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First a little about how Google works. Google has robots that cruise the entire Internet logging information about all of the websites out there – this is called indexing and those robots are looking at several factors that determine how your search results will appear. The data that is collected by the robots are plugged into complex formulas called algorithms to “rank” sites and these rankings will determine the order of the search results that you see. The exact algorithm structure is a secret that Google will protect to the death, but there are some truths that we know:

Connections Matter – just like in real life. The more links into and out of a website, the more value is placed on that site compared to other sites. All other things being equal, the site with more other sites linking back to it will come out on top.

Structure Matters – again, virtual space mimics real space. Websites are created using code that is read by your browser and turned into what you see on your screen. There are a number of ways to create that code ranging from hand writing the code to modern blog software that essentially write everything for you. Search engines are trained to look for certain bits of information in that code to determine the contents of the website. If that prescribed information is missing or incorrect, your site is ranked lower. Luckily, most modern software that writes webpages has the code requirements hard-wired into their system and create search-friendly webpages.

There are a lot of other things to talk about in terms of Search Engine Optimization but those 2 are the biggies – connect your site well and build it right. Now let’s figure out how to use some more advanced search techniques.

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Info Avalanche – Most people just type some keywords into the search box and click search. Because of all of the hugeness of the Internet, most common word searches return the answer you’re looking for, but it is usually buried under an avalanche of information you don’t really care about. To get at what you’re really looking for, it is useful to learn about search operators. In this context, an operator is a string of text that modifies or focuses your search to get at what you really want. Here are a few of the more useful operators:

site: I use this almost every day. If I am on a website and I want to find something that exists somewhere on that website, the built-in search function is often worthless. A better way to search a specific site is to go to Google and type “site:whateversite.com” and then add a space and then type whatever term or term I want to search on. The key is to not put a space between “site:” and the URL of the site you’re trying to search. You do add a space after the URL before adding your search terms. Here’s an example: “site:desmoinesregister.com beaverdale”

filetype: This operator is useful to find specific types of files you might be interested in. If you want to find Microsoft Word Document templates for invoices simply type “filetype:doc invoice template” Once again, no space after the colon. Common filetypes of interest: jpg, pdf, ppt, mp3, wmv. Here’s a page listing even more file types you might be interested in: www.fileinfo.com/filetypes/common

” “ The use of quotation marks around a phrase will return results that contain only that specific phrase. Using the quotation marks will eliminate all of the results that contain your search terms but have them scattered throughout the page. This is good for finding the source of specific quotes: Here’s a search without quotation marks (3,670,000 results) and here’s the same search with quotation marks (6 results).

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Alternative Search Engines - Google has several search engines that only return information from specific kinds of websites. To get to the various search engines on the Google platform, simple go to www.google.com and then look along the top black navigation bar at the top. Some of them are hidden under the “More” button. Here are some of the ones I use:

• Blog - This engine returns results from blog sites about whatever topic you’d like. Great for finding out the “word on the street” regarding topics: Blog search sample
• News - this engine returns results from news sources. This is great for finding out about breaking news on a topic that has a lot of information posted on static websites: News search sample
• Scholar - This engine returns results from scholarly journals and education sources. Good for searching for original research to support blog posts and for citing resources for work related projects: Scholar search sample
• Shopping - Just like you’d expect, this engine will return ecommerce sites that are selling things related to your search terms. Shopping search sample

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Thanks for reading and let me know if you have any questions about search!

ben@yourtechyfriend.com  |  515-314-8165 

Do:

• Be polite in your email dealings with both internal and external audiences
• Be positive and professional in your email messages
• Use proper structure and layout for ease of reading
• Use a meaningful subject line and keep emails to one subject
• Use proper spelling, grammar, punctuation and capitalization
• Avoid long sentences
• Keep sentences clear
• Use an active voice
• Re-read your emails before sending and check the recipient line
• Be careful of humor or sarcasm – be sure you know your recipients
• Avoid expressing extreme emotion or opinion
• Recognize when it would be better to pick up the phone instead of creating a long chain
• Return emails within 48 hours, even if it is just to say that you received it
• Use your out-of-office assistant if you will not have access to email for more than a day
• Keep the list of recipients and the CC list to a minimum
• Remember that words are only 10% of how we communicate – with email, we are missing the other 90%, so there is need for extra clarity and grace

Don’t:

• Use email to discuss confidential information
• Write anything you wouldn’t say in public
• Write anything you wouldn’t want to see in the newspaper
• Use the “reply all” function unless necessary
• Leave out context such as message thread
• Write in ALL CAPS
• Write email when you are angry
• Send large files to those who don’t need them
• Use stationary – it uses extra memory and transmission resources
• Forward chain letters
• Send or forward emails containing libelous, defamatory, offensive, racist or obscene remarks
  

Spreadsheets are about the only thing I can think of that routinely require an attachment. Everything else can be included in the body of an email. Many people use their mobile phone to scan and screen their email. Have you ever tried to deal with an attachment on your mobile phone? It sucks. Even if your audience is sitting in front of their desktop, attachments are a roadblock to getting through their big pile of inbox items. It’s tempting to point to the time it takes to open the attachment as the efficiency culprit, but I think the real issue is that attachments screw up your reading flow. There is a rhythm to reading email and anything that disrupts that rhythm is bad Mojo.

Uploads Are Where It’s At

If you have material that really needs to be shared as file, instead of attaching your pdf flier or Word Doc your email, why not upload it to your server and then just include a link in your email. Here’s an example from of a pdf document that has been stored my server and shared with a link: http://yourtechyfriend.com/samples/Your-Techy-Friend-pdf-upload.pdf. Here’s that same document shared with a text link. Notice that you viewed this pdf right in your browser. If you have a need to save or print it, you’re free to do so, but that’s a choice you can make and not a requirement I force on you in order to view the content.

If you don’t know how to upload things to your server, you should learn – it’s becoming a critical business skill. There are so many ways to load files to servers that I can’t cover them in this post. If you really have an interest in learning, drop me a note and I can give you some pointers.

Go to Google maps (http://maps.google.com) and enter the address you’d like to share into the Google Maps search box. Once the map comes up, click the link icon in the upper right hand corner just above the map and copy the link. It will look like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=snookies+ice+cream+des+moines+ia&hl=en&ll=41.612266,-93.673339&spn=0.00884,0.021136&z=16&iwloc=A

An even better way to incorporate the map link is to use a text link like this. All email programs have some way of creating text links and you should find out how your email client does this valuable chore.

If you really want to liven up your correspondence and get people interested in your content, you can make a combination of text and images along with your link:

Photo Courtesy of Flickr user emrank

Let’s use the venerable Word Doc to explore how cloud computing works. Here is a link to a Word Doc stored on my website. If you want to edit that document you will have to download the file and open it up with Microsoft Word 2010. If you didn’t have Word 2010 installed, you’re out of luck. If all of the people reading this post wanted to add their input, we would all need to download it or email it to each other and there would be over 100 different versions of the file running around and taking up space on hard drives. Collating all of that input would be almost impossible.

Here’s a Google Document version. This file “lives” in the cloud and all of the editing is done through your browser. It really doesn’t matter what kind of software you have, as long as you have Internet access and a modern browser installed, you can open the document and add your input (and I really do want you to write on that document). There is only one version of the file that everyone accesses so collaborating is seamless. More than one person can edit it at once and you will see a notice in the top right corner that others are making changes. There is a complete history of all of the changes so it is simple to revert to an earlier version even if you come back days or weeks from now. Google has a similar solution for Spreadsheets.

If you own a small business and want to have a convenient and secure way to store and share documents, Google Docs is the first place to look.

Use a descriptive subject line that tells the receiver exactly what’s inside the email. Most of the “handling” of emails happens by looking at subject lines so this is not the place to get coy. We all have 80,000 emails to get through so “Guess what I did today?” is just going to make people mad. “Added item to order – process before shipping” means something to your recipient and they will read all about that when they have time set aside for that type of email.

If you get into a long email exchange with multiple people and the topic changes, change the subject line to reflect the new subject so it can be tracked easier. While you’re at it, delete all of the old text at the bottom of these long email exchanges and only leave what’s relevant to the current conversation. It makes more sense for one person to spend 3 minutes cleaning up these mega-emails instead of multiple recipients each wasting 3 minutes reading through a bunch of irrelevant text.

Every major email system allows you to automatically insert a signature at the bottom of your email. Do this. Make sure you add your phone number and web address so your mobile audience can just click to call you or visit your website.