Google China Shows “Tank Man,” Tibet Search Results

The clash between Google and the Chinese government appears to be coming to a head.  Various sources have reported that Google ignored a cut-off date to reregister as an Internet content provider in China, and more importantly, that the company has stopped censoring search results.

Let's get the paperwork-related story out of the way first.  Charles Arthur wrote this morning, "Google missed a deadline to re-register as an 'internet content provider' (ICP) in China last night, which observers say is a sign that it is preparing to shut down its search engine there."

As for the news related to Google.cn and a lack of censorship, something has definitely occurred.  Following some tests, Adrienne Mong wrote, "Web sites dealing with subjects such as the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, Tibet and regional independence movements could all be accessed through Google's Chinese search engine Tuesday . . ."

Other people have seen uncensored results, too, although filters apparently kick in on occasion.

Google's stayed pretty tight-lipped during all of this.  One spokesperson told Arthur that the company actually has until the end of March to reregister.  Another told Mong that nothing's changed.  So it's possible that we're just seeing a case of deadline confusion strike at the same time as some technical problems.

Google may have finally taken a stand with regards to censorship in China, though, and is just daring the Chinese government to challenge its position.

We'll be sure to stay on top of this situation as it develops.

Ensuring Your Site is Indexed in Google’s Mobile Search

In this day and age, you pretty much can't ignore mobile users. The rate at which consumers are accessing the web via mobile devices is growing rapidly, largely thanks to the increasing popularity and production of smartphones.

Just having a mobile site isn't even enough. Sure, it's a great start, but you have to start thinking about a mobile site just as you would a regular site. Can people find it? Just because you have a good ranking in Google does not mean that your mobile site has a good ranking in Google's mobile search engine, or is even indexed at all.

Google recently shared a few important tips for making sure your mobile site is being indexed in Google's Mobile Search.

1. Create a mobile sitemap and submit it to Google so Google knows it exists. This can be done using Google Webmaster Tools, just like with a regular sitemap.

2. To make sure Googlebot-Mobile can access your site, allow any User-agent to access it.

"You should also be aware that Google may change its User-agent information at any time without notice, so it is not recommended that you check if the User-agent exactly matches 'Googlebot-Mobile' (which is the string used at present)," says Jun Mukai, a software engineer on Google's mobile search team. "Instead, check whether the User-agent header contains the string 'Googlebot-Mobile'. You can also use DNS Lookups to verify Googlebot."

3. Check that your mobile-friendly URLs' DTD (Doc Type Definition) declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML.

If you run both a regular site and a mobile version of it, there is a possibility that the wrong version will show up in the wrong search results. There are ways you can prevent this.

"When a mobile user or crawler (like Googlebot-Mobile) accesses the desktop version of a URL, you can redirect them to the corresponding mobile version of the same page," explains Mukai. "Google notices the relationship between the two versions of the URL and displays the standard version for searches from desktops and the mobile version for mobile searches."

If you do use a redirect, you should make sure content on the corresponding URL matches as closely as possible, because Google finds sites that abuse the practice in order to try and boost their rankings. Google says this should be avoided at all costs, so you can probably expect to be penalized for such an action.

Another way you can make sure a user is pointed to the right version of your site is simply to provide a link. In fact, that is what Google itself does. If you access the mobile version of Google, you will find a link to the desktop version.

Another way still, is to switch content based on the User-agent, so mobile users automatically see the mobile version and desktop users see the desktop version, even though both are accessing the same URL.

Google warns, however, that if you use this method, there is a chance that if you fail to configure your site correctly, it could be mistaken for cloaking, which you can be penalized for.

"To remain within our guidelines, you should serve the same content to Googlebot as a typical desktop user would see, and the same content to Googlebot-Mobile as you would to the browser on a typical mobile device," says Mukai. "It's fine if the contents for Googlebot are different from the one for Googlebot-Mobile."

Have you taken the necessary steps to ensure you are being indexed in Google's mobile search engine? Have you been left out due to cloaking-related confusion? Discuss here.

Have You Read This?

> Google Launches Custom Search For Smartphones

> Google Gives Mobile Searchers More Options

> Google Revamps Mobile Local Search Experience

Google Doesn’t Know if Your Site is in the Cloud

Google's Matt Cutts discussed how the search engine handles sites that that are "in the cloud" with regards to how listings are affected. Matt's explanation was a response to the following user-submitted question:

Can moving my website to "the cloud" harm my listings? Say my server's in Germany and I move the website to Google's App Engine or Amazon S3. Does this harm my listings for German results - or is it enough to set the "geographic target" in GWT to Germany?

Matt broke the question down into separate parts to answer them. First, he took on the part about moving a site to "the cloud" harming the users' listings. His answer for this is basically that Google doesn't even know if your site is in the cloud, so it can't use that information to affect listings.

"We don't know what is happening on the side of your web server. Your web server could be running Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby on Rails," said Cutts. "All we know is what the web server returns. So your web server could be running code that would go talk to Amazon's cloud or Appspot or anywhere else in the cloud, but we wouldn't even know that. We don't even know whether a page is dynamically created or statically created. All we know is what the web server sends back."

He says if your site is talking to the cloud behind the scenes, there is now way for any search engine or bot to know about that. Watch the video above to hear Matt's explanation for the second part of the user's question.

Have You Read This?

> Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010

> Google May Change Your Page Titles

> Where Google Stands on the "Keywords" Meta Tag

How Important is Natural Language to the Future of Search?

Where Google is a search engine, and Bing is a "decision engine," Ask.com seeks to be an answer engine. Ask thinks the future of search is in questions and answers. This means, you should be able to ask a direct question and get a specific answer, rather than pages of results, which can lead you to finding the answer on your own.

It's natural language search, and it's not exactly a new concept. However, Ask says it is dedicated to improving how well this works. It makes sense, since the Q&A niche has been the area of search, which Ask has carved out for itself. Rather than trying to compete directly with Google as Bing does, Ask appears to be more interested in setting itself apart as a place to go simply to find answers. "Asking a question isn’t the same as searching," says Ask.

How imporant will natural language search be in the future? Share your thoughts.

Ask illustrates the difference with a couple sample queries, saying that the most successful answers won't get clicked:





The company says it is seeing increased loyalty from users who conduct question searches, and has seen "a pronounced increase" in the percentage of users who conduct queries in the form of a question. In fact, they claim to see three times more questions as a share of total queries than their competitors.

"Indeed, the information that is directly relevant to many questions most certainly exists; it's just that it’s locked in people’s heads or captured in unpublished conversations, and therefore inaccessible by traditional search," says Ask President Doug Leeds. "Obviously, this is not a trivial deficiency in a world that is increasingly interconnected and clamoring for perspective, guidance, and shared knowledge at an interpersonal level online."

Ask is setting out to extract and rank existing answers, and index sources of answers that have not yet been published. "To extract and rank existing answers, as opposed to merely ranking web pages that contain information, we have and are continuing to develop a unique set of algorithms and technologies that are based on new signals for relevance specifically tuned to questions and answers," says Leeds, outlining these signals with the following images.







Right now, Ask is focused on developing a new algorithm that utilizes the signals highlighted above. "But our work doesn’t end with extraction and ranking of existing, published answers," says Leeds. "Where our vision really comes to life is in our efforts to index the sources of unpublished knowledge that can generate answers specifically in response to a question, in the moment it’s asked. This is the long tail of questions that are nearly impossible for search engines to answer, but which create incredible value for users when they are."

These include complex questions (like "What is the cheapest way to get to the Austin airport from downtown Austin?"), temporally dependant questions (like "When will the Oakland Bay Bridge re-open?"), and subjective questions (like "What should you do to save a withering tomato plant?").

Ask has reached a milestone of 400 million Q&A pairs in its database, so the engine is already capable of answering a significant amount of questions you might have, but there's a lot of work to be done in order to give users the "best answers on the planet" in real time, as the company intends to do. It will be interesting to see how Ask's progress comes along. Leeds promises updates on the company blog as they work their way along.

Do you think Q&A search is an important part of search's future? Do you think Ask will play a key role in it? Do you ever use Ask to find answers? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends... what you think in the comments.


Have You Read This?

> Ask Gets More Serious About Answers

> Ask.com Gets New U.S. Leadership

> Microsoft Tipped As Most Likely Ask.com Buyer

> Searching for Answers Google Doesn't Have

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