Google Releases Official Buzz Share Buttons

Google’s next order of battle for Google Buzz – Share Buttons. If you’ve felt envious of sites such as TechCrunch and Mashable which were quick enough to come up with their customized Google Buzz Share Buttons, Google will now let you do the same without having to hack through some codes and all. And it’s also the official Google Buzz Share Button.


So Google announced that starting today expect to see Buzz buttons around the web particularly on sites such as The Huffington Post, Glamour, YouTube, Blogger, MySpace, GigaOM and more. These buttons will make it easier for you to share and post interesting items you encounter around the web to your Google Buzz account.

In addition, independent sharing widget provides such as “Share This,” “Shareholic” and more have started implementing the Google Buzz share button.

If you want to have a Google Buzz button on your own sites/blogs, you can easily do so by getting the codes from buzz.google.com/stuff. You can customize your button in a few clicks, copy the Javascript code, paste it to your blog/site code and you’re good to go.

And while you’re there, you might also want to grab the code for putting a follow me on Buzz button as well. This will make it easier for your friends and fans to follow your Buzz posts.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-releases-official-buzz-share-buttons/19981/

Multilingual SEO: Things to Remember

Google has recently done a series on the usability of multilingual websites and it got me thinking about multilingual SEO. How do you, in fact, optimize the same website for keywords in multiple languages?

But let’s start with the core basics. In simple terms, a multilingual website is a website that has content in more than one language. And such website has a lot of on-page stuff that is often done wrong. Let’s take a look at some common issues:

1) Language recognition

Once Google’s crawler lands on your multilingual website, it starts with determining the main language on every page. Google can recognize a page as being in more than one language but you can avoid crawler confusion by doing the following:

* Stick to only one language per page
* Avoid side-by-side translations
* Use the same language for all elements of the page: headers, sidebars, menus, etc.

Some web editors create code-level attributes automatically but these attributes are not very reliable, so keep in mind that Google ignores all code-level information (from “lang” attributes to DTD (Document Type Definitions) during language recognition.

2) URL structure

A typical pet peeve of SEO but even more so with multilingual websites. To make the most of your URLs, consider language-specific extensions. Language-specific extensions are often used on multilingual websites to help users (and crawlers) identify the sections of the website they are on and the language the page is in. For example:

http://www.website.ca/en/content.html

http://www.en.website.ca/content.html

http://www.website.ca/fr/content.html

http://www.fr.website.ca/content.html

This is a great way to organize URLs on a multilingual website because not only does it help the user, but it also makes it easier for the crawler to analyze the indexing of your content. But what if you want to create URLs with characters other than English? Here’s how to do it right:

* Use UTF-8 encoding for non-English characters
* Make sure your UTF-8 encoded URLs are properly escaped when linked from within your content

i.e. if a URL contains an é, which is a non-English character: http://www.website.ca/fr/contént.html

here’s how it will look properly escaped: http://www.website.ca/fr/cont%C3%A9nt.html

* But if you have to escape the URLs manually, use an encoder such as one from Meyer Web or look for others

It is important to note that Google directly extracts character encodings from HTTP headers, HTML page headers, and content. There isn’t much you need to do about character encoding, other than watching out for conflicting information – for example, between content and headers. While Google can recognize different character encodings, use UTF-8 on your website whenever possible.

3) Crawling and Indexing

Another common area of focus for SEO. On multilingual websites, follow these recommendations to get more pages crawled:

* Avoid redirects based on user’s perceived language: they could, in fact, prevent both users and SEs from looking at more pages on your site.
* Keep the content for each language on separate URLs
* Don’t use cookies to show translated page versions
* Cross-link page by page

Last but not least, please remember that Google does not recommend automatic translations.

By getting the on-page basics right, you will set a great base for your multilingual SEO in the future and, unlike so many others, you will not have to beg (in multiple languages) SE crawlers to come and index your content.


Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/multilingual-seo/19903/

Google to Launch New Voice Desktop App

When Google acquires Gizmo5, a VoIP service that provides P2P VoIP calls and calls with normal landlines and mobile phones, it wasn’t clear as to how Google will possibly use Gizmo5’s technology. Although, Gizmo5 could very well provide Google Voice an endpoint for calls, Google didn’t do much to make this happen, until now.

According to TechCrunch, Google is currently testing a new Google Voice desktop application built on the Gizmo5 technology. This application will finally allow users to make and receive calls from their desktop without needing to attach their Google Voice account to an existing phone number.

The said app is currently under Google’s “dogfooding” system, meaning it is currently being tested by Google employees themselves before putting it out for public beta testing soon. How soon? In a weeks or so perhaps since Google has started testing the app this week.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-to-launch-new-voice-desktop-app/19797/