name suggests, it’s a lot of HTML5 web content that’s been designed to work well with Chrome. So far I’ve tried it on Opera and Firefox with errors both times, leaving me to suggest that ‘buildwithchrome.com’ is a ‘chrome only’ site for now.

Other news..

Yep it’s been a bit slow on our blog lately, but there’s lots of buzz from Google IO, and the latest services like Google Now that we’ll be talking about very soon!

I’ve also been working behind the scenes on the programming posts so if you enjoyed our last one there’s more to come and they all touch on SEO implementation so there will be something for everyone.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 10:26 am

Categories: Browsers,Code Tests,Coding,Google,Google Chrome,html 5,Mozilla Firefox,Opera,Search Engine News,Technology
Tags: Build with Chrome, Google IO, LEGO, Minecraft —

June 28, 2012

Chrome on iOS: Your move Apple

We know that Apple has been making a break from Google, I even blogged about it last week in my ‘Apple: On the Charge!‘ post discussing the switch away from Google Maps and Google Search.

Now, almost as if they were holding back a sucker punch, Google has released a version of Chrome for iOS. This means that you can stay logged into Chrome on almost any device you can connect to the internet with, and that’s some pretty big bragging rights!

If this was DnD Google just landed a 19 on a d20 attack roll and with Google’s attack bonus Apple is going to either get a critical head shot or get lucky with a dodge roll.

Here’s the video Google put out to tease us (this is also a great round up of the Chrome profile option):

Now don’t get too excited.. Even with a video demonstration from Google, word is that the App isn’t available yet and common opinion is that Apple is going to stall or veto the option to use Chrome on iOS.

Keep in mind that the browser demo is using the Safari Webkit engine, not Google’s modified engine or rendering improvements. You won’t get flash support from this, and you also won’t be able to make this your default browser even if Apple allows it, which is still dicey.

We’ve been a bit light on the blog this week due to end of month madness but we’ll be back to regular soon, and just in case we don’t manage a Friday post, Happy Canada Day!

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 1:27 pm

Categories: Apple Safari,Browsers,Google,Google Chrome,just for fun,mobile,Search Engine News,Technology,web design
Tags: canada day, Chrome on iOS —

June 13, 2012

Google’s New Hot Searches

Google has just announced a new update to their search feature Google Trends, called "Hot Searches." This allows users performing searches in Google Trends to see a list of trending search terms in the U.S. to offer a glimpse into the public’s collective mind.

The Hot Searches list is updated hourly from an algorithm that analyzes millions of searched and then determines which queries are trending topics. The service has been given a new look and feel to make the interface more visual and now groups trending searches together to give you more detailed data regarding those searches.

Images and links to new articles allow the user a quick overview to see exactly why these topics are trending and the ability to find out more about them instantly. Previous versions only allowed a user to view 20 daily results.

The new system incorporates filtering to ensure that only the hottest stories of the day are shown. Newest and faster rising search terms usually refer to the same news story.

Google has now aggregated them into one entry, which lists all the "Related searches" that go along with the main story. An additional new feature provides an indication of how many related searches have been conducted for each topic within the 24 hour period in which it was trending.

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 10:57 am

Categories: Google
Tags: google hot searches, google trends —

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