Net66: Google Doodle Celebrates

Google runs a second concurrent Doodle today celebrating the life of Dian Fossey. Dian was once the foremost primatologist in the world and worked closely with Gorillas in Rwanda. She wrote the book Gorillas in the Mist in 1983 which combines her own personal story of living in Rwanda working with the gorillas, with her scientific research.

Dian was murdered on December 27th 1985. The case remains open but there is speculation that she was murdered due to her anti-poaching and anti-tourism agenda.

The note below is her las in her diary and beneath that is Google’s Doodle.

When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future.

Net66: Google Doodle Celebrates 255 Years of the British Museum

Evidently it’s not just Net66 celebrating an anniversary this week. The British Museum has been running for a little bit longer than our 10 years, clocking up an impressive 255 years!

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Net66: What if Google Was a Real Person?

A lot of people on Twitter today are asking what if Google was a real person. This is all thanks to College Humour who produced a skit video portraying Google. It gave me pause for thought. At first I thought of the comparison we’ve already made here at Net66 that Google is like a librarian.

But then I started thinking more, I mean a whole person can’t just be summed up as a “librarian” (I think). They’d have to be more than that. For a start they would have to know pretty much everything there is to know about anything in the world. Secondly, and more importantly, they would have to spend their days dealing with queries from everyone who had one.

But it does beg the question, if Google were a person, and you had to go to them to query them personally, would your queries change?

Would you be more polite when asking? Would you be more direct? Would you be embarrassed? People use Google every day to look up their ailments, but would you be more comfortable going to your doctor for advise, or asking Google?

In the video by college humour, Google is portrayed as your typical office worker in drab clothes and lacklustre attitude. What isn’t portrayed, however, are the Adwords. For every query you had, you’d have three champagne dressed people offering you their answers, with some more on the side dressed in similar garb as Google themselves offering you their answers too.

They would also be undoubtedly, unashamedly, unabashedly stinking rich. Think about it, in recent weeks and months Google on whim bought several of the top robot building companies out there. That’s a lot of money to be throwing around. Especially when you know they’ve got a plan to turn their robotics into another successful business.

On the down side however, I’m more than willing to be there’d be a few harsh words for Google from everyone who is unhappy about Google+ and its recent integration to YouTube.

What do you think Google would be like?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 Turns 10 Years Old Today! Happy Birthday to Me!

10 years ago it was 2004, Facebook wasn’t a global phenomenon, Manchester United were chasing more than just 4th, Manchester City still employed Robbie Fowler, and Neil McVey had just bought the domain https://netsixtysix.co.uk.

Fast forward 10 years and Facebook is one of the biggest sites in the world, Manchester United are 7th in the league, City now employ Sergio Aguero and Neil McVey has gone from working out of a spare bedroom, to several offices in Manchester City Centre.

Not only that, what was a very small operation with two family members is now an international company that has expanded it’s services and client base exponentially. This is the transformation we’ve gone through here at Net66 and we couldn’t be happier to celebrate our 10 year Anniversary.

We have our development team, our design team, our SEO team, our admin team, customer service team and a whole host of other staff. A far cry from when our two directors were all that Net66 consisted of.

It’s not just about us though, it’s about our clients as well. We’ve been fortunate enough to work with some amazing people over the years with a lot of clients working with us still. Take, for instance, Meqs consultants and Warwick Motorcycles, they were there at the very beginning of Net66’s journey and they’re still here now having both purchased websites from us within the last year. The former also taking up one of our SEO packages too.

We’ve seen ourselves go through our own fair share of websites too always looking to keep on trend with the latest design happenings. Our SEO has also grown from an experimental side department to one of the biggest aspects of our business. Our own progress now sees us top ranked for SEO in Manchester.

We’ve also grown as a family with not only Neil & Tom getting on board, but David, Greg (me) and Grace have all joined Net66. This is why we pride ourselves on being a family company and to this day we still hold true to our family values.

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Net66: Google Updates Guidelines on Links within Embeddable Widgets

Back in August Google decided to update their guidelines on links within widgets that could be embedded in websites. As you can see if was pretty clear you needed to nofollow all links.

Google have again reviewed their position on embeddable links by changing their webmaster guidelines subtly from:

Links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites.

to:

Keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites.

This change means that you no longer need to nofollow all links within widgets. What you need to nofollow, and better yet remove, are low quality, keyword rich or hidden links.

This basically singles out spammy links that are getting abused by this method and allowing again for white hat companies to use embeddable widgets.

See the video from Matt Cutts on Embeddable Widgets below:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66 – Google Doodle: Simone de Beauvoir is Celebrated in Google’s Doodle

Google’s Doodles have long been one of those unexpected perks of the day where you access your favourite search engine and are presented with a little bonus.

Today’s little piece of new knowledge came in the form of a cartoon of Simone de Beauvoir. Born in France, Simone became a leading light in quite a few different ways. She was an existentialist, philosopher, intellectual, feminist and much much more.

View her Wikipedia page to find out more. Image below:

Simone de Beauvoir

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Net66: Snapchat For Businesses, Confide in your Colleagues

There is a new start up coming from a pair of New York City tech executives who have banded together to produce Confide, which is quickly being described as the Snapchat for businesses.

The premise of Snapchat is simple, you can send an image, video or message to one of your friends, and after a certain amount of time this image, video or message will be deleted.

The reason why this has been targeted directly at businesses seems to stem from LinkedIn. Facebook was the first truly massive social network, 7/10 adults who are internet users are also users of Facebook. As Facebook was a more informal place for people to post pictures of their every day life, including weekend escapades, there was a market for a more formal, professional Social Network. A la LinkedIn.

This new start up aims to provide a professional version of Snapchat. As this is a more formal operation, security measures have been stepped up as well. For instance, where (at first) users could screenshot Snapchat messages, Confide doesn’t allow this feature so you can be sure your messages are deleted when the message has been delivered.

They also offer a more secure way of transferring data with the messages you send never being stored on any of Confide’s servers. When they’re passing through the servers, they remain encrypted, the key to the encryption is only ever stored on the recipients phone too.

So if someone were to intercept a transmission, they would only get the encrypted version which would be incredibly hard to crack. So security seems to be a key feature of this app.

Would you use something like this?

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Google Webmaster Tools Offers More Data For Impressions & Searches

Google has been a bit stingy with data recently. Especially since they decided they weren’t going to pass keyword data through Google Analytics anymore which drew the ire of nearly every single SEO out there. What compounded this unfairness is that Google say they were doing it for Security reasons, although they have no problem sharing the data with paying Adwords users.

They are now however giving exact amounts of clicks and impressions in their Webmaster Tools. If you log into your Webmaster Tools account and navigate to Search Traffic > Search Queries, you’ll find your stats for phrases you rank for. These stats are immensely useful when looking at a sites performance as you can check your impressions, clicks, CTR (click through rate) and average position.

It was Google’s John Mueller who announced this today on the Google Webmaster Blog. Declaring that websites statistics will no longer be rounded up (or “bucketed”) in the Webmaster Tools Feature.

Have you checked your statistics today? How are they looking?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: A New Year but the Same Old Google, Rap Genius gets Rapped.

Now I don’t mean to say that Google is resting on it’s globally huge laurels, I merely intend to inform you that Google is continuing it’s harsh critique of bad link building practices.

Rap Genius is a website dedicated to creating a large library of rap lyrics that are highly searchable. For example if you heard a lyric and couldn’t remember the song, you could type it into Google’s search engine where Rap Genius is trying to rank.

The success of the website eventually led to the website landing a #1 spot on Google for the phrase “rap lyrics”, a choice phrase.

Unfortunately for Rap Genius, they recently started an ill-fated link building campaign that led to the removal of their entire site from the Google Listings. Even when you searched “Rap Genius” word for word, the website didn’t show up.

The reason being, Rap Genius were offering to tweet links to their near 140k followers, from websites that linked to Rap Genius. Punters accepted this challenge and soon the links were flowing between websites, and that is where the major problem occurred.

Much in the same way that Interflora were penalised for offering “gifts” to bloggers who would blog about them, Google saw this as a way of purchasing links, even though there was no actual money exchanged, the “gift” or the tweet was sufficient reward to encourage people to link to their sites.

Just like Interflora though, Rap Genius has now recovered from this blip in their link building campaign. Not only have they recovered, but they recovered in style and in just 10 days. They have also been restored to the #1 position on Google for Rap Lyrics.

Unfortunately, having to removed so many links does seem to have affected their overall rankings with not as many first page listings as before. This should also remedy itself with time.

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Glass Gets an Upgrade [Vine Video]

Last month Google announced that they would be upgrading their Google Glass. Current owners of the technology, who are at the moment beta testers for the products, could either keep the pair they had currently, or trade it in for the new headset.

When they released the statement they announced that anyone who wished to trade their pair could let Google know and Google would “Reserve a place in line” for them. Once their new Google Glass was ready, they’d receive an email and could go pick it up.

People must be getting emails as there’s now a bit of an internet buzz about the new headset which has featured on a Vine video recently. The headset, although visually similar, has a few marked upgrades.

The small in built speaker form the last Google Glass headsets has been replaced by a removable earbud option that plugs into the headset. This is mainly due to most testers of the product saying that it was hard to hear anything unless you were sat in a quiet room.

Allowing for this earbud will be especially useful for when you’re using satellite navigation or watching films.

Another big change is the new addition of “Prescription Frames” which would be specifically designed to cater to Glass. Check out the unboxing of the new Google Glass below:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Manchester City, Barcelona and the importance of Goals

Last week in Munich, there was a Chilean manager of a football team beating the current Champions League Champions. His team were currently in front by one goal and needed another goal to win the group.

Unfortunately for Mr Pellegrini, he had miscalculated what was actually needed. The unfortunate City boss was left with egg on his face after having substituted a striker (who scores goals) for a defender (who doesn’t).

It was made even worse by the fact that after the match, he indicated that had his team scored again, he would have brought on another striker to go after the top of the group. When they only needed one more goal anyway. Oops.

The reason the top of the group is so important is that the next game you play is against the runners up of other groups and therefore, on paper, an easier game.

So that miscalculation by the City manager has set them playing against Barcelona, a very good team, instead of a lesser team such as Olympiakos.

So this is why you should always plot out your goals and make sure you’re on top of them. If Mr Pellegrini was as astute a mathematician as he is a tactician (only at the Etihad of course) then he would have realised he only needed one more goal and could have ended up playing a much easier team.

If you’re a business owner and you haven’t done your calculations correctly this could seriously cost you money and your business.

So make sure you have your business goals set, and definitely make sure your calculations are correct, or you could end up like old Pellegrini.

Google Testing Adverts in the Knowledge Graph Boxes

Google are continuing to test changes to their advertising platforms with the news that they are now serving up ads in the knowledge graph. For instance, if you were searching for a new Chevrolet Camaro, the following could be appearing in the knowledge graph box:

The thing to notice here is the “Dealers Nearby”. It shows here that the nearby dealers are there because they’ve paid for it. Noted as such by the small “Ad” placed just above it.

What do you think about Google’s new advertising move?

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Image from Search Engine Land

Net66: Google Matt Cutts Gives Advice on Guest Blogs [Video]

There’s no doubting that guest blogs are on the up and up in the SEO world. But as with all things that become a tool in the SEO world, there’s a risk of this practice getting taken up and abused by black hatters and spammers alike.

An example of this would be for a spammer to scrape emails from thousands of websites and then send the same guest blog request to each email account. Other techniques would be to spin articles or to post the same articles on different websites.

Matt also suggests that you should NOT use guest blogging as your sole link building practice. The links can be powerful, but you still need a wide variety in your link profile. See the full Video below:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Bust Another Link Network – Matt Cutts Gloats [Tweets]

Anglo Rank are the latest link network to be taken down by Google. Google’s webspam team seem to be getting better and better at this as more and more networks are coming down.

This time is seems Matt Cutts has Tweeted about a certain company. See his quote below:

“There are absolutely NO footprints linking the websites together” Oh, Anglo Rank.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) December 6, 2013

He also went as far as to give some advice, again with a mocking hint aimed at Anglo Rank.

SEO tip: don’t use a blackhat link network that claims no footprints, but also has no refunds, no reports, no guarantees.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) December 6, 2013

So if you are or have been using Anglo Rank, prepare for some barren months ahead.

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Matt Cutts on how to recover from Link Spamming Penalty [Video]

In a nutshell, DISAVOW those links with the disavow link in Google’s Webmaster tools. Matt Cutts who does a lot of question answering for Google was given a question regarding the punishment and recovery from the international company Interflora.

It appeared for a time that Interflora were completely deindexed by Google as an exact match search for their company name failed to list them. The remarkable thing for this, however, was that after the penalisation of having their site deindexed by Google, they were back up and ranking in just 11 days. Admittedly they weren’t ranking for phrases as they were prior to the penalisation, but 11 days is a great result.

So this question was put to Matt Cutts, how did Interflora get back their rankings in just 11 days? You can see his answer below:

So it appears that when you do find yourself penalised for your shady link building techniques, take a figurative chainsaw to all potential bad links.

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Google Doodle: Grace Hopper Honoured

Grace Hopper was an absolute pioneer and someone who we all have to thank for using computers. She helped program one of the first Mark 1 Computers.

It was also Grace’s forward thinking that lead to the development of computer programming languages. She helped create COBOL which was the very first of the modern computer languages.

Another feather in her cap is that she first popularised the phrase “debugging”. Check out the Doodle below:

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Net66: Google Updates Toolbar PageRank for first time in 10 Months

Despite Matt Cutts saying he didn’t expect PageRank to be updated again this year, Google has now updated it’s Toolbar PageRank for the first time since February.

Naturally the SEO community has exploded into a thousand different conversations about what this means, what this doesn’t mean, why Google are doing this, why Google have waited til now and of course all the previous arguments about what PageRank actually is and suggests.

The reason PageRank is such a hotly debated topic is because it’s a very obvious “at a glance” score of your website in the eyes of Google.

See Matt Cutts discussing PageRank below:

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Net66: Is Negative SEO Affecting your Website

We all know by now that it’s getting easier and easier to get your website penalised or even de-indexed by bad link building practices. Things such as too many keyword rich anchor texts pointing to your domain. Too many of a certain type of link can also get you penalised.

Opportunistic, there are more colourful words being used on the internet, webmasters have taken to building these types of lists to websites that they have no affiliation with. You might wonder why, as this is a bad practice, and it takes time and effort for no gain. But, you see when the penalised site comes back to this “opportunistic” webmaster, there will be a cost for the removal of the links.

Hardly the most ethical way to earn money and it is quite similar to some “customer review” sites out there who host bad reviews that you can pay to remove.

With Negative SEO though, you can win back control from the person who’s building said bad backlinks to your website. Here are some steps to help you:

First of all, find where the backlinks are coming from. Contact the webmaster. A lot. I don’t mean email them once and wait, email them at least once a day and try to get a phone number for them too. Keep in close contact with them until those links have been removed.

If the webmaster is uncooperative, then you need to take this a step further. Get a record of the contact you’ve made with this webmaster, and then you can add their website to a disavow file. Just before you upload the disavow file it might be worth one last try with the webmaster, inform them that it’s in their interest to avoid getting disavowed as Google will remove all worth from the links on their site.

If they don’t care, neither should you. Upload the disavow file with their website on it. There are still debates about the usefulness of the disavow file, but it is in keeping with Google’s recommendations so you shouldn’t fear doing this.

Blog Post by Greg McVey