Google have just issued an email to Google Merchant Centre users (which powers Google Product Search), telling merchants who sell electronics that they need to start including at least two unique product identifiers from a choice of MPN, Brand and EAN. The email reads as follows: Starting in the first months of 2011, we areContinue reading “Selling Electronics Using Google Merchant Centre? New Guidelines”
Category Archives: Web Development
Adding A Facebook Like Button To Your Site
If you look closely at the header of my website, under my phone number and email address, you’ll see I’ve added one of Facebook’s new Like buttons. There are all sorts of implications for Facebook’s developments in this area, not least that it moves Facebook from a destination to a platform enabling people to findContinue reading “Adding A Facebook Like Button To Your Site”
Web Developers Available and A Junior Web Vacancy
As you might expect, I have a lot of friends who work in the web industry, from programmers to graphic designers, SEO experts to pay per click wizards. In a strange and unconnected coincidence, I have three different friends all with a pretty high degree of experience looking for new opportunities in the web developmentContinue reading “Web Developers Available and A Junior Web Vacancy”
Solving Website Structural Problems With The Canonical Tag
Long time no blog! I hope you all had a good festive season. I thought I would kick off the new year with a technical post, as Google announced cross-domain support of the Canonical tag last month (worth reading for the explanations of when you might want to use it and how to implement). YouContinue reading “Solving Website Structural Problems With The Canonical Tag”
On-Site Search Box Text Confuses Users
Do you have a search box on your website that contains a phrase like “Enter Search” or similar? Are you using Google Analytics to track Site Search? I’ve noticed this on several sites for a while, so thought I would post about it. In most cases where there is text already in the search box,Continue reading “On-Site Search Box Text Confuses Users”
New Google Webmaster Tools Labs Features
Google launched a new Labs section of Webmaster Tools today, containing two features. The first is called Fetch as Googlebot, which shows you the page that Google gets when you enter a URL from your website. Quite handy to see what Googlebot sees, particularly HTTP headers. Here’s a screenshot of the tool showing the 301Continue reading “New Google Webmaster Tools Labs Features”
Google Analytics Campaign Tracking vs. ASPX
As a result of the MyDeco experience (see earlier post), we found that the site in question wasn’t recording campaign tracking (although obviously we can see referring websites). In case you’re not aware of Campaign Tracking, there’s a guide here. MyDeco are keen for retailers to use campaign tracking to ensure more accurate results withContinue reading “Google Analytics Campaign Tracking vs. ASPX”
First Click Free – the solution to Google’s “protected” content problem?
I was discussing the issues around “hidden” or “protected” content with a client yesterday, specifically the problem that as a website owner you want as much content in the search engine’s index as possible, so that your site will be found, but you don’t actually want humans to see it without registering/paying. This is anContinue reading “First Click Free – the solution to Google’s “protected” content problem?”
Google’s change of policy on URL re-writes
An interesting post and comments at Search Engine Roundtable regarding Google’s recent statement on re-writing URLs. Google has somewhat changed its mind about re-writing URLs, as they now claim to be better able to understand dynamic URLs (the sort of query strings you often see in e-commerce website addresses, for instance, along with many contentContinue reading “Google’s change of policy on URL re-writes”
Don’t forget to update your XML sitemap!
I was shown this in a client’s Webmaster Tools earlier this week: We had carried out a number of 301 redirects on some of their pages, as for reasons known only to the original developer, a lot of pages had been created as sub-domains, which was causing duplicate content and indexing issues with Google. WhatContinue reading “Don’t forget to update your XML sitemap!”