Focus Web Works

Getting ready for super important presentation Friday.

nohl — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:54:05 +0000

Getting ready for super important presentation Friday. I will talk about the next step in website construction as a reaction to the incredible growth of social media.

Twitter Digest for 2010-08-14

nohl — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:37:00 +0000

@thynctank I just figured out that Coke upsets my stomach, but other drinks don't seem to. in reply to thynctank #

Twitter Digest for 2010-08-13

nohl — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:37:00 +0000

Social Media is the new SEO. What is the new website optimization approach? Join me next week to hear some thoughts. #
I woke up this morning and gmail got a facelift. Not sure I like what they did to contacts. We'll see. #

Twitter Digest for 2010-08-12

nohl — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:37:00 +0000

@thynctank I cut soda out for 4 days. Whole new world in reply to thynctank #
Am I the only one who thinks this is funny: I search for Chuck Zeapfel in my email and I also get Chuck E. Cheese #
How cool is this: Johnny updates his phone number on Facebook and my Palm Pre automatically updates my address book. Sweet. #

Twitter Digest for 2010-08-06

nohl — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:37:00 +0000

Hot as hell in my office. Thank heaven for last Coke in fridge. #
Social Media Minute: 20 Billion Tweets and Counting, Facebook Poses Questions http://bit.ly/d0t9cn #

Notes from the road 08/05/2010 at 4:12 pm

nohl — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:12:26 +0000

Hot as hell in my office. Thank heaven for last Coke in fridge.

Notes from the road 08/03/2010 at 11:08 am

nohl — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:08:40 +0000

The nightmare: someone gets a hold of your CC. They go way over your limit. Your business CC deposits into the same account. You can’t use the $. Arrrg!!!!

Catching Up

nohl — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 05:46:16 +0000

I’ve been listening to the Dresden Files while sorting through tons of material about social media. Fun stories: part pulp fiction; part magical fantasy.

Tech News July 12, 2010 Google Google Google

nohl — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:27:17 +0000

July 10, 2010: Google’s YouTube.com announced that they now support up to 4k resolution. This is 2 times the quality that IMAX uses on their giant 25 foot movie screens. Clearly YouTube is planning for a super hidef future.

July 10, 2010: Google to invest $100 million in online game developer Zynga. If you’re not sure who Zynga is, just think Farmville, or Frontierville, or one of the other time sucking highly addictive games found on Facebook. Personally, if Google wants to replace Facebook, they need access to entertainment. Since they recently introduced a mini Pacman game on their Google page, it looks like they see the value of games as a revenue stream and a draw for pages with advertising.

Google speaks out about how searches work

nohl — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:02:58 +0000

On June 8th, Google announced on their company blog that they were using an new searching algorithm (method) for keeping track of all in information on the web. They named this new system Caffeine.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

Sidebar: How Search Engines Work
A search engine does not scour the Internet when you look for something. Instead, search engines “scape” the Internet looking for data and then build a giant list/table called an index. When you type in a search request, the search engine, looks in the index to find everything it has on your search terms and then sorts if based on factors such as popularity, how frequently the search terms are used, and other factors.

Google claims that Caffeine provides 50% more up-to-date information than their old system and has more stored information about the Internet than ever before.

Why is this big news: Analysts listen to and watch Google (G) because G’s search engines often provide more traffic to a website than when people just type the address into a web browser.

Google’s… old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Recently Google posted an article on their webmaster blog explaining their ranking methods. It’s all about quality. Google’s advice to owners of new websites is simple. Get involved in an online community and contribute with substance. Avoid fluff. Humor is OK, but don’t waste people’s time with ads and other junk. They discourage the purchase of links from unrelated sites or doing random link exchanges (where you trade links on sites with people who have nothing in common with you.) It is definitely a long-term game. Getting good rankings on Google is about consistency. It is not for sprinters. This race is for the turtle. Finally, Google suggests that you make it easy for novice users to link to your site. Notice below that you can post a bookmark to