April 5,
2006
In This Issue:
1. Earning a User's Trust
2. In the News - Google dominates, Googlebot,
SEO in 2006
3. More News Headlines
4. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Earning a User's Trust
Here's what I say when a client or prospect asks
me what the No. 1 thing they need to do for their
web site to succeed: You have to get people to
trust you. Trust is the first and most important
element of succeeding online. If users don't trust
you or your web site, they won't buy your products,
order your services, or believe what you say.
The obvious question, then, is How do you earn
that trust?
That's one of the subjects on my "future
articles to write for OWTweb.com" list, but
for now there's a good list of ideas from the
Web Credibility Project, which is part of the
Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab.
Stanford
Guidelines for Web Credibility
I don't know if those 10 are listed in any sort
of priority or importance. If so, I'd certainly
want to re-order them a bit. Numbers 2, 4, 5,
and 6 would be at the top of my list in some order.
But it's a good list overall.
_________________
In The News
Google Still Dominant SE
Perhaps no surprise here. According to a couple
recent news articles, Google is dominating the
UK, referring 75% of all UK visitors to other
sites on the web. Yahoo is 2nd in the UK at only
9%. Amazing.... Meanwhile, in the U.S., the latest
numbers show Google up to a 42% search share,
with Yahoo next at 28%.
New Googlebot
Those of you who keep a close on your web stats
and/or log files (and you all should) will want
to know that there's a new Googlebot going around.
The new crawler is part of Google's new "BigDaddy"
infrastructure, and it seems to have a very good
appetite for pages. Here are the user agent strings
for the old and the new crawler so you know what
you're seeing:
OLD: Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
NEW: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
SEO in 2006
And finally, I've begun posting the "SEO
in 2006" article I've mentioned a couple
times here in Net Gains. Why the long delay? I
started writing, then kept writing and writing
and writing some more. The article is so long
I'm breaking it up into four pieces. Part one
is available now.
SEO
in 2006, Part 1: Search Engine Visibility = Bloodsport
_________________
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.
Google
beefs up local advertising with logos
March 31, 2006 - Reuters
How
to build dynamic-width pages now
March 28, 2006 - Digital Web
Designing Web sites for wider screens has become
more important.
Google
Base being integrated into Google results
March 23, 2006 - Search Engine Guide
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
Wrapping it Up
A strange and sudden illness kept me home last
Wednesday, which is why there was no Net Gains
a week ago. Lots of news posted on OWTweb.com
during the week off, though -- more than just
the couple articles linked above. Be sure to take
a look.
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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