Search Engine 'Bots are Getting Smarter - Headless Browsers!

Bookmark this article, print it, save it to your computer.... you may need to pull it out the next time your SEO Manager and Web Team are about ready to face off over the direction of your website. I've witnessed (and been a part of) many tussles between these two groups, each typically approaching web projects with different objectives and perspectives in mind.

How a site is coded can determine how well a search engine spiders it, indexes it, and subsequently ranks it.  In the early days, bots or spiders could only crawl and capture front-end text and textual hyperlinks.  One could forget about showing up in the SERP's if the site incorporated items such as flash, scripting, or dynamic database strings/references.  Things have changed dramatically since those times.  For example, Google announced circa 2008 they could spider flash (swf) videos and navigation items. (Although I still wouldn't bet my kids' education funds on Google being able to successfully crawl, index, and display a large flash-based site appropriately.)

The following featured article from SEOmoz further explains how bots have evolved, and also provides insight to what this all means for SEO...

Just How Smart Are Search Robots?

Google+ Now Available for Business & Brands -- Will You Promote?

Just when you thought you had your social media/marketing plan solidified, Google comes along and throws everything in a tizzy.  Many of you have probably worked diligently to build your Facebook presence and are starting to see healthy returns on those efforts.  Facebook is likely engrained on your website, email, and offline marketing materials.

While Google+ for business has been on the horizon for a while now, I can certainly understand any resulting confusion and uncertainty their roll-out has presented.  Will it be worth my effort and development costs to integrate into my business?  Will users adopt G+ as their sole platform, or will there just be a lot of redundancy with Facebook?  Can I expect to see new customer leads? Conversions?  Much of the uncertainty lies in the lack of data available at this point to justify embracing this new platform.

I've had a G+ account for a while now.  I don't use it.  My updates and shares are solely conducted within Facebook.  I can also say the folks within my circles aren't very active on G+ either.

Whatever your thoughts, here's a couple articles from Mashable to aid in your decisionmaking...

Google+ Launches Branded Pages

Google+ Badges Make it Simple for Users to Connect With Brands

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