When it comes to searching images on the Web, Google Image Search probably is the first web service to cross your mind. However it might not be the right choice to find high resolution pictures, animated images and wallpapers for designing your website/blog, social network profiles, posters and other web design projects.

Fortunately Google Image Search isn’t the only option we have. There are many image search engines and stock photo websites out there where you can look for any type and quality of images. Below we’ve listed 22 image search engines and websites that absolutely worth your attention, some of them even support reverse image search. Read more…

There was a time when some webmasters result to shady methods to get a good placement in Google. They employed black hat search engine optimization (SEO) techniques such as keyword stuffing, invisible text, and doorway pages to get great rankings in results pages.

It would have been better if those who manipulated the results provided something of value. Sadly, that was not the case. Instead of getting highly relevant content, users were provided with info that had no substance whatsoever. Read more…

Facebook has just launched its new search tool called “Graph Search”. It’s the social networking site’s biggest foray into online search. Most analysts said that the new social search is not strong enough to challenge Google as the world’s dominant search engine, but it will certainly take away quite a sizeable search share from Google especially on the local information.

Apart from social search, Facebook has collaborated with Microsoft’s Bing to provide web search results. In return, Bing also includes certain Facebook results into their search results. However, when it comes to social search, your choices are not limited to Google, Facebook and Bing only. There are other powerful social network search engines out there helping you to find social profile of people, company, group and brand, as well as user-generated content such as comments, bookmarks, videos, and news. Read more…

Every year, Google makes hundreds of changes to its search algorithm with the aim of providing quality web pages to its users. The giant search engine also applies over 200 different signals to reward websites with quality contents by ranking them high in the search results. On the other side of the coin, Google penalizes low-quality websites by either lowering their search rankings or removing them off from the search results.

Last year Google has rolled out its major algorithm change called “Panda”. While the update has improved rankings for a large number of high-quality sites, it has also identified low-quality sites and upgraded their rankings. Early this year, another algorithm update named “Penguin” was released to penalize websites that employ webspam techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking and link schemes.

Google has been emphasizing many times on its blog and help forum that we should make sure our sites comply with its quality guidelines and develop more unique, original and quality contents rather than focusing on any algorithm tweaks. Having said that, if we can step into Google’s mindset to find out how it has been looking for high-quality websites. That will certainly save us a lot of time and efforts. Below we’ve compiled a list of ranking signals and guidance that might be used by Google to determine how websites rank in the search results. Read more…

Which is the best website to check Google search algorithm updates? Every year, Google rolls out changes to its search algorithm with the aim of providing better search results to Internet users. While most of the changes are minor, every once in a while the Internet giant will make significant algorithmic changes such as Panda and Penguin updates which greatly affect the ranking of search results.

As a website owner and search marketer, we should keep ourselves updated with the latest Google algorithmic changes. It helps us to understand how Google ranks the search results so that we can make necessary changes to our website driving more organic web traffic. Below we’ve compiled a list of website, blog and forum where you can keep track of Google updates making your SEO (search engine optimization) effort easier. Read more…

Link building is an old search engine optimization strategy that has existed for years, nearly since the first days of Google’s algorithmic existence. Social networking, on the other hand, has only been around since roughly 2007 or thereabouts. However, despite its newness, it’s slowly starting to supplant or at least rival long standing backlinking strategies.

One particular factor that has wrought enormous changes on the entire field of optimization is Google newfound insistence on and enforcement of actual quality in websites; you’re no longer going to cut it simply by creating thin content, spamming out a bunch of cheap links to whatever websites you can and stuffing your website with keywords to the point of unreadability. Google now wants search rank to be guided at least in large part by human interest and as much of it as possible within your niche. Read more…

Wondering how to show your name and photo under the title of your blog post in Google search results? Look no further, this is the right post where we provide a quick tutorial guiding you to link your online content to your Google+ Profile.

Once you’ve gone through the tutorial, your authorship information will be displayed in Google search results as shown in the image below. Read more…

We all know that Google is the most widely used search engine on the web, but it’s not the end-all search solution. There are tons of websites out there that come with sophisticated search functionality, allowing users to customize the results based on individual’s need. Today we would like to show you 37 websites that feature powerful search facilities, customizable filters, engaging search interface and interactive options. Instead of searching web pages like Google, these sites are specifically designed to let you find travel information, Internet archives, hot trends / topics, ebooks, audio files, videos, fashionable items, special restaurants, and more.

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Internet is all about delivering information. Apart from chatting with friends on Facebook, watching videos on YouTube or shopping online at Amazon, you can also make use of the Web for academic purposes. There are many great websites out there that allow students, researcher and librarians searching for valuable academic journals and scholarly articles.

Here we’ve gathered 15 online databases and search engines where you can find great journals, articles, and books online for your academic and publishing success. If you know of any other worth-sharing sites, let us know in the comments section below. Read more…

Google Webmaster Tools is a must for every webmaster and blogger. It provides detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google, which can be hardly found from other website analytics tools. The free web service has many excellent tools and features allowing you to check indexing status and optimize visibility of your website. It also provides abundance of traffic data which is useful for improving the SEO of your site.

Webmaster Tools is pretty easy to set up, all you need to do is verify that you’re the site owner, and then you’ll be able to use the tool instantly. To assist you fully utilize the power of Webmaster Tools, here are 10 basic tips you must know! We hope you’ll find this article useful. Read more…