WordPress.com Goes Down!!! Updates to Follow!!!

WordPress.com and the millions of blogs hosted by it have gone down for currently unknown reasons. Not only are blogs hosted on WordPress.com down, but WordPress VIP blogs are out of commission as well.

All it currently says on WordPress-hosted blogs is the following:

UPDATE 2: From @Wordpressdotcom “We’ve isolated the issue on WordPress.com, and we are working on a fix.”

In all, the downtime was around an hour!

Stay Tuned to SEO-Specialist-Online.com for Further Updates!!!!

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Google announces New Search Index

June 9 2010 Google announced the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before — no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

We’ve built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

Is Windows OS Doomed?

Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs

Says it is!

Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs says he’s predicted the steady decline of rival Microsoft’s Windows operating system (OS). That swipe at Microsoft comes only a day after Google says it’s phasing out MS Windows as it ramps up internal testing of its Chrome OS.

Jobs made the comments Tuesday night in an onstage interview at the D: All Things Digital conference. Jobs said he believes computers running Windows would begin a decline in popularity as people move to new platforms for their web needs: devices like the iPad, other tablet computers, or smartphones. Apple CEO Compares PCs to Big Old Trucks

Jobs even went so far as to compare the standard Windows PC with motorized trucks, which he said were at their height when people lived on farms, but have faded in importance as people have moved to cities and suburbs.

Although the logic of his analogy seems questionable, other industry experts agree with Jobs on the decline of Windows PCs. “He is pretty clear about ‘it’s over’, and it is,” said DreamWorks chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberger. (Source: ft.com)

Katzenberger agreed that people in the future will rely less on Windows, noting that he’d personally started using an Apple iPad and RIM BlackBerry combination rather than a laptop.

Windows Security Issues: a Top Concern

Jobs’ attack on Windows comes only day’s after Google said it would stop using the ubiquitous OS. The company reportedly cited security concerns, though it’s likely the announcement was more of an attempt to build up hype over Google’s own Chrome OS. Chrome will begin debuting on netbooks soon, with plans for use on regular laptops to follow. (Source: pcworld.com)

Jobs also cited security concerns in suggesting the future decline of Windows. He added that less-than-stellar battery life and poor user experiences will force the Windows PC out of its market dominance.

Google Mayday Alert

You may have heard that Google made a pretty big change that has some site owners complaining about lost traffic Cookie cutters are a great idea… for making cookies. But when it comes to marketing, a cookie cutter approach can do more damage than good.

Unfortunately, many search marketers do exactly that when they treat their keywords, ad copy, landing pages and customers all the same.

Webmasters take note of Google Algorithm Change

Websites across the world have noticed slumps in their Google rankings and traffic levels. SEOs have been frantically seeking explanations and deliberating the true cause of these sudden dips and increases. Is this search Armageddon?

Is Mayday the algorithm update that pushes many towards extinction?

Probably not. In fact almost certainly not. While Google has been predictably aloof over just what their Mayday algorithm update includes, evidence suggests it isn’t something that most will need to be overly concerned about.

If you have suffered a large drop in your site traffic, indexed pages and long-tail keyword performance since May 1st, you are not alone though. This is particularly true for larger sites, such as those ecommerce outlets with a
diverse product range, according to Search Engine Land [see: Google Confirms “Mayday” Update Impacts Long Tail Traffic].
In the first real post to address the issue with facts rather than speculation, Vanessa Fox got to the crux of the update. As we know, Google have been looking to achieve a few fundamental things with their search engine:

1)    Improve speed of results
2)    Improve relevance of results
3)    Increase the amount of time users spend on Google

The Mayday update (along with the left-hand navigation) appears simply to target these three principles. Leaving Google’s stickiness to one side for a moment, the biggest issue for site owners and webmasters is quality. Unfortunately ‘quality’ is something of a loose term and Google certainly don’t do much to provide a definitive answer as to what they expect.

In Vanessa Fox’s piece for Search Engine Land, we get an understanding for how and why some sites have been affected. We also see how deeper pages using long tail keywords are being impacted the greater.

To see how some sites may suffer, here is a quick (slightly exaggerated) example:

Say you have a website with 30 pages. You have just 12 core products and have optimized the entire site to target these pages. There is an excellent linking profile, including plenty of deep links to your individual product. You have also developed a good internal link structure, with all pages easily accessible and sharing their content.

Better still, you have unique content on each page and customer reviews to keep a fresh stream of information for the search engines to index.

Your competitor on the other hand has a sprawling site covering thousands of pages. They offer a variety of products in a wide number of categories. Each product has the manufacturer’s description attached, but no dynamic or unique content. The site has a high number of links, but the majority go to the Homepage and other main money pages.

Now you both have the same product. You are also both targeting the phrase ‘Sky Blue Brand X Sports Jacket’. This is a long tail keyword; it is also a term that you are likely to be far more optimized for being as though you
have created original content. This could mean that you could now possibly overtake your rival due to your page’s greater authority.

Google usually tries to use a variety of methods to determine a website’s authority. Going beyond just including the main search keyword, it looks for synonyms, uniqueness and of course the strength of its linking profile.

If you have no links to your child pages across the site, there is a fair chance that your pages will suffer a Mayday relevance drop. Equally if you don’t have unique content, even on what you might consider to be less important
pages (such as individual products), you could see a dip.

Brand Recognition Counts

Seemingly, the brands are benefiting most from this. Google have been working hard to ensure that brands (or their preferred distributor) are being seen first for their own goods and products first. This of course is common sense, but hasn’t always been the case (and still isn’t).

So if you were ranking first for a Sony Bravia television, you probably won’t now. As I say, this is something they have been slowly rolling out over a number of algorithm updates (especially the Florida update at the end of last
year); now though it seems to be for more apparent than ever before.

What is the Solution?

If you have 10,000 products on your site, writing 300 words of engaging, unique content for each just isn’t going to be viable. Neither are you likely to be able to gain the number of links required to boost its profile sufficiently.

The solution really is about prioritizing. If you have found your traffic and rankings slip significantly on a select few pages particularly, you’ve got yourself a starting point. See what you can do to make the page unique. Review the link structure and the content, see where improvements can be made and implement them.

Site-wide changes including customer comments, can help you to increase your page’s content organically and ensure that the Googlebot has something to crawl. Ensure that your internal linking structure allows for
straightforward crawling and the passing on of page strength.

Should you Panic?

Easy for us to say, but there’s no reason to get too carried away with this. Even if your rankings have suffered take stock of the situation, look at who overtook you, what they’re doing differently and make changes accordingly. Don’t resort to spam, don’t try to buy up some links to quickly reinstate your position. Focus on quality and develop your site.

Traffic isn’t everything. You need to be more focused on ROI, so only when this suffers should you really be concerned. Obviously the two often go hand in hand; but many site owners are seeing that whilst some rankings have faltered, others have thrived.

Invariably one person’s loss is another’s gain in the world of search engine rankings, so it is far from doom and gloom. If you haven’t seen any significant changes, you can rest a little easier. There’s no reason to cease your website optimization, if anything there’s more reason to continue.

At the moment the only solid confirmation of the Mayday update has come in the form of a Matt Cutts YouTube post (below). This simply confirms the above, as well as dismissing suggestions that it is part of Caffeine or indeed is likely to be a temporary thing.

If you have experienced significant changes, good or bad, keep us posted. For those that have suffered drops, do you hold Google accountable? What are you doing to get traffic back? What affect has it had on your overall business?

Generally speaking, do you believe that the Mayday update has been a positive thing for searchers or not? Is Google giving too much weight to the big brands and letting down the small guys? Are they playing God online, holding the fortunes of millions in their hands?