What is Yahoo Search Monkey ?

I really feel that Yahoo didn’t do much marketing on the new services they started recently. The developer platform for this service is called Yahoo Search Monkey.
And the main reasons Yahoo came up with this service are

1. To improve their Search services
2. To have yahoo users to login account to yahoo all time when they look for any yahoo services. I think people started doing that for Google… anyways I do it all time :) .
3. To have the search results have different look and bring some change in the usual search results.

So let me explain how it works .Yahoo has called all the general developer community to use their Search monkey API’s to develop applications that can be added to Yahoo search gallery. Right now they have added some 48 applications. To make it more clear let me take an example , somebody has made an application with LinkedIn , the pretty famous professional social networking website. So here check my search list when I search for ‘Naroor’.



To try it in you PC follow the following instructions as follows.

1. Go to yahoo.com .Sign in to your account there and return back to you main yahoo homepage with login session.
2. Search for a name, say ‘Naroor’. In the search page you can see the linkedIn listing but not the picture. Now you can see a Customize combo near the search button on the top. Click the dropdown and select browse gallery. The gallery lists various search monkey application that developers had developed and Yahoo added them to the list. Now select LinkedIN from that list and add it .
3. Now when you search for the name you can see my picture with the link .(I think it takes some time for the application to be added to your account but I have no idea how much time ,max by one day.)

So to summarize, Yahoo search monkey can be said as a place to redesign the yahoo search result and make it more attractive that you are sure it will make the surfer to click the link. Check out some other Search monkey applications like Movies, recipes , restaurant reviews.

Basic SEO for Blogs and Websites

I have seen so many of friends asking how they can make their blog address or website to be listed in Google search engine when I say I work on SEO. I try to give some of the ideas but thought I should write down a list of basic steps any internet publisher can do .So follow the basic steps and see the results.

1.Searchable Keywords
You should list the keywords / phrases that your prospective visitor will be searching to find your blog/website .For example, say you write about recipes, and you want the page which has the recipe for ‘ chicken curry ‘ , list the various keyword combination which people can search like Indian chicken curry , Preparing chicken curry , ingredients of chicken curry etc .Once you have the list ready try to have those keywords mentioned in the webpage anywhere .

2.Title and Description HTML tags
The first impression about a webpage comes from the title and the description tags. The Title tags is the sentences which is shown when the page is list in Google search results and that of course tells the internet user whether to visit the web page or not .And I recommend you to have the top keyword added on the Title tag .Also keep the length of title tag sentence less than 80-90 character count.
The Meta Description tag is used in showing the snippet in the Google result. The small description after the title is the Snippet. But from my experience the company doesn’t show the description tag always but when it finds a good combination of the keywords mentioned in that short description about the page. At times it tries to find some description in the body or common directory like DMOZ.org.

3.Google Webmaster Central
Google has opened a service mostly for the webmasters or blog owners to add their website information’s through this account. If you have a Google account you can log into through Google Webmaster Login page.
Once you login there are so many tools for optimizing for Google search engine. Most attractive and important tool is submitting the Google Sitemaps , which I will be covering in detail in my next blog on that topic .Will be adding some more details on the tools provided in Google webmaster central .

4.Keep blogging or updating with interesting topics
As a blogger you really has to convince the world that your blog is worth a look or subscription and the only method is to write and update with interesting blogs or articles which interests public. Once the general public start looking for more blog entries you can find high page rank website linking to your blog or website.
Google Searching ranking mostly works on the basis of how famous you are on the internet ie how many websites or blogs are pointing to your website or blog.

5.Wrong information about Google page ranking
I have heard so many people thinking that if you participate in Google Adwords (their advertisement service), it helps you to gain or increase Google Rank. That’s wrong information. The search engine is not mixing their revenue generation method and their main search facility together.