Google India has announced its winners for the Doodle 4 Google competition it held lately. Here are some winning entries.

Theme – My India

1. Unity in Diversity – Sriradha Kapoor

2. Headgears of India – Arnobe Das

4.  Pot Seller – Arushi Agarwal

5. Ghungroo se Google – Anusha S. Patel

6.  Celebrating Life – Indrajeet Devale

7.  My India – Full of Life

Puru Pratap Singh

8. Incredible India – Clint Baby

9. My India – Mrudul Gole

10. Land of Gandhi – Vedanshi Dalmia

This one’s a big relief, sort of a swiss army knife to SEOs. I mean, we are the guys who dig deep inside and rip apart search results pages just for the fun of it right ? If that’s what you love to do, this addon will just come in handy.

Firefox Google Addon for advanced operators enables a long list of Google Advanced operators right in the browser so that you can rearrange and rip apart the search results to find relevant data.

Here are the entire list of search features.

Site: Restrict a search term within only website (very efficient when searching for a specific item)
Date: Restrict a search within a month range
Safesearch: Excludes adult oriented content
Link: Finds pages linked to a certain URL
Info: Returns information about a particular URL
Related: Returns related websites for the URL entered
File Type: Find documents restricted to specified type
Cache: Google’s cache of a web page
Define: Find definitions for terms on the web
Stocks: Shows stock information
Book: Search full text of books
Phonebook: Shows phonebook listings
Bphonebook: Shows business phonebook listings
Rphonebook: Shows residential phonebook listings
Movie: Find showtimes and reviews
Weather: Shows the weather for a zip code or city
Tracking: Track FedEx, UPS, Patent #’s etc
Feeling Lucky: Returns first web page from your query
News: Returns latest related news stories
Synonym: Returns related synonyms for your term

I know many of us knows the advanced search operators already but how many can we memorize ?

Download the Firefox addon here.

Its very likely that you’re reading this post because of either of the following two reasons.

Reason 1. You tweet so much, just like me.

Reason 2. You unfollowed me because I tweet too much.

If you’re neither one, and is a random follower – means  a lot to me. Why ? Read on and you’ll know.

Recently, I was talking to a friend whom I met at a Tweetup. After an interesting conversation, I came to know about the inconvenient truth. That he had unfollowed me soon after three days of following. My friend actually hid the truth from me first, but later, had to admit it. He in fact, was puzzled how I’d take it. Whether I’ll feel offended, sad, or not.

To be honest with you, when someone unfollows me, it doesn’t hurt, as my friend was thinking (not that I’m arrogant) but I kind of agree with the guy that he made a right decision. I mean, when someone unfollows me there must be a reason. And after consulting with many people who’ve unfollowed me,

I’ve come to conclusion that there are only two reasons why someone will unfollow me.

Number 1 – High Frequency of Tweeting.
Because I tweet so much and clog their timeline.

Number 2 – Unacceptable content.
Because I tweet content that’s offensive to him/her.

Apart from these two facts, there is no worthwhile reason why someone is unfollowing me (or you).

Why I tweet so frequently ?

My Twitter Timeline is a blueprint of my learning curve.

People unfollowing you because of your twitter frequency is actually, not a fault or a mistake.

But a “wavelength incompatibility” with you and your follower. In my case, I tweet so much because I’m a constant and rapid learner.
I tweet about things that I often read and study about online. And I can’t possibly stop it. And Twitter is like a blueprint of my learning curve. All those links and stories are all reading material for me, and I share them with the world on Twitter. Luckily there are lot of people who find it interesting, and unfortunately there are a others who think its too much. I don’t blame them, but its quite understandable that not all can find your tweets interesting.

Why clogging one’s timeline isn’t my mistake (rather theirs).

From experience I’ve learned that when I’m clogging someone’s timeline (some of them reporting it graciously), its primarily because they are following very few people on Twitter. When you follow less people the updates too are less that show up. In these cases, what I suggest is to “open up” and follow more meaningful people. Some people don’t like the idea and still follow very less people, while some find the fun at following more tweeps. In the first case, they’re doing a mistake of following me, so I simply ask them to pull me off their timeline so that I don’t end up as the villain

So there you have it. I think you are the best judge to decide how frequently you tweet. Also, it depends on how you want to use Twitter. Some use it as a communication device or an IM tool, while some use it for networking. In my case, its a networking tool with lots of information passing around, so me being a information magnet, can only devour it all and not let it fly by.

So everyone on Twitter has the right to decide whom to follow, what he tweets and when. Obviously if you’re committing grave mistakes, people will dump you, otherwise you keep going and a few will always unfollow.

What are your thoughts ?

The whole of internet. Easy guess right ? Lets try and find out.

All of you might have noticed that last week starting November 4th, Google started featuring the Sesame Street characters on its homepage with special doodles celebrating its 40th Anniversary.

And clicking on the doodle would take you to a search page with the first page listing of Sesamestreet.org.

I was wondering how much traffic the site might have received during these days ! its a seven day long process and its only half way through, but its good to check the numbers right ? Now, I know this is not the same as “being featured on the homepage” means but this is as close to it.

Let’s see what Alexa says.

It cannot give the exact numbers but the graph explains it all. There’s a humungous spike in traffic and the real numbers would be amazing to see. If only the webmaster shared it with us.

Not sure if you’ve noted this already. Its been online for a while now, but I haven’t mentioned it on the blog yet, so here it is.

Its a special box that appears with a flight icon, when searching for terms such as “Fly Cochin Dubai” or any two places in that format. Interestingly the links go to travel sites with a pre-populated date (which you can enter right from the serps)

Seen anything interesting like this on Google ?

Submitting to search engines, technically means applying for an inclusion to the search index of a search engine. Some SEOs treat this as a service, offering different methods for new websites to get listed on the search engines, but in my opinion this is a very basic necessity every webmaster must go through.

Submitting websites to search engines is an obsolete concept in my opinion, rather get them to index the sites, the other way round.

Why its good ?

- Gives you more value, as a website.
- Gives you relevancy and authority.
- Makes it an easier process.

So how to get indexed by search engines the easy way ?

1. Get a good authority website to link to you. (Try Link Building Strategies 1, 2,3)

2. Deploy the RSS feed.

3. Deploy a sitemap file.

And in my opinion, option 1 (in links) is the best way to get indexed, the right way. I’ve explained here why.

What in your opinion is the best way to get indexed on search engines, may be share the experience on your blog ?

You can only find two type of people on Twitter. The one’s who’ve really found the gold mine on Twitter and the one’s who’re still trying. There are possibly none who doesn’t have a clue about anything.

We all started from zero and I’m guessing most of us would’ve gone through more or less the same thought process.

Registered on Twitter, put your name in there, start a profile and boink !! What next ?

In fact, that’s not a bad start. Because the moment you start adding friends and strangers, you come to terms with reality – that this is a huge network and you’re only at the one millionth string. From there on, provided you get the basics right, its a snow ball effect.

Illustration Courtesy – Hubspot

But its also possible that somewhere down the line, you could drift away. Especially if you don’t stick around and find time to listen to the crowd. The beauty about social media (Twitter in this case) is that there’s a lot of conversation happening around and if you got to make the most of friends, you got to listen well. You CANNOT make sense if you assume things your way, and go ahead with a hidden agenda. One needs to listen well, get to know the pulse of the crowd, tastes, likes and dislikes to be one of them.

Twitter has a different purpose for each person using it. For some, its a marketing tool, while for some its a learning channel. Based on how you see it, Twitter can be a powerful tool serving your purpose be it business or personal.

So, with that in mind, lets see how Twittering can be a meaningful thing to the most of us.

1. Twitter is an “Open Content” platform. Figure out what you can do with it.

As I said, people use Twitter differently. For instance, some people (like a friend of mine in the media industry) are listeners on Twitter. They subscribe to top news feeds and profiles and are on the constant watch out for news bites. They don’t converse much but discover valuable feeds and subscribe to them. That’s all that they do, but that makes a lot of sense to them. All they need is fresh news and information and Twitter is the best tool online to get it. So its all about finding out what you can do with Twitter, everyone can’t be Guy Kawasaki or Gary Vaynerchuck, but still you could be heroes in your own respect.

2. If you’re into business, find out how your products can help the community, but please don’t “sell”

Community may be the wrong word here, because Twitter is a multifaceted cluster. I can’t possibly single out one common factor in all Twitter users. The group is diverse and there are multi groups, circles and regions. If you’re into business and wants to use Twitter to your advantage, don’t just jump into it blindly, like you do in SEM/Online Marketing. By just having a profile that “sells” your stuff, you’re not going to attract your clients. Because the crowd is not in a “buying mode”, you have to convince them that your product can be useful to them. Unless you can do it, you’re going to be spammed.
Essentially, its about matching the community energy and moving along. Don’t sell.. just hang around there, if there are any that might genuinely get interested in your products, they may..just may buy it, but that’s about it.

3. Make your own rules, no guru could possibly know what you really need

The weird thing is that there are many preachers than practitioners. I mean, how could someone who’s marketing his e-book tell you how to create your twitter profile ? Its for you to find out what you really need from Twitter. Friends / Marketing / Fun – you figure out and make your own rules. So what if someone said, don’t use Twitter like a chat tool ? If you think you can make more friends chatting, go with it, who’s stopping you ?

4. Numbers don’t really matter but quality of your followers does

One thing that many of us tend to get smitten by is the follower number. In fact, getting a lot of followers on Twitter isn’t a big deal (look at me for example ), but whether your followers are quality tweeps in indeed valuable. By quality I mean responsiveness, agility, connections, influence etc. And there are a lot of influent people with less follower numbers on Twitter. You can spot them counting their enormous number of ReTweets or mentions.

5. Engage with your followers, don’t get preachy ( unless you’re a celebrity ) and open up

Celebrities don’t have to try too hard right ? But, a major chunk of us aren’t celebrities, so lets have our own rules.

Having said that, this is a tricky situation to be in. You don’t have influence, you have a very small circle of friends, you aren’t listed on the “Most charismatic people on Twitter” or some absurd list like that. What do you do, engage with whom ?

If I were you, I would open up. Of course that doesn’t mean non-engagement with my friends, but finding new and interesting people, would probably may share your likes and dislikes. I use the twitter search functions and recommendation engines like Mr.Twitter to find similar people, and most of the times they respond positively to my “call”. Its not going to be a roller coaster ride where you say a simple “hi” and he follows you – no. You got be seriously interesting (at least show that you are) and get interested in the other guys profile to start a conversation. Even though slowly, this method works and the beauty is that whoever you made friends with this way, even though small in number would be the most responsive, friendly and supportive in the entire Twitter community. And that’s exactly what we need.

Summary:

Essentially, the idea is that Twitter is an open community surprisingly simple that you have a lot of focus on personality and character. You got to be seriously interesting to get friends, and there is no thumb rule to success on Twitter. You can “use” the community to your own needs, and provided your need is okay with the majority of the crowd, you’d probably survive. People see twitter differently, its a unique tool for each person using it and in however small amounts you can everyone meets success daily on Twitter and that’s the beauty of it.

Hope it all made sense. Keep tweeting

Call it black hat or grey hat, but these sure are forbidden things when it comes to SEO. If you do it, the heaven will fall on you and the Google gods will curse you for your deeds.

So what are they ? (I know you know this better than me, but remember..this is all basics for the beginners, so if you know more, feel free to add.)

1.  Hidden Text

Never ever hide text in your code. Either with CSS or otherwise. Its bad karma and even though it might look tempting, its fatal. I find it interesting that there are websites with elaborate tutorials still on this.

2.  Cloaking

Dangerous stuff. Basically it means showing two different content to search engines and actual visitors. But since its “discovery” webmasters have devised various ways to cloak and the ways are numerous (and complicated.)

But one thing is intriguing – why put your time and energy into such complicated things, when you can do it the genuine way with half the effort ?

3.  Buying sales/purchases

I bet everyone knew this. Google doesn’t like it because it kind of “affects” their algorithm in a manipulative way and it hinders the right for the common man to know things fairly on search engines while searching for information.

So buy or sell – Ah ..Ah.. No says Google.

What are the other things that you think will get you bad karma ?

This is really really good news for Nokia users. After all, not all good things are on iPhone and Android alone.

Google launched the Voice search application for Nokia mobiles today, making lives easier on S60 mobiles. Now you can just literally order a search by voice on your Nokia mobile phone and Google would do the searching part, obviously finding you the best results.

All you got to do is download the Google Mobile App and install it on your mobile.

Check out this video that demonstrates the Google Mobile voice Search.

Way to go Google !

So, we know backlinks are probably the most important influencing factors when it comes to search engine ranks, but what are the most important influencing factors within the backlinks sources ? Lets try and find out.

1. Anchor Text

Obviously the most profound is anchor text value. Google places a lot of value on the anchor text in your backlinks. So much that even if your onsite optimization factors aren’t aligned to support the anchor text. your site could rank high.

The most popular example is the “click here” example where Adobe ranks on number one position, because a lot of site uses the click here link to download the Adobe flash player and the PDF reader.

2. Context quality

The next most influencing factor is probably the context of the backlinks. What content is the site that’s backlinking to you, and how is the link passed on. Is it a sidebar/footer link or a contextual link ? Its always a plus to have contextual links rather than sidebar links as contextual links makes more sense content wise.

3. Diversity of Link Sources

Ideally, all backlinks should come from sites in context within your niche. But this could prove a bit unnatural. Rather, its gets more interesting if links comes from all around and there’s a bit of irregularity in the sources. Natural link building methods can source you links from a variety of sources and this is found to be more efficient than trying to get links from a particular niche. That’s a bit odd.

What are the other influencing factors in backlinks in your observation ?