Google Indexing Javascript / AJAX?
Saw a post this morning, Google Bot now crawls arbitrary Javascript sites.
Seems like not only is Google indexing javascript files, but executing them as if they were an actual user clicking (thus firing off related javascript calls properly).
Google’s HTML/CSS Style Guide
Sorry for the deluge of posts today. This next one is a must read for web developers.
I’m not sure when it was first posted, but I just came across it today, the Google HTML/CSS Style Guide.
There are some useful reminders in there, and also some curveballs (beyond “Use Valid HTML where possible”):
- Omit protocol from embedded resources – this means your JS and CSS includes should use “//” as opposed to “http://”. This means whenever your code runs over HTTPS it won’t generate all those annoying popup windows.
- Don’t use Entity references – an interesting point. If your entire environment revolves around UTF-8, there is no need to encode special characters (except for < > and & because they are HTML code). Bye bye —
- Omit optional tags – skipping a few lines of code must save Google millions annually, but it’s interesting. I don’t know if I can stop writing “<head><title>Title Here</title></head>” … but according to HTML5 specifications it’s an optional tag, and you can just write “<title>Title Here</title>”.
- Hexadecimal Notation – Use 3 character notation where possible. I’ve been doing this, but didn’t realize it was a best practice (this may save Google hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, me? nothing).
- Alphabetize CSS declarations – I guess this makes sense, so there is at least SOME organization to CSS declarations
- Property name stops – For some reason Google WANTS room between a CSS property and the value (“value: 0px” vs “value:0px”). Seems odd to me, but at least it’s what I’ve always done
Google’s Matt Cutts on White Hat SEO Tactics
SEO professionals argue day in and day out about whether or not to use Black Hat SEO tactics. For those of you not aware of the difference between White Hat and Black Hat tactics, here’s a few bullets…
White Hat Techniques
- Improve usability of site
- Generate Content
- Improve site speed
- Marketing the site legitimately
- Technically implement the site correctly
- Anything a search engine would want you to do
Black Hat Techniques
- Buying links
- Keyword spamming
- Link circles
- Spam commenting / linking
- Farming out link generation
- Anything to fool a search engine into thinking you are bigger than you are
I will admit that for certain clients, it is useful to consider some black hat techniques. Black hat techniques come at a higher price tag, and much shorter term lifespan.
Matt Cutts (of Google), considered one of the closest things many of us have to seeing inside Google’s head, wrote an article talking about Google’s stance on White Hat versus Black Hat.
Google Drive is Live
Today Google announced their newest offering, Google Drive.
Everyone gets 5GB of storage free. Other price points are:
- $2.49/month – 25 GB
- $4.99/month – 100GB
- $49.99/month – 1 TB (yes, 1000 GB)
Sure to be a major competitor to DropBox, as their prices beat out any competitor that I know of (if you know otherwise, let me know).
The new Google Drive service is available for PC / Mac, and Android devices currently. iPhone and iPad apps are sure to follow soon. Full integration with Google Docs is sure to push adoption of the technology (the instant sharing of edits is a great feature for remote collaboration).
Chrome beats IE Usage on Sundays
Google’s Chrome browser has been beating out IE usage on weekends since March 18. People are choosing Chrome for their home browser, while being forced to use IE at work during the week.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share
Due to Chrome’s automatic updates, more people are using Chrome 18 now, than any other browser version. It’s a delight for developers to know people are automatically going to be using the most recent version of a browser. Probably why I’d expect it to be the most recommended browser by web developers. The graph is amazing to see how quickly use of the “old” (Chrome 17) browser drops off and the new browser jumps up. Compare that to the IE8 and IE9 graphs. They are slowly switching (over years, not days).
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share
Chrome has been experiencing slow but unstoppable growth in browser usage.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share
Thanks to StatCounter for the cool graphs.
Project Glass: Google’s Augmented Reality
It’s been a rumor for a few months, but Google is actually putting their “Project Glass” technology out in the wild. They’ve been seen in the hands of Google employees.
This stuff is the future. We just need to find out who does it right. Google has some impressive technology here, and it actually works.
All powered by Android. I’m still an iOS guy, but I can see this as changing my tune.
Google Search includes Google+ by Default
Sorry for all the posts today, I keep seeing things I think people would want to hear.
Google announced today that search will now include “Your World”. It’s a good idea to watch that Google Blog, always good stuff.
Google needs to push Google+ somehow, and this will sure help. Including “Personal results” in search results is both good and bad in my opinion.
You’ll start to see (as this rolls out over the next few days to everyone) Google+ posts and shared photos showing up in search results. These are posts of people who you are following.
Also in the Google search box, Google+ profiles will start showing up there.
If you don’t like it, you can opt-out (although it is opt-in by default).
This change means for SEO experts, having those Google+ profiles, and relevant Google Pages is important.
Why you should add Facebook like buttons
I still think at some point, Facebook will fade into our memories. It’s a safe bet.. given enough time.
For now it’s time to embrace it. Until this past summer, I hadn’t added Facebook like buttons to my site. This was done because I was opposed to having those irritating social media icons all over my site. I thought maybe I was missing out on a few percentage points of hits.
Today, and for the past few days, I’ve gotten more page views on my site from Facebook than from Google search. This is according to the WordPress Jetpack by the way, Google Analytics still says I get more from Google (but I’m inclined to have suspicions).
There are about 50 pages / articles on my site that people have “liked” on Facebook (go ahead and try it… ). A few of my posts have hundreds of likes.
This is currently generating about 500-1000 page views a day for me. I would have never though adding a stupid Facebook Like button could do that for my site.
Add them to your site, you won’t regret it.
Chrome beats Firefox in Global Usage
According to statcounter, Chrome overtook Firefox globally for the first time.
My traffic still has Firefox at 25%, Chrome at 22.6% and Safari at 28% for overall traffic (most likely due to the high number of iPhone visitors, 25% of seangw.com traffic is mobile).
Good to hear folks around the world are abandoning Internet Explorer.
YouTube’s New Design
You haven’t seen YouTube’s new design yet?
It’s not your fault, it’s hidden from the public.
If you want to see YouTube’s new design, open up Google Chrome:
- Launch YouTube.com
- Make sure you’re logged in (most people are by default)
- Copy the following line:
document.cookie=”VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=ST1Ti53r4fU”; - On the YouTube window, hit Ctrl+Shift+J (Developer Tools)
- Put your cursor in the console (at the bottom)
- Paste that line in, hit enter.
- Refresh the page, and you’ll see it!
Please share, it makes me happy:
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