Posts Tagged google
Google’s Image Search Colour Filter
Posted by Chris in Tips & Tutorials on April 13th, 2009
Google has recently added a great addition to their image search. Well I think it is a nice little addition..
“The option that lets you filter images by the predominant color has been added to Google Image Search’s interface. Just click on “All colors” above the search results and you can choose one of the 12 available colors.” – Google Blog
Of all the advanced options in the image search, this has to be the most practical… now I can find all the red WRX’s! 
Canonical URL Links / Tags
Posted by Chris in Search Engine Optimisation on March 25th, 2009
I have just been reading up on this new canonical link tag that the three top search engines have started implementing. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have just announced a new tag, which we can use to tell the search engines which URL it should have for the current page. – yoast.com
In short, this is a way for SEO’s to help prevent duplicate content from being cached in search engines. This tag can be used on pages where there is duplicate information on a number of pages and points the search engines to the page that you would prefer to have cached. A good example is were you may have a page with variables in the URL like session keys or variables used to sort data. The same content will appear on many pages, but you don’t want duplicate content penalties. Even example.com and www.example.com, which point to the same page (normally), will show up as duplicate content.
Sample URL that may have duplicate content:
http://www.pagestrength.com/2009/03/canonical-url-links-tags/?source=firefox-search
Example canonical code that should be placed in the <head> tags:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.pagestrength.com/2009/03/canonical-url-links-tags/" />
I intend to try it out on my referral system in my directories, so that any referrals that use ?ref=123 in the URL can rather “hint” to the search engines that I would prefer to use the home page… hmmm, I wonder if this will pass on PageRank at all. I hope so! I will test it and let you know… may take a few months I would say.
Matt Cutts explains it well, see below…
What is SEO?
Posted by Chris in Search Engine Optimisation on March 16th, 2009
Well I guess I should start at the beginning, for those of you who are starting out and want to learn exactly what SEO really is. To begin with, SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimisation, and what better place to obtain the perfect meaning for SEO other than Wikipedia : Search engine optimisation is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings.
So the main aim in SEO is to get your website to the top or as high as possible to the top of search engine listings. There are ethical and unethical methods of achieving this, but I believe in only using ethical ways and will focus on these only. Many search engines will penalise domains for “cheating”.
I will try my hardest to blog on SEO or tips on the topic, whether it be on site architecture, page content, or finding the suitable directories. My plan is to share as much as I can with you and who knows, maybe I can learn from you too!
Footnote: In some countries, for example the United States, the spelling is Search Engine Optimization. Google’s definition of SEO is an abbreviation for “search engine optimizer”.
