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http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1571/ you sucky SEO
http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1570/ - widgets emerging to drive traffic

Over the past few years, the use of HTML, has declined rapidly. In fact, I have seen more and more web sites and web developers moving far away from HTML than ever before.



New authoring languages, most especially CSS and XML, for web page creation have really become the way to go in the 'industry.' There's no questions that when CSS emerged during the late 1990's, it quickly grew in popularity because it allowed web designers and developers spend less time on coding each and every piece of content, and instead replace it with a tag that would do all the formatting based on the settings in one CSS file.


Mixing CSS with HTML back then made sense and it worked, for the most part. Ask back-end engineers what they thought of CSS when it first surfaced and caused headaches because it was so new and still somewhat clunky.

Nowadays, CSS has actually merged with many HTML elements to create tags that are more dynamic and friendly to various browsers and operating systems. The growth of OpenSource software and other alternatives to the two big browsers - Internet Explorer and Firefox - has spurred further modifications to web page coding, and will continue to.

Actually, if you think about it, has CSS and XML really decreased the amount of coding work that developers have to do? That's definitely debatable, especially where I see pages coded in new-generation CSS, if you will, in the use of the much loved tags. While the 'DIV' tag is officially certified HTML 4.1, it has retired many other traditional HTML tags like HR, B, BR, P, and so on.

All in all, HTML is somewhat still relevant, but mostly for the very beginning and end of web pages and web documents.

Moreover, the introduction of automated software for web authoring and the number of large web sites offering online applications to build web pages (without ever writing a piece of code) means that an entire new generation of web authors (whether they are professionals or just ordinary web users) may never know how to code a simple web page using HTML.

Nevertheless, the fundamentals of HTML remain relevant, even as they have metamorphosed into a variety of cross-platform (including Linux) authoring languages over the years.

All things considered, HTML will continue to be relevant, but it will also continue to diminish in significance as more dynamic and cost-effective authoring languages eventually morph HTML into oblivion.

For example, the rapid rise in consumer use of hand-held devices to access email and web will keep rising at phenomenal percentages. This alone has presented multiple challenges to developers, engineers and designers when considering how a web page will be constructed, parsed, delivered and viewed on the web, on hand-helds, mobile phones and who knows what next. Your eye glasses or sun glasses? Trust me, someone is working on it somewhere. A quick search on Google backs up that statement.

In the end, web authoring for all the various platforms, operating systems and browsers is something that web developers, authors and designers will always have to grapple with (not to mention the stress that comes down from the business and marketing folks who don't always understand how freaking difficult it is to code and test and fix and retest and on and on).

So, the discussion is: Is HTML Dead? If yes, explain. If no, still explain ;-)
Please use the comments button below to publish your opinion on these important issues.

Note: We are currently working on putting up a bulletin board to offer these questions to more professionals in the web development and design community, as well as ordinary web users who build or plan to build web sites.

Labels: CSS, HTML, HTML relevancy, Web Authoring, Web Coding, Web Design, Web Development, XML

A great and inexpensive way to fight the spammers is to configure your system or network or web site to exclude common words found in spamming.

Here are a few good resources to get started:

WordPress Codex - Spam Lists
Process Software - Common Tricks Employed by Spammers

Labels: Anti-Spam, Common Spam Words, Fight Spam, Spam Counter Measures, Spam Reduction

Google has launched a new search service called Personalized Search.

The basic idea is to make search results more relevant to individuals by using the person's search history, and which search results they clicked on, to determine the best search results for future searches by that person.

Is this going to skew the page and keyword ranking that so many have worked so hard to achieve? See Google for the full scope.

Labels: Google Search, Google SEO, Personalized Search, Search Engine Companies, Search Engine Keywords, User Search Habits

Alexa, one of the leading search engine companies of the past decade, is currently seeking participants in a beta crawling project.

This is potentially a great to way to get insight at the inner workings of Alexa's search nuisances, especially since they have provided the search results for various Internet search engines for many years. In fact, Alexa was hailed as a pioneer in the search technology field during the early days of the search engine craze, roughly 1996 to 2000 when the infamous dot com bust happened.

(Note: Does anyone remember oldskool MetaCrawler, Altavista, Excite, LookSmart, InfoSeek, Northern Light? Some also provide updates on the current top searches. For example, today they include Radioactive Spy, Google Pizza, Gift Cards, Unique Gifts, Target.)

Labels: Alexa, Crawling Technology, Gift Cards, Google Pizza, Radioactive Spy, Search Engine Companies, Search Engine Technology, Target, Unique Gifts, User Statistics, Web Site Traffic Statistics

After leaking the search queries of 36 million of its users, AOL has pulled the data from public access, faced a firestorm of outrage and perhaps future lawsuits.

The damage to the reputation of a company that has already suffered a serious decline in its user base and a multiple blows to its credibility in recent years is only compounding.

Despite AOL's backtracking and damage control efforts, everyone knows (as is the sordid case with the OJ Simpson book and interview) that in today's world, once information gets out, it's nearly impossible to get it back. (Just imagine dropping thousands of leaflets from an airplane flying over a population of people and then land and try to get them all back from everyone. It's impossible. (Um, oops).

In fact, attempts to remove content from the Internet usually hightens the media and bloggers reporting of the issue and increases the attempts by many - whoever they are (bloggers, marketing execs, disgruntled AOL users, etc.) - to find, copy and publish the data for the world to see.

That is exactly what has happened. A number of web sites, including AOL Stalker, that have posted the entire report online.

But for search engine marketing and optimization professionals, the leaked report is a potential goldmine. The data, once carefully studied, also reinforces one of the most important aspects of successfully promoting and search engine optimization.

Companies that do not aggressively seek out savvy web writers and editors are losing money, much more money than they would if they invested in SEO web professionals.

SEO professional writers, analysts and "full picture" consultants provide not only optimized, targeted copy, but they also understand the various nuiances of search behavior and search engine algorithms to create more traffic, make updates, tweak lower performing keywords and most importantly, can create new and returning customers.

Because search engine habits, rules and penalties are changing all the time, only a dedicated team can accomplish lucrative results for any business, corporation or individual endeavor.

Labels: AOL, AOL Data Leak, AOL Query Report, Online Privacy, Search Engine Keywords, User Search Habits

http://news.com.com/Calif.+court+ruling+seeks+to+protect+bloggers%2C+Web+publishers/2100-1030_3-6137323.html?tag=st_lh

As with many things nowadays, the web is changing advertising which Jeremy Lockhorn says is an opportunity to address the fundamentals of user control when interacting with online content.

Here's an excerpt from his article, which may not be the best news to content creators:

Here's the ultimate rub: even though all the survey data points to tremendous annoyance with video ads online, they're effective. People click them and marketers are seeing strong ROI (define). Our clients have, for the most part, experienced great success with pre-rolls, and the industry buzz is that it's consistently higher performance than many other online advertising options. So for now, it's really hard to rationalize yourself out of it if you're a media buyer.

Today is Web Usability Day. It's not an official day in the way a holiday is, but for web developers and designers, it is an important day nonetheless.

In my opinion, what we must remember most on this day is that our responsiblity is to conceive, plan, develop and launch brands, products, services and entertainment to meet the needs and demands of the end user, not the other way around.

Web usability is still a big issue because there are so many web sites that have not made their web pages completely accessible, shutting out a portion of the online population (and therefore visitors and potential customers). This is most troubling when businesses, government agencies and academic institutions fail to understand the fundamental truth for success on the web: make your web site easy to use, accessible to everyone and reliable.

In honor of Web Usability Day, here are some great usability resources and web pages from the WCP, with many contributions from UI Guru Jakob Nielsen:

World Usability Day

Users Interleave Sites and Genres

Usability Testing With 5 Users

The Need for Web Design Standards

The AskTog Bug House Ten Most Wanted Design Bugs

Online Extra Jakob Nielsen on the Unwieldy Web

E-commerce User Experience Study Details

Deb Levin, writing for mediapost.com, offers an a look at the most obvious "trend" in web publishing - user experience. (This author has advocated greater concentration on the end user experience passionately since 1996).

Rapid7, a network security software company, has released a browser emulator to detect holes in Javascripts.

There are many ways web analytics can be interpreted or spun. Here's an article on the seven sins of web analytics from John Marshall, CEO, ClickTracks, Santa Cruz, California.

Mike Grehan, an online marketing consultant and columnist for ClickZExperts offers a look at KDA and data linking. This is one issue that I'll be covering more in the future.

Interesting discussion about Wordtracker and Metacrawler.

A community member unearthed the fact that WordTracker uses only Metacrawler to track keyword results. The developers of the software explain why.

Hey folks, we recommend reading Brian Smith's search engine collection of articles that look at Google OpenBox, Ask's Smart Answers, Microsoft's Instant Answers, and Yahoo Shortcuts.

During the past year, chatter about the AJax platform has continued to swell. Recently, MSN demonstrated the web application of AJax, proving that it may - whether you like it or not - become the next new platform for web-based applications.

During the past year, search engine optimization specialists have been touting the benefits for companies to implement SEO techniques for mobile rooms. SearchNews does a good job of covering the SEO mobile sector.

Many eBay sellers are unaware of how they can optimize their web pages and listings for better search engine results, increase traffic from targeted consumers and boost their sales.

As a PayPal employee for years, I have gained an expert level proficiency in optimizing any kind of web page for search engines. In addition, I design web pages, write and edit web content, including marketing materials, FAQs and product manuals.

Please visit SEO WebPros for more information.

Google is taking the threat of 'link bombs' seriously after a number of left-wing pranksters were able to disrupt the websites of Republican candidates by tricking or cheating Google's ranking system.

Here's the full story about "Google Bombs" from The New York Times.