Meta data is one of the least understood parts of the optimisation process, and for years there have been debates on the level of their importance, with ebbs and flows ensuring that few people are ever entirely clear as to just how important they really are.
The number of computers being hijacked in order to be used in sending our spam and viruses has surged according to report at BBC News, with a 30% increase in the past year.
Research from security firm Symantec found that almost 6 million computers across the world are being used as part of a ‘bot network’, with most computer owners entirely unaware that their PC have been hijacked.
Although you’ve been able to see the list of words that are commonly used in the anchor text to your site, Google has announced that they have enhanced this information to give you a clearer picture of inbound links.
Google has launched version 5 of its Desktop full of new features and updates to existing tools. The new release features a new sidebar, redesigned tools for ease of use, improved desktop search and enhanced security warnings.
Search Engine Land is reporting that both Google and Yahoo! are updating link counts. Various partie seem to be reporting increase and others are seeing decreases from Yahoo, while an overall increase has been seen from Google.
Let me know what you are seeing.
Google has posted an explanation of how robots META tags are handled and offers a comprehensive review of what it means to Googlebot when it comes across a META tag such as ROBOTS” content=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW
Visit the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog to find out more about the NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW , NOARCHIVE, NOSNIPPET, NOODP and NONE tags really mean.
Of course it would be too much to expect Google to give us the actual data (they still need to protect their index from manipulation) but while the new links data shows only a fraction of the links they can track, it provides much more information than the link: operator.
Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has given a great overview of just how different the links data is with the new webmaster tool and what can be done with it, including exporting the backlinks in a CSV file.
Yahoo! has launched a new tool which allows webmaster to very quickly remove a URL from the index if necessary. The Delete URL option, which is accessed via Yahoo! Explorer, not only deals with the removal of one URL, but also clears all associated subpaths.
Search Engine Land was lucky enough to spend some time with some of the Site Explorer team - Priyank Garg, Amit Kumar and Tim Mayer – who went over the Delete URL option and explained the differences between what the Delete URL function does in contrast to the usual robots.txt file and meta robots tag methods of keeping a page out of the index.
Danny Sullivan has posted an in depth explanation of how Delete URL works independently of the other two options; pages will continue to be crawled but similar to won’t get indexed.
Yahoo! has updated its Site Explorer tool, the application that allows you to explore all the links and web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search.
The update allows users to authenticate using meta tags and offers new Site Explorer badges which can be added to your site to show how many sites link to yours as far as Yahoo! is concerned.
If you fancy taking the new Windows Vista for a test drive, Microsoft has launched a new site which seems, if you’re in the UK, designed entirely as a tease.
http://www.windowsvistatestdrive.com/ is designed to allow the curious to test drive the new operating system without actually having to install it. Sadly its only available for US and Canadian users at the moment, but if this floats your PC boat keep an eye on it and hopefully Microsoft will let us all have a play about with Vista.
arstechnica.com have been able to access the Vista test site and have provided a short review, but expect more to pop up in the new few days.
