Firefox has been very busy updating itself as a Web Browser recently. Not long ago it announced an update to itself and also added support for DuckDuckGo to be a default browser.
With the news that Yahoo were going to be the default browser, they’ve changed the layout of their search results and it’s eery how similar they are to Google’s own results. Check out the images below:
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
For a while now Google has displayed “Quick Answers”. These are usually factual or instructional answers. All the while Google has offered these answers, they have only offered one.
Now it seems like that is to change with Google adding a quick answer slider so you can scroll through results. Check out the two formats below:
What do you think to the new layout?
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
We all know that Google have been testing mobile friendly and none mobile friendly labels for search results. They initially tested out different formats such as icons and then written labels.
Well now, in an official blog post, they’ve confirmed the support is rolling out. They’ve added some best practices, an example mobile friendly listing and even a mobile friendly testing tool.
Check out the example image Google sent out:
They also offered a bit of advice on what you can do to get these labels and advise that your website will get the mobile friendly label if it:
- Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
- Uses text that is readable without zooming
- Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
- Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped
They’ve even released a tool that can use to test your mobile website friendliness.
Net66 Qualifies as Mobile friendly, does your site?
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Hodor is a character from the ubiquitously popular book series A Song of Ice and Fire and TV series A Game Of Thrones. Hodor is a character who, much like a Pokemon, can only say Hodor. Everyone refers to Hodor as Hodor, even though his actual name is Walder.
In recognition of this character, Google have released a little Easter Egg celebrating the popularity of Hodor’s speech. Simply type or talk “Hodor” into your Google browser and you’ll get a response from the man himself. Check it out:
Are you a fan of this new Easter Egg from Google? For all you web developers out there, here’s a bonus Hodor Ipsum Generator.
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
If you’ve ever sat in the office and managed to throw a piece of rubbish/balled up piece of paper 10 yards into the nearest bin and celebrated (we all have), then the achievement of the Rosetta Mission last night will have blown your mind.
I know it can be a difficult throw to make what with office distractions and the potential of fan heaters knocking it of course, but just listen to the shot the European Space Agency made last night.
In 2004, that’s 10 years ago now, the Rosetta mission was launched. It has since travelled 6.4 Billion kilometres, swinging round the Earth twice and round Mars once in the process, to land on an object that’s travelling at around 18 km/s. Shot!
In honour of this great achievement, Google launched an animated doodle today with a space themed font and an animation of the Philae lander too. Check it out below:
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
We all know of certain Google Easter Eggs. Those rare phrases you get that, when typed into Google, have a funny affect on our favourite search engine. They have quite a few of these trigger phrases such as askew, Zerg Rush, Atari Breakout and Kerning.
You also get seasonal Easter Eggs that appear around certain holidays.
But what you may not know is that some of these hidden commands are actually very useful. Whilst not technically hidden, a lot of these commands aren’t widely know. For example, the use of two full stops between two different years or prices tells Google to search for results within this range. Perfect for if you need a new phone and have a set budget. You could search for “Latest Smartphones £200..£300” which would bring up results for the latest smartphones, but only those costing between £200 & £300.
Check out the full infographic below for more useful tips:
Blog Post by Greg McVey
A developer recently found a bot crawling his website and found that that bot originated from Apples servers. Check out the below:
Apple have most recently partnered with Bing who provides suggestions to users of Apple’s new OSX Yosemite version of Spotlight. Again, check out below:
So do you think Apple will launch their own search engine in earnest?
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Yelp and Tripadviser dominate a lot of the local search listings. If you’re looking for a nice local restaurant with good reviews, the websites above are probably the most prevalent out there in regards to reviews.
That’s something Google wants to stop. Not because they’re doing a bad job, in fact the opposite. Yelp & TripAdvisor are doing great and Google wants a slice of that pie.
They’re aiming to make their maps app so useable that rather than load up Yelp or TripAdvisor for the latest reviews of the local restaurants, you open up maps and search that way.
Check out the new look below:
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Earlier this year, way back in February actually, NetVoucherCodes.com launched Donkey Cutts. This was a game aimed at making light the perils and pitfalls of SEO as well as boosting the profile of NetVoucherCodes (a cunning tactic).
It was a huge success and a lot of people played it for a very long time. Now that Google Penguin 3.0 is rolling out, the follow up Donkey Cutts this time places onus on cleaning up your bad links.
Little link symbols are scattered around your screen and you have to pick them up and move them to either the Disavow Terminal in the top right of the screen, or to the Webmaster in the bottom left of the screen who’ll disavow it for you.
You have to disavow 20 links before the Penguin update refreshes otherwise it’s game over. Have a go at the game yourself:
Courtesy of
NetVoucherCodes.co.uk
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Take a look at the below infographic, put together by Linkbird, that takes and in depth look at the state of SEO Agencies in the current climate:
Blog Post: Greg McVey
Everyone who has had some involvement with SEO in the last 10 years should know Matt Cutts. He’s been the face of Google’s web spam team for years now and often offers sage like advice for SEOs.
Back in July he announced that he was going on leave for “a few months” and that is should last through October. Well October came and went over the weekend and with it a small note added to the original blog post that Matt Cutts used to announce his leave.
The note read:
Added: When I went on leave, I wanted to see how webspam would go without me. I’ve been talking to people on both the algorithmic and manual webspam teams during my leave, and they’ve been doing a top-notch job. So I’m planning on extending my leave into 2015.
Normally this wouldn’t be a particularly large deal, but such is Matt Cutts’ position of power and reverence in the SEO world that this has conjured up a lot of questions, including some who question whether he will come back at all.
The reasoning behind that sort of thinking is that Matt acts as a focal point for Google. This focal point can be used for good, such as congratulating the Webspam team for a job well done taking down lots of spam or finding and destroying a link network. But it can also act as a focal point for all the rage and angst of Webmasters who are affected by algorithm updates / ranking fluctuations or just general conspiracy theories.
As such, taking away Matt Cutts face could also take away a lot of the vitriol that Google receives. Personally, I think Matt is too much of an asset to lose. They could simply replace his regular answering webmasters’ questions with some of their Google Hangouts. This way there is no one person that webmasters can attack for the perceived injustice of bad rankings.
Do you think Matt Cutts will return to Google?
Google today launched a new tool that helps Webmasters diagnose and fix issues with the mobile versions of their websites.
The blog post that announced this feature was written by John Mueller, who has been very vocal since Matt Cutts took his annual leave.
The tool takes a look at your website from the eyes of a mobile device and then lets webmasters know what could be causing problems. Take a look at the example report below:
Looks fairly useful. In this post they’ve also added a link to their web fundamentals page. A page that will help people code a beautiful and mobile friendly website.
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
As we all know, Google LOVES doodles. In fact they have a whole section of their website dedicated to storing them.
Today it’s the turn of Niki de Saint Phalle to receive the honour. Niki was a famous French artist who has a number of very popular scupltures, paintings and films.
The Doodle you can see below shows a few of Niki’s trademark “Nanas”, colourful female figures that became synonymous with her work.
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Google Doodles have again announced their admiration for a person by honouring them with a doodle on their homepage.
This time it is the turn of Dr. Salk. The man who created the first vaccine for Polio. Take a look at the Doodle below:
What’s interesting about Dr. Salk is that he never patented the vaccine. Meaning that anyone else who could replicate it and potentially patent it themselves. Earning thousands or potentially millions of dollars/pounds from it.
When asked why he didn’t patent the vaccine, Dr. Salk responded simply “Would you patent the sun?”.
Branding is often one of the most important decision a business will make when launching. Especially when it comes to the Logo. As a business, your logo is what is going to be synonymous with your business.
It’ll be the first thing that comes to your customers’ heads when they think of your company so you need to make it special. And there are a lot of companies out there with very lovely logos. What can sometimes take your logo to the next level is having a deeper meaning to it.
An extra little slice of flair could help your business launch with an extra few rocket boosters. Take a look at 40 logos that have a little something extra than what you can first see.
Which one is your favourite?
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
The nights are drawing in, it is getting much colder, it is getting dark much earlier and on the horizon Halloween looms large!
So, what are you doing this halloween? Online shopping of course. As with all industries, if you can buy halloween goodies in a shop, then you can probably buy it online for a little cheaper.
Things like costumes, wigs, fake blood, face paint and more are all going to get purchased in their thousands this year for the end of October.
The infographic below, created by Nextopia, breaks down online spending form 2013’s halloween.
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
People in the SEO world are very aware of the Penguin algorithm. The reason being that this was the algorithm that, when updated initially, caused the most uproar we’ve seen from any algorithm update previously.
Back in October we informed you that Penguin 3.0 was set to be released within 2014. The weeks passed and on Friday, Google finally announced that they had released the latest version of their link analysing algo.
The last couple of times Google updated this algorithm there was fury from all sides of the SEO world. This time however, it seems that Penguin 3.0 is a softer version of 2.0 and 2.1. It’s either that or after the earlier versions Webmasters finally got round to doing some housekeeping on their links.
When the algorithm was released on Friday there wasn’t much detail really released with it. Usually when google announces a fresh algorithm they give a bit more info with it. Such as how many queries will be impacted, which languages will be affected etc etc.
That data didn’t really emerge until today with Google’s giving the following summary:
> All versions of Google around the world will be affected by the updates
> The whole of the algorithm hasn’t been released yet and will take a few weeks for it to be complete.
> Less than 1% of English language queries will be affected but all other languages could be more or less.
> Google have confirmed that the implication of the new algorithm began on Friday.
> The update has been specifically termed a “refresh” by Google engineers.
> Main losers will be websites with bad link profiles.
> Main winners will be websites with good link profiles and profiles that have been cleaned up since the last update of Penguin.
So what do you think of the new algorithm?
Blog Post by Greg McVey
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