I swear I am not talking about search engine optimization of a food joint or a restaurant. Nor am I interested in SEO for cows. The title is just an adaptation of the proverb – “sacred cows make good burgers”, which means that commonly held beliefs when broken, yield good results.

There are numerous blog posts each day on hundreds of SEO blogs that discuss what to do and what matters when in comes to ranking in the top 10 results in Google. But a lot of misconceptions float in the minds of small business owners, especially in India and other Asian countries, which have heard about the concept of SEO or Search Engine Optimization and have heard about meta tags!

Let me try to clear some of the misconceptions that are important if you are serious about making a mark online

• Meta tags – The dodo was a flightless bird and the meta tags are flightless SEO entities when it comes to using them in 2009. They are NOT important from search engines perspective. The only advantage that you get by a properly placed meta description tag is that search engines use them as a snippet of text when your page is displayed in search rankings. If the keywords that the user has typed in her query are found in your meta description, they are highlighted and if the meta description is formatted well, it helps build a well sounding logic which increases the chances of your results getting clicked on the SERP (search engine result page).
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Google’s technology is evolving quite rapidly and search is not the only place where the company is making big strides. The pace of technological innovations has placed Google ahead of every other major company in a highly competitive market. Not to say that the niche players are sleeping, but with its demonic size and sky touching stock prices, buying out competition is not a problem for Google. In web advertising, Google is already the undisputed leader, the doubleclick acquisition even irked many a competitors and industry watchers alike. Not so long ago, Google announced a bunch of new features at its Google Searchology event, then at the Google I/O it was Google Wave and now it’s Google Translator Toolkit. Continue Reading…

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The Microsoft ASP.NET Chart Control

We were looking high and low for an easy to implement and lightweight chart control for an on-going ASP.NET web application. We got down to working with  our best friend, the Google search to look up for the available options. There were many third party Chart Controls available and some were really fancy and good-looking. They were rather bulky and wore exorbitant price tags though, and the two factors made them look less attractive. After short listing, we finalized one of them thinking it was the best solution, though I wasn’t too keen on it since it lacked luster and sent information outside the application each time to generate charts. But it worked well, was free and better than most other alternatives we had come across. We tried the product, made a demo application and finalized it for use within our application. This was just, till the client questioned the free status of the product and for how long it would remain so.

That sent us scurrying back to Google search. My colleague, an eagle-eyed developer (who had suggested the other option as well) with an uncanny knack for Googling up the right stuff surprised us with an even better solution this time- the perfect chart control that we could use with complete ease! One look at the charts the Microsoft ASP.NET Chart Control could generate and I was an instant fan!

After a long drooling over the charts that the control sprang up (erm, yes), I got around having it set up to check its feasibility in the application. After a demo to the client and a clean chit from the developers, and it was clear that this was the chart control we were going to use in our application.

It’s unbelievable how effortlessly we can use the Microsoft ASP.NET server control (for free) with C# and ASP.NET 3.5 to enable rich browser-based charts. The control provides a useful addition to your standard ASP.NET toolkit of functionality, and enables you to easily add richer visualization and data workflow scenarios to your ASP.NET applications. The web chart supports many types of charts amongst which are Area, Bar, Column, Doughnut, Line, Pie, Radar and many more. And, they are very good looking. The best part is, it’s a .NET control so it makes sense to opt for it over the bulky third party tools.

Features supported

• Multiple chart types supported
• Data series, chart areas, axes, legends, labels, titles, and more
• Data binding
• Built-in data manipulation and formulas
• Comprehensive chart appearance, such as 3D, lighting, perspective, and more
• Events and customizations Continue Reading…
  

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Google Wave Logo

Everyday we surf the web to explore new things which are happening on the web and once in a while we do come across things that really make us interested. First it was Microsoft’s Big Bang with “Bing” and now it is Google’s turn to create wave with their new product “Google Wave”.

Google unveiled “Waves” at Google I/O, which is Google’s web developer focused conference. It was presented in front of 4000 strong developer community and the success of the event can be gauged that by the end of the conversation all of them were completely mesmerized and gave it a long and hard applause. All the developers present were provided with the credentials of demo account for which they will be submitting their feedbacks. I wish we could have been there and have a sneak into the live demo! We have already applied to Google for a Developer Preview and hope they will oblige. The product would be officially launched by around the end of this year. Continue Reading…

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BING Logo

Out comes a new search interface/algorithm set/a real new search engine from Microsoft. Slated in as the “next big thing in search” may be just after Wolfram Alpha, searchers are getting a new option to search on. Will it be exciting? Will it satisfy users’ queries in a better manner? Let’s have a look whether Bing is a bang or just its alternate meaning – a heap of pile.

In a hasty move, Microsoft launched its official search engine christened as BING. Although the company announced that the new search engine will be made available by June 3, the full-fledged unexpected release of the beta version of the search portal has left industry analysts amazed. The question on everyone’s mind is – why Microsoft launched Bing two days prior to the officially announced release date? But there aren’t any answers.

Whatever the reasons are, the fact is that Bing is here to make a bang and challenge the supremacy of the search giant i.e. Google. Moreover, in the near future it is going to replace Live which is at present the main search engine of Microsoft. Additionally, those who are contemplating Bing to be a Google killer kindly reset their expectations. Microsoft too has stated that it’s a fresh (re)start for them in the search domain and the improvements will continue to be rolled out. It looks like they are in no mood to dethrone Google, at least not right now. As far as the name is concerned, Bing is definitely a better name than “Live Search” as we all know that whatever results search engines display are not live but an assortment of their huge database. Continue Reading…

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How many times have you clicked a link or followed a search engine to land on a page that has no information display and says, “the page cannot be displayed”? Many a times, huh? What do you do next? Do you move up the directory level? Or do you slice the URL and visit the webpage? Not many do that. The best practice that majority of the web surfers will follow is use the ‘back’ button and visit another website. Isn’t that what you do as well? Continue Reading…

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My company (Viscus Infotech) has grown insanely popular and everyone and their dog seem to be copy pasting stuff that we’ve either produced or have designed. Continue Reading…

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Google Searchology has become kind of an annual event which is used to showcase the search related products and enhancements the Internet giant has to offer. In the preceding two years, Google used it for showcasing Personalized search and Universal search enhancements. On May 12, 2009, the search giant organized the event to introduce three new features for its search:

1. Refined search options
2. Google Squared
3. Rich Snippet

The guest speakers were:

1. Udi Manber, VP, Engineering (Core Search)
2. Patrick Riley, Software Engineer
3. Scott Huffman, Engineering Director
4. Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products and User Experience
5. Nandu Jankiram, Associate Product Manager
6. Alex Komoroske, Associate Product Manager
7. Kavi Goel, Product Manager
8. John Taylor, Software Engineer

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What is an SEO astrologer, is she an SEO or an astrologer, or is she someone from Mars? Well, none of them. Infact, the title is more of related to closely we can understand user behavior to come up with some conclusions, even if they are about a 100% unpredictable domain; the “psyche of a voter”. Let me tell you what I am trying to do here. I am using a couple of web based tools to predict the web searchers interest, strictly in India and try to find out whether it’s the BJP/the congress or the ubiquitous “others” who win this race to power center. Continue Reading…

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A fortnight ago I got a mail from a site stating that I have registered on it long back but have not used its services since then. Thanks to my knack of reading the log files and examining the cookies, I was appalled to find that I had never been on this site before. After further investigations, I came across a scary fact. The site that has sent me the mail had all the details and information about me which I normally have on my profile on various social networking sites.

Now the situation was clear in front of me. There can be two possible reasons for it. Either these social networking sites are selling the user information or hackers have the keys to their databases. Though both of these reasons were born out of the fear and insecurity, but were quite impossible. I had a discussion with few of my friends who are part of the cyber world and then after a long discussion I came to conclusion that it was none other than me who did the foolish act. This website only exploited it. Continue Reading…

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