So, if you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks and have emerged, bleary eyed and wondering "What on Earth is this Google +1 button?" Then you've come to the right place.

The Google +1 Button is like… the "Like" button on Facebook, but instead of being for people's posts, updates and photos, it's for the web. Instead of liking a post, you're liking a website, a blog article, someone's profile… anything! To use it, you have to have a Google Account and, in turn, a Google Profile. If you've just got an account, you can still +1 a page, but you'll have to click "Create a Profile" when you first try to use this new feature. Why not try clicking our +1 button at the top to get into the swing of it?

The Importance of the +1 Button

The Google +1 Button is going to be important for many reasons; Google will begin to tailor search results so that if you've got a friend associated with your Google account that has liked a page related to what you're searching for, chances are, Google are going to rank the page they 'Plus-Oned' above the pages that they didn't. The other thing is, even if none of your friends have Plus-Oned a page, chances are the pages that have more will rank better.

It's for this reason, and this reason alone that we deem this new +1 button as very important. People are starting to speculate that if the +1 button kicks off a lot, Google might start to favour the pages using it over the pages that aren’t...

We also know that the +1 button is a surefire way to make sure Google knows about your page. All +1s will be stored, somewhere, in Google's complex database systems, but Google's algorithms will be looking at this list to make sure it is regularly spidering the pages people are 'Plus-Oneing.' (How many of these have we created?!)

If you have any questions, or need any advice, give us a call at 24/7 FastTrack IT on 0845 838 7801.

Learn more on the official Google +1 Page.

The much anticipated 'ChromeBook,' a laptop running the new Google Chrome OS, has gone on sale on in the United States, hailing a new era of modern, online-based computing.

The premise of the ChromeBook is that current computer systems are still based on a system that was developed before the internet, and has adapted to use the internet. The ChromeBook is more of a new system, designed to work solely with the internet. While the system has been hailed for being faster and simpler, and removing the need for internal storage and anti-virus software, critics have claimed that the ChromeBook doesn't function terrifically well when offline.

For the computer user who spends the majority of their time on the web, this is an ideal solution, with its' almost instant boot-up time, and simple, safe web browsing. For the conventional user who uses a mix of desktop applications, both offline and online, the idea may need some more refining before it's ready.

Related Links:

Google Chrome OS video on YouTube
Article on the BBC

As of the 1st of August, Google will no longer be optimising its' products to work with older web browsers. People using older versions of browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Safari and Mozilla Firefox will find that when they use Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs and some other products, some features may not work.

There are a few reasons for doing this. One is to try and break the trend of people clinging to older browsers, for whatever reason, another may be so that Google's developers can begin to utilise the functions of HTML5 without worrying about affecting some users. Google has stated that they will only do compatability testing and offer support for browsers up to the "third oldest" release version. So, for instance, 'BrowserX' versions 3, 4 and 5 will be catered for, whereas 1 and 2 won't.

This is a breath of fresh air for some web designers, because as Google is now causing a shake-up in browser standards, web developers can start to limit their compatability testing to ensure their websites only work with up-to-date browsers.

The Google Wave is gathering momentum and the beta testers are having quite a ride. The question is what and how can the Wave be leveraged by business users? Firstly take a look at this superb video which contains strong language but does demonstrate the Waves amazing functionality of the search mega giants embrace of social media.

Wow, the system is a fully integrated media extravaganza, with the ability to pull in images, movies, sound clips, background tracks and multiple format text. The user can start multiple waves (conversations) and select participants by their wave avatar (image or photo) and then start collaborating.

The end result is a single platform which looks like it can be used by business, not only for marketing, but customer support, project management, quick internal and external conversations, the list just goes on.

Many dispersed workforces have been using chat-room technology to connect quickly for quite sometime, but the interactivity is normally limited to some text and a smiley :o). Recently with Facebook and Twitter, some have started to use these slightly richer platforms to perform the same tasks. However, the very real and rich components of The Wave may well be so compelling that business once again migrates to the better platform.

From a marketing perspective, the Wave will need to encourage the same mass buy-in as Facebook and Twitter. Googles Friend Connect hasn't yet hit the big time but we are sure The Wave is going to hit much harder.

PageRank™ is passed from web-page to web-page. It does this through links, everytime you link to a page on your own website or to pages on a partner or an information website you pass across PageRank™. You vote for that page!

So this is a good thing for who you're linking to and can be a good thing for you also, it demonstrates a sense of sharing and helps Google™ and other search engines crawl the web, you have now become a source of links. However you are not yet trusted!

To be trusted you too have to grow your own PageRank and have others vote for you, but that's another post and tutorial all together. If, however, your interested in this check out the Understanding Search Engines DVD.

OK, so on with the topic in hand. What can you do when you wish to link, but not vote? In real world terms it's like telling someone you know a plumber but can't vouch for them as you haven't used them before. In this case you can direct Google™ not to follow a link. There are 3 ways to accomplish this;

1. Meta tag directive 
2. Anchor (link) tag directive 
3. Robots.txt files

Meta tag directive

The meta tag directive is a small piece of code you add to your HTML head tag. It has a number of different settings, but in terms of PageRank voting, you need to use the 'nofollow' attribute setting as follows.

<html>
 <head>
  <!-- Other tags such as Title, meta description etc. --> 
  <meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOFOLLOW">
 </head>
</html>

This instructs the search engine not to follow any links found on that web page. You can also instruct the search engine not to index the page by using the following snippet;

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW">
 

Anchor (link) tag directive

Similarly to the meta tag directive, you are also able to add no follow instructions at the lower level of just a single link. You may have a number of links on a page and only a handful are not to be followed, in this instance using the Meta tag or robots.txt file is not suitable. You use this tag as follows;

<a href="http://www.targetsite.com/subpage.html" title="something interesting" rel="nofollow">Stuff I may not trust in the future</a>

The rel="nofollow" directs Google™ not follow this link.

Robots.txt Files

A robots.txt file sits in the route folder of your website and provides search engines with hints of what it can and cannot crawl. Therefore the robots.txt file is more of a NOINDEX directive than a NOFOLLOW one. A basic file may look like this;

User-agent: *
Disallow: /links/

However, you can add specific instructions to certain crawlers by adding the crawler name to the User-agent like this;

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /links/

This would have the effect of stopping Google™ from crawling the links folder but allowing other search engines to crawl it.

We hope this helps, please comment if you have any questions.

Google^TM today informed the community of a simplified way of integrating Friend Connect into their websites and blogs. Friend Connect is a collection of widgets website owners can use to encourage more community use of their on line content.

Typically, the widgets are very easy to use and implement and are often just small pieces of HTML and Javascript which are placed on each web page. Previously there was a complex file validation process website owners needed to perform, but its just got better.

View the recent blog post to read more about the changes on Google Friend Connect. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/google-friend-connect-no-more-ftp-just.html

You can also browse more information about the service generally here. http://www.google.com/friendconnect/

Google^TM has recently updated their verification process for their webmaster services. The changes are small but are slightly different to those described and shown in the Understanding Search Engines DVD.

The first change is that the Meta tag verification will no longer be generated based on your email address. Previously it was and caused verified sites to become unverified if your email address changed.

The second is to do with the file verification process. Now Google^TM will provide a file for you to upload to your website rather than just providing you with a file name to create. Therefore to verify your website using a file, use the download link they provide and then upload it to your website as instructed on the SEO Training DVD. 

Today Google Translate has gone on-line. The new system from the search giants is available as a small snippet of HTML & Javascript code which can be placed on almost any web-page. The result is a translation of the page to any of the following languages:

Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified),Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh and Yiddish.

You should consider however that only standard text will be translated. Text in images and flash movies won't be translated. In order to support these elements as much as possible remember to add well worded alt tags to your images and titles to your links. You can find out more about alt tags and title tags as well as best practise for managing images on websites with the Understanding Search Engines SEO Training tutorials.

You can find out more here about Google Translate.