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Katz Web Services is a web development company operated by Zack Katz.
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Category Archives: Google
Ten Blue Links
Remember when Google was ten blue links?
Today, for the first time, I was actually taken aback by the amount of visual crap on Google results.
The Google +1 Sprite Animation
How the +1 Button Works
The +1 Button uses an advanced sprite technique to simulate an animated gif. The animation occurs when hovering over search results with +1 enabled, and the shine moves across the button. (The image to the right is an animated gif I made…)
The +1 Button is not an animated gif, however. It’s a sprite image that moves a background image across the “window” of the button using Javascript. The code, if you care, goes something like this:
onmouseover="window.gbar&&gbar.pw&&gbar.pw.hvr(this,google.time())"
The sprite image Google uses for the +1 button is below:
Pretty neat, huh?
Yeah, the +1 Button animation is pretty neat…
…now turn it off!
Oh goodness gracious, the animation is annoying. After hovering over one search result, it’s obvious how awful the animation is and I want to claw my eyes out with a rusty nail. I wanted to find a way to disable the animation.
Google Rewrites Your Search Result Titles for Relevance
Google is changing your titles for you…whether they’re “optimized” or not!
Google is overruling your title tags when they determine that your content headlines are more relevant.
Previously, I had only seen this behavior when there were not well-structured title tags, keyword-stuffed title tags or no title tags at all. This has been well documented and discussed. This is the first time that I have noticed Google taking a more aggressive stance in rewriting title tags that have been well crafted.
Posted in Google, SEO
Tagged Google, Page Title, Search Results, Search Results formatting, SEO Title Tags, Title Tags
1 Comment
Fixing the Interspire Google Base Feed
Google Base updates their guidelines faster than Interspire updates its Shopping Cart.
Upon launching the new MakeUpMania.com website, I discovered that the XML feed that Interspire generates for Google Base is not properly structured. There were many hits and misses before making the modifications necessary to get the feed approved.
Fixing the generated feed
Below are fixes to three issues that kept throwing errors on the Google Base side.
How to prevent your Google background image from fading in slowly.
Google + slow loading = not worth having background images.
In trying to keep their homepage as minimal as possible, in December Google switched to fading in the home page links only on an event: moving your mouse or tabbing out of the search box. This was fine when the home page was only white, as it wasn’t taxing on computers to fade in on white.
Now that Google allows for custom image backgrounds (likely in response to how beautiful the Bing backgrounds are), the fading in process can be tedious, even using blazing-fast Chrome. I can only imagine what users using Internet Explorer 6 are going through: fading in images takes a lot of work and time!
This was annoying me, so I made a quick modification to my SEO Stylesheet (a Custom Stylesheet to display search results and no-follow nicely in Safari, IE and Firefox). This mod will make the image load solid, with no fading or resulting lag.
Google Place Pages – Google Finally Shows its Answer to Yelp.com
Google finally goes “local directory” in Place Pages
Google had been lagging behind sites like Yelp.com in providing a place to find information about businesses. If you did a local search, you would have a “More info…” link that would expand your search result inside the map and have tabs that were badly organized. Not anymore. Enter Place Pages. Google explains it well: “Now, instead of just getting a slightly bigger bubble, you’ll get an entire page of rich details, like photos, videos, a Street View preview, nearby transit, reviews and related websites.”
But don’t let them fool you. This is not just a minor improvement. This is a major entry in the directory website world. Think MerchantCircle, Yelp, CitySearch, etc.
Google Place Pages is a crazy directory…
http://maps.google.com/places/us/denver/s-queen-way/904/-katz-web-services-seo-&-web-design
Google now has pages for each of the “directories” in the URL. The street you live on now has its own Place Page.
- United States – /places/us/
- Denver – /places/us/denver/
- S. Queen Way – /places/us/denver/s-queen-way/
- 904 – /places/us/denver/s-queen-way/904/
- Katz Web Services, Inc. – /places/us/denver/s-queen-way/904/-katz-web-services-seo-&-web-design
…but Place Pages are still “search results”
Place Pages also seem to guess what you’re looking for. If Google thinks that the URL you have entered is related to a page, it will display the related information.
Interesting examples:
Posted in Google
Tagged Citysearch, Google Local, Google Maps, Google Place Pages, Google SEO, Local, Local Search, Local SEO, Map SEO, Maps, MerchantCircle, Starbucks, Yelp
1 Comment
SEO Google Profiles – Google Adds NoFollow to Links
Just a quick post to show that Google has started to nofollow all links on new Google Profiles. This is too bad for a quick SEO shot in the arm, but also makes sense, since most of the people who knew about Google Profiles were SEO’s anyway 
- Here’s my do-follow Google profile: Zachary Katz – Google Profile.
- Here’s a no-followed profile: John Sileo – Google Profile.
Oh well, on to greener pastures!
As an user on BlogCatalog notes,
The links on your Google profile will be nofollow, but the links on your Google Reader shared items page (as of the time I write this) are NOT nofollow.
Posted in Google, SEO
Tagged Google, Google Profiles, Link Building, Links, Nofollow, Nofollow SEO, Personal SEO, Profiles, SEO Link
12 Comments
How to Create a Google Profile and Manage your Online Reputation
As seen on 7News – View the video on TheDenverChannel.com
Why Google Profiles matter to you
Receive monthly tips like this one on how to get online exposure
As featured on the May 20th 7News program featuring Zack Katz of Katz Web Design, Google Profiles are a great way to be found online for your own name, even if you don’t have a website.If you set up an online profile with Google, a person looking for you online will be able to find you more easily.
Your profile will show up in search results
In the past, if you wanted to be listed in search results for your own name (it’s called a “vanity search”), you often needed your own website. Google is changing that, and giving users the power to show up in a search result with a picture and link to their profile.
The Google Profile box embedded in the search results for Zack Katz
In April, Google has started giving Profiles a prominent placement in search results. It is safe to presume that Google will be further incorporating the Profiles in the future, and assigning them more value. If you want to improve your findability online, setting up a profile is a great step to take.
Posted in Google, SEO, Tutorial
Tagged Denver SEO, Google, Google Alerts, Google Profile, Local SEO, Online Reputation, Personal SEO, Profiles, Vanity Search
7 Comments
New Google search results — OneBox is upgraded
Google’s OneBox results getting smarter
Recently, Google seems to have updated their algorithm for when they show the mapped results (or, “OneBox”). It used to be that the OneBox would show up when viewing 10 results at a time for many most local searches. Now, the OneBox only shows up when viewing locally relevant industries or when a certain number of results are displayed at once.
Posted in Google, SEO
Tagged Denver SEO, Denver Web Design, Google Maps, Google SEO, Industry SEO, Local, Local Search, Local SEO, Map SEO, OneBox, OneBox SEO, SEO
5 Comments
