April 6,
2005
In
This Issue:
1. The Google Patent Undressed
2. In the News - Google Maps, SERP Comparison Tool
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Web site width
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
The Google Patent Undressed
Of course all heck breaks loose while I'm out of the office;
doesn't it always work like that for you, too?
The big buzz over the past two weeks has been about a Google
search patent application which was discovered on the U.S. Patent
and
Trademark Office web site. "The Google Patent", as it's
quickly been dubbed, is quite long and offers incredible details
about a method of ranking web pages. Immediately after it was discovered
there was some speculation that it may just be a red herring from
Google. Some also suggested that the details presented in the patent
application are not necessarily how Google currently ranks web
pages, but just an overview of one method of ranking that Google
wants to patent. Red herring or not, there's a lot of agreement
that the patent details many of the ranking methods we've long
assumed Google (and other SEs) is using.
The main thing, and it's even in the title of the patent filing,
is that historical data associated with a web page is a strong
factor in ranking. Every document in Google's index has a "creation
date" -- the date Google first became aware of the document.
And based on that, Google analyzes historical data such as "how
many inbound links does a document have now, compared to how many
it had on last check?" and "what is the current status
of anchor text on inbound links compared to the status on last
check?" and a lot more things like that.
I suspect the actual patent filing will put a fair amount of
you to sleep (but I'll link to it below anyway!). Luckily for
all of
us, a couple enterprising SEO-types have undressed the patent
filing, publishing what they think are the most important nuggets
of information
to be pulled from it. If you've ever had even the slightest curiosity
about how pages are ranked -- and I suspect every one of you
reading this newsletter does -- these recaps make for good, educational
reading.
Google patent filing: Information
retrieval based on historical data
Graywolf: Google Patent Analysis
SEOmoz: Google Historical Data Patent
_________________
In The News
Google Maps Adds Satellite Imagery
Google Maps, which quickly became the coolest online map service
right after it was introduced, just got cooler with the addition
of satellite imagery. When you put an address into the maps service,
look for the small "Satellite" link in the upper right,
and then start playing. Don't tell the boss, but yesterday I found
my current home, the house I grew up in in Pennsylvania (along
with my grade school, my little league fields and the local mall),
and the house we used to stay in at the Jersey shore. Oh, and my
friends' houses, too.
On the flip side, it's bound to raise some privacy concerns because
you can zoom in quite a bit to any address. I saw my car in the
parking lot when I put in the address here at OWT. Yikes.
Google Maps
Yahoo/Google Comparison Tool
Here's another one of those "compare search results tools" we
talk about every now and then. This one just covers Google and
Yahoo, but does it in a nice, clean layout which shows both sets
of SERPs in adjacent frames.
YaGooHoogle
_________________
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.
The Myth of Rankings - Beyond Search Engine Optimization
March 30, 2005 - Search Engine Guide
Looking for links in all the wrong places?
March 29, 2005 - Search Engine Guide
Why quality content is key for search engines
March 24, 2005 - Search Engine Watch
Often, higher rankings in search engines go to websites with
higher quality content that earn more links.
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Matt:
Here's a question I think you already addressed in Q & A a
while back, but since these things are always changing, I need
to ask again. How wide in pixels should a website be? Should it
be constrained to a certain width or be set up to be a certain
minimum (say 600 or 700 pixels) but expand to the user's browser
window width? I used to make my sites 600 pixels wide x 400 high,
but that seems ridiculously small these days. On the other hand,
probably not everyone else is enjoying an iMac G5 20".
Katryn
Hi Katryn --
There are still a lot of people surfing the web at 800 x 600,
so a web site should be designed to look nicely and function
correctly
for those folks. We're not at the point yet where you can
ignore that group of web surfers. I do think it's okay to
ignore the
600 x 400 crowd at this point -- they've numbered less
than 1% of web
surfers for several years now.
Whether or not a site should be a fixed-width or not is
a matter of taste. I prefer fixed-width because I know
the
site will
look as similar as it can for all users no matter what
platform they're
on, what size monitor they have, what browser they use,
etc. That said, I'm thinking about experimenting with
variable width designs
on some upcoming projects just to get a reminder on the
pros
and cons of both types of design.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Better get to work - lots of post-vacation catching up to do
around here. Hope business is treating you well these days!
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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