SEO by the Sea

Sometimes a list of search results isn’t always the best way to present information found in a search.

Google has recently come up with a couple of other interesting ways to show results related to a query, that might make you reconsider how you present dates and addresses on the pages of your website.

A map pointing out different facts related to a query might provide some interesting results:

Likewise, a timeline could show you some things that you might not expect to see from a search engine, especially if the facts used in response to the query came from different web pages:

Continue reading Google Timelines, Fact Maps, and Fact Relevance Rankings

Google described some of its janitors in a recent patent application.

Google has been working on extracting data from a wide variety of sources on the Web, but there are problems with a lot of that information. Some examples:

One site may use a certain format to present information, while other pages use different formats.

Information from one web page may contradict information from others.

Some data may become old and stale.

When Google collects this kind of information, a lot of it needs to be cleaned up, and Google’s “Janitors” spring into action to do that.

Continue reading Google Janitors Clean Up Facts on the Web

Depending upon how you may phrase a query, Google will sometimes jump into a Q&A (question and answer) mode. This is described on one of Google’s help pages:

Want to know the population of Japan? What currency is used in Algeria? The birthplace of Bono? Hit us with a fact-based question or query (like “population of Japan”) by typing it into the Google search box. We’ll search the web and display the answer at the top of your search results page. We also link to our source for this information so that you can learn even more.

- Google Web Search Features

The same feature is available through a moble phone service from Google, a little more straightforward in that you know you are only in Q&A mode when asking a question:

Continue reading Google Q&A Patent Applications?