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Google has provided advice for website designers on how to make sure their site is correctly displayed on the company’s new browser, Chrome.

Maile Ohye, a developer for Google writing on the Webmaster Central blog, recommends using HTML rather than AJAX coding, as this will help search engines find the site.

And to achieve a uniform look across all browsers, validated code should be used, while designers should make sure that they have tested the usability of the site and not just its aesthetics.

‘When your site renders poorly or is difficult to use on many browsers you risk losing your visitors’ interest and, if you’re running a monetised site, perhaps their business,’ she wrote.

‘It’s possible that the clickable area of a linked image or button may change from browser to browser.’

According to research firm Net Applications, Chrome has a one per cent share of the browser market.

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Black hat search engine optimisation (SEO) is becoming less frequent, the head of spam abuse at Google has said.

Matt Cutts told cnet news that he felt legitimate, or white hat, SEO techniques were gradually becoming the norm and this was in part because of Google’s anti-spam policies.

The search engine uses algorithms to deal with particular automated spam-creating techniques but also takes manual action when required.

‘We see the majority of the trend is people trying to find legitimate ways [to promote their sites],’ Mr Cutts told the website.

‘The hope is you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.’

Google advises website designers to use its guidelines on how to avoid becoming a black hat SEO practitioner.

However, Gab Goldenberg, an SEO professional, recently put forward the argument that black hat SEO was not ‘in and of itself unethical’.

He said that it only became so when it ’significantly and negatively affects humans’, rather than an abstract mathematical system.

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A new online tool could change the way that search engine optimisation (SEO) works in ranking websites.

Powerset Demo Video from officialpowerset on Vimeo.

Currently SEO conducted by engines including Google works by comparing key words defined by the searcher with the related words in online articles and ranking them in the order of the most viewed.

However, a new tool called Powerset could change this by comparing the natural language of the content rather than simply the key words. This is done by ‘unlocking’ the meaning encoded in ordinary human language.

The first Powerset was launched last month to improve the search process on Wikipedia. The system promises to give more accurate results and to frequently answer questions directly.

‘Powerset’s goal is to change the way people interact with technology by enabling computers to understand our language … We believe that now is the right time to begin the journey,’ the San Francisco company states.

In related news, it has been reported that physicians competing for the top internet search ranking have found it more successful and economical to take the SEO route rather than using expensive links.

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Blogging can be beneficial to some businesses and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the Chicago Tribune has reported.

Websites can profit from a boost in credibility and get a higher search rank making the owners more competitive if they feature a popular and regular blog, the article comments.

Certified electrologist and owner of Face Reflections Liz Stapleton told the paper her website has attracted an extra ten clients every month since adding a blog and added that it was the ‘best business decision’ she had ever made.

By adding blogs SMEs can better compete with large firms by boosting their search rankings through the economic strategy of hosting a blog, a Northwestern University lecturer added.

Business Blogging Consultants’ Derrick Sorles gave further advice, saying that by adding one word to a domain name the likelihood that a blog will be found using a Google key word search increases.

On a personal level as well blogs can be beneficial as well. Petite Anglaise blogger Catherine Sanderson was fired from her job in Paris after her online comments about her job were discovered but her writing has now been made into a successful book.

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Google is to allow businesses to customise what search results visitors receive when searching for information within their own sites.

The world’s most popular search engine will expand its existing service, the online news agency Reuters reports.

Visitors who search within a particular company’s website will receive customised results not typical to Google.com that could include previously untracked information from the firm’s own site.

The new service does not have to be installed or maintained independently but is hosted on the network of Google computers.

Custom Search Business Edition, which was launched in 2006, will be renamed Site Search and will integrate the new functions.

A product manager at Google’s Enterprise division, Nitin Mangtani, told Reuters that the extended system was aimed at businesses and governments that wanted to feature search without advertisements.

In related news, Loren Baker, editor of Search Engine Journal, has given tips on how to increase search engine optimisation (SEO).

He advised that without incoming links or SEO basics, websites would ‘probably not even rank at all’.

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Search engine providers need to be more transparent about how they utilise users’ data, a government initiative has said.

Get Safe Online, a joint initiative between the government and the Serious Organised Crime Agency, has said internet users should make a decision as to whether to remain with providers who use private information for things such as targeted advertising.

A report released this month by the European Union stated that search engines should not hold on to personal data for a period of more than six months. Google and Yahoo! currently carry a policy of rendering all users’ data anonymous after 18 months.

Managing director of Get Safe Online Tony Neate said: “It’s not always exactly transparent why they [search engine providers] need it [user data] so I’d like to see a bit more clarity in relation to the information that they hold and why.”

A June 2007 report by Privacy International said that Google demonstrated an “aggressive use of invasive or potentially invasive technologies”.

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A European advisory body has recommended that internet search engines should delete users’ personal data.

The European Commission’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party report has told how search engines are unclear on their data protection policies and advised that all collected personal data should be deleted after six months, the BBC has reported.

The recommendation would mean that collected data could only be used for the purpose of searching.

If the commission accepts the request it could lead to conflict with popular American search engine companies.

Google and Yahoo! carry a policy of rendering all users’ data anonymous after a period of 18 months. MSN’s policy comes into action at 13 months.

In a statement Peter Fleischer of Google’s global privacy counsel said: ‘Google takes privacy incredibly seriously; protecting our users’ privacy is at the heart of all our products.’

Another obligation set out in the report was the obtainment of personal consent from users to allow their data to be uses in non-search services. It also asked search engines to give users clear information on the data they intended to collect.

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Google’s email service, Gmail, has seen a two-fold rise in spam in just one month, according to new data from security experts at MessageLabs.

The firm’s report for February indicated that 4.6 per cent of spam now originates from web mail-based services, with the proportion of spam coming from Gmail alone increasing from 1.3 per cent in January to 2.6 per cent the following month.

Yahoo! Mail was the single most targeted application, sending 88.7 per cent of all web mail-based spam.

One of the new technologies to emerge from hackers was the ability to evade spam detection, such as CAPTCHA - a mechanism which is designed to need human input in order to sign in.

“There are several approaches a spammer can take to defeat a CAPTCHA,” said Mark Sunner, chief security analyst, MessageLabs.

“Whether they do so using an algorithm, a ‘mechanical turk’ or combination of the two, email providers are feeling the pressure to keep pace but are limited to what a human can realistically solve creating ever more doubt surrounding the long-term effectiveness of the CAPTCHA as a security mechanism for protecting email services from abuse.”

Spammers finding a way round CAPTCHA is being cited as one reason why Gmail may have seen such a dramatic increase in spam.

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Google has come up with some new features to attract the regular user to the internet.

The mega search engine has devised an experimental search page and added some new features to its “alternative views” experiment from last May.

Map view is one feature that according to the official Google blog, solves the problem of looking through many sites for information by “plotting some of the key locations contained in your web results onto a map“, according to Andrew Hogue of Google.

Timeline view is another feature that looks up dates on the internet much like Map View looks up locations along with biographical information generated from a user’s search results.

Mr Hogue explained the control panel on the right side of the page: “Usually we show some text from the page that includes a few of the words you searched for.

“Now you can instead reveal text containing dates, locations, measurements, or images,” he said.

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A discussion in an online webmaster forum indicates that Google might have invented a new ranking penalty for websites that rank well for popular search terms.

What has happened?

During the last few weeks, some webmasters noticed that some of their long term position 1 or position 2 rankings in Google suddenly ranked at position 6.

The problem affected well established websites with a long history. The dropped web pages had long time rankings for popular search terms, usually on position 1.

Why has Google done this?

It is not exactly clear yet which factors cause that ranking drop in Google’s results. There are two theories:

1. Google now considers usage data when calculating the rankings.
2. Google now has a better understanding of word and phrase relationships.

If different usage data is the reason for the change then web pages with a higher click-through rate would get higher positions. However, some webmasters reported that even web pages with high click through rates have been downranked.

The penalty also seems to affect web pages that are listed with an appealing title and a description that is very relevant to the search term so it might be that the click-rate is not taken into account.

We think that it’s more likely that the word and phrase relationships are the reason for the ranking drops. It seems that web pages with too many inbound links using exactly the searched keyword as the anchor text were affected by the filter.

If the link to a special web page always uses exactly the same anchor text then the word variety is probably extremely low compared to the competing websites in the top results. That indicates a manipulation of the anchor texts and Google applies the filter.

What can you do to avoid that filter?

When you build links to your website, make sure that you use different but related keywords for the links to your site. If you overuse the same link text, Google might discover a manipulation.

If you use different but related keywords, then ranking algorithms will consider your web page relevant to a special topic. Use IBP’s inbound link analyzer to get further information about the inbound link structure that leads to top 10 rankings.

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