Fishing boat

In some ways, it’s the Who’s Who of Twitter — the Twitter Suggested Users list. These are the 241 people Twitter currently suggests that new people should follow. Below, a look at who makes it by categories, such as media or sports. Who’s getting Twitter’s love (such as the New York Times) and who’s not (say most other newspapers). To make the breakdown below, I used an account that was following no one on the Suggested Users List. That’s important, because if you follow someone, then they’ll no longer show (that’s why it seemed TechCrunch might have been dropped recently, but they weren’t). NOTE (Sept. 22, 2009): About two weeks after this was originally written, it appears TechCrunch really was dropped from the list. How to get on the list? Twitter blogged in March: We’ve explained that the Suggested Users list is a bit like your local book store’s staff picks but there’s a little more to it than that. Our … [Read more...] about Who Does Twitter Love? Breaking Down The Twitter Suggested Users List

As a small business owner, the web holds a lot of challenges that, if navigated successfully, may yield some treasures. But there are some waves on the horizon, and uncharted waters ahead for many who would pursue those riches. A secret for those of you who are starting out with a fresh website, and something to learn about the storms ahead. There are fundamentals about conducting business online that will be helpful for you to learn, and there are a few best practices that have been well documented in some places. But a constant on the Web is that there’s always something new, always something that even the most experienced business folks and online marketers alike all face together for the first time. Let’s take a look at some of those cresting waves approaching from the distance. Exploring the mobile web The web provides some big opportunities, but the mobile web may provide even more. For a small business owner, making your goods and services available to people over … [Read more...] about A Smooth Sea Never Made A Skilled Mariner

As a link builder and content publicist, I rarely see a link building challenge that cannot be overcome. Today there are many unique and legitimate ways to attract and generate links that didn’t exist ten years ago. There are different styles and approaches to link building, all of which can be effective. And there is no single approach that will be 100% effective, 100% of the time. Link building is more exciting than ever, and this November, as I enter my 15th year in this field, I can say with certainty that link building is as much art as it has become science, and sometimes the science gets in the way. That said, while this may sound like heresy, there are times when the link building solution for a site is to simply give up. There are some types of content for which no amount of trying will help, no amount of link bait will matter, and no amount of money can fix things. I had such a scenario come up this past week. Without giving names and URLs, here’s what happened. I … [Read more...] about When Link Building Is Pointless

Search for the word “automobile” at Google, and the search engine might expand your search to include results for the word “car” as well, since it is a synonym of the word automobile. Accidentally misspell the word as “automoble” and Google might automatically correct your spelling error and search for “automobile.” Follow that up with a search for the word “driving” and Google could expand your query by using a process called stemming to look at the root of the word (driv-) and adding common endings to it, to come up with, and include in the search, such words as “driving,” and “driver.” This kind of query expansion is aimed at providing searchers with better search results. This method of expanding queries might not happen yet (though it sometimes appears to for spelling corrections at least), and it might not happen in all searches. Typical approaches to query expansion include: Stemming of words, … [Read more...] about How a Search Engine Might Find Synonyms to Use to Expand Search Queries

There have been a number of patent filings and whitepapers from the major search engines over the past 5 or 6 years that describe how they might break a page into blocks or segments to understand things like the main topic or topics on a page, which block might be the most important for a page, what to show on smaller screens for mobile devices, and to apply different weights for links depending upon which block they are located within. I’ve written about a number of those in the past in posts such as: One of the areas that most of the patents and papers that I wrote about didn’t delve into in much detail is how a search engine might understand the functions of blocks that they identify. Is a block primarily navigation, or advertising, or a footer? Does it contain mostly information or noise? Is it decorative in purpose, or primarily a way to interact with the site owner, such as a contact form? There are a few reasons for a search engine to break pages into blocks. One … [Read more...] about How a Search Engine Might Identify the Functions of Blocks in Web Pages to Improve Search Results