For years we have been recommending you use third party browsers for your Internet surfing. We have always recommended using browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Maxthon. Now even more then ever this is still the case, or is it. It seems wherever you go people are telling you to stay away from IE. In 2014 alone a record number of vulnerabilities were found in regards to Internet Explorer. In fact at one point, Homeland Security advised against using it until a major security flaw was patched. The patch was issued for all versions of Internet Explorer including folks who were using the retired XP operating system. This was supposed to make everything great in paradise again. The fact is, when Homeland Security tells you not just once but twice to stop using a browser, it really gets you thinking. There is another angle to look at, however. It seems there is another browser that is getting infections almost just as much as IE. That browser is Chrome. We are starting to see more and more cases where Chrome has been compromised and corrupted by Malware to the point to where it has to be removed from the machine. We are seeing this more and more as time goes on. We are also seeing similar issues with Firefox but not near as much as with Chrome. Now, lets look at Exploits. This is essentially a horse of a different color compared to virus and Malware infections. It appears that IE is the looser in this category. There were fewer exploits in third party browsers then there was with Internet Explorer. The one g=big disadvantage you have with IE is that is not just a simple task of uninstalling and reinstalling a new version when something goes a muck. There are times when the only fix is to reinstall the operating system. When you use a third party browser, all you usually have to do is uninstall and reinstall the software when there is a problem. The one browser that was never mentioned in the tests is Maxthon. This is our browser of choice and we have been using it for years. We have never contracted a...
Read MoreIf you use Google as your main search tool you may have noticed some strange search results this past week. You may have found that many of your favorite sites are no longer listed. No you are not going crazy, you are looking at the end result of Panda 4. Once every couple of years Google engineers create new code that deciphers what results you see on your screen when you do a search. About 3 years ago, Google released an update called Panda 3 that turned the search results into mush. It took most of that time for everything to normalize and get decent search results again. The results were so bad that I personally switched to Bing for all my everyday searches. After this last update, it looks like I will be continuing to use Bing as basic searches are again turning up some undesirable results. If you are an E Bay shopper, chances are you are not going to find any items you want using Google. Google banished 80% of the organic search results for the online marketplace. They are not the only major companies that have been affected. Important sites such as ask.com, yellowpages.com and History.com have also been banished from the search results. Why does this happen? It is actually unknown whether these results are intentional or if it is just some unpredictable behavior that Google did not expect. After all, I like to see results from E Bay when I am doing searches for a product. If I can save a few bucks buying an item on E Bay that is always a good thing. The sites that had the most increase in rank from the new Panda release are essentially neither sites that I have never heard of nor sites that I would ever want to go to. One of those sites is shopstyle.com. Essentially, Google is killing off many of your favorite sites and nobody actually knows why. The only way this trend is going to stop is if people start using Bing or Yahoo to do their searching. Bing has already taken about 2% of the traffic away from Google but they still dominate with about 70% of...
Read MoreEvery so often Google modifies its search algorithm to provide better and more relevant search results. Sometimes the effects of the changes are drastic and turn the SEO world upside down. Other times they are barely noticed. Which category is Hummingbird? Time for Change In the past, Google made updates to its search algorithm, but didn’t really change the core code. Hummingbird is different. It is an almost completely new code base. A rewrite was necessary because the old algorithm was written more than a decade ago. In that time the number of Internet users has grown from approximately 500 million people to almost 3 billion. The old algorithm still worked, but was not created with that kind of demand in mind. It was slow and not well suited to the type of searches people enter in the search box today. Hummingbird Understands Google’s old algorithm would seek keywords in a query and focus on them. Hummingbird looks at the entire query, so results relate to the entire query, not just a keyword or two. In other words, it is an attempt for an algorithm that understands what a search query means, not just what keywords it contains. Ten years ago a query might have been, “Iraq Desert Storm”. The old algorithm was written to handle that type of query. Today someone seeking the same information might type, “When was Desert Storm”. The second query is a “natural language” query – a query written the way people talk. The Penguin and Panda updates helped handle the change in search habits, but did not touch some of the deficiencies in the core code of the search algorithm. Hummingbird uses older code that works well with modern queries, like Penguin and Panda, and replaces the code that didn’t. The new code works well whether the query is keyword based or uses natural language. Effect on Local SEO Hummingbird could be a game changer for search. It is faster and understands natural language better than the old algorithm. But does it change the way local SEO works? Somewhat, but nothing like Penguin and Panda did. The fact that no one knew Hummingbird had been implemented until...
Read MoreHi everybody. We are often asked what is the best search engine to use when I am looking for information? There are literally hundreds of search engines out there but almost everybody uses the top three or four brands. In this article, we will share our findings but you will have to be the ultimate judge. The first search engine we tested was Google. Google is by far the most widely used of all thesearch engines. They currently have about 70% of the users but Bing is starting to take some of that away. We will talk about that a bit later. In our tests, we have found the Google searches good for finding all the big companies but many of us want to do business with the often times more personable small business owner instead. It is harder to find these entries on Google, especially since the Penguin update. So depending on what you are looking for, you can decide if Google is the best choice for your needs. The second search engine we tested was Bing. Bing is one of the main competitors for Google and rightfully so. From the pleasant to look at home page to the great organic results, it is our number one pick. Bing actually stems from the older MSN search that was first introduced by Microsoft. It has great organic results that give you a mix of both the big guys and the smaller hometown businesses. If you happen to deal with their advertising department, even if it is a free local ad, they are courteous and helpful. With the new social media plug in they are introducing, Bing will be a force to be reasoned with. This is our top choice. The next big gun on the block is Yahoo search. These folks are essentially the same as Bing with only slight differences in the search results. Although not quite as fancy as Bing, the searches are very organic and you get a nice mix of corporate and small business. Yahoo also rates very high with us in our searches. As an added bonus, both MSN and Yahoo make excellent home pages delivering compelling news articles and featured stories. Sometimes you...
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