The first of my conquests on my journey through Widget Land has been to sign up to www.bit.ly

I have long been a fan of www.tinyurl.com which takes long URLs and turns them into something shorter – which is ideal when you are doing a lot of publishing of information (both online and offline).

And when I saw a newcoming in the pack (www.bit.ly) I didn’t think it was worth investigating – I was happy with what I had.

However, once you start Twittering, it helps to have the sortest URLs possible.  And bit.ly takes up less space than tinyurl.com.  So, I decided to have a look.  And I was well impressed.  Not only does it do the same job as TinyURL it also has these great additional features:

1. If you sign up, you can post direct to Twitter
2. If you add the Bookmarklet to your toolbar, you can convert the URL of the site you are on at a click of a button
3. If you’re so inclined, you can track how many visits each link generates

Not only do these save time, they make it just as simple as possible to share interesting sites and articles with others.  And it’s fun!  Which in turn makes you more inclined to do it.  After all, that’s the power of online communities: sharing information.

Summary: it is a must for  Twitterers.

With regards,
Cat Young
STW

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/stwonline
• Website: www.stw-online.net

This report on Blog Storm indicates that Google is giving more of the top slots over to big brands.  This may be considered good news for searchers, but it is a worry for smaller businesses who are trying to compete with companies with much larger budgets.

Until now, the Search Engines had always been a good ‘leveller’, allowing smaller companies to compete on equal terms (well, sort of!) with larger organisations.  But this change will make it even harder for those of us without a strong brand to be found on Page 1 of Google.

Read the blog posting here

http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/google-brand-update-hits-the-uk/

And let me know if your experience of Google search results has noted any such changes.

Regards,
Cat Young
www.stw-online.net

I’ve been creating my online information empire by connecting up by Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Blog and website.  And in doing so I’ve come across a million (or thereabouts) “add ons” and “widgets” that you can utilise to make your life easier.  The trouble is, how do you know which widget to go with?  Will they really save me time?  And how do I find out if they’re any good without having to try them all out myself?

I decided I needed to find out more.  I felt an “expodition” was in order (in the style of Winnie the Pooh) and that I needed to ‘get out there’ and investigate.  What I want to discover is:

1. Where do you go to get reliable information on such things?
2. Which of the widgets really do make your life easier?

For the purposes of this investigation, I’ve been looking at the widgets aimed at the Twitter / Facebook / Blogging community – i.e. those who share their thoughts and ideas online.  There will be some cross over with emails and email marketing in here as well, I’m sure.  I may also stumble across some other not-so-related geek-tools during my travels, and if so I will unashamedly share them with you here on my blog.

Bearing in mind I have no map, and little experience, this trek could be dangerous!  So, if any of you have any information to share that would help me, please post it here.  Perhaps you have already located the Shangri-la of widget know-how.  Maybe you know that your life has ‘never been better’ since you loaded ‘plug in b’ into your browser.  If this is you, share your findings here and help the rest of us attain such zen-like states!

Or, if you want me to do the hard work for you, simply watch the story unfold here!

So, on with the hiking gear, backpack strapped down, toothbrush remembered, and off I go…

A delegate on one of our SEO workshops, “Optimise”, send me this email soon after:

“After the workshop on Wednesday I tried to find a decent article on the algorithm  that Google or other search engines use – and there is nothing decent out there that would give an overview .”

The truth is, there is no such thing.  The Search Engines will never reveal their algorithms to the public as that’s be revealing their ’secret recipe’ that could be copied.  And, in order to keep ahead of the SPAMMERs, the criteria used to judge a website is constantly changing.  When I first starting giving SEO seminars 6 years ago I used to say “Google uses over 100 different criterion to judge your site”.  Now I have to say “Google uses over 200….”.

Actually, this post is not about whether or not you should use Bing (the new search engine from Microsoft – the daughter of MSN Live).  It’s about how you may experience different search results to when you use Google.

A customer of ours said, “I can’t find my site on Bing”.

I was suspicious of this.  Yes, every search engine presents different results, but he was ranked no. 1 in Google, so it seemed very unlikely that Bing could not find his site at all.

I tested this and (to put your minds at rest) I could find his website in Bing.  However the results were quite different and here’s why.