When you search for something on Google, at the upper right in the light blue bar there’s a note of the number of results Google found and how long it took them to process your search. Someone at Google apparently has a skewed sense of humor. Once I saw one of these, I had to keep re-running my search to see how many different ones I’d get back.

Google has a funny view of time

Monty Python fans will particularly appreciate the last one, but I have to say that the skidoo one is pretty darn good, too.

Search engines are funny things. They sometimes return amusingly irrelevent results.

A couple of days ago, someone searched Google for:
how to sue somebody on trumped up charges

My business blog at tropicalwebworks.org turned up #4 in that search. The person actually clicked through to the page, even though it’s clearly not about suing somebody on trumped-up charges.

So….. some ex-Google engineers have launched their own search engine: Cuil (pronounced “Cool”).

They claim that its index is 3 times the size of Google’s. Great!

They say it focuses on on-page content for relevancy. Great!

I would love to see a good solid competitor for Google. I would love to see a search engine that focuses more on on-page content and less on backlinks.

I ran a few searches on Cuil. The results were nothing to write home about. Some key search terms brought up zero results. Other searches brought up tons of spam. Some searches brought up reasonably relevant results. But the search results were inferior — vastly inferior — compared to Google. Cuil’s index can’t possibly be big as they claim, and it’s obvious the algorithm needs polishing. But that’s okay; I would expect a brand-new search engine to need fine-tuning.

I like the thumbnail image that Cuil displays with each result, too. Well, I would, except that the images seem to have no relationship whatsoever to the search results. What on earth are they doing, showing random, unrelated images as thumbnails next to search results?

But why oh why is Cuil using a scrolling div to display search results? I have my default text size in Firefox set big enough that the entire search result set doesn’t fit on my screen, and the scrolling div means that after I perform a search I then have to click with my mouse inside the scrolling div area before I can scroll.

And, in case it’s not bad enough that Cuil is using the scrolling div, they’re also displaying the search resuls in columns.

Why oh why is Cuil using columns? I have a choice to use two columns or three, but honestly, there’s nothing wrong with a single column. I hate hate hate scrolling down then up then down then up then down then up. A single column doesn’t force all that up-and-down — I can just scroll down through the results until I find what I’m looking for. But two or three colums forces two or three down-and-ups. It gets more annoying each time.

In Google, I have my options set to display 100 results at a time. Cuil doesn’t offer this option. They may in the future — but imagine scrolling down through 33 results, then back up all that way to the top of the second column, then down through another 33 results, then all that way to the top of the third column, then down again. Egads! This is not user friendly.

I wish Cuil the best of luck. Google has far too much power in the world of search. But for now I won’t be using it.

I used to work in corporate public relations, and produced a lot of printed materials: magazines, newsletters, that type of thing. Printers and typographers have a saying: “All bold is no bold.” Meaning, if you boldface everything on the page, it’s the equivalent of boldfacing nothing, because nothing stands out.

This has relevance to the world of search engine optimization. I’m hereby making up a new saying for SEO:

A page that’s about everything isn’t about anything.

In my experience, it’s nonproductive to try to optimize every page in a web site for the overall topic the site is about. The key is to create individual pages about specific sub-topics, and optimize the heck out of each of those pages for the specific topic.

Say you have a site about widgets. Don’t try to make the entire site rank for “widgets.” It ain’t gonna work.

Instead, make a page about “small red widgets” — and make that page be entirely and only about “small red widgets.” Make another page about “lightweight aluminum widgets” — and that page should be entirely about lightweight aluminum widgets. And another page could be about “heavy duty industrial widgets” (and nothing else).

Don’t make a page about small red widgets, lightweight aluminum widgets, and heavy duty industrial widgets. It likely won’t rank well for any of those terms, nor for “widgets” as a generic term. Because that page is trying to be about everything, but you’re not giving Googlebot the clear indicators it needs to figure out what the page is about.

Use your title tags, your headlines, the textual content, photo captions, anchor text, and all other indicators to make it absolutely, 100%, unmistakably clear to Googlebot that this page is about small red widgets, and that page is about lightweight aluminum widgets, and that other page is about heavy duty industrial widgets.

Remember: A page that’s about everything isn’t about anything. Tattoo that on your forehead.

And don’t forget: All bold is no bold.

Google thinks that searching for web pages with the word “design” in the title means you have a virus

There are some “advanced” Google searches that web developers and search engine experts often use to get a better picture of the true competition for various keywords. One of these is using intitle: to find out how many web pages are targeting a particular word or phrase in the title of the page. The syntax is intitle:keyword or intitle:”keyword phrase”.

Google apparently thinks that anyone who includes the word “design” in such a search is infested with a virus or other malware.

Go ahead and try it. Go to Google and type intitle:”website design” into the search box. Or intitle:”interior design” or intitle:”fashion design.” Bet you get a warning message from Google about having a virus or spyware.

Now try those searches with a different word instead of design. Search for intitle:”website developer” or intitle:”interior decor” or intitle:”fashion clothing.” No problem, you get regular search results of all the pages Google knows about that contain those phrases in the page title.

WTF? “Design” is a virus word? If anyone wonders why search results in Google can be so screwy sometimes, I shall point them to this post.