Tafiti - The future of search engines?

I have recently been trying the beta version of a search engine called Tafiti, built by Microsoft. It seems to have some particularly useful features. The name 'Tafiti' is Swahili for 'do research': the search engine is more robust than most making it a very useful platform for researchers and for anyone who needs to do multiple searches to compile what they need.

Whats makes Tafiti stand outout is its ability to 'stack' individual search results together. If you type in 'Charles Darwin' & you can see that of a result is of interest to you, you can drag it to a 'stack' and continue to search. You can drag pictures, rss feeds, maps and pretty much anything to the 'stack'. These collections of resources can then be named and the excerpts you have selected are put in an html page that can either be emailed to you or to your colleagues or it can be published to your webspace.

Search results can be further filtered so that you can see items of specific interest within a broader category. For example, within my Charles Darwin search page, I might filter for articles with the word 'Beagle'.

There is a 'carousel' which enables you to view the results by different types (pictures, web pages, feeds etc) without clicking away from your page.

Finally, the search engine has cross-browser support and your searches can be saved for later, say if you were researching from home & from work.

I believe that the search engine has been in beta form since August but it's well worth a look. It is far more dynamic than most search engiens and offers functionality without complication.

Stuck for Content - How About an FAQ?

One of the problems that small firms have is the size of their budget. Often a website budget has been based on that the design of a website costs and does not take into account the value of good copy.

Well-written copy, in my research, increases the business done on e-commerce websites by 40% on average. Well-written copy gets browsers enganged & gives them the key facts & entices them without bambozzling them with science.

Many firms do not want to pay for this service, however, and would rather write the content themselves. This can be fine but it's amazing how many people are dumbstruck when it comes to writing about their business, even if they go out and sell it all day every day.

One way to get started is with an FAQ. By thinking about the questions you get asked the most, by polling your clients to see what most concerns them when they make a decision involving your industry and by formulating questions and answers for each of the aspects of your business you have done three things:

1. Formed the basis of each section of your site - you know the questions people ask when they're interested in your services now write your copy accordingly
2. Created extra content for your site - you now have a user-friendly FAQ that people can refer to, allowing them to feel reassured by you & your business.
3. Gained an extra page for optimization - you can link each question back to the relevant pages of your site with anchor text.

This can be an invaluable way of showcasing you as a source of good advice, of creating extra content & of increasing the content and relevance of your pages within the search engines.

It's Official - Paid Links Can Harm You

After the recent drop in the rankings of certain directories, it seemed that Google was on a mission to cut out the practice of webmasters paying for premium listings on websites. A recent update to the Google Webmaster section now shows this to be true:

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

Google's arguement is that paid links can create inequity in searches with the people with the deepest pockets being able to buy prestige which does not correspond to their standing or merit within the community.

Buying and selling links does have a place, especially in directories that need to invest time & effort analysing their content but links sold purely for advertising purposes have no place in Google's new world and sites found exercising this practice will be penalised.

Link Building - Tips for Emailing

Part of any link building strategy involves contacting the webmaster of the sites you have identified as good targets. The most unobtrusive way of doing this is by email. It is not pushy & means that people can get back to you at their leisure. That said, because email is more leisurely & less pressured, you need compelling reasons why people should link to your content.


Eric Ward at Search Engine Land has identified a typical email that might be sent:


Greetings;
My name is Ga+++++ +++++++++, and I'm in charge of getting links of web site. I have visited your site http://www.ericward.com/articles/index.html and I believe a link exchange could benefit us both.
I'm offering you the following: If you place a link to my site in just one single page in your website, I'll place a link to your website in 3 different sites. I'll provide you the details. These are my sites info:
Title: Web marketing GroupURL: http://www.webmarketinggroup.co.uk/Description: Online marketing solutions delivering measurable results. Services include search engine optimisation, website design and digital magazines.
And these are the sites where I would place a link to your site:
http://www.wmwebtech.com/ : PR6http://www.dcadultliteracy.org/ : PR6http://www.usalah.org/ : PR5
As you can see, all of these sites have a decent PR, so if you are interested, please add the link to your site, reply to this mail and I would gladly add your link in my sites after I verify them.
Thanks a lot for your attention, hope to hear back from you.
++++++++++oup.co.ukGab++++++ ++++

On the face of it, it's not too bad & you may well have sent something similar at some time, but, on closer inspection, there are a number of problems that would put off a number of webmasters.

These are:

ADDRESS - the address that this email is being sent to is wrong, this shows a slapdash approach. If you want to link to quality sites, you wouldn't expect to find one at the end of a poorly thought-out email. Furthermore, the emailer is mailing an address that has not asked for content form the site. This makes the email unsolicited.

IMPERSONAL - there is no name included despiste the link to the ericward.com website.

'GETTING LINKS' - this person is obviously paid to get links and so you might not trust the content.

JARGON - terms like 'link exchange' and 'PR' are used which might be of no use to the webmaster.

GMAIL ADDRESS - although you might not be able to tell this, the email comes from a gmail account which is not very professional.


When people make the decision to link they want to link to relevant well-thought-out sites. They do not want to do it because a link exchange would be of benefit (this is not quantified), they just want to find good content.