December 22,
2004
In
This Issue:
1. Web-Smart Colors
2. In the News - SE updates, SE wars, etc.
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Why are SERPs always changing?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Web-Smart Colors
It's pretty common at this time of year to take stock of what
we've done over the past 12 months, and think about what's ahead.
You'll no doubt see plenty of year-in-review and prediction shows
on TV, and in magazines and newspapers the rest of this month.
It happens in the web design world, too.
Forty Media, a Phoenix-based shop, recently took a stab at predicting
what's ahead for the web design industry in 2005, covering a
variety of sub-topics such as "Looks", "Layout", "Coding
and technology" and more.
Forty Media: Web Design in 2005
The one I want to comment on is "Colors."
First, they
predict the color of the year for 2005 will be ... get this ...
BROWN. Brown?? Please no. Unless your company
name is UPS, let's all agree to stay away from brown, except
perhaps
as a complementary or alternative color.
Secondly, the last prediction in the "Colors" section
offers a link that was new to me -- and just what I've been looking
for: Web-smart color palette.
Back in the day we all operated from a "web-safe" color
palette, which offered a very limited set of colors we could use
in creating web sites. If you wanted to make sure your site's color
scheme would look consistent on all monitors, you had to choose
from only 216 web-safe colors. With monitors much improved in the
past few years, and able to reproduce consistently a much wider
array of colors, web-safe design isn't really needed. But as the
link suggests, web-smart color design is a great replacement --
more than 4,000 colors, all of which should display consistently
on modern browsers.
If you're a web designer, this is a good one too bookmark.
It even offers tools to help you locate and select hex codes
for
the colors
you want.
moreCrayons: Web-Smart Color Palette
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In The News
Google and Yahoo updating
Search engine watchers (like me) confirm that both Yahoo and
Google are in the process of updating their indexes right now,
though it's a bit too early to tell if either update is "major",
or just a case of tweaking their algorithms here and there for
more targeted purposes. But if you keep an eye on your search engine
rankings, you're likely to see changes soon -- if not already.
I've done a super-quick check on a couple of our clients, and
I'm seeing changes in both search engines, but nothing major. If
any
readers notice changes with your own rankings in Yahoo and/or
Google, feel free to tell me about it. Use the questions@owtweb.com
address.
Search Engine Wars
Charles Ferguson writes an excellent article in the January issue
of Technology Review, outlining and updating what's at stake
in the ongoing "search engine wars" between Google and Microsoft
mainly, with Yahoo in the mix, too. But the focus is clearly the
battle between Google and Microsoft:
"Google's defeat is not a foregone conclusion. Indeed,
if it does everything right, it could become an enormously powerful
and profitable
company, representing the most serious challenge Microsoft
has faced since the Apple Macintosh. But if Microsoft gets
serious
about search -- and there is every reason to believe that
it will
-- Google will need brilliant strategy and flawless execution
simply to survive."
The article is lengthy and at times far more tech/geeky than
I suspect most of you care to read, but if you're up to the
challenge, I think you'll enjoy reading it. It's one of the best
articles
of its kind I've seen, and there have been plenty of articles
like
it over the past year. If you're with us mainly for the Xs
and Os of web design and search engine rankings, skip it
-- this
one's more about the industry than the How Tos.
Technology Review: What's Next for Google
Yahoo Video Search
Speaking of search engine wars, Yahoo continues to bring
new features and services on board to capture your
attention and
loyalty. The
most recent is Yahoo Video Search, which is in beta
mode and does exactly what you'd expect it to do: search
for video clips
on the
web.
Yahoo Video Search beta
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More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Annual Web Site Checklist
December 20, 2004 - OWT
Search-a-palooza '04
December 17, 2004 - ClickZ.com
Unnoticed fee could raise Net domain costs
December 16, 2004 - News.com
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
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This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
Can you explain why our web site keeps moving up and down in
Google? We don't check every day or anything like that, but it
seems
every time we do check to see how we're doing, something has
changed. One week we're on the first page, the next time we're
not. And even when we stay on the same page, we're never in the
same spot. Are we doing something wrong?
Eric
Hi Eric --
No, you're not doing anything wrong. Well -- you might be, but
if you are, it has no bearing on the fact that your site moves
up and down in the SERPs. Changes like this are completely
normal in most industries. It's more unusual for your site
to NOT move
around in the rankings.
A couple years ago, Google updated its index once a month.
In the webmaster community, we called this the "Google Dance." It
would last for a few days, sites would dance around the SERPS,
moving up and down, and then everything would settle when the dance
was over and you could count on holding your current position until
the next dance the following month.
But about a year-and-a-half ago, maybe a little longer, Google
stopped monthly updates in favor of a continuous update. Their
computing power is such that they can now crawl the web constantly
looking for new sites and updating existing sites already in
their index. This is why it's important to keep your web site
as fresh
as possible -- if you do, you can "train" Google's crawler
to visit your site regularly, which means any new content you add
to your site will be indexed more quickly, and your site as a whole
should rank higher because it's fresh. This is also why the Google
SERPs change every day.
Yahoo and MSN Search (which is still in beta mode) also crawl
the web regularly, although Yahoo's SERPs don't seem to change
as regularly
as Google's do. MSN is still incomplete, and still too new
to say what their SERPs will look like.
My last comment is this: while you can't control the SERPS,
the better you make your web site and the more you follow the
steps
in our Search
Engine Success Checklist article,
the more likely you can achieve high rankings and keep them.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
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Wrapping it Up
If all goes well, there will still be a newsletter next week.
The holidays haven't thrown off the schedule as much as I thought
they would. In any case, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy
2005 to all our readers -- the email gang and the web-based readers.
We're planning to rename the newsletter starting with the first
edition of 2005 -- "OWT Newsletter" is kinda boring.
We have some ideas, but if you want to share your own suggestions,
feel free to do so at the questions@owtweb.com address.
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
The OWT Newsletter is a weekly service offered free to anyone
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