SEO & GEO
21 Jul 2011
Google Directory has been retired
Back in 2000 Google Directory launched to take on Yahoo's; eleven years later Google quietly retired it. A look back at why directories stopped scaling on the open web.
Technical SEO, search intelligence, and the code behind it — notes from 20+ years of making websites work harder.
Back in 2000 Google Directory launched to take on Yahoo's; eleven years later Google quietly retired it. A look back at why directories stopped scaling on the open web.
First it was doorway pages, then selling links, now buying them. Google's warnings in Webmaster Tools keep piling up — and the wording matters more than it seems.
Rankings are no longer enough to prove SEO is working. The whole point is free traffic — so it's analytics that tell you what's really going on.
Google extended rel=canonical to the HTTP header — so PDFs, videos and other non-HTML files can finally declare which version belongs in the index.
In SEO there is a mantra: Content is King. The time has come for it to change. A Google experiment links articles to author profiles — and the author starts to matter more.
Analytics and Webmaster Tools now talk to each other around +1, Likes and Tweets. Interesting — and a reminder of why a client's Google account access matters at pitch.
A few days with Google+ on the pre-invite list. The missing link between Facebook and Twitter — Circles done properly, privacy controls Facebook never managed, and no ads yet.
A Bing Webmaster Tools bug lets any account download data for domains they don't own. Tempting to keep quiet and use it for pitching — but I'd rather sleep, so I reported it.
Google is experimenting with showing a click count below PPC ads. Once searchers see one ad racking up clicks, it's hard to imagine they'll still favour the organic result.