Rapid Web News

Web visibility is of vital importance to any web business, be it e-commerce or otherwise. The visibility of your website is one of the key focuses of search engine optimisation.SEO will increase your web visibility through by improving the rankings of your websites in search engine results pages (or ‘SERPs’).

SERPs are the pages you land on, as an Internet user, when you enter search terms into an online search engine. They present a list of web page results which are linked is order of relevance, from most relevant to least relevant, in accordance to the keywords you have entered. Obviously, having a having ranking in these results pages will increase your website’s overall web visibility, whilst a lower ranking will decrease its visibility.

If you want to increase your web visibility in SERPs, you need search engine optimisation. For more information about search engine optimisation, take a look at some of the following blog posts.

• SEO Tips
• Ideal Keyword Density
• Social Networking and SEO

Alternatively, you can view all our search engine optimisation articles, read about the SEO services we provide, or simply contact us directly.

Google is highly likely to be shutting down Google Search in China, after discussions with Chinese authorities regarding censorship laws appear to have reached an impasse.

Last Friday, the Chinese government challenged Google directly, stating that it refused to compromise its censorship laws to prevent Google from leaving China. Google’s removal of censorship occurred after a number of ‘cyber-attacks’ has occurred to Google’s systems from an apparent Chinese origin.

Li Yizhong, the Chinese minister for industry and information technology, has this to say on the topic:

“If [Google] takes steps that violate Chinese laws, that would be unfriendly, that would be irresponsible, and they would have to bear the consequences.”

“[Google] has taken 30 per cent of the Chinese search market.”

“If you don’t leave, China will welcome that, if you don’t leave, it will be beneficial for the development of the Internet in China.”

In an update to our previous post on Google Buzz, we now have a screenshot to show of the Google Buzz interface within Gmail. The following screenshot shows the Google Buzz Welcome screen, as shown the first time you access Google Buzz.

Google Buzz welcome screen

Google has tried social networking in the past, with ventures such as Orkut and Google Friend Connect, however neither have really become very popular. In fact, I imagine many of you reading this article may not have heard of Orkut at all. Google Friend Connect on the other hand is a API for web developers to put Google hosted social networking features directly into their websites via a iframes, JavaScript and AJAX.

Anyway, I’m here to talk about Google Buzz, which is a new social network that Google are releasing to all Gmail users. It combines elements of Twitter and Facebook and is integrated directly into the user interface of Gmail. Google started the launch of Google Buzz to a small selection of Gmail users yesterday (9th February 2010) and is continuing to release Google Buzz to more and more people over the next few days.

Take a look at this Google Buzz demonstration video. It is obvious from Google Buzz, that many elements of the service are inspired heavily by existing microblogging and social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter and identi.ca.

Google Buzz on Google Apps?

Google has stated that Google Buzz is not yet available for users of Google Apps for Domains yet, but it is being worked on. Based on this, it can be anticipated that Google Buzz for Google Apps will probably be released within a couple of weeks, towards to end of the Google Buzz launch for regular Gmail users.

Google Buzz and Search Engine Optimisation

I may be discussing Google Buzz more as this service develops and is released to more and more users. As Google Buzz listing will appear alongside Twitter results in Google search engine results pages (SERPs), Google Buzz may also create a buzz in the search engine optimisation community.

If you’re interested in search engine optimisation for your website from a team who really know what they’re doing, take at look some of the search engine optimisation work we do and see examples on our live SEO results page. If you just want some more about this intriguing new product from Google, take a look at the official Google Buzz pages.

As web developers, we are using web browsers continually to preview and debug our web pages, dynamic web application and the website page’s we develop. However, many consumers are unsure of what a web browser actually is. Admittedly, for many, this can be very confusing as there are such a lot of Internet related terms flying around now that it can be difficult to explain exactly what a web browser is. This can be especially true where many web services, such as e-mail and search engines are so tightly integrated into the web browser and the web browsing experience.

Speaking of search engines, Google, which I’m sure you have all heard of, prepared an excellent video which demonstrates and explain the concept of a web browser and attempts to explain exactly what a web browser is, and indeed, what it is not. If you are in any way unsure, take a look at the video below.

At Rapid Web, our best work is in our websites and our dynamic web applications. If you wish, you can find out a bit more about us, our web design and some of  the work we do.