I’m The Proud Recipient Of A Broken Google Design

Posted in General on Feb 18th, 2011 | 3 comments

Anybody else have this going on since they rolled out the new design updates? Kinda funny that this is happening, I’ve tried cache refreshing and switching browsers and it’s still happening. Not sure what to make of it.

It looks like they have some sort of image sprite issue going on, here’s the image that is causing all of these shenanigans:

As A Consumer, I Do Not Want Social Search

Posted in General on Feb 17th, 2011 | 0 comments

Social Search is a novelty. On paper, it sounds good: search results are influenced by the likes and interests of those in your social circle. But for the vast majority of searches, I don’t really give a damn what my friends think or where they have been before. Yet Google has stated that they’ve launched a more integrated social search experience. Here’s the example they’ve posted:

“This means you’ll start seeing more from people like co-workers and friends, with annotations below the results they’ve shared or created. So if you’re thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and your colleague Matt has written a blog post about his own experience, then we’ll bump up that post with a note and a picture”

Useful? No. Abstract Example? Yes. Nice try guys.

I search Google when I need information about a topic that none of my friends have. A perfect example of a situation like this would be if I wanted to buy a nice new HD Video Camera. There’s maybe 3 or 4 people out of my 500 or so Facebook friends who are even close to being qualified to answer the question “what is the best HD video camera I can buy for $X?” The people I want to hear from are professional videographers and product reviewers. Possibly I’d go to Amazon and read reviews simply because every product has a review there. But I won’t defer to my friends for this one.

A question I’d post to Facebook rather than Google is something like “What’s the best Mexican food place in Pacific Beach?” That’s something I want to hear from my friends. Google’s results are not in any way supported by actual quality of service, the local results are easily gamed, and they are simply not that useful compared to a few vouched for suggestions by my friends in the area.

Social Search, to me, is simply a buzzword mashup without any useful substance. It’s almost like they’re showing off what they can do with their technology. It’s no secret that Google absolutely sucks at anything that has to deal with Social-Anything, and the Social Search enhancements are a shining example of their perpetual failure in that field.

The bottom line is, Google is for search queries outside of the realm of your friend’s expertise. Google themselves state that 20 to 25% of searches have never been searched before. That’s a huge amount of searches that you nor anyone else has ever queried before. I’m calling it right now, Social Search will not become what all the buzzword fans think it will become.

100 Questions Asked At SEOLoudmouths.com!

Posted in General on Feb 10th, 2011 | 4 comments

Big day today, hit 100 questions asked at SEOLoudmouths.com! Granted, most of those were posted by myself and my sister, it’s still a nice milestone to hit. I have some big plans in the works for growing this site and community to even larger levels and traffic and will try and document as much as I can along the way. Things are growing quickly for being only a week old and I’m stoked to see where things go in the near future. I have some personal goals for the site right now that I think can be hit within a month or so. I will post up an article this weekend about my goals and thought processes.

Big shout out to Gary Simon, the web design course expert, for doing up a sweet banner for the top of the site, it’s looking great!

OBEY – GO TO SEO LOUDMOUTHS

SEO Loudmouths – Get Your SEO Questions Answered!

Posted in General on Feb 4th, 2011 | 0 comments

Hey guys, I set this up last night relatively on a whim but I am excited about it. I am a huge fan of online communities and forums (as can be seen from my participation at Wickedfire over the years) but I’ve always thought there was a hole in the SEO space where a Q&A site would be very useful.

There are a few stack exchange based sites out there that kinda fill the gap, but for the most part they’re a little too White Hat to be useful and tend to devolve into discussions of topics that are both 1) uninteresting and 2) not that helpful.

So I launched SEO Loudmouths to try and fill that gap. It’s very green around the ears right now, but I’m working on annoying all of my friends enough to get them to start posting questions and answers to get the ball rolling. So this weekend, do me a favor and tweet/facebook/digg/blog the shit out of this site and let’s get it rolling with some good questions and I’ll do my best to answer things with everyone else and get it really picking up steam.