The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organized to make it easily discoverable. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it. We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that. The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal.
Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.
The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.
A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.
Knols will include strong community tools. People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on. Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it. Knols will also include references and links to additional information. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.
Once testing is completed, participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality. Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.
We do not want to build a walled garden of content; we want to disseminate it as widely as possible. Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and will make that content available to any other search engine.
As always, a picture is worth a thousands words, so an example of a knol is below (double-click on the image to see the page in full). The main content is real, and we encourage you to read it (you may sleep better afterwards!), but most of the meta-data -- like reviews, ratings, and comments -- are not real, because, of course, this has not been in the public eye as yet. Again, this is a preliminary version.
Official Google Blog: Encouraging people to contribute knowledge
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Official Google Blog: Encouraging people to contribute knowledge
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Saturday, February 16, 2008
Building a Mouse - Over Menu Using CSS
Introduction
I remember when I started building web sites. Creating a dynamic menu’s meant creating a series of images: one for the static image, one for the mouse-over image, and at times a separate image for when a click occurred. After this, I piled on the JavaScript to preload the mouse over images and change the images, depending on which menu button had the mouse cursor over it. Phew! It was a lot of work.
This in itself was tedious. Not only because I had to create up to 3 separate images, but also because it increased page load time, as well as being a pain when the time came to create a new menu item for the same site. With the evolution of CSS over the past couple of years, however, this process has been greatly simplified.
In this article I’ll show you a very simple technique to create mouse over menu’s that load almost instantly, that look great, and that are very easy to maintain.
Anyway, let’s get started!
The Finished Product
Before I get started, here’s a picture of what the end result will look like. Keep in mind that you can easily change the fonts, sizes, colorsto match your web sites look and feel.
Search Engines Care
If you’ve been involved in any form of search engine optimization then you’ll know that search engines use links quite heavily to determine search rankings and relevancies.
Why does this matter? Simply because using text or style sheet driven menu’s mean search engines such as Google can read your links. If we used images for our menus,
Google would know there’s a link, but it wouldn’t be able to index the actual words used to create the link.
Building the Menu
Building the menu is a simple process. First, we’ll start by creating the background of the menu. This is the dark gray bar that you can see above.
Insert this div inside the body tags of your web page, where you want the menu to appear:
<div class=toolbar></div>
Next, create the stylesheet class for the toolbar and add it before the closing </head> tag in your web page:
<style>
.toolbar {
background-color: #313031;
padding: 5px 0px 5px 0px;
}
</style>
We added some padding to the top and bottom of the toolbar div tag to create some spacing between the text and the background border.
Notice the following expression in the style sheet:
padding: 5px 0px 5px 0px
Here, we’re setting the padding on the top, right, bottom and left sides of the div respectively.
Now we’ll place some menu links inside of the toolbar div, and then add some CSS to format the links, thus emulating that menu button look that we’re after:
<div
class=toolbar><a class="menu" href="menu1.html" title="Visit Menu
Item 1"> Menu Item 1</a></div>
The title tag causes a tool tip to be displayed when the cursor is placed over the link (or menu button). Here’s the CSS to create the basic menu buttons:
.menu {
border-right: 1px solid white;
text-decoration: none;
background-color: #313031;
padding: 5px;
}
Here, we simply place a border on the right side of each button to create the 1 pixel of white space which acts as a separator between menu items.
We then remove the underline from each link, by using the text-decoration: none attribute. Finally, we replace the background color of the menu item to match the background color of the toolbar div and add a padding of 5 pixels to create our menu button.
Whilst this works, it obviously doesn’t look very pretty. So let’s add some formatting to the text of the buttons:
.menu {
border-right: 1px solid white;
text-decoration: none;
background-color: #313031;
padding: 5px;
color: white;
font-family: Tahoma;
font-size: 8pt;
font-weight: bold;
}
Ah. Much better! We’re almost done -- all we need now is the mouse-over color change. Whilst this used to involve Javascript and can still be done using some simple Javascript code, I find it easier to use the CSS hover attribute, which basically defines the look of a link when the mouse cursor moves over it:
.menu:hover {
background-color: #5A8EC6;
}
Remember that the hover attribute only works on links, i.e. <a href…></a> tags.
We’re done
That’s really all there is to it! We can now add more link tags to create the rest of the menu. The complete code looks like this:
<style>
.menu {
color: white;
font-family: Tahoma;
font-size: 8pt;
font-weight: bold;
border-right: 1px solid white;
text-decoration: none;
background-color: #313031;
padding: 5px;
}
.menu:hover {
background-color: #5A8EC6;
}
.toolbar {
background-color: #313031;
padding: 5px 0px 5px 0px;
}
</style>
<div class=toolbar><a class=menu href="menu1.html" title="Visit Menu Item 1"> Menu Item 1</a><a class=menu href="menu1.html" title="Visit Menu Item 2"> Menu Item 2</a><a class=menu href="menu1.html"> Menu Item 3</a></div>
And there you have it. A complete menu for your next website, in only a few lines of code!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Few Steps to Increase your Google Page Rank
Page Rank of a website is a asset for a site owner, because if a site has a larger page rank it will be more visible in search engines and can get more visitors. There are a lot of ways to promote your website and increase its page rank. Some ways require you to pay for it and some are FREE but needs extra time and efforts. Remember in Websites the most important thing you need to remember is the patience. Below are some points which you can follow and improve your website ranking.
- Linking is the best and fast way to improve your page rank. Try to get a link back from higher page rank websites. There are some free ways also but they will take a long time to insert your link in other websites. But if you can pay some $$ to get a link back from higher page rank websites, they will guarantee you for your link to be approved within a week.
- If you are planning to purchase a link back then remember this point, some websites have PR4, PR5 or even PR7 for their home page, but no PR for any of their other pages, So remember to pay for only that link which will be displayed on a PR+ page.
- Submit to directories and sit relax. Start one by one and submit your link in all web directories. If you can, try to give a link back (reciprocal link on your page) to free directories, some directories does not need it, but if you provide them, their owners will look for your approval first.
- Build a sitemap for your website (XML based for Google and text based for yahoo) and submit them to Google and yahoo. Get a Google webmaster account and sign in there to see your website statistics. It will also tell you if you site is indexed or not, and your page rank in Google.
- Update your website every day by adding more unique content. If you site has some information for a visitor then it is 100% chance for him to come back to your site again.
- Provide inside linking to your website. For example you can provide a link of your previous and next articles on an article page. Or you can provide a list of related articles so visitor can remains a long time on your website.
- Keep in touch with your website. If you do, you will get results from your statistics analyzer very soon that you are getting visitors and your page rank is improved.
- And the most important tip. “Trade your link with other web owners“. Put their link on your website and they will put your link in them. This is for free and the very fast way to improve your visibility in search engines.
Keep following in the above tip and your will get a better result within days. Keep reading this website for more informative articles and unique SEO tips.
Display Google Page Rank INSTANTLY on Webpages
Add Page Rank Button or Icon to your web site - FREE!
- By adding our Page Rank Checker Button to your site you can check the rank (check PR) of all your web site pages right on your web site.
- To use our Page Rank Checking tool you just need to add a small piece of HTML code to the pages where you want to check the page rank and our free tool Page Rank Checker will show the small icon that displays the current Google.com PageRank of those web pages.
How to add Page Rank Checker to a web site
If you want Google Page Rank checking Button or Icon to be add to your web pages, please copy one of the HTML codes below and paste it on your page where you want the page rank icon to appear:
 | |
 | |
 |
IMPORTANT: Please DO NOT modify the code, otherwise we can not guarantee the correctness of our free page rank checking tool that displays the page rank value and in case PR checking image DOES NOT work properly on your site?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Recent posts widget for your blog
With “Recent posts” widget you can show recently posted widgets or you can say all posts in one list which may help your visitor to browse around your blog or site. Here’s the procedure on how to in stall the widget on your blog : Just copy the above code and paste it in new widget of your blog. Also, don’t forget to add your sitename in the last line of HTML code where I’ve mentioned “http://yoursitename.blogspot.com”. I mean just replace it with your sitename and you are done. The above code refers to recent 10 postings from your blog.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Recent Comments Widget - Customizable
Since many of you would prefer to have different features for your "Recent Comments" widgets, I've decided to post this widget generator. Using this tool means you can customize your recent posts widget to your personal preferences and then automatically insert the widget into your Blogger blog! Simply choose your preferences in the boxes below, click "Apply" and then "Add Widget to my Blog" when you are ready. I've tested this in both IE and Firefox and the widgets seem to appear fine.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Blogger Tricks - Delete "nofollow" Attribute from Blogger.com to increase Page Rank
You can also remove "no follow" attribute from yours blogspot account to increase Page rank ,If you do that you can join Do Follow blog that will increase yours Page Rank, and also your Adsense earning.
How to Delete "nofollow" Attribute on Blogger
1. To do this, login into your blogger. Usually you will bring to Dashboard after login.
2. Choose your blog and click "Layout"
3. Click “Edit Html" subtab og the "Template" tab
4. Before remove "nofollow" attribute, please backup you template by clicking Download Full Template and save your template. You can use it if you get error when make modification of your template.
5. Check "Expand Widgets" checkbox at at the top of the Edit Template text box. This expands the Blog Posts Widget Code within which is the comments code.
6. Scroll down the template and find below code:
<dl id='comments-block'>
<b:loop values='data:post.comments' var='comment'>
<dt class='comment-author'expr:id='"comment-" + data:comment.id'>
<a expr:name='"comment-" +data:comment.id'/>
<b:if cond='data:comment.authorUrl'>
<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='nofollow'><data:comment.author/></a>
<b:else/>
<data:comment.author/>
</b:if>
<data:commentPostedByMsg/>
</dt>
7. Detele the bold code in red rel=’nofollow’(Or you can remove only no also making it rel=’follow‘) and save the template.Check both below image of before changing code and after chaging code.
After
One Way Link building Services
One-way link building is a great way to improve your link popularity and ranking in the search engines. One-way links are more difficult to obtain than traditional reciprocal links, but pay off in securing solid long-term search engine ranking results. One way link building is the process to acquire number of in-bound links without placing an out-bound link back. There are more difficulties in acquiring one way links but it serves more to your websites as it increases your link popularity, search engine rankings and Google Page Rank.
Why Are One-Way Links Helpful?
Link building in general is an important part of making sure your site ranks well in the search engines. Google and many of the other search engines include link popularity as part of the way they evaluate the web pages they include in the search engine databases. Links are seen as a positive "vote" towards the quality of the web page. Each individual page acquires link popularity based on the pages that link to it. Google and Yahoo both have toolbars showing the page rank of pages you visit, so you can use these tools to get a good estimate of your pages' link popularity. It is not necessary to get totally caught up in the minutia of which types of links from which types of pages are the most important. The bottom line is this: acquiring links pointing back to your website, particularly links from sites covering the same or related topics as your site, is helpful in the overall scheme of search engine ranking.
The big "plus" of one-way links is that you don't have to worry about linking back to a "bad neighborhood". If your site has links pointing back to sites that serve as "link farms" or "free-for-all" sites, you may not gain, and could actually lose page rank. These sites are rarely focused, and tend to have links to and from all different sorts of sites. Since there is no particular topical emphasis here, it is clear to Google and the other search engines that the sole purpose of these sites is to artificially increase the number of links pointing to your site. Since there is no value added for the search engine's users, they in turn give no value to these links.
Another advantage to these focused, one-way links is that they will tend to stay in place. A website that features a link to your site probably does so because that site's owner thinks that their visitors will benefit from the content your site has to offer. Rather than simply trying to manipulate search results, they want to add to the experience of their visitors; you benefit from having a long term link in place. Sites featuring reciprocal links may simply drop your link when it no longer suits their linking strategy.
How Do I Obtain Natural Links?
Building good content helps interest your visitors and keeps them on your website. By becoming an authority on your topic, you will attract more visitors. When another website in essence "votes" for the quality of your website by placing a link pointing back to it, you are obtaining natural linking. The more you can build upon helpful articles, FAQs and white papers, etc., the better reason for visitors to link back to your website because of the quality content.
One-Way Linking Sources
There are a number of ways to get links from other sites back to yours. The most important principle to keep in mind is that you will get the most links when you offer something significant to link to. Think of what you can provide that people will want to link to:
- Natural links given from topic-related websites that like your website
- Providing free content, such as access to articles, e-books, FAQ's and white papers
- Directory links, listed under the category related to your topic
- Business directory links, listed under the category related to your topic
- Blogs, submitted to a blog directory and archived online
- Business associations, listed under the category related to your topic
- Newsletter text ads promoting your business, archived online at topic-related websites
- Original articles, submitted to and archived online at topic-related websites
- Original press releases, submitted to and archived online at topic-related websites
- Original newsletters, submitted to and archived online at topic-related websites
- White papers, submitted to and archived online at topic-related websites
- E-books, submitted to and archived online at topic-related websites
- Free software tools provided with required link back to website
The extra value of one-way links is the fact that you are also promoting your website from the listing as well as the active link. Articles, newsletters, white papers, directory and business association links may bring in traffic from visitors who are interested in the description of your website listing.
How Do I Know The Links Are Valid?
To gain the most benefit from your links, the link back to your web page should be one that can be followed by the search engine robots. Plain old text links and image links usually can be followed by the search engine robots. More exotic types of links, like JavaScript links, cannot typically be followed by the search engine robots. When you provide suggested linking code, the simpler the better. Don't be afraid to suggest linking formats to owners of sites that link to you. The types of links that serve your purposes best will generally provide their visitors with the best experience as well.
Check to see if the page where the link will be located can be found in the search engine results. You can search via the entire website or by individual page. Different search engines use different syntax in looking for individual pages and links; refer to the advanced search function for each search engine for details.
Google Search Example:
Shows indexing of all pages listed in website
site:www.websitedomainname.com
Shows indexing of a specific web page in website
info:www.websitedomainname.com/pagename.html
If the page is listed in the search engine results, this means the page has been indexed by the search engine robots. This means the web page is valid for indexing and that your link will be picked up as well.
Research And Quality Content Equal Success
One-way link building means hard work and long term determination to achieve good link popularity. By improving the quality of your website, you improve the chance to obtain good quality natural links. Spend a set amount of time each week to seek out quality one-way links to achieve your goal. By using this long-term game plan you will be able to safely build links for optimum link popularity success.
CHECK YOUR PAGE RANK
Check Page Rank of any web site page instantly:
In order to Check Page Rank of a single web site, web page or a domain name, please enter the web site, web page URL or domain name in the form below and click "Check PR" button:
Please Enter a Valid URL above and click Check Page Rank Button to determine its Page Rank.
Add this FREE Page Rank Checking tool to your web site
In order to add this free page rank checker tool to your web site and give your visitors the way to check the ranking of any pages, just copy the following HTML code and put it into your HTML document where you want the check page rank tool to appear:
On your web pages the tool will look like this:
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