SEO Blog

Today and yesterday we added search engine map pages for Infospace and Netscape Search.

It’s getting pretty crowded in the search engine map! Still a few more to come thought…

People are often confused about hyphens (-) and underscores (_) in filenames, and even domain names. I often see people create filenames .com/keyword_keyword.html, and shake my head. So much effort poorly executed.

We tested the difference out years ago, and have been explaining it to clients for I don’t know how long.

While surfing today, I visited the blog of Matt Cutts, a senior Google Search Engineer. In a post from yesterday, he gives a “from the horse’s mouth” explanation. I’ll take the quick and easy route, and just quote him.

” if you have a url like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens). If you have a url like word1-word2, that page can be returned for the searches word1, (or) word2, and even “word1 word2″.

That’s why I would always choose dashes instead of underscores. To answer a common question, Google doesn’t algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url. Of course I can only speak for Google, not other search engines. And bear in mind that if your domain looks like www.buy-cheap-viagra-online-while-consolidating-your-debt -so-you-can-play -texas -holdem-while-watching-porn.com, that may still attract attention for other reasons.”

The New York Times had an interesting article the other day entitled “Relax, Bill Gates; It’s Google’s Turn as the Villain.” Earlier today I saw this picture on some site, and I laughed and thought to comment on the article;

Basically the article comments on how after years of the tech industry embracing Google as the antithesis of Microsoft, some are now viewing the company as a threat.

No surprise there. At some point it seems to comes to anyone or anything that reaches the top of their industry or field.

In anything in life, the court of public opinion tends to swing wildly from favorable to unfavorable. Look at famous music artists. We can’t get enough of their songs, and then suddenly people start groaning when they hear “yet another overplayed track from ‘X’”

In politics the pendulum tends to swing slower, moving between conservative and less conservative in the U.S., but between moderately socialist to conservative in most European countries. People always want a change. They like to see a leader climb to the top of a mountain, but they get skittish when they see them reach the summit, and then continue to build.

What a great idea! The London Zoo has added the one aminal exhibit missing from all zoo’s worldwide: humans.

Apparently, it’s only going to last for four days, and unlike all other zoo exhibits, these animals will be clothed. It doesn’t need to last forever to make its point. It’s a very smart move for the zoo on every level, and a reality check for us all.

Mankind has finally inserted itself somewhere other than at the top of the food chain.