Wordpress 2.3 is out, and it is even more Search Engine Friendly than before.
This is due to one particular feature - canonical URLs. Basically, this means that there is now 1 url for each page in your blog rather than the 10 or 20 (in reality there are a lot more than that) that there were before. These are all versions of the same page:
/index.php/////page/2//////////////////////////////?paged=2
/index.php?paged=2
/page/2
There are lots more. So why is this an issue, and why should we care that it is now fixed?
Easy. Same reason as we care about all other forms of canonicalisation - it can confuse the search engines if not looked after properly. You might end up with the same page being indexed with several different urls, you might get different URLs linked to with the same content, and it can end up as a mess, and can only be fixed with some clever use of an .htaccess file. So rather than mucking about with .htaccess files and other such things, it is now dealt with by the standard install of wordpress. Brilliant!
There are few other nifty additions with this version of wordpress:
Tagging of posts is now supported in wordpress core as opposed to a plugin.
Automatic notification of updates to plugins and to wordpress itself. This is gonna be a timesaver for all those who have lots of wordpress plugins, or even those who don’t follow wordpress development and release news.
Obviosuly there are all the usual bug fixes and changes under the hood as well.
So if you are using Wordpress, look into installing the latest version, as it will definately be a time saver!
James
SEO Programmer
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | No Comments »
Those of you who have used Google today (which will be many of us!) may have noticed the temporary change to the homepage logo which now shows a big image of the number 9 as a pinata. If you haven’t figured by now, it’s because today is Google’s Birthday! It was 9 years ago today two students from Stanford University decided to release their revolutionary new search engine to the masses.
On September 27th, 1998 the internet and how we use it changed forever. This change was because students Larry Page and Sergei Brin felt search engines at the beginning of 1996 just weren’t fulfilling users’ requests. So after almost two years of research and development they launched their new search engine Google.com to the masses. The way their revolutionary search engine differed from others was how they scored websites through the quality and quantity of links going to them. This proved highly successful and many others quickly followed suit.
Since then Google have gone from strength to strength, expanding their company into a large corporate empire, while still sticking to their slogan of “Don’t Be Evil”. They have developed countless web applications such as Google Analytics and Google Mail, expanded their search facilities to include the likes of Google Image Search and Google Maps, as well as many other ventures, overall establishing them as probably the most powerful company online. A quick check of Google’s market value will back up this claim.
So what’s next for Google?
Perhaps the real question should be ‘When will Google completely take over the world?’ (at least that’s what some people believe!). Their growth has been phenomenal over the last few years, with them expanding into pretty much every online industry. Rumours are abound that they will soon be dipping their toes into other areas, from releasing a Google Phone to developing their own operating system. One thing is for sure - Google won’t be going away any time soon!
So, from all the staff at Just Search, Happy Birthday Google!
Rik
SEO Programmer
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | No Comments »
