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Do Search Engines Scare You?

by: Elaine Currie

What do the words "Search Engine" make you think of? I get immediate mind-pictures which vary but all have similar themes. Sometimes I see one of those tiny submarines which are used to explore the deepest parts of the ocean bed. I have this picture in my mind of the tiny submarine underwater in complete darkness apart from the beam of its searchlight which is probing the gloom. Other times I see a horse-drawn carriage driving through dense fog with only its weak lamp relieving the darkness. This scene is from a movie where the police are racing through London in search of Jack The Ripper. The final picture is of a line of policemen in old-fashioned uniforms advancing across a moor in darkness through rising mist with only their flashlight-beams to light their way.

It can get a bit scary inside my mind at times. If these were dreams rather than passing thoughts, they would probably be analysed as meaning an obsession with darkness and getting lost. Maybe the lights penetrating the darkness symbolise a fear of ignorance (or maybe a fear of getting found out). The obvious link is that these pictures all relate to a search of one kind or another. The first one might represent a search for knowledge, the second one is obviously the search for a criminal and the final one a search for clues at the scene of a crime.

Why would the words "search engine" conjure up these dark visions? If you look at the words we associate with search engines, I think the connection will be clear. We talk about "submitting" our websites to search engines. We don�t "send" our websites or "apply" to search engines or "register" our websites with search engines. We are submissive and the search engines dominate us.

We adopt this submissive posture and the search engines send their robots to "crawl" over our websites. Doesn�t sound very pleasant does it? The future of your website is entirely in the power of these monsters. You have spent time and perhaps some cash getting your website ready for the visit. Your website, the shop window to your home business, has been tweaked and "search engine optimised", now you can do nothing except hope that your efforts will be rewarded with approval by these invisible inspectors.

Web site owners act as if the search engines are neighbourhood dignitaries: "We must tidy up, the search engines are coming to visit". An anxious time follows while your website, brushed, polished and optimised to the best of your ability, waits to greet these visitors. The most respected visitor is Googlebot. He causes most anxiety and is renowned for being unpredictable. Webmasters try to analyse the "Googledance" in the hope of making Googlebot's visit enjoyable. If we can get the mighty Googlebot to dance instead of merely crawling, he might give us a good report, but Googlebot can't seem to decide what algorithm he prefers. How are you supposed to get his feet tapping? Unfortunately, the search engines are not the most communicative visitors and you only realise they have carried out their examination when something (either good or bad) happens to your prot�g�'s page rank.

The search engines are not like your school teacher who gives you a class test, they are more like the university Board Of Examiners: when you have passed or failed their test, you will never get to know which questions you got right or where your weakness lies. Further improvement will have to be a matter of guesswork but suppose your guess is wrong? You might destroy the very things which met with the search engines� approval. Then you hear that the search engines don�t agree amongst themselves, so what pleases some of them might lose you points with others. Which ones should you try hardest to impress? Should you turn your website into some sort of private Googledancer and risk offending the rest of the robots? Would it be better to try to please one or two of the larger search engines or a big bunch of the lesser ones? Finally you hear a rumour that the search engines are changing their secret rules anyway but nobody knows what the changes will entail. You despair of ever satisfying the masters of your fate, you feel as if you are stumbling around in the dark. Panic takes you over.

Should you be afraid of search engines?

Anybody in his right mind should be afraid, very afraid.

About the author:
This is one of a series of articles published by
the author, Elaine Currie, BA(Hons) at

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5 Ways Google Will Help You With Your Traffic
by: Tinu AbayomiPaul

If you�ve ever had a severe drop in your Google rankings in search results, you may think of Google more of an enemy than an ally.

But if you knew what I do, you�d realize that there are tools provided by the search engine that help you learn more about your traffic, and may even help drive visitors to your site.

Here are five ways that Google provides free traffic assistance.

#1 - Google will Help Your Pages Get Discovered with Google Sitemaps
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Google Sitemaps is a program that gives you the opportunity to present your site�s pages to Google in XML or text. Google will then come by and spider the pages, getting you indexed faster.

Take note that this doesn�t necessarily mean that your pages will be listed for your favorite keywords, only that discovery will take place a lot faster than with manual submission. Google Sitemaps will also give you some basic site stats if you verify your site, such as the top keywords for discovery, errors it found when crawling, and the types of documents at your site.

If you find compiling your sitemap for Google in the correct format difficult, try the SOFTplus GSiteCrawler Google Sitemap generator. It�s my favorite Sitemap generator, free and easy to use.

#2 - Google Will Talk To You and Your Webmaster In His or Her Native Tongue or Plain English with the Webmaster Section
http://www.google.com/webmasters/

The Google Information Page for Webmasters should be your first stop when you want to know more about anything that has to do with your site and its relationship to Google and any of its many flavors of search such as Froogle. Particularly for new site owners or operators, checking this page first has saved many from needless anxiety.

Most of the basic information is in straightforward language, with links to details for geeks like me.

#3 - Google will Tell You What It Knows with Web Page Information

If you type info:yoursite.com into Google, Google will tell show you a page that has your link at the top of the page, with a short description, and the following phrase �Google can show you the following information for this URL�.

This special page compiles several queries about your site including pages that contain your URL (all the pages Google knows of that are linked to you).

#4 - Google will Help You Analyze Your Traffic with Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/

After a recent purchase of Urchin Stats, a free online version has been made available, and re-branded as Google Analytics. This cookie-based invisible visitor tracker can give you information that go a bit beyond standard stats such as bounce rates, visitor loyalty, keyword discovery results for a single day, click paths through your site, and page views per visit.

With the ability to analyze your traffic, you can help learn where the holes in your site are, and how to keep them on your site for longer periods of time, as well as better ways to steer a visit towards a specific action, such as a subscription. Results come in flavors for the executive and the search marketer alike.

There�s currently a waiting list to use Google Analytics due to popular demand.

#5 - Google Will Advise On Getting the Most from Your Traffic with Conversion University
http://www.google.com/analytics/conversionuniversity.html

Google Analytics also has two content sections that are available to all, called Conversion University. While the articles are decidedly slanted towards AdWords users, a prudent read yields many clues that can be applied to preparing for visitors who arrive through organic search discovery. One reference area is called �Driving Traffic�, the other �Converting Visitors.�

At the end of the day, the process by which your site gets ranked in Google search engine results is a computation of a complex algorithm, which means Google - the search engine - really isn�t capable of being your best friend or your worst enemy.

Meanwhile, Google - the company - also provides access to resources that will help give your site a fighting chance.

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