Twitter Hires Ex-Googler, Has Plans to Launch Ranking Algorithm

Twitter is looking to become a Google competitor in real time search by announcing plans to build a search ranking algorithm. The algorithm will assign a “reputation” score to certain tweets and use this to deliver the most relevant results to searches.

Currently, search.twitter.com simply performs a text match and returns all posts that mention the keyword you’ve searched for. The down side of this is that for popular terms, many times you will just see re-tweets and low value content from hundreds or thousands of users. By assigning a ranking system to these results, you’ll be able to see the most meaningful results first.

The changes were announced by Santosh Jayaram, who recently joined Twitter after managing search quality operations at Google. Jayaram said that not only will Twitter launch a ranking algorithm; they will also begin scanning the links included within tweets and start indexing this content.

This could see Twitter become a serious competitor to Google in the field of real time search. By indexing external links it will help to make twitter a more complete index about what’s happening in real time across the web.

4 Major Reasons Why SEO and Flash Still Don’t Mix

In June of last year, Google announced they had improved their indexing of Flash files – and web designers around the globe rejoiced. Many web designers love flash because it frees them from the creative shackles of HTML and can give them the “WOW” factor when presenting new websites to clients.

Unfortunately, while flash sites may look great, they’re a nightmare when it comes to SEO. Google’s improvements in flash indexing did help some flash sites to rank, but most of the fundamental problems with flash still remain.

Below are 4 reasons why I believe small business owners should avoid building flash based websites.

1. Different Content is not on Different URLs
Because your content is all contained within a single SWF file, there are no additional pages for Google to index and this severely impacts things like bookmarking your site, analytics etc.

2. Basic SEO Tags are Still Missing
While Google can read text from within SWF files, most of the time, basic SEO tags will be lost. Examples of these are link anchor text, H1/H2 tags, image alt tags and bold text. Missing these tags is going to have a negative impact on your ranking.

3. Not All Browsers Have Flash Installed
If the user does not have flash installed, or is using a device that doesn’t support flash (eg: Apple’s iPhone) the content is going to be lost completely.

4. Flash Doesn’t Receive a Lot of Links
There are a number of reasons why flash sites don’t earn as many links as HTML pages. Some of these reasons include:

* Less social media links because users can’t link to content within your site.
* Less blog/news links because users can’t easily quote your text.
* Less one way links from resource websites because specific content is not on a separate URL

Overall, I believe the benefit of building a slightly more interactive flash based website is far outweighed by the negative SEO impact it can have. If your website designer is determined to use flash, ask them to use it sparingly rather than designing your entire site with it.

Thanks to SEOmoz and Search Engine Land for some great insight on this topic.

Yahoo! Directory Giving Away Free Renewals

In the world of SEO, three directory listings have been seen as pivotal to any serious optimization/link building campaign:

1. DMOZ
2. BOTW (best of the web)
3. Yahoo! directory

Murmurs emerged this week that Yahoo! was giving away free renewals to its famous directory. A directory that would normally cost site owners $299 for a listing.

My first thoughts were – “interesting move for a company whose financials have been a little worse for wear of late”…shareholders will love this strategy.

Barry Schwartz and Loren Baker have both covered the discussion, and they raise a good point. While the directory probably offers a reasonable revenue line, it’s not exactly a key focus moving forwards.

It might have reached a point where administration costs don’t align with the focus and revenue potential of the service, and accordingly the company is re-organizing the way it is managed.

At this stage there has been no formal statement from Yahoo! about the complimentary renewals – so it could be a glitch in the system rather than a deliberate strategy for all we know.

Here’s one of the comments from the forum discussing the free renewals

I’ve always had 3 websites that I paid for inclusion into Yahoo Directory. Now, 2 of the three are no longer listed under my Yahoo account (the backend where my billing info etc. is).

I noticed this after realizing I wasn’t charged for them towards the end of last year. But the listings are still active in the directory – they show up in the same categories, everything just like when I was paying for them.

The funny thing is, my oldest website which was listed in Yahoo Dir first, still shows up in my account and I am still paying for it.

While it’s great for those that are receiving the free listings, and disappointing for those still having to pay…I can’t help but think that the Yahoo! Directory is on a downward spiral.

Its value to SEO/ranking is questionable these days…and with freebies being issued, you have to wonder how long it’s going to exist in its current form. While I’m sure it won’t hit the deadpool anytime soon…I can’t see it being reincarnated into anything useful either….

It’s rapidly becoming “just another one of those directories that used to be good….”