Omar Kattan - search in a nutshell

Google has announced the launch of the “Open Social” application initaitive which will allow developers to write application that can work across various social networking such as Linkedin, friendster, Google’s own Orkut. 

This announcement is regarded by analysts as a defensive move towards Facebook’s mammoth growth in the past few month since it allowed developers to write applications to be used on its site.

The initiative was strengthened further when MySpace announced that it too will be joining the “Open Social” initiative.  Google’s decision to back this initiative stems from various factors namely:

• Google arch rival Microsoft is the sole supplier of contextual ads on Facebook

• Microsoft recently bought a %1.6 share in Facebook valuing the social networking giant at $15 billion

• Google realises the importance of social networking for the future of search. 

• Google cannot afford to be left behind in this crucial race 

 Google’s move is a smart one but is it too little too late?  Time will tell…

Heading to work today I was reading the Metro newspaper “aka the London Bible” and in it I read an article entitled Wikinomics.

Back at home this eveing I Googled Wikinomics and got this site http://www.wikinomics.com/.  I was intrigued so I read on. 

Basically this site is about the book that explains what wikinomics is and how you can prosper  in a world where new communications technologies are democratizing the creation of value”.

If you don’t understand what wikis are, a good place to start is at the original Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) site started by Jimmy Wales.  It was the first large scale collaboration to build the world’s largest encyclopedia. 

The Wikipedia inspired a whole bunch of other similar collaborations in travel, entertainement, and other niches from engineering to marketing and even SEO.

I will be buying the Wikinomics book soon and will review it once I finished reading it, so stay tuned…

Google has today joined the Open Invention Network (OIN),  a patent-sharing organization founded to create a legally protected environment for anyone who works with Linux.

The basic concept behind OIN is that all licensees as well as participants such as IBM, Oracle, NEC and Sony, agree to cross-license their Linux-based patents to the other licensees free of charge.

Its worth a mention that Google’s technology background is Linux-based.  In fact, the servers used to power the internet giant’s search results are Linux-based servers.

This move re-enforces Google’s support for open-source software and reminds us all why we all fell in love with Google in the first place.
 

A few months ago I wrote about building my very own Google using the open source software that is Nutch. 

I actually did it but had to remove it from my server because the crawling sessions occupied too much space and resources on my server and caused it to crash a few times. This is one of the main obstacles facing anyone trying to compete with Google…computer power. 

Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikipedia has found another way to compete.  Jimmy (aka Jimbo) is also utilising open source software to challenge the search giant but he plans to add a couple of new ingredients to the formula to make it work. 

To challenge Google, Jimbo plans to utilise human editors from all around the world coupled with the computing power of thousands of idle computers to overcome the barriers to entry that Google has created over the years.

Basically, Jimbo plans to add the human touch to the traditional search engine algorithem and utilise computer down time from thousands of computers to crawl and index the web, this concept was tested in the past through a project called Grub.  Grub never saw the light of day, but is now getting a second chance after it was recently bought by Jimbo to incorporate into Wikia.

Can Jimbo challenge Google?  Why not,  if anyone is qualified, Jimbo is, after all, he did manage (with the help of Google) to create the largest online encyclopedia to rival giants like Brittanica and Encarta. 

Also…who would have ever though Google could challenge Alta Vista way back then but they did and they did it with new concepts and ideas set to revolutionise how search works and this is exactly what Jimbo is attempting to do.

Good luck to you Jimbo!

Here a quick tip to help you optimise your Word Press title tag so that it becomes more search engine friendly.

1. Login to your site using your favourite ftp application.

2. Open the header.php file, it can be found in root > wp-content > themes > your theme.

3. Find: <title><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?><?php wp_title(); ?></title>

4. Replace with  : <title><?php wp_title(); ?><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?></title>

5. Upload header.php back to your site

What this small change does is make your post title appear before your site name in the search engine results pages (SERPS). 

So instead of :

My WordPress Site - This is my latest Keyword Rich Blog Entry Title

You will now get:

This is my Latest Keyword Rich Blog Entry Title - My WordPress Site.

What you’ve effectively done is put your keyword targets closer to the beggining of the title tag, this is beneficial from an SEO perspective.

If you have any questions ask away…