Today, for the first time, I was actually taken aback by the amount of visual crap on Google results.

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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.

Note: To use the code below, you must have a user stylesheet with the code shown added to the file. Here are links that will help you set it an user stylesheet: Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera. Set that up, and then proceed below!

Disable the +1 Button Animation

.esws { background-position: -400px 0px!important; } /* Disables animation of the +1 button */

Hide the +1 Button

.esw { display:none!important; } /* Hides the +1 Button completely */

Improve the +1 Button

I want to use the +1 Button, so I’ve left it enabled. What I’ve done, however, is make the image lighter so it stands out less when you hover over a listing. When you hover over the button, it increases the brightness to 100%. It’s the best of both worlds:

/* Disabled the animation, makes the +1 button lighter yet full brightness on hover */
.esws, .eswh { background-position: -300px 0px!important; }
.eswh:hover { background-position: -400px 0px!important; }

I hope this helps people who love the +1 Button but hate the animation.

Related posts:

1. Google’s Sprite Image is a Thing of Beauty
2. How to prevent your Google background image from fading in slowly.
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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.

Google employees have clarified on forums when titles used to be rewritten:

There are certain situations where we’d replace a title in search results (as is happening here), for example if we find that the same title is used on a number of pages or if the title is otherwise not that good (eg “Home”).
Why is Google rewriting my Title Tags? – Google Webmaster Central Help

In general, when we run across titles that appear to be sub-optimal, we may choose to rewrite them in the search results. This could happen when the titles are particularly short, shared across large parts of your site or appear to be mostly a collection of keywords.
Google Webmaster Central Help

Let’s take a look:

When doing a site:[article url] search, Google displays the actual <title> tag of the page:

When doing a search for CubeCart PDF Upload, Google has rewritten the <title> tag: it replaced the title with the name of the post and stripped “Blog” off of the site name:

And just to prove that they don’t mind the title in general (according to their old rules, quoted above), when doing a search for File Types CubeCart Upload, we have the normal page title again:

What does this means for optimizing your blog posts for SEO?

Use different keywords in the <title> and the blog post.

It’s always recommended to craft your <title> tag carefully and to mix up the keywords used in the name of the posts as well as in the <h1> and <h2>‘s. That way the most valuable parts of your site have your targeted keywords. Google used the name of the post (verbatim) instead of the title tag.

Use headings for improved listings.

Since we now know that Google is re-writing listing results for relevance, using more headings with variations on a theme. Also, moving around words in a phrase (and making some plural) is a good move: check out our post on SEO word order for examples.

Do you have examples of Google modifying your search results? Have they used content other than headlines for the updated titles? Leave feedback below.

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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.

On months with more than 30 days, it causes an error.

Google requires the <g:expiration_date> field to be fewer than 30 days in the future. Interspire’s PHP code generates a date one month in the future. Months can be longer than 30 days, thus a problem occurs.

The fix:
In /store-root/admin/includes/classes/class.froogle.php, around line 87, find:
$expirationDate = isc_date("Y-m-d", strtotime('+1 month'));

Replace with:
$expirationDate = isc_date("Y-m-d", strtotime('+29 days'));

Google only accepts unique products with descriptions.

Interspire’s Google Base feed creates duplicates of the same product. Also, it exports all products, not just products with descriptions. Google requires product descriptions, and will disapprove a feed because of this.

The fix:
In /store-root/admin/includes/classes/class.froogle.php, around line 72, find:

WHERE
	p.prodvisible=1

Add below it:

	AND p.proddesc != ''
	GROUP BY p.productid

This will only retrieve products with a description and will not show the same product twice.

That should do it.

Let me know if you are still encountering issues with your Interspire feed.

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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.

Add to your User Stylesheet CSS file:

#fpdi,#cpBackgroundImg { opacity: 1.0!important; }

Once the image loads, it will be displayed as solid, and Google will be fast-loading again.

For more information on user stylesheets, check out the SEO Stylesheets post.

To prevent the home page links from being hidden…

If you want to prevent the new “fade-in” look, use the following code in your user stylesheet instead:

#ghead *, span#footer center#fctr, #fpdi,#cpBackgroundImg { opacity: 1.0!important; }

Updated

I realized that when logged out and logged in, Google changes the ID of the background image. I’ve updated to code from #cpBackgroundImg to #fpdi,#cpBackgroundImg to reflect that.

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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:

• Place Pages are related search results or best guesses? The results are not always right, or even close.
  • /places/us/co/lakewood/-starbucks takes us to a related coffee shop
  • /places/us/-starbucks and gets Starbucks wrong again here
  • /places/us/denver/-starbucks but is correct in Denver and New York

• S. Queen Way - each of these shows the same page content
  • /places/s-queen-way/
  • /places/us/s-queen-way/
  • /places/us/denver/s-queen-way/
  • /places/us/lakewood/s-queen-way/
  • But the South Queen Way in nearby Littleton that gets no love except when going to /places/us/littleton/s-queen-way/
• London – Google chooses the most relevant
  • /places/london/ goes to the UK London (also at http://maps.google.com/places/uk/london/)
  • /places/us/london/ goes to the apparently famous London, Kentucky…which doesn’t have anything going for it, or any content
  • …and all the other Londons in the US get ignored. Like London, Alabama (which has steet view!?) or London, Ohio, which even has a YouTube video on its page…but gets no love.

Keep your eyes on Google Place Pages

We want there to be a Place Page for every place in the world, but we might be missing a few places here and there….And if you don’t have a business, but you discover a place that doesn’t have a Place Page, you can add it through community edits or Google Map Maker, depending on the country you’re in.

I’ve been waiting for Google to release something that could effectively serve as a way to review every single business, place, restaurant, etc. on Earth. Place Pages is their true entry into the world of Yelp and Urbanspoon, because finally each business has its own page that is easy to find and remember. It’s simple to find hours, leave reviews, and more all from this one page.

I imagine Google will create Android and iPhone apps to enable more simple reviewing using Place Pages. This is a bomb that Google has dropped…but they’re dropping it all soft-like so as not to worry the competition.

For further reading:

• Place Pages: Google Launches Rival to Yelp
• Google Maps UI upgrade: Places page replaces tabbed interface

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3. How to Create a Google Profile and Manage your Online Reputation

Google just introduced a new tactic in the browser wars, and this one’s juicy. It’s called Google Chrome Frame.

What it does is it makes Internet Explorer render websites using Google Chrome in a frame. That means that IE can have HTML 5 compatibility and all the other WebKit goodness. The catch? Google Chrome Frame will only activate if webmasters ask it to by adding a meta tag. So I created a plugin that does just that.

Download the Google Chrome Frame Plugin from WordPress.org

Hopefully, GCF will start to shift users from rendering sites in IE 6/7/8 to Google Chrome.

Version 2.0 includes option to add the Google Chrome Frame javascript installation prompt code.

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• 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.

Linking to your profile on your site or blog is a great idea, but linking to your shared items page is an even better one.

Update: Google Profiles are Back to Do-Follow

Over the weekend I created a brand-new profile for my wife, and noticed that the profile for John Sileo that I had previously mentioned is now “dofollow,” as is the brand-new profile for my wife.

Use it, don’t abuse it!

It’s good that Google’s reversed their policy on this, because Google Profiles are a natural thing to optimize and promote. They are a great tool for linking to other properties, and you should create your own. Just don’t go too crazy, or Google might pull the follow plug again.

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Why Google Profiles matter to you

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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.

How to create your Google Profile

If you already have a Google account (if you use Gmail, or any other Google product), go directly to the Google Profiles page, and skip to step #7.

Part 1: Getting signed up and logged in

(Click image to view larger) The 'Create your profile' page has many options, including your contact information. Choosing what information to include is a personal decision.

1. Click here to go to Google Profiles
2. Click on “Create an account now”
   
3. Fill out the short form to create a Google account.
4. Check your email on the email account you provided. Google will send a confirmation message confirming your email address.
5. Click the verification link provided in the confirmation email.
6. After clicking the link, a page will load with a link saying “click here to manage your account profile.”  Click it.
7. You should now be on the Create your profile page (view image to the right).

Part 2: Adding information

There are lots fields you have the opportunity to fill out – fill out as many as you want. Google’s done a good job of having some silly options, such as a place to specify “My superpower.”

Here are some main items you won’t want to miss:

• Explore — make sure to check out the different tabs near the top of the page. “Contact info” gives you a place to enter your email, phone numbers, instant messenging account information, and photos from photo sharing sites like Flickr.
  
• Add a profile photo — why create a really great profile if you’re not going to share your likeness with the world? Click on the Googley-eyed image and follow the instructions. It’s easy, and it will make your profile truly personal….and if you don’t have a photo, the photo won’t show up in search results, reducing your exposure.
• Add a bio — write a bit about yourself: your job history, your family pets…anything you would like to share. If you’re creating a professional profile, you could write about your business and your qualifications.

Google will let you know if they need more information before having your profile listed in search results.

Part 3: For power users

Maximize your profile with search engine optimization techniques

One of the best parts about setting up your profile with Google is that you can tell Google what your website is. If you run a business, adding a link on your profile to your businesses’ website will help that website rank better in search results. Google Profiles pass value to sites you list.

• Make sure to add all of your profiles and websites using the “Add custom links to my profile” form provided (pictured at right).
• In the “Link name” field, be descriptive about your website. If you have a profile on LinkedIn, and you are a florist, you could write “Denver Florist on LinkedIn” — which is better than “My LinkedIn Profile,” because it has relevant, descriptive words.
• Feel free to list as many links as you want, but be aware that the more links you have on one page, the less value each link will give; the page’s value will be divided.
• Create a Profile URL (at the bottom of the profile page) — otherwise, your profile will look  like google.com/profiles/104944297119239125072, instead of google.com/profiles/your-name, which is much nicer (and better for search)

Verify your name for added trust

Follow these steps to verify your phone number, and get a Verified Name badge on your profile.

How to monitor your online reputation

When someone writes about you online, it’s important for you to know about it. Reputation management in the age of the internet is an extremely important aspect of having an online presence.  In order to monitor where you are mentioned online, we will set up an alert with Google Alerts.

Go to Google Alerts. If you are logged in to Google, you will see a form similar to the one on the right.

• Enter in your name, or the name of your business in the field “Search terms,”
• Choose Comprehensive as the “Type” — the other options will limit what content Google looks in.
• Select from the “How often” drop-down your preferred frequency of alerts.  I recommend setting “How often” to “as-it-happens;” that way, as soon as Google finds new content about you, Google will send you an email with a link to the web page where it found you.
• Choose your email as the delivery option.
• Click “Create Alert,” and you’re set up!

Once you’ve set up an alert

Now, when Google finds new content that mentions you, you will immediately receive an informative email.  This will allow you to respond to the new content appropriately.

If a person has written a complimentary article about you, you can leave a comment on it thanking them.  If the content is negative, you can seek ways to remedy the situation. But that’s for another article.

You may create as many alerts as you like, which will provide you with an immediate notification of any Google content related to your alert.

Any questions?

If you have questions about this article, please leave a comment in the form labeled “Leave a comment” below.  You may also check out the following official Google help documents:

• About Google Profiles
• Profile Privacy Information

Zack Katz runs Katz Web Design, a search engine optimization and web design company in Denver. Katz Web Design specializes in helping small business owners dominate search results in their industry. Email KWD for a free consultation.

View Zack’s Google Profile

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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.

OneBox Search results are still immediately relevant for many industries

Here are some industries google still shows the mapped results on the front page with 10 results showing at a time.

• “Denver restaurant” – 10 results
• “Denver plumber” – 10 results
• “Denver hair salon” – 10 results
• “Denver car repair” – 10 results

OneBox results: SEO

For the SEO industry, it seems Google finds map results less relevant. While doing a search for Denver SEO — the OneBox only shows up with 40 or more results:

• Search for “Denver SEO” – 10 results
• Search for “Denver SEO” – 40 results

OneBox results: Web Design

For web design search, Google recognizes that location matters even less: they don’t show the mapped results until you show 100 results.

• Search for “Denver web design” – 10 results
• Search for “Denver web design” – 100 results

OneBox results: Web Development

For web development search, Google believes location matters.

• Search for “Denver web development” – 10 results

Further complexity

When doing a search for New York City SEO and New York City web design, the OneBox shows up! Is it because I am doing a search from a different location? Or is it that, even if I were in New York City, the OneBox would be displayed.

What about your industry or locality?

What are you noticing about when the OneBox appears or does not? Leave a comment with your experience.

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