As mobile phones are becoming increasingly popular for accessing the Internet, webmasters are finding it almost mandatory to make sure their mobile site has been indexed by search engines like Google. In fact, most of the mobile sites are designed keeping in mind users’ interests, they hardly ever think of being search engine friendly, thus, losing out on the mobile search audience.

If your website doesn’t show in Google mobile search results or even when you use the “site:” operator then it could mean either or both of two things:

1. Googlebot is unable to find your site – Googlebot is Google’s crawler that should first crawl your site before it can be indexed by Google. It takes some time to crawl a newly created site. So, first create a Mobile Sitemap and submit it using Google Webmaster tools, just like a regular Sitemap.
2. Google is unable to access your website – Some mobile sites become unsearchable by search engines like Google as they only allow access to mobile phones, not search engines. Webmasters who want their mobile site to be accessed by Google should allow all User-agents including “Googlebot-Mobile” to access their site. The User-agent string should contain the “Googlebot-Mobile” string (this may, however, change later on). DNS lookups can also be used to verify Googlebot.

How to ensure Google recognises you mobile URLs

After the Googlebot-Mobile has crawled your mobile site’s URL, Google checks whether it is viewable on a mobile device or not. Google will not include it in its mobile site index if can’t be viewed on a mobile phone. However, the site will be included in its web index.

Another factor that determines whether your mobile site will be indexed in Google’s mobile index is the “DTD (Doc Type Definition)” declaration of your mobile friendly URL. Compact HTML and XHTML Mobile are the appropriate mobile formats for this declaration.

An interview by Australian Sky News reporter, David Speers, has shed even more light on Rupert Murdoch’s plans to move away from free content to a pay-for-content model. He now intends to possibly stick it to Google by preventing them from indexing Newscorp content.

To date the pay for content strategy has been met with mixed reviews. Mark Scott of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was one of the first heavyweights in Australia to hit out at his plans.

Now we have further revelations from Mr Murdoch suggesting they may block Google completely.

As an example, the Wall Street Journal currently appears in Google SERPs and Google News, however when you click on a WSJ link you are taken to the page which offers a short snippet or summary of the article. If you want to continue reading you must be a paying subscriber.

If Rupert Murdoch continues with his current plans and Newscorp does block Google, by raising the “barrier to the ceiling”, stories from the WSJ or any other Newscorp publication will be blocked. . . depending on what your thoughts are of their journalism you may see it as a good thing.

So how will this play out? For two opposing view points head over to the Blog Maverick who believe Rupert Murdoch is right. On the other hand you have Andrew Shortland suggesting Rupert Murdoch will be the equivalent of “Howard Stern Without The Lesbians”.

My take, it is a very calculated move by Rupert Murdoch. . . and if it works we will see a flood of media powerhouses and businesses moving towards paid content and pay-per-use strategies. If it doesn’t he always has TV?

One final thought. It does seem Newscorp has been beaten at its own game, for the time being?

Seth Godin recently suggested how media companies, such as newspapers, built audiences and then businesses and brands rented their audiences.

In today’s online world the playing field has shifted. Google has built the platform and they are renting their audience back to the newspapers. Newscorp no longer owns the platform, they’re renting eyeballs as Seth would say. Now it seems a time has come as Mr Murdoch wants to stop renting and move back to a position of owning the platform — and build a loyal customer base in the process.

Only time will tell if Rupert Murdoch’s strategy is correct.

Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google, has announced a new partnership with Twitter.

Bing was the first out of the blocks to announce a deal. Now we see Google embracing the shift towards real-time search.

Every day there are millions of tweets on every conceivable topic, and its popularity is rapidly growing!

Paul Yiu of Bing says: “Twitter give us access to public opinion and thoughts in a way that has not before been possible. From important social and political issues to keeping friends up to date on the minute-by-minute of our daily lives, the web is getting more and more real time.”

Bing is currently displaying Twitter results in a cloud above its existing search results, with the more popular topics and hot trends appearing bigger and bolder than other real-time topics.

Twitter trends are only available to Bing users located in the United States, however this will be expanded over time.

Soon we will see how Google intends to display Twitter trends. . . no doubt it will be neatly wrapped in to Google Wave at some time?

A friend handed me a small blue booklet today with the title – Make your website work. After a little digging around it seems the guide was launched on the 22nd September.

The guide I received focuses on UK websites and how they can be improved to convert visitors in to buyers. Although, the tips could be applied to any website.

The booklet points out some common areas a business could look at to improve the results and performance of their website.

If you haven’t receive a book it doesn’t matter, you can view it online at Make your website work.

Just in case you missed it Google does not use the keyword meta tag when ranking search results.

Don’t take my word for it.

I think that’s all that needs to be said about keyword meta tags for now.

Manly is known for being a tourist hotspot of Sydney. Being a local I could go in to detail about the pros and cons of Manly — what you should see and what you should try to avoid. But my job isn’t to convince you to visit Manly. I promise.

As Manly is a destination for many tourists from interstate (and overseas) I thought it would be interesting to see what local search results would appear when using Google Australia.

The search phrase I’m using is accommodation in manly. Let’s take a look at the results.

The top 3 listings in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), appearing on the left side of the screen, are:

• Manly Australia
• Wotif.com
• Stayz

These websites are using the title tags and meta description with good effect — although there is room for improvement. Two of the three are using SEO friendly URLs with keywords to help their rankings. They also benefit from having links from a variety of top sources. For example, Stayz is a spin-off accommodation website for Fairfax Media, so they have one-way links on websites such as Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Brisbane Times.

Local Business Listings

Interesting result for position A in the local business listings – “Manly Hotels Accommodation” with a redirect to Aussie Mortgage. I don’t think Google would be too happy about this spammer manipulating the business listings.

The Sebel Manly Beach, Travelodge Manly-Warringah and Novotel Sydney Manly Pacific have good positions in the local business results, which is partially due to the high number of reviews linked to their local business listing.

Manly Paradise Motel and Quest Grande Esplanade are the only two listings on the 1st page, above the fold, which appear in the natural listings and in the local business listings.

Sponsored Advertising

The majority of the sponsored links, on the right-hand side, are taken up by some heavy hitters such a Lastminute.com, Expedia and Kayak. Manly Lodge currently seems to be the only independent hotel ready and willing to adopt a pay per click advertising strategy for this search term. It’s nice to see and I hope they’re getting results! The downside is their website hasn’t been optimised to take advantage of higher rankings in the SERPs.

Earlier today I was using Google Trends and noticed something different when I conducted a search on a trending topic.

Let me explain.

Today’s most trending topic is for the term Regina Lasko. The name mean’t absolutely nothing to this Aussie lad. So I typed the phrase in to Google only to find Regina Lasko is David Letterman’s wife and he has been embroiled in an extortion attempt — after having sex with employees in the past! The blackmailer wanted $2 million ($AUD2.3 million) otherwise he was going to spill the beans on Mr Letterman.

Ok. Back to the purpose of this post. After typing in Regina Lasko I noticed at the bottom of Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) a Hot Trends information box is appearing. Just like the one below.

You can see I have focused on the hot trend for Regina Lasko, which is currently #1 out of 100 and ranked “volcanic” on the Hotness Scale. Other terms on the hotness scale include — on fire, spicy, medium and mild.

Trend information is also highlighted visually. You can see from the graph there has been a surge in people searching for Regina Lasko around 6pm PDT.

This is how Google Trends appears on the search results page:

Google has more than likely added “Hot Trend” information to the search results due to the popularity of Twitter and the demand for real time information. It will be interesting to see how hot trends and real time search evolve.

If you want to see how trend results differ in Bing and Yahoo try their trend tools:

• Bing xRank
• Yahoo Buzz
]]> http://www.webmarketing4you.com.au/2009/10/01/google-hot-trends-appearing-in-search-engine-results/feed/ 0