Archive for General articles

WolframAlpha: A Knowledge Engine

May 182009

published by Hannah in General | News | Search Engines with 7 comments

I spend my weekend playing around with one of the most awesome things to come out in the internet ever – WolframAlpha. If you haven’t heard of it’s the fruit of Stephen Wolfram’s vision and it is real live working computational knowledge engine. Forget search engines for the moment because the geek in me is so excited about this that even if SEOs have no way to benefit from this thing (at least none that I can think of right now) it’s revolutionary enough to be posted on ANY blog or site that considers itself a follower of what’s new in IT.

So what is it about WolframAlpha that’s got me all excited? As I mentioned earlier they do not call it a search engine but a knowledge engine because that’s exactly what it is. Initially when you look at the search box it looks every bit like a search engine but once you get the results you will see why it is a knowledge engine. Instead of returning relevant links what WolframAlpha returns is a summary of information that it has garnered from all over the net. This makes me think about Star Trek, Andromeda, and all the once far fetched sci-fi computers that can answer your questions by doing the data analysis on its own.

The thing about WolframAlpha though is that since it is a computational knowledge engine it won’t return the latest movie show times or restaurant addresses, which is good news to Google and the other search engines because they are still needed for those kind of searches. What WolframAlpha will return though are all the information that I needed way back in college to make my life easier. It will compute any mathematical formula and plot functions, compute relativistic momentum, give you the financial background of a company and extrapolate the data to predict future trend, allow comparison between performance of companies, give you information about any date, and so much more. In short it is what it claims to be a KNOWLEDGE ENGINE.

Right now it’s still pretty mind boggling and I still find myself playfully entering everyone’s birthday so I can see who was born during a full moon and tease them endlessly about it (so far it’s only my father-in-law that answers to the description so I still haven’t got anyone to tease mercilessly!). And in case you plan on asking it also gives the right answer to the only question that matters:

Popularity: 16%

Google-Yahoo Deal News Links

Jun 142008

published by Gary in General | News with 7 comments

The internet is abuzz with the Yahoo-Google deal. With all the news you can read instead of writing up a long post about it I will just provide links to some really good articles that pretty much sums up the different views regarding the deal. Before I do that though let me just point out [...]

Hacked site? Stop worrying and start working.

May 302008

published by Hannah in General | Rep. Management | SEO | SEO Basics | SEO Tips with 2 comments

If you are worried about the consequences of having your site hacked here are some useful info that should put your mind at ease, knowing that you know what to do in case it happens.

Google will delete you from their index but they will restore your URL in their index as soon as they confirm [...]

Keywords in commentors names

May 92008

published by Gary in Blogging | General with 3 comments

Some people purely looking for link juice leave comments with key words and phrases in their names. One common theme of people using this tactic is the poor quality of comment that more often than not adds little or nothing to the thread.
I want people to be able to enjoy and increase their knowledge by [...]

Earth Day in PhoenixRealm: Helping the Earth Through SEO?

Apr 222008

published by Hannah in Blogging | General | Phoenixrealm with 1 comment

It’s earth day today so let me take some time to post something related to remind us all to try and help our Earth. Here are some of my suggestions on how we all can help the environment as SEOs.

Lessen the use of paper - Instead of printing everything out opt to digitize as much [...]

Matt Says No to Spam In ALL Forms

Apr 152008

published by Hannah in General with 2 comments

Apparently Google has a policy about their employees receiving gifts to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Because of that Matt Cutts recently asked people to stop sending him gifts aka “spam”. Some book publishers sent Matt Cutts free books and a really cool cookie. He just gave everything away. He’s definitely appreciative but I guess [...]

SEO Doctors: Educating our Clients

Apr 92008

published by Hannah in General | SEO Services with 3 comments

Gary and a few of our readers have mentioned the problem with “partially educated” SEO clients. If you have read one of my first posts here on PhoenixRealm you would know that I too have had run-ins with clients that knew/have heard something of SEO which has made them set on their ways but know [...]

Hostile Takeover Here We Go

Apr 72008

published by Hannah in General | News with 2 comments

The Microhoo possibility is still very possible after all despite Yahoo’s continuous refusal to Microsoft’s unsolicited bids. Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer sent a new letter to Yahoo’s board of directors dated April 5 this time giving an three weeks for Yahoo to accept their proposal. In the letter an ultimatum was given stating that they [...]

What Standards?

Apr 42008

published by Hannah in General | SEO with 6 comments

I really liked the comments in the previous post on SEO Standards because they got me to thinking more about the issue. I see that mostly people DO NOT want standards because…

having standards wouldn’t stop black hats anyway
of problems with enforcement
resistance to being policed

While it is true that it won’t fully stop black hats I [...]

Popularity: 23%

Continue reading “What Standards?”

The SEO Standards Debate

Mar 312008

published by Hannah in General | SEO with 7 comments

Last month’s SMX West Search Insights track topic “Is it time for Search Marketing Standards?” sparked a debate not just on SEM standards but also SEO standards. On one side we have Jill Whalen of Search Engine Land telling us that we DO NOT need SEO standards. On the other hand we have Lisa Barone [...]