Alert Blog Reviews

Back in February, Google, Yahoo and then-Live premiered a solution to on-site duplicate content: a canonical URL element that let you designate which version official word was, of course, that the element is still just one signal.) Unfortunately, that element only worked within a single domain—if you had your content copied on another domain, no joy. Until now. Yesterday on the Webmaster blog, Google announced a new cross-domain canonical URL element . Now, if you have the same content on two domains, you can indicate to search engines which one is the preferred URL. The element uses the same syntax as the prior version, but now you can indicate the canonical URL is on a different domain: As part of the announcement, of course, they review other ways to handle cross-domain duplicate content, including 301 redirects. However, if you can’t use server-side redirects, the cross-domain canonical URL element can help search engines find the new content and possibly use that new URL in search results. In the questions sections of the post, they note that you can’t use the cross-domain canonical URL element to just redirect search engines to a new root site (it’s for 1:1 mapping of substantially similar pages), and that pages with redirected cross-domain elements should not use meta noindex.

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Fix Cross-Domain Duplicate Content

So you are bit.ly and you just suffered through the announcement that your already crowded area of the Internet space has been sat on by the 800 pound Google gorilla with their announcement of the arrival of their own URL shortening service . That can make for a rough day. Sure competition is a good thing because all ships rise with a rising tide. Google makes those tides rise so fast sometimes though that the little ships get tossed in the air and don’t always land well. Well, bit.ly is trying to do its part in making the URL shortening industry a little more interesting. They have announced their new Pro service. One wonders if they needed to announce it a little more hastily than anticipated considering the new “Google’s in the URL shortening house!” scenario. At any rate they are offering a chance for users to provide customized / personalized / whatever-ized shortened URL’s for those looking t stand out from the crowd. Their blog’s description goes a little something like this : As part of our initial beta program, we’re making custom URLs available to a limited number of large and medium-sized Web publishers and bloggers, including AOL, Associated Content, Bing, Clicker, The Daily Telegraph, foursquare, GDGT, Hot Potato, The Huffington Post, IGN, kickstarter, Meebo, MSN, /Message (Stowe Boyd), The New York Times, OMGPOP, oneforty.com, The Onion, slideshare, someecards, TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network — which includes WSJ.com and MarketWatch.com — and blogger Baratunde Thurston (baratunde.com). Users and publishers benefit from the additional transparency that this private-label service provides. When you see a short URL like nyti.ms, you know the destination web site before clicking on the link. OK, good if you are one of the big boys. Goes on the wish list of most others. In addition the service is introducing a new dashboard as well. Go check out the picture at their blog which has itty-bit.ly print for you to strain over. The readable words from bit.ly about the dashboard are We’re also excited to be introducing a unique real-time dashboard that will provide publishers with even more information about their bit.ly traffic. It’s a real-time view of how a given publisher’s content is being distributed across networks like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace and services like email, SMS, and instant messenger. Now, I have to admit that this is cool. It’s fun to see this kind of innovation from someone other than the big names. I can’t help but wonder though just how long this kind of innovation will be available now that Google has entered the space. I have been a fan of Google for quite some time but it is starting to feel a little too ‘big brotherish’ at times. When Google talked about the 3 S’s of their URL shortening service (security, stability and speed) all I could think about is the speed with which they are going to take all of the air out of the room for the little guy in this space and determine who may be allowed to stick around. What if Twitter decides to remove bit.ly as their default URL shortener and creates Twi.tr for their own branding purposes? There may be too much muscle for a player like bit.ly to stick around no matter how much innovation they provide. Am I overreacting here? I’m sure you will let me know because that’s your job here at Marketing Pilgrim. Let’s hear it.

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A bit.ly of Interesting News

Have you noticed how most bloggers are at their meanest best early in the day? Come 4:20pm, they simply don’t have the same energy levels. You’ve not noticed? Well Google has! And the search giant has a growing tendency to announce potentially polarizing news late in the day. Exhibit A: Google’s launched its own URL shortener called Goo.gl . As the search giant describes it, Goo.gl offers: Stability: Google’s scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users. Security: As we do with web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites. Speed: At Google we like fast products and we’ve worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We’ll continue to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener. Goo.gl is also being added as a new feature to Feedburner –letting you “tweet” your new blog post automagically ! So, that’s all sugar and spice, and all things nice. Right? Yes, right now, absolutely. But, so was “nofollow” when that was introduced to save us all from spammers. Fast forward and Google threatens to kick you from its index, if you don’t play by its nofollow rules. I’m not saying that Goo.gl is evil, just that it has the potential to be evil. For example: What if Google starts using this click-thru data as part of its algorithm? How does this effect SEO? What if Google insists that sites with long URLs slow down the web and insists you convert to Goo.gl? Not that far fetched! What if it was added to the Google Toolbar because PageRank is going away–and Google needs a new reason to get you all downloading the toolbar? What if Google starts adding AdSense to the destination URLs? Actually, that might be OK . There are a lot of unanswered questions. Go ahead and use Goo.gl, just don’t do so with that blindfold on!

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Google’s New URL Shortener Goo.gl: Is it Goo.d or Evi.l?

Friday, Google announced new Universal Search features for Google Suggest. The query-finishing prompter used to only suggest completed or related queries as you typed: The new Google Suggest has way more than just words to offer. Google announce ten new Universal Search shortcuts available right in Google Suggest . Just start typing in a query that falls into one of these categories, and you’ll get the answer to your question before you can even click. Many of the suggestions also feature more “universally” features including weather icons and links in addition to the answers. These suggestions are available for weather, flight status, local time, area codes, package tracking, answers (like [what is the capital of Belgium]), definitions, calculator, currency and unit conversions. “Extra” results have long shown up in Google Suggest, especially with ads . In the same blog post Friday, Google announced an extension to Chrome to help you find snippets from SERPs on the resulting page. What do you think? Will these suggestions change the way people interact with Google (eventually)? Will they change the time spent on site? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Google Suggest on Steroids

When we shared Google’s first TV ad for its Chrome browser, Marketing Pilgrim’s had mixed opinions about it: some hate it, some loved it. OK, so now we have a new series of TV ads out of Google’s UK office. What do you think of these? My take? I grew up in England–and our UK readers can will relate to this–but the ads look like they were directed by the creator of Bagpuss ! ( via Mashable )

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Will the New Google Chrome TV Ads Convince You to Dump Firefox or IE?

Yahoo (moves toward the little blue bird, the center of attention at the party): Well, hello there, baby. You sure are popular here. Twitter (BIG SMILE): Yep! And I have #friends @overthere and @overthere and— Yahoo (slips an arm around the bird): How would you like to come back to my place for a little . . . integration? Twitter: Whoa, buddy—this is why I carry an API at all times! Back in July, Twitter was popping up everywhere: first a deal with Bing , then a deal with Google . Not to be left out, Yahoo made a real-time foray with OneRiot , but apparently they still had their eyes on the life of the party: Twitter. Last month, Yahoo News integrated Twitter into its results for breaking news via a tabbed shortcut: Apparently this went well, because now more of these Tweet results will be directly integrated into the SERPs—and they just might be doing this right: However, Yahoo won’t be adding Twitter to all its results. According to the Yahoo Search blog, So how does this work? We continuously keep track of queries searched on Yahoo!, and when there is a spike in interest in a topic, our search algorithm selects relevant tweets to show on the search results page, either as a part of the Yahoo! News shortcut or in a Twitter section, like in the examples above. The age of the tweets will vary – some will be a minute old, while others may be hours old. Our goal is to feature interesting Twitter content that is relevant to your query and complements the other results you find on the search page. And if they do that, that might be just the way to integrate Twitter into SERPs: filtered for relevance, used only for topics generating a lot of discussion, and sequestered in a section of the SERP. What do you think? Is this too little, too late for Yahoo? Or is this more than you want to see of Twitter in your SERPs?

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Yahoo Moving in on Twitter

One of the things that bugged me about Google’s iPhone app was that clicking on a search result opened the page up in Safari. If my Twitter app can show me a web page within its own browser, why couldn’t Google figure it? Well, it finally did! The new Google Mobile App for iPhone just hit the iTunes App Store : You can also change the colors of your iPhone app, turn on improved voice searching, and, get this, the new app supports Australians! Huh? Yeah, apparently… …you can now choose your spoken language or accent. For example, if you’re Australian but live in London, you can improve the recognition accuracy by selecting Australian in the Voice Search settings. And now both Mandarin and Japanese are supported languages as well. I wonder if there’s a setting for Brits living in North Carolina–cos you all know how strange that accent sounds!

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Have a Strange Accent? There’s a Google iPhone App for That!