The GDrive or Platypus

Rumours are circulating on the internet about the release of Google's new GDrive

The Daily Mail are asking will it make the PC redundant?

The GDrive would mean users would no longer have to worry about their hard drives crashing as their data could be accessed from any internet connection, a move that could effectively make PCs redundant.

SEO backed by Barack Obama, new US President

If search engine optimisation is good enough for the White House, it's good enough for businesses and organisations anywhere, wouldn't you say?

The online community is buzzing with news that SEO got some kind of elevation in position as soon as President Obama took up his new, splendid residence.

Under the Bush administration, much of the whitehouse.gov site was invisible to Google and the other search engines due to coding of the robots.txt file. Now it's been opened up.

However, that said, the White House blog seems to fall down on an important optimisable feature... the Title tag. This most important of tags display just one word: blog.

That's not going to be of much use when people are searching for details on governmental issues or economic policy information.

Is it something for Obama to worry about? Maybe the White House doesn't need the kind of visibility via SEO that most websites work for. We reckon it's something important to bear in mind though because when people are looking for information about current issues, the White House will surely want to be showing up on pages to cover the official US view.

Still, it's interesting to think that just like any other issues Obama may choose to tackle, it's now hardly surprising that SEO comes under the intense gaze of the media and online communities.

It's kind of remarkable to think that maybe a decade ago most people hardly gave search engine optimisation a second glance. Now however it's almost at the centre of business and political debate! Truly remarkable progress!

To our mind, it is important for this online discipline to continue emerging from its sometimes shadowy reputation of the past and take its rightful place in the business order as a key driver for marketing and sales success.

SEO will be an eco-friendly, green business

It is a debate and issue that you can be certain will not go away - the cost to the environment using Google to search for all those answers (a process we take for granted), as well as the bigger question about the carbon footprint caused by the business of IT.

When it seems clear that two Google searches can generate the same amount of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas as boiling a kettle, it's time to look carefully at the use of computing. Read more in the BBC 'Google carbon cost' story or watch details here about this worrying matter:

YouTube video - Impact of Google searches on the environment

What do you think about the environmental impact of Google and IT? Absurd or highly relevant in today's green-conscious world? Fuse would like to hear your views about this issue - we can see it becoming a big one in the months and years ahead.

Fuse reckons it might one day be compulsory to use search engine optimisation (SEO) to best build eco-friendly websites. Sound a little extreme, you might think? Well, if it takes several searches to find information via a search engine, this causes more CO2 to be produced. An SEO-optimised site that ensures answers can be found more quickly by efficient searching will keep down the 'green' cost of IT.

Mark our words well - SEO might help save the planet!

Google Video and Video Sitemaps

Google has just announced that it will be turning off the ability to upload video to Google Video in a few months time.

In a few months, we will discontinue support for uploads to Google Video. Don’t worry, we’re not removing any content hosted on Google Video — this just means you will no longer be able to upload new content to the service

Google Video will continue, but for webmasters who want their videos to appear on the site, they will have to host them elsewhere, either on their own sites or on YouTube or other similar video hosting sites. If you want the Google bot to find and index your video(s) a video XML sitemap should do the trick. A guide to the Google Sitemap Protocol can be found here

Search, SEO and usability - free calendar

Bad usability - what's that about? Well, if you want to build better websites, as well as ensuring excellent search engine optimisation - whether you are a law firm, accountant, insurer, retailer, whatever - you have to make sure you avoid bad usability.

Web usability is about developing a website that ensures site users can find what they're looking for, both quickly and efficiently. A usable website can reap huge benefits for your website and your business.

A usability group in Norway has created a neat one-page calendar that highlights some of their knowledge and experience about bad usability and indicates better website practice.

Download the free calendar

Google PageRank Update

Google updated the PageRank data shown in the Google toolbar at the turn of the year. Although Matt Cutts has stated that it may take 1 or 2 months for all data centres to be updated.

This is the first time Matt has announced a PageRank update. He took the opportunity to answer a few questions from webmasters about PR. These are the two main points.

• Toolbar PageRank is usually 3 or 4 months out of date.


• The PageRank data that Google uses in its algorithm is calculated continuously.

Read more from Matt Cutt's blog here
 

Google and bounce rates

Everybody who has used Google Analytics will have seen statistics about their 'bounce rates.' I have often heard people say that if a visitor clicks away from your website in under 5 seconds, then it registers as a bounce. But this is not true.

This is an interesting discussion about what Google really considers to be a bounce.

According to Avinash Kaushik from the Google Analytics team, a bounce is

a visit (a session technically speaking) with just one page view.

So Avinash is saying that it doesn't matter how long the visit is, if only one page is viewed then it is considered a bounce. The only exceptions mentioned are if you use Google Analytics and 'event tracking' for your videos, or you have a 100% flash site.

You can read a more in-depth piece about bounces and bounce rates here