Agriya

It used to be that you would expect to have an e-mail account or three, you would receive a few messages everyday from work or from your friends, you would sniff when you saw the Spam folder say “100 New Messages”, every week, and you would consider your e-mail existence pretty fulfilling. On the other hand, there is life on the Twitter and Facebook plane that sees your Inbox full with wonderful emptiness every 15 minutes. The social media craze has not gone unnoticed as a potential area to capitalize on, in the search engine war between Bing and Google.

Microsoft’s tested the waters first in this area; there is now a special Twitter search option on Bing. When you search with this service, the results page shows a pretty hysterical cloud of tags of hot Twitter topics, along with a swarm of relevant shared links to them. You can even search among the search results you get.

Google won’t be left behind of course, having put down arrangements with Twitter. It says it plans to show Twitter search results among its regular search results; this innovation could be a few weeks coming though. But there’s not nothing quite like The Google Social Search feature that Google has planned; you could probably guess that it’s a Google Labs project yet again.

Google’s Social Search is for Google account holders only; when an account holder performs a regular search, Google looks up everything that your Twitter pals may have put up on the subject you searched for and gives you that information too. Now this is not exactly an all-new feature the way you might imagine, seeing it appear on Google’s Labs. Search websites like Crowdeye have been letting you search for Twitter results for quite a while now. It’s just that having the major search engines do it helps you do all your searching in one place. Will great new startups like Crowdeye be crowded out of the market they helped create, by the majors? Only time will tell.

Bing, Microsoft’s decision search engine, has been chipping away at the market share of its competitors since its official launch on May 28th this year. On an average, Bing has gained about half a percent a month and an overall 1.3% (9.3% in August, 8.9% in July, 8.4% in June and 8% in May) gain in the three months succeeding its launch. In about the same period Google, the market leader registered a fall of 0.3% to 64.7% while Yahoo came down by the same amount to 19.3% (source: ComScore). In August, Bing grew faster than Google for the first time, with a 31.9 percent annual increase in search queries compared to 21.6 percent growth for Google and 16.8 percent for Yahoo. So the rise in the market share of this Microsoft search engine does seem to be at the expense of the other two.

Some experts consider these early gains in the Bing market share the result of superior technology from its recent acquisitions and better algorithms for seeking the context underlying a search. Many users feel aerial photos available via Bing are more up to date and have better clarity than the corresponding Google photos. The eye-catching design too is bound to have helped Bing made inroads with viewers.

Skeptics, however, contend that this so-called increase in market share is driven by any number of factors such as the curiosity engendered by a new launch, the publicity and media hype that a hundred million dollar marketing drive is likely to generate, the fact that Bing is the default search engine on the latest versions of IE and Microsoft’s cash back offer for Bing users and is highly unlikely to last. Some of the skeptics also are casting doubts on the veracity of the statistics by stigmatizing the sources as unreliable.

A strong competitor to Google in the search market can only be good news for users. Google has for too long been almost a monopoly. The more choices that consumers get the more likely it is that necessity will drive more and more innovations in the search engine market.

One of the most used tools technology has provided us with is the concept of search engines. Business people, writers, teachers, students, and people from all facets use search engines. The most used and popular software is that of Google but one of the latest products emerged is that of Sig.ma.

This software is a tool to explore and leverage the Web of Data. At any time, information in Sigma is likely to come from multiple, unrelated Web sites – potentially any web site that embeds information in RDF, RDFa or Microformats .

Normally what search engines do is to provide any kind of information related to the data typed in which results in a lot of unwanted information being provided. The user then needs to clear the unnecessary material and select the data which is useful. In the case of sigma, it puts together a series of related inputs regarding that particular query and puts it to together as a single data sample and presents it. It currently uses mostly Yahoo! BOSS and Sindice. It primarily is used to put together that collection of data fragments (which they call a ’sigma’) into a permanent URL. This in turn can then sent around or embedded as an iframe in another web page.

One of the major disadvantages of software like this is the fact that more time is spent to remove unnecessary data that the user is not interested in. So when the user requests a specific piece of data he spends a lot of time cutting and editing the irrelevant material. And moreover, one would definitely not be interested in squandering his time clearing up another person’s messy material when he needs some information from a search engine. Sig.ma on the other hand, emerged for the sole purpose to enable people to actually obtain the information they were looking for than for just publishing papers about potential Utopian scenarios. So in that regard sig.ma was created with a lot of potential, and definitely will play an integral role in the technology of search engines by providing efficient semantic information mashup.

Every successful corporation has a responsibility to use its resources and influences to create new things for people. Bing is the latest attempt by Microsoft to gain popularity in the search market. Bing, is a new Internet search engine designed to navigate the web and find online information easily.

Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. There are hundreds of new features on Microsoft’s Bing. A few of the interesting features include:

Bing will provide useful links and information related to your search. For instance, if you search information about a black berry, Bing will provide links to reviews on the item and give you complete details about the particular product as well. This feature will reduce a user’s clicks to find specific information.

Going into search engines, typing something in, and searching items is very difficult nowadays. Bing facilitates people to save favorite sites while they are searching information. It helps them to save their time by saving their favorite stuff and accessing them at anytime.

Microsoft maintains partnerships with different online services like airlines, hotels and holiday resorts. If you are searching for flight information, Bing can offer specific information like flight deals, reviews etc.

Bing will Auto-Suggest the search queries. For instance, if you’re looking for “Obama” then it will auto-suggest some additional queries like his biography, information on his speeches, quotes, facts and so on.

Bing can also provide videos and images about an item in the search results page.

Microsoft is currently holding a third-place behind Google and Yahoo Inc. it hopes that Bing will play a big role to reach a good position in the search market. Microsoft is trying to pull people away from Google and Yahoo.

This is Abdul Malick, working as a Senior SEO analyst in Agriya Infoway Pvt Ltd. Recently, I attended the Google India Search Masters Conference 2009 on 28th February at Bangalore, Karnataka, India. It was a great opportunity to interact with other members of the Indian webmaster community and Google People.

The audiences were a mix of webmasters, bloggers, entrepreneurs, online marketers, SEO experts, web developers, etc. and all were excited to register for attending the conference.

Vivaik Bharadwaaj, Manager of the Search Quality Evaluation team in Google India and Korea, gave the welcome note. Followed by, Adam lansik, along with members of the Search Quality team at Google, lectured on webmaster central and best practices.

Following are the excellent webmaster resources that were discussed during the various sessions at the Search Conference.

· Webmaster central blog: Find the most current and official news.

· Webmaster help forum: Find answers to your search and web master tools related questions.

· Webmaster help center: Find excellent articles on webmaster guide lines.

· Third party sitemap tools: Find collection of links to tools and code snippets that generate sitemap files.

· Webmaster central on You Tube: Visit the webmaster central channel in YouTube.

· Video tutorial: Find video tutorials for webmasters.

Adam lansik gave a nice presentation on google webmaster tools and its resources. Here I have quoted some of the points from the presentation that will help in improving site performance.

· Sitemaps: Webmasters can use XML sitemaps to determine whether their site is currently included in Google’s index. Currently, maximum number of websites that show up on Google.co.in make use of XML sitemaps.

· Remove URLs: Webmasters can tell about pages they don’t want in Google index, and they will remove them from their search results.

· Traffic: Google will show you who’s linking to you and how. In addition, they also provide statistics from which one can know which pages on their site get the most links and which keyword searches drive most traffic?

· Content analysis: Use Google’s content analysis to identify potential issues with content on your site. Robots.txt allows web publishers to control search engine success at multiple levels.

In the next session, Koti Ivaturi, from the Search Quality team at Google, gave a brief description on webmaster help forum. It was really one of the interesting sessions.

Rajat Mukherjee, group product manager at Google, who is working on Google Custom Search platform, presented a great speech on Google custom search through which web masters can define their own search engines.

Ankit Gupta who is working on making mobile products discoverable and accessible at Google, as well as providing a consistent and rationalized experience, illustrated about building mobile friendly websites.

And finally, the topics Google analytics and website optimizer were demonstrated by Dinesh jain (A Google Analytics Specialist) / Deepak Kumar (from the Google Analytics team, and works on Google’s Website Optimizer).

Google analytics: Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about visitors to a website. It is very useful in study of keyword research and how much traffic comes from keywords.

Website optimizer: Website optimizer, which is a Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing website and traffic without spending a cent.

A webmaster is a businessperson who uses online media to sell products and/or offer services. They cover not just the technical aspects of overseeing Web site construction and maintenance but also management of content, advertising, marketing and designing in order to fulfill their website.

Developing a quality, unique website tactically designed to sell your products or offering services, is one of the main factors to reach success. However, it is an initial stage. So as a webmaster, you have to build a website consistent in look, feel and design. Keep colors and themes constant throughout the site. And one you have to keep in mind while designing your website is most of the web surfers find what they are looking for, through top search engines. Make sure that your page is designed to improve your placements in the search engines.

Having a wonderful site is the preliminary step to start an online business, but it won’t serve the purpose until the site is found by visitors. So, promoting is must to reach more audiences. Take a look at some suggestions laid below to promote the website effectively.

Don’t forget to motivate visitors by giving quality content on your products and services in an interactive way. When you provide your visitors with quality information that teaches and informs, you are not only gaining their trust but also there are more chance to turn visitors into an eager customers, which is very important for running a successful business and earn more money.

Live chat is an excellent customer service feature. Provide online chat rooms on your site where visitors and customers can gather and discuss information about products and services offered by you. This feature will help people to get the information instantly instead of waiting for hours in telephone and net for support mails. This will surely attract more visitors to your site.

Make sure your site works. Check all your websites links regularly. Dead links will hurt your position in the search engines.

Provide a sitemap to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. This assists the visitors who are using a sitemap as a quick and easy means to find the information.

Appearance of your website is the one of the important factors in determining your website’s value. If your site doesn’t look professional or pleasing to the eyes at first glance, its value will be reduced. So use effective webpage layout for designing as it will assists you to achieve a clean, professional and easy to read page.

Another important thing is, try to pay more attention to expose benefits of products and services than its features. This will surely increase your profit, sales and beat your competition.

Create the website and promote your business effectively and make it shine!

Everyone’s goal is to be successful in their field. You can be successful in online marketing by following two simple steps:

Step 1: Attract more visitors to your site
Step 2: Turn visitors into customers

Right now, you may think that it is easier said than done. Yes! I agree with you. This article will provide some tips that will make it easier for you to go through the above mentioned steps and achieve your goal.
Attract more visitors to your site by listing your site in search engines, advertising your product/service in other popular sites, bulk e-mailing, pop-up ads, building link popularity, and offering e-books or articles and classified advertisements. Analyze the statistics of site visitors, to find out the weakness of the site and look to improve upon those areas.

If your site is not listed within first ten rankings of any search engine, the probability of visitors finding it reduces greatly. Hence you have to use the advanced SEO techniques to be able to fair very well on search engines.

You can also increase your web traffic by writing to e-zines or to any free article sites available on the net. The article should include a link to your site, so that every time someone clicks on your link, it brings traffic to your site for free.

Once you have grabbed the visitors to your site, your next job is to make sure that all of them stay glued to it. This can be done by providing enriched information about the products or services offered. It is also important to keep your content fresh and alive at all times.

Some tips to enrich your site content are, using images, listing out the features in points (to make it easier for reader), posting a list of all your products and mentioning features of each version in detail, providing clear and simple content, and offering guest posting opportunities to motivate visitors to become part of your blog community.

If the visitors find your site useful, you can be sure that they will buy your product. It is hence in your hands to expose your product effectively and promote your business online.