Search Engine Optimization

Anyone who owns a blog and continues to maintain and write in it on a daily basis is always seeking new ways to deliver consistent amounts of new unique traffic in order to build up their name in an area of business online. Being included in Google News could bring heaping amounts of new steady traffic but there are some steps that need to be taken prior to even trying to be included.

Here are some tips that could help you when submitting your blog to
Google News:

Unique Content
Your content on your blog should always be unique and never duplicated. If you are writing about other news related sources online that is fine but you need to be able to include some of your own stories and news as well.

Show Personality
How is your blog going to stand out? If you are in a category that is very congested you could find yourself in line with many other like-minded blogs trying to be included into the news stream. Write with some personality so you really stick out from your crowd of competitors.

Have Multiple Authors
This seems to be a big sticking point when trying to be included into Google News. Your blog or news source should have multiple authors writing every single day. Any news source online always has more than one reporter or writer so Google must be looking at it from a standpoint of quality and diversification. If you have multiple authors or writers you are going to have a much more diverse approach to your reporting’s creating good journalism over time.

Website & SEO
Your website needs to look professional and be well optimized. Google is not going to let a news source in that is sloppy and poorly built. Keep your design clean and always search engine friendly. Look at your content and URL structures and ask yourself is there enough search engine optimization elements or too much? Google is not going to take a blog that has more links than content on each post.

Google News is an amazing way to bring in heaping amounts of newly found traffic but there are some steps you need to take prior. Try and follow these guidelines and eventually Google might let you in.

The Internet has become a battleground lately; instead of fighting over adult content, trademark rights,

search results and market share, the fighting is over the very speed at which you can receive any data.

Recently, Google and Verizon have made a compromise over net neutrality and the eventual rules to follow.

This “regulation” over the way online traffic is handled has divided the internet. Despite the compact made

between Google and Verizon, Facebook, Ebay, Skype and Amazon, have spoken out against the pact, and

stated their unwillingness to accept these new rules.

As part of the new pact, Verizon acknowledged it is prepared to accept restrictions if they would have the freedom to charge Internet companies a surcharge to have their services carried on a new faster channel that would run parallel to the existing Internet.

As a compromise, they would insist upon no restrictions on their ability to block or slow services on their mobile network.

Google however lost some former allies in the longtime campaign for net neutrality.

Google, along with a collection of public interest groups, are part of the Open Internet Coalition.

Google’s partners in this coalition criticized the company for putting together a proposal that they said

betrayed their previously agreed upon net neutrality principles.  Amazon and eBay, appeared to be

concerned with the Verizon and Google alliance, but did not make a statement in this regard.

Facebook however has made a point publicly to part ways with Google. In a statement, Facebook, has

suggested that exempting wireless networks from net neutrality rules, is the wrong approach.

This begs the question from some us; what is network neutrality?

To summarize, network neutrality is a principle based on the idea that Internet service providers (ISPs)

should be required to treat all web traffic equally. This means that regardless of content type or origin, there

is no control over the data passing from content providers to end users. ISPs should not block any lawful

content or control their infrastructure to preferentially deal with any kind of data.

Proponents to the regulation say that exponential growth in usage, specifically around video applications,

rising peer-to-peer file sharing, and higher infrastructure costs means their business has become more

costly.

Their argument centers around the ability to control the data rates for the various types of content;

tightening the pipeline for individuals and slowing speeds at particular times, and deciding which content

gets bandwidth preference will allow the delegation of what they deem as more urgent applications.

Opponents to the regulation, contend that everyone has the right to open access to the Internet. They state

their concern that any erosion of net neutrality would usher in an era of tiered service, where

telecommunication companies would monopolize the Internet, and personal users will be throttled down to

dial up speed. The fear is that these same companies would be allowed to strong arm users to pay a

premium for barely usable service and force out any new competition. Most people believe this move

would freeze innovation, and basically create an unnecessary toll system for regulated access, and remove

the freedom that exists online currently.

In addition, many industry groups see any government intervention as the first step toward government

control of the Internet.

The next logical question would seem to be, how will this war end?

Sides have changed since the inception of this idea. For example, Google who was once an advocate of

network neutrality has switched sides with Verizon to embrace a shared vision of control. Their vision of

control does not extend to mobile traffic and certain content that benefits their companies.

Amazingly, and temporarily, the Government has essentially switched sides by calling off negotiations for

the time being. The FCC stated they did not feel the framework was properly in place to preserve the

freedom of the Internet as it exists.

A truce it seems, is the end of the discussion for now, but rest assured this issue is far from over.

Google released the Caffeine Web indexing system on June 8th, which according to Google, is 50 percent fresher search results from its previous index and contains more content than ever. This development is on the back of the Mayday update which here at Metamend we wrote about recently.

The basic explanation of how Caffeine works, is that it processes hundreds of thousands of Web pages in parallel and updates these results more regularly on a global scale. Google Research head, Peter Norvig was quoted as saying the company was updating its index every ten seconds now.

This represents a change from collecting big “batches” of Web pages to index for its search, instead Google is publishing more frequently, somewhat in real time; it processes the web in bits and pieces instead.

This means that new Web pages or newly added information on existing Web pages are added to Google almost immediately. This has resulted in Caffeine making Google searches faster than Yahoo or Bing at present.

This doesn’t mean Google changed its search formula beyond the Mayday algorithm update. These changes also will not make Google search results populate any faster; all that really changed is that Google has made it easier for you to find new content, and find that content more quickly.

Social media is set to benefit most from this update.

In the past, any new posts that normally would have been missing from search results, because Google wouldn’t have found and indexed it yet, are now visible. These same posts will be found in Google search results more quickly with Caffeine.

So in the wake of these changes, let’s talk percentages:

Caffiene claims to index new information 50 percent faster than Google’s old search queries.

Caffeine adds new information to the index at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day, and takes up nearly 100 million GB of storage in one database.

Google is still the top search engine, with 64 percent of search queries, but that’s down 1 percent compared to last month.
Microsoft and Yahoo! combined now make up about 30 percent of the search market.

This is not to say that Bing and Yahoo are out.
Microsoft in May made major increases in four major categories. Some believe this is due to the company’s focus on verticals., but the results are indisputable;
Searches on Bing related to automotive, health, shopping, and travel all increased by 95%, 105%, 100%, and 71%,  compared to this month last year.

This demonstrates a desire to compete and based upon these changes, Bing is also doing something right.

Back to Google, what does it take to orchestrate a change of this magnitude? Executives at Google are reluctant to release any specific details with regard to how or what they changed but they have released some interesting analogies:

Rough calculations suggest that you would need 1,562,500 ipads, that would stretch for 235.75 miles or 625,000 of the largest iPods stacked end-to-end which would go for more than 40 miles to equal the new storage it requires to make Caffiene effective.

Thats a lot of electronics.

Aside from the Apple comparison, it will be interesting to see what Bing and Yahoo do in response to preserve or gain market share.

Perhaps, if you hit refresh in Google, Caffiene may already have the answer.