It can happen that your sitemap.xml or your robots.txt file finds it’s way into the index. Just do the following query site:yourdomain.com filetype:xml to see what XML files you have listed from your domain. Here is an example of some files indexed for the domain court.us.
It’s probably not what you really want, as basically it’s just trash in the SERPs. To fix this, and remove it from the SERPs, you can simply add some extra details to your .htaccess file which will send the the proper X-Robots-Tag.
For your .htaccess file
<FilesMatch "sitemap\.xml"> Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex" </FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch "robots\.txt"> Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex" </FilesMatch>
This method can also be used to remove all word documents or similar from the index.
<FilesMatch "\.doc$">
Header set X-Robots-Tag "index, noarchive, nosnippet" </Files>
To check your MIME type
http://redbot.org/ is a handy tool to check out the MIME headers, cache control and FileTypes. Their code is opensource so you can run a version on your server.
Later on this year, Google plans to roll out their Street View system across Germany (see below for the cities they are targeting), but it’s been hit with a number of privacy concerns. At an event I was at a few weeks ago, Wieland Holfelder, Google’s Engineering Director in Munich, said that Google sees that Germany is their privacy capital of the world. And because of this, one of their teams in Munich is focused on this topic of privacy. He said if they can make the Germans happy, their policies should be okay almost everywhere else.
Street View Privacy
Besides the issue with the WIFI networks, people have been requesting that their should have a way to “opt-out” of this service. Currently Google blurs out faces & number plates of cars, but in Germany people have the right to request that the image of their house can be removed. Right now this is a storm in a tea cup for the German regional Information Commissioner, Dr Johannes Caspar. Some{DE} newspapers {DE} are reporting that there are over 10,000 requests already to remove information, and it’s expected that this number will continue to grow.
I must admit, I think that these people are forgetting how the internet works. This type of information is not just available from Google. Here are a series of videos from a Düsseldorf letting agency, which show houses and other details of locations through the city. People fail to realise there isn’t much you can do from stopping someone taking a picture of your house, and putting it on a service like Panoramio, here is an example of a house close to my office. And the bigger question, is this something you should be able to request ? Is this an invasion of privacy (either morally or legally) to have a picture of your house on the internet without your permission ? All that Google is doing is making this information easy to use, and filling in the many holes in what other services offer. While I realise that Germany’s privacy laws on photography of people are stringent, I really don’t understand why this could extend to an image of your house.
There are other issues that I wonder about, like if you live in an apartment building, and one person requests your building removed, but the other 11 tenants are perfectly happy with the image being included. In the end, my fear is that it will just render this service unusable in Germany.
Google Video on Street View Privacy
Here is a video from Google’s Street View page in German that talks about data privacy {DE}, from their microsite about this topic.
Street View German Cities
The cities list of cities that google plans to roll out streetview in, via google blog {DE} :
Berlin, Bielefeld, Bochum, Bonn, Bremen, Dortmund, Dresden, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hannover, Köln, Leipzig, Mannheim, München, Nürnberg, Stuttgart and Wuppertal.
Google’s Local Business Center (now called Google Places) hasn’t been without it’s problems in the past, but today I did come across an interesting tactic that can probably help you get listed in multiple places in the local business results. Now I don’t condone this tactic, but perhaps by highlighting it Google will get that little bit smarter and they in turn will update things.
This morning I was looking for a T-shirt printer in Munich, and I typed in the following search query [tshirt druck] on google.de , and after position 3, I see the google places map.
Casually checking out C & D, I didn’t notice that they had the same phone number. But both results brought me to the same same website. On closer inspection we see that munich-t-shirt.com 301 redirects to stadtkopierer.de, but none the less google places lists them both.
btw. stadtkopierer I am also surprised you have 20 reviews, when your competitors have 0, but maybe that’s a topic for another day.
Steps to create a multiple listing
Things that will probably need to be unique :
website URL
email address
business title
Things that probably don’t need to be unique :
phone number
location
I did notice that the two websites have different WHOIS & DNS settings, but I’m guessing that this also isn’t so necessary.
Adding your business on Google Places
To add your business to google places, simply log in to your google account and visit http://www.google.com/local/add/, here you will be guided through the process. My only tip here would be to include as much information as possible.
I’m not going to go too in-depth as to why being listed on Google places is absolutely important. But if you are selling a product and have a physical presence in a town or city, then having a listing will deliver you a great leads of customers who want your product in a specific area. (examples : wedding planner {city name}, dentist near {postcode} , gardner {town} , etc, etc.) You know that people searching for these types of things are more prepared to buy, than someone looking for general information. Test it yourself, google [tv shop] & [tv shop dublin], and see how Google treats the different visitors.
Note : this is just more a little mind wander, rather than an actual Google product, but it’s one that I can really could foresee them producing.
The next thing from Google
I’m thinking out loud here, while looking at my credit card bill earlier today I am really quite surprised that Google hasn’t launched their own version of a credit card. They already have a payment gateway, google checkout, which can provide data on consumer spending processes. But it is limited to online transactions. I’m sure that offline transactions, and the data set of
to allow them to create a comprehensive profile of a person, and ultimately target ads to people with products that now that they like to buy.
Again this would align with their strategy to organise the worlds data. hen I see Google touching into these markets with their recent credit card comparison tool for the UK, I really start to think that it could be a possibility.
We’ve seen how they will soon destroy the GPS industry with their Google Maps Navigation (which I wish would be launched in Europe, so please hurry up) to provide free turn by turn directions to users instead of having to buy rather expensive GPS devices. Google entered the market under the radar so to say, by licencing the content until they were in a position to use their own. Maybe with the comparison tool google will be able to see what offers interest consumers most, is it a low APR , balance transfer or rewards ?
Ways to make the Google Credit Card attractive
I’m sure they will want to avoid another backlash like they got from the launch of Buzz earlier this year, so it will have to be something people are willing to trade their data for. Most cards in the United States don’t have an annual fee, unlike European cards, so I don’t think that a no-fee card would be a such an attractive proposition. And offers of points, air miles and cash back are also quite standard. To catch the attention of the public it would probably need to be something significantl that people wouldn’t mind their purchasing data being analysed. My thoughts that it would be something with an extended credit limit, lower balance, and then tied in with another google product like say a free phone for example. Again these are just some random thoughts on what they could do.
One other possible entry into the market would be to purchase one of the smaller credit card companies, like say Discover.
After Google Credit Card
And what will Google do after that. Could Google start to be an cheap energy provider or even a bank ? Sure why not ! At the end of the day it’s all data.
There has been a bit of a buzz in the SEO community this week with the announcement from Google about their new version of Google. Essentially it is still in a testing (sandbox) phase, and they have opened it up for feedback. I still have to see some real major differences, but it does show some slight changes in the algorithm.
Some quick points noted about Google Caffeine :
Image results seem to have lower priority.
Search results appears to be about 50% faster.
Larger index size.
A different sensitivity to keywords in domain names.
Right now we have a US .com and Irish .IE targeted versions, more can be added upon request. Just say the word !
Updates
Given the amount of feedback I’ve gotten, I decided to implement some changes:
Added .CO.UK version , the tool is now available in .COM / .CO.UK / .DE & .IE versions
Ability to see more than 10 results, now has the option to show 10/20/50/100 SERPs
Personalised search is turned off. Result changes on the current version of Google SERPs won’t be effected by what you have clicked / searched previously.
Today Microsoft has relaunched Windows Live search and it is now called Bing (www.bing.com). Right now Bing looks very promising, at least for the US market, their image search and some localisation seems to be better compared with google.com. For some searches like [thai restaurant 33308] the results are very similar indeed. Bing’s image search has a nice slight zoom in featyre , and “similar images to this” option which is rather nice. They present the results rather clearer than google, and have an easier navigation system on the left hand side to drill down on queries.
For Bing.IE the results we looked at seem on a par with google.ie, i.e. as good or even better, when it comes to general queries of facts ([horse racing] for example). But when we start to ask more localised and to ask for [doctors in Cork] or [cooking courses], bing starts to show it’s weakness. I would generally expect more local search results to be returned, even without specifying “only pages from Ireland”. I’m sure that this will be improved over time, and Bing.IE’s deficiencies are not always a bad thing. Right now there are very little ads on bing.ie, so you can be sure that the results you are getting are not confusing you with paid ads. This alone would move me to check bing before google.
Compare Google & Bings Search Results
For SEOs we have thrown together a quick tool that basically compares the two search engines side by side in one frame. Check out our Google compared with Bing Tool . Here you have the option to compare the .com or the .ie version of the search engines . The query will check and display the results for both search engines so you can see the difference in their ordering of the SERPs.
Google vs. Bing
Search Results compared
Submit your site to Bing
Hat tip to Michele for the link toBing’s URL submission. If you were previously in MSN Live Search results, then your site should also be listed in Bing, but if not you should take the time to add your URL.
Is Bing the Google Killer ?
Right now I think it is too early to say whether Bing is a real Google killer, but it does look like it will give Google a run for their money. I’ve read that Microsoft are planning an ad campaign in around the $100m mark, so after that I’m sure everyone will know what it is ‘to bing‘ just like they know what it is ‘to google‘.
