maine web development, web design, internet marketing

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all announced this morning that they’re supporting an addition to the Sitemaps protocol that makes it easier for site owners with multiple subdomains to manage sitemap files.

In the past, you were forced to maintain an XML sitemap in the same domain as the domain which it referred to. i.e. www.hallme.com would have a sitemap for this domain, and blog.hallme.com would also need its own sitemap hosted on its own domain. There was no way to specify that we wanted blog.hallme.com to have a sitemap hosted on www.hallme.com, nor could we for www.hallblog.com.

For most site owners, this isn’t much of an issue, but if your business consists of multiple web properties, or many subdomains, the management of the sitemaps protocol could be quite a chore! (Imagine a scalable CMS such as wordpress.com).

The update makes life a lot easier for webmasters in these situations. Now, you can host all of your sitemaps for multiple domains at a single domain, and then use your robots.txt file to point search engines to the location of the correct sitemap.

So let’s say we want www.masterdomain.com to have the sitemap for subdomain.masterdomain.com. All you need to do is add the following line to the robots.txt file on subdomain.masterdomain.com:

Sitemap: http://www.masterdomain.com/sitemaps/subdomain.masterdomain.xml

On the same token, www.masterdomainblog.com could have this line added to the robots.txt:

Sitemap: http://www.masterdomain.com/sitemaps/masterdomainblog.xml

For the average small business, this is an interesting, if useless feature, but for businesses spanning multiple web properties, with subdomains, or for businesses like ourselves who manage sitemaps for hundreds of clients, the new update is welcome news indeed!

By now you’ve already hear that Microsoft has made an incredible bid of $45 billion to pick up Yahoo. Some call it an offer Yahoo can’t refuse, but what does it mean for your business online?

While in general monopolies have never proven to be great for the little guys, a combined Yahoo-Microsoft effort would either produce a viable competitor to the Goog or continue a tailspin of diminishing relevance, leaving Google the #1 search engine by default, not choice. With Google already enforcing strict policies about paid links and essentially defining how thousands of webmasters develop their sites, the latter situation would create a hazardous environment for business owners who have desires for their sites that at odds with Google’s policies.

Now to Google’s credit, their standards for websites are generally pretty good ones — build sites for users, avoid using duplicate content, have a reliable site, etc. However, what checks and balances will there be if the organic search world is a one-company show? Especially as Google stretches its fingers into acquiring information and media properties, the neutrality of this web behemoth is going to become ever more a subject of scrutiny… and legitimate concern.

On the other hand, even a more influential Google will have to contend with the emerging power of social networks, which is exactly where a Microsoft-Yahoo would be strong. The savvy website owner — that is, you — will be wise to keep working on a site which drives in diverse sources of traffic, and answers all of the questions your customers typically have. Though it’s also not a bad idea to make an appearance in social media circles!

Well all know that technology changes will abruptly alter how we approach web marketing, and though the tactics will differ depending on how organic search companies butt heads, the bottom line will always be reaching your customers. Keep speaking the message your customers want to hear — no matter the medium — and success will follow you.

Whether Florida or a “weather update,” when algorithms change, the web forums light up. Today’s question we talk a little bit about why this happens and why you should focus on producing quality, not riding the algo-train.

[audio:http://www.hallme.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/seo-audio-05.mp3]
SEO Audio Episode 5

The New York Times reports this morning that Google has unveiled a system to automatically prevent copyrighted videos being uploaded to YouTube. This system looks to be an olive branch in what’s turned into a bitter battle between Google and major media companies, including everyone from Disney, CBS, NBC to Viacom and Time Warner.

The system uses a fingerprinting technology, where media creators would upload content to Google’s servers. Google’s software, in turn, creates a fingerprint which is checked against any files that a user attempts to upload. If the file too closely matches the fingerprint, the upload is blocked.

The opinions of media representatives about the technology range from the lukewarm to the dubious, and for good reason. While from a copyright-owner perspective it’s nice to see Google taking a serious move towards blocking free uploads of copyrighted video clips, their position has long been that their position as a sharing-service is protected by the 1998 DMCA. Google is happy to remove copyrighted clips when alerted to their presence, but the lack of a cohesive, thorough means of blocking these uploads has frustrated media companies and lead to accusations of Google’s profiting off this copyrighted material (by having a service that is more popular because of the unauthorized content).

While the record-companies continue to wage war against file-sharing even as the future of DRM grows more and more dubious, it’s clear that the copyright battle is just beginning for video media. And Google, as much as they can within legal limits, is standing on the side of more open sharing and proliferation than the media companies that risk losing a lot more with this emerging technology.