Google and Bing Fight for Content

It’s becoming clearer by the day that Google sees Bing’s presence as a threat to their service.

Because of Microsoft’s investment in improving Bing’s search algorithm and speed, the technology gap that once separated Google from its largest competitor has been narrowed significantly. Whereas years ago improvements to scalability, client-side usability, and relevancy of contextual search results helped push Google to the front of the pack, this noticeable technological disparity has slowly evaporated over time. Given Bing’s relative success when it comes to shopping and travel searches, as well as its recent deal with Twitter and Facebook to improve search results for these services (Google struck a similar deal just two hours later), it looks as if both companies are attempting to aggressively expand their feature-sets and the scope of content being queried.

The most recent development is Google’s partnership with streaming audio service Lala and the MySpace-owned iLike. The deal promises to bring streaming music to the Google page, allowing users to listen to a song once-thru for free or to pay for repeated listens (10 cents for an online-only version, and $1 for a downloadable mp3). The technical details are still a bit sketchy, but if Google manages to integrate this into their search in a substantial way (audio search, store search, improved MySpace search and caching, etc.), then they’ll have managed to set the bar higher for content search and potentially make up for any shortcomings in other areas like their previous attempts at integrating their search with online merchants.

Google clearly recognizes the level of competition that Microsoft brings to the table with Bing, and as time goes on it will be interesting to see where these two tech industry giants focus their efforts.

Is Google Indexing Flash Frames?

We have been running a test of Flash content inside Google for quite a while. Google started indexing text inside a Flash movie back in 2006. We never proved they were actually following action script links so we decided to put up the Flash test again and see if we pull different results.

We intentionally took the file down for 5 months to clear the cache out of Google. Now we posted it again with only a change to the date in the first file.

But are they indexing animated Flash Frames?

We have reason to believe that Google is actually indexing each frame in Flash. Our Flash developers are testing a Flash animation with 12,000 frames and a keyword at the end. It appears that Google has been banging away at the file with a vengeance but we don't see the keyword in search results pages to date.

We won't point to the test file in the blog until we can prove our hypotheses with certainty.

We should see results in the next few weeks if our last Flash in Google test has any hint to the outcome.

Optimizing your HTML code

I'm revisiting a few important topics from the web design realm this week. There are a few topics that keep rearing their heads so I can't help but react to the questions.

My previous post regarding design for the iPhone continues to be a hot topic and now we're off to optimizing your HTML Code.

I wrote a post about optimizing your HTML code back in May of 2007 and over 2 years later this continues to be a primary factor in every web design we create. As far as we are concerned, clean HTML code is of paramount importance for a few very good reasons, not the least of which is good will towards your visitors!

Obvious reasons to optimize your HTML:

1. About 9% of adults are still using dial-up for their Internet connections;
2. Google is a busy search engine;
3. Bing is a busy search engine;
4. W3C Validators don't like old code;
5. The online visitor represents a fickle, impatient audience.

You simply must present a fast-loading, correctly coded website to each visitor. A large percentage of page visits will fall into the group of "less than 15 seconds" per page. We're talking about 35-45% of all your page visits will happen in less than 15 seconds.

Optimizing your HTML code:

The key to any optimization is to take a 2-phase approach to your work. The idea is to remove as much HTML code as is possible, leaving a high percentage of content to code.

1. Centralize all formatting in linked style sheets.
2. Centralize all javascript in linked files.
3. Remove tables and use <div> layers for positioning.

This process will take some time but the dividends will pay off in spades. HTML code errors will drop to zero and your pages will load lightening-quick.

Website Designs for iPhone Still a Question

Our First Scribe technology team uses our blog to talk about the latest trends in our industry. We try to point out the technology that has an impact on web design, development and SEO topics (or will in the near future).

That being said, this post is in regards to an old topic --

Websites for the iPhone

Back in June of 2007 we posted about the iPhone's upcoming release and the concern that client websites were not iPhone compatible. Of course, most pieces of the website are compatible save for Flash and Javascript. But the question is, "Will your website render as well as it could?"

By the way, if you think the iPhone is passe, remember that it only launched 2 years ago!

Here we are 2 years later and we are still talking to people about their corporate website's appearance in an iPhone browser. One of the most common concerns raised during our design sales cycle is the impact of a mobile version of the site (or just the stylesheets).

Lately we discussed the topic in-house. After 2 years, don't you think this topic would go away?

Design concerns for iPhone is still highly relevant

That old blog post happened to be one of the first iPhone/website pages to hit the market so it rules in Google searches on said topic. That old page still produces a major amount of traffic for us.

Why? Because it's still relevant.

In fact, a visitor from Apple.com landed in our website today due to a search for "build a website iPhone compatible."





If they care (or one person there cares) and we see 2 years of traffic on this same topic - then it's still relevant.

So what do we do?

Develop your site correctly. Build a website with the content separate from the formatting. In doing so a developer can create a set of stylesheets specific to the browser technology. You are essentially building a website optimized for the iPhone. The content is the same but the formatting is served dynamically for the mobile visitor.


If a visitor arrives to your website with an iPhone, the website will send them a stylesheet with imagery optimized for their use.


One additional item - be nice to your mobile visitors. Make your pages short to alleviate excessive amounts of scrolling.