Some topics are so shrouded in mystery, they can divide the very SEO experts themselves. Nowhere is this more true than the ubiquitous meta tag. Sure, you’ve written a fantastic meta description, volunteered some of your more important meta keywords (even if you are unsure how much impact the latter will have).

But what next? What other meta tags should you include? Here are just some of the meta tags I see in wide use on the web:

<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1“>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”meta tags, rogue meta tags, useless meta tags, dangerous meta tags” />
<meta name=”description” content=”The Manchester SEO Blog guide to meta tags, rogue meta tags and downright dangerous ones.” />
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”3;URL=http://manchester-seo-blog.co.uk/”>
<meta name=”robots” content=”would you pass the Turing test?” />
<meta name=”title” content=”Redundant Meta Title” />
<meta name=”rating” content=”unsuitable for homosapiens” />
<meta name=”distribution” content=”global” />
<meta name=”publisher” content=”Rogue Meta Tag Technology Ltd.” />
<meta name=”author” content=”John Doe“>
<meta name=”designer” content=”Jane Doe“>
<meta name=”copyright” content=”Rogue Meta Tag Technology Ltd. All Rights Reserved“>
<meta name=”abstract” content=”A brief overview of some of the more useful, the useless and the downright dangerous meta tags people use on their web pages.“>

In this post, I hope to provide you with a brief overview to the jungle of meta tags.

Useful Meta Tags and Robots

<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />
<meta name=”googlebot” content=”noimageindex” />

Some meta tags can be used to give the robots supplemental information about your page and modify their default behaviour. Meta keywords and description have already been discussed. Robots, is highly useful one which you can direct at all crawlers by specifying “robots” or to a specific crawler such as “googlebot”. You can use directives such as: noindex (do not index), nofollow (do not follow links on this page), noarchive (do not store cached copy of page), noodp (do not use DMOZ description), noydir (do not use the description from Yahoo directory). Not all robots are polite, and at the time of writing, only Googlebot, Yahoo and Bing/MSN/Live crawlers respect these directives. Googlebot also supports: noimageindex (do not index images on page), notranslate (do not offer to translate the page) and unavailable_after (will not recommend for search after a particular date)

Other Useful Meta Tags

There are a small number of other useful meta tags, such as:

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”3;URL=http://manchester-seo-blog.co.uk/”>
<meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en-US,fr”>

The first will cause your brower to refresh the page after X seconds (where X is the first number in the content section). You can also specify a URL and use this to redirect your page. But this is the worst kind of redirect, as any SEO expert will say, you are better using a 301 redirect. The second meta tag allows you to specify the language content of the page itself. (see later for multiple language meta tags)

The Redundant Meta Tags

All major Search Engines will ignore meta tags such as: rating, distribution, rating,  author, designer and publisher. You may have your own reasons for including these, but do not expect them to make a difference in your websites rank! Some (such as the ‘rating’ meta tag) were genuinely proposed as a method for allowing webmasters to set the ‘age appropriateness’ of web pages. The difficulty is that without the backing of W3C, it is not standard. Without a set standard, we cannot expect search engines to habitually use meta tags like these. There is also an issue of honesty when reporting on the self :- if you are a webmaster who runs a site, would you wilfully restrict access to your website?

Meta Tags in Multiple Languages

The W3C consortium have proposed a method in which you may specify several different sets of meta tags in different languages within the same page, by using the lang=”" form. For example:

<meta name=”keywords” lang=”en-us” content=”vacation, Greece, sunshine”>
<meta name=”keywords” lang=”en” content=”holiday, Greece, sunshine”>
<meta name=”keywords” lang=”fr” content=”vacances, Gr&egrave;ce, soleil”>
<meta name=”keywords” lang=”ja” content=”空室, ギリシャ, 日照”>

Summary

If in doubt – leave it out! Google and most other search engines will make very good guesses about your page based on the content itself. If you are not sure how to use the meta tag, it is best not to! You may find interesting ways of shooting yourself in the foot by asking search engines to not index or cache your page. It is always better to err on the side of caution, and (as ever) look to W3C as a guide.

A Review By The Manchester SEO Blog

Well, Christmas has come and gone and already I find myself imagining what 2010 has in store for us! Tomorrow I will be cashing in some more of my predictions from last year, and also making some fresh ones for 2010. Today, however, I wanted to write an update of a prediction made six months ago when I reported the launch of the new Your First Search business directory. At the time I described it as a “business connection tool that would rise above other directories and offer a genuine alternative for business related searches”.

Over the last six months, I have watched in awe as this directory has soared in popularity to obtain a Google Page Rank of 5, boasting almost 350,000 pages (according to Google) and ranking very well for a range of search terms.

Optimising Your Business Directory Link Building

I often talk about the importance of link building, and despite the recent overhaul of Google, link building still forms the essential core of all SEO activities. However, the art of effective link building depends on you being able to identify the directories that will benefit your website the most. For every popular business directory there will be a hundred unpopular tumble-weed baiting ones that a person might waste time submitting their site to. In this respect YFS is definitely a feather to keep under your cap that will give significant clout to your SEO and website’s rank.

Why Is YFS Better Than Most Other Business Directories?

There are actually several answers to this. The first is that the authors themselves are Search Engine Consultants. These wizards know exactly how to craft every architectural detail of the directory to ensure it can be easily indexed by search engines, maximising the benefit of each business listing and outbound link. Despite the history that yell.com, Thomson Local and other well established directories may have, none have such a rich background in search, and will therefore be left playing catch-up in this area of expertise.

Each entry in YFS is carefully hand edited to ensure consistency, quality of data and usability. Most other directories rely on site owners to choose a category they feel is most appropriate with only minimal moderation – usually a simple approve / disapprove choice by moderators – leading to all kinds of interestingly disorganised inconsistencies.

Unlike many other directories, YFS also allows each entry to include a brief company description along with contact details and a map, allowing companies more freedom on how their listing appears, and also providing a great deal of quality information to users.

Conclusion

At the time of writing, YFS has grown to become one of the more popular business directories on the web. There are quite a number of others of equal popularity around, but this is definitely one I would recommend being featured in. However, it is the speed at which this site has grown that has been truly astonishing and perhaps a telling indication that it has not yet reached the apex of it’s popularity.

Google has been gradually rolling out some exciting new features over the last few months: from real time search and social search to music and image-driven searches. They even gave Google a face lift with some nice fading text on the homepage and a tweak under the hood with the Google Caffeine update.

But the real biggie for the SEO world is Google’s personalised search results. For the first time ever in search engine history, everyone will be given slightly different search results.  This is true even if you are not logged in to your Google account.  This week the Internet was bombarded with a flurry of posts by mourners proclaiming that SEO was officially dead. I was particularly worried that my results might start to lack variety, or that I would only get to read news that Google thought would please my interests and political palette. Variety is the spice of life, because without the bland, spice loses all meaning. Just what will these updates mean for SEO? I am pleased to announce that SEO very much alive and well, and that – today - The Manchester SEO Blog can reveal the reality of tomorrows SEO and what these recent updates will mean for you.

A Poorly Expressed Search Will Be Affected More

Imagine opening your phone and searching for ‘John’ in your contacts. I have Johns in my phone too… But mine are not likely to be the same as yours, and yet they are all John. I have been vague and expressed this search rather poorly, knowing that only a handful of Johns feature in my life on a regular basis.

Now imagine searching for ‘plumbers’ in Google. This is also a poorly expressed search because most plumbers only operate in a relatively local area. Now imagine that Google has built up a history of my searches, and knows that services in MANCHESTER are the ones I will be interested in… Google can supplement the missing information in my search to give a bias to Manchester based plumbers. If however, I search for ‘plumbers in Manchester’ I am likely to see similar results, even if I lived in Sheffield, even if I was a totally different person with a different search history.

Not All Searches Will Be Affected Equally

Each search results pages will be affected differently, and some will be affected more than others. If your website was optimised well, you will already be ranking well for some good long tail phrases and local searches anyway, so we can expect to see little or no change with 8 out of 10 search results pages.  Of these, most will be an adjustment by only one or two places, not the complete overhaul which has led to this spate of SEO doomsday proclaimers!  After all, a great website with plenty of traffic and a horde of good back links is still a great site.  To suggest that the old methods are now totally ineffective is akin to standing in Manchester centre with a sandwich board that reads: “The End is Neigh!”.

The reality is more likely to be a very slight skew in some searches and a change of one or two places in other cases.  For the most part, it is these general and ambiguous search terms that will see the biggest shift.  Mostly Google will draw on your search history to fill in any blanks on your current search. Anyone who feels SEO is dead, should go ahead and leave the industry. It will mean a bigger slice of the pie for the rest of us!

One question I get asked quite often, usually comes in the form of the statement : “I’ve found company X offering to do Y-thousand back links over Z weeks for some fixed amount of money” (adjust variables as necessary!).  You might think such information helps you assess the value of such a service, but it does not.  Today I will be asking : just how effective are link buying tactics?  What are the potential risks?  And how do these compare with links won for good quality content?

Well, it really depends on who is acquiring the links for you. Unless you know for sure how and where they plan to obtain these links, there is always a degree of risk to your site and domain.

What Are The Risks of Link Buying?

Google is very smart, and is aware of these tactics.  In the worst case scenario, your link building company has no ethics and will use link farming and spam techniques to obtain the sheer volume of links for you. If Google notices this sudden influx of poor quality links, your domain name may be penalised, impairing it’s ability to rank – or worse – may actually be blacklisted altogether.

How Can I Judge The Quality of Paid Back Links?

When I used to work for Tescos, one of their slogans was: ‘would you buy it?’ – do you feel the standard of service and presentation of the product meets your own personal standards? I like to think the same is true of the Web : ‘would you click it?’. If these links come from a site which someone may find helpful, and the links contribute to the usefulness and structure of the Web, then you have nothing to worry about.  If however, the referring sites include nonsensical gibberish, repetition of keywords and features links that appear to be going around in circles, then be afraid! Be very, very afraid!

The page rank of the referring page is also another important indicator. Google will not assign a page rank at all if it suspects foul play is afoot. If the referring page has a Google page rank other than zero, you are probably quite safe. This is why I often advise people to go for a smaller number of higher PR links, rather than sheer volume alone. There is significantly less risk, and potentially more for you to gain!

Advantages of Buying Links vs. Quality Content Linkbaiting

Recent updates to Google’s algorithm, mean that more weighting is given to relevance and quality of content that surrounds the link. I believe this is one fundamental cornerstone that has ushered in the current era of SEO blogging. If the link is surrounded by well written, rich and informative text content, you will find the link does several times more for you than a series of generic business directory listings. Not only this – but the traffic it conducts is likely to stay longer, be more interested in the topics you discuss and will improve the overall health of our SEO itself.

The (Current) Verdict?

In a perfect world, I think Google would like everyone to keep their links very context-relevant, and would like to encourage all users to freely contribute as much information as they possibly can to the Web. But in reality, not everyone has time to get very involved in generating rich content – particularly if you have a business to run! Be sure you have an idea what type of links your link broker will build.  Go for quality not quantity - 5 good back links will do more for you than 50 generic ones, do not be swayed by sheer volume alone!  And – as always – be very cautious.

Plenty of people write about SEO, and a myriad SEO companies sell their services, but only occasionally are we lucky enough to catch glimpse of the giants involved in working their website wizardry on search engines. There are some notable exceptions – SEOmoz have Whiteboard Fridays, Matt Cutts is comfortable explaining what the future of search is likely to hold (or who cut his hair this time!) and occasionally we get to see guest speakers at the latest SEO conference. But for 99% of companies and individuals, 99% of the time we have only their blogs, articles and avatars by which to understand them.

Last week Channel M’s Andy Crane had the pleasure of interviewing the founder of the top UK search engine consultancy, FirstFound. Founded a decade ago, this Manchester based SEO company has experienced steady growth and last year announced a record turnover of £4m. Chris Bellamy explains:

We started this ten years ago when the Internet was in its infancy. Clients were coming along and buying a new website and saying: ‘what a waste of money that was.’ because nobody is finding them. We drive traffic to those websites by making sure they rank when someone searches for either their product or service.

Chris does not divulge any secrets to his success, but points out that a couple of hundred different ranking factors are taken into account when placing a website in the search results.

What we have to do is work out which of those are the most important…we’ll make some changes to that website, we’ll make some changes that are off the website that will make a big difference and we’ll do some testing.

Chris goes on to explain a bit about how split testing helps them identify the improvement these changes make, enabling them to further improve the optimisation, making SEO is an ongoing process. In the current climate, few markets are experiencing any real growth, but Chris was very optimistic about the future of online sales:

It’s a boom time, and it has been for 9 or 10 years yet, and I think it will be for some time to come. The increase for last Christmas was 15% and I suspect sales this year on the Internet will be approaching £9bn in the UK, which is colossal.

He is not exaggerating either, last Christmas saw a significant increase in online sales, Chris goes on to explain this phenomenon:

I think [sales are] predominantly moving out of the high-street. The high-street is changing and is becoming the Internet. Which high-street brand doesn’t have an Internet brand?

Andy points out that ITV has suffered a significant downturn in advertising in recent times, but is pleased with the ratings they get from X Factor, saying that a 30 second slot in the semi finals will set advertisers back a cool quarter of a million pounds. Chris replies:

The first half of this year was the first time that Internet advertising overtook television advertising, so there are issues there, we all know the ITV have issues, but give me the quarter of a million and I’ll do a better job!

Getting that all-important click in the search engine results page (SERPS) is a vital part of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). People will naturally judge a book by its cover in the same way they will judge your article by their first impressions. Even if you have the greatest article in the world, it won’t necessarily attract any readers if it is not presented properly! You only have a couple of sentences to convince the searcher they need to read your article, so how can you optimise your chances of getting that click?  How can you improve your click through rate?

• Baiting Your Hook with Juicy Titles

  The title is often the first text your readers’ eyes will be drawn to, making this a vital element to get right!  There are several important factors to consider:  Besides the obvious inclusion of poignant keywords, just how interesting is your title anyway? Sometimes it is the subtler, psychological factors that determine who gets clicked.  A good copywriting tactic is to include one known concept and introduce one unknown which will integue your reader.  Curiosity killed the cat!

• Carefully Crafting and Sculpting URLs

  Both your domain name and page address gives the searcher a clue about how informative your article is likely to be and how authoritative you are on a topic. URLs need to be as concise as possible, while including important search phrases that accurately describe the content of the article. Although most people will not be consciously aware of it, the URL also helps indicate your area of expertise and will have an impact on your SERPS click through rate.

• Marketing to Popular Trends

  Socio-economic factors will influence both peoples’ searches and clicks in the same way it will affect shopping habits. Being aware of this before you write your article will help you better tailor your message to the widest audience possible:

  Short Term Search Trends

  
  Imagine this week brings some news that has everyone talking. This will stimulate  more searches and clicks for this topic.  Is there anyway this trend could benefit your site? Could you somehow mention or make reference to the topic or find a way to incorporate this into your news or blog entry? Be careful not to go too far and end up with a title that has nothing to do with your article, or this will increase your bounce rate!

  Long Term Search Trends

  Some factors will cause trends that will be felt much deeper and over longer periods. For instance, consider the current state of the economy. Over a period of many months there has been a gradual increase in the number of searches relating to ‘cheap’, ‘budget’, ‘affordable’, ‘economy’ and ‘bargain’ phrases.  Some trends are slower to change and will last longer.

  Because SEO is a relatively slow process (especially for static web pages!) you are best using your static pages to target long-term search phrase trends, and news or blog articles to vacuum up some of the briefly-trendy search terms.

• Comprehensive Descriptions

  Try to give as much detail as you can in your META description, feature as many keywords as you can and avoid turning it into a mindless list of stuffed keywords. Also remember to keep it fairly brief. Google will show the searcher up to 70 characters from your description in the search results page, but it will also ’scroll through’ your description to ensure the most relevant section is visible to the searcher for their search terms. If your article deals with multiple topics, it would be a good idea to ‘cluster’ the key phrases in similar ends of the description and not to double back on yourself.

• Avoid Anything That Might Look Like Spam!

  It may sound obvious, but even subtle oversights can easily turn a well-meaning document into an apparent piece of spam.  Try not to repeat keywords more than a couple of times, and ensure that the grammar has not suffered due to crow-baring keywords into the sentence!  Keyword stuffing in this way is a false economy and risks putting your potential visitors off, having a negative impact on your SERPS click through rate!

We would all like a little more control sometimes. We’re so used to accepting things the way they are we often don’t recognise a choice when we see one. One of the great creative freedoms of search engine optimisation (SEO) is that you actually get some kind of choice over who your competitors are.

I like to think of each search term like a market, and within this market are competitor websites. Even if you provide a similar product or service to your next competitor in the real world, you still have the freedom to adjust the wordy pitch you use with the search engines, allowing you to carefully pick your fights. It may sound like I’m stating the obvious, but this paves the way for The Manchester SEO Blog’s guide to choosing your keyword competitors carefully.

• How Well Searched for is Your Target Search Term?

  It may be the first phrase you thought of, but this does not automatically mean it has a large search volume behind it. Consider the number of searches done on this phrase as the prize you stand to gain. Does the extra work required for a competitive keyword justify the potential gain you stand to make?

• Could You Pick Up Long Tail Phrases Around Your Target Phrase?

  Following from the previous point – would you actually benefit more by picking up a range of long tail phrases around your target phrase? The search volume behind long tail phrases will be lower, but they will also be easier for you to pick up, working out better value to you.

• Is Your Search Term Ambiguous or Introduce Unnecessary Competitors?

  If your search term lists competitors who don’t actually supply the same product or services you do, it is worth refining your target phrase to something more specific. Remember, that if you accidentally draw clicks for people looking for something entirely different (but ambiguously similar to your phrase), your bounce rate will go up and your listings will suffer! To test this, simply have a careful look the websites listed for your target phrase. Are there any competitors you didn’t expect to see? Why is this and could you perhaps refine your search term to something a bit more specific?

• Are Brand Names Important?

  If your industry has big brand names, it would be worth including these. It is very easy to focus on the new customer by optimising for general phrases, but there will be searchers out there who already know what they want and will be searching for a particular brand or model! Obviously, be sure to optimise yourself for things you actually supply, and avoid search terms in the hope to gain other peoples’ customers. This will not work and will just cause your bounce rate to go up!

• Have You Given Enough Detail?

  It is always best to include as much detail as possible. Even if you sell ‘scarves’ be sure to include the material (are they wool scarves?) and also the colour. Each product and service is different, and while this example is probably a little generalised, the same is true of almost every industry. More detail is better!

• Can You Offer Something Your Chosen Competitors Cannot?

  It is worth putting yourself in direct competition of a website if you notice it is lacking in some way. If you provide the most comprehensive information on a topic, then it is in Google’s own interest to place you first! If you notice a particularly weak series of sites in a particular area, deliver the knock out blow with your information!

The best overview is to analyse your real-worldly competitor websites carefully, identify weak areas that you will be able to make significant progress in, and avoid general phrases and big competitors!

In the fantastic Star Trek Voyager series, a Borg designated Seven of Nine is ‘rescued’ and disconnected from the collective. This causes her great distress, as the voices in her head suddenly fall silent.

This weekend I think I understand how this feels. Most good SEO news sources are corporate blogs, causing a sort of giant blogging vacuum to open up once the weekend rolls around. Not being one to disappoint, I realise that this void might actually represent an opportunity in disguise.

Content Marketing is About Giving Your Audience What They Want

SEO never sleeps, takes a break or any kind of holiday. This is doubly true of content marketing. The information blogs and websites contain might be better thought of in the more traditional supply and demand model – the more writers for a topic, the less readers per writer there will be and (therefore) the more difficult it is likely to prove to find your niche. Perhaps there are very good reasons for choosing the timing of your blog posts?

Content Marketing is About Timing

In many ways, the key to SEO content marketing lies in predicting the future. Foreseeing upcoming trends and identifying the need for particular articles before others have a chance to supply them, enabling you to manoeuvre yourself into a prime position ready for when the readers come. Getting there first is easier when you only have a couple of competitors to worry about.  Once you have the top spot, it will become increasingly difficult for newcomers to challenge your position.

One Case Study

On another site I run, I endeavour to provide the solutions to a popular Lucasarts game series called the Tales of Monkey Island before anyone else. By making the solutions available on the day of the games release, not only does this make it easier for me to get into the top position in Google for phrases I suspect people will be searching for, but I actually generate traffic I would have missed if I had released exactly the same article only a couple of days later.

The graph below shows the traffic generated for these solutions, shortly after the release of the latest episode on the Friday the 30th of October 2009.  The shaded area indicates extra traffic that only the speedy writer can achieve.  If the solutions were published only a few days after this, the traffic would go to someone else.

Traffic For Game Solutions After Launch on the 30th October 2009

When it Pays to be Different

In a nutshell, it pays to be different.  Whatever you can contribute that others will struggle with, is something you can turn into a great traffic source.  Being the first to provide will ensure others are constantly playing catch-up and will be lucky to scrape second place.  Going with the crowd is likely to get your voice lost amongst other  similar messages.  But if you jump to the left while everyone is jumping  right, someone is bound to stop and take notice!

Caveat Emptor is a slogan used all too often. It is true that a fool and his money will be easily parted, but it is doubly sad to see a well respected company, suddenly open up a scheme that is more than a little crooked. It is both my sad duty and heavy responsibility to report a scheme being run by Yelldirect, a branch off the popular Yell and Yellow Pages brands which is designed to fleece less web savvy entrepreneurs of their hard earned cash.

Yell is a respectable business directory, that even your SEO consultant will say can benefit your websites profile and traffic. However, a newer branch from this company known as Yelldirect is far less honest and much more murky.

I know this news article will make me unpopular initially, but like The Manchester SEO Blog’s discovery that gb.com domain penatly in Google, but people will eventually realise I am doing this for the benefit of the people less Internet savvy in the hope I can show you why you should avoid YellDirect, who is in no danger of living up to a single claim they make about their service.

What Do You Believe is Wrong With Yelldirect?

Well, firstly, there is a ‘Web Creation Charge’ of around £100, and as a Webmaster myself I have trouble understanding what this is for, because it does not include the .co.uk or .com domain which will set you back another £50 per year, (roughly 10 times the value of these domains had you gone to a regular registrar such as 1and1, 123-reg or any of the other big names). There are all sorts of interesting charges for work (whether real or imaginary!). There will be another charge of around £200 for ‘artwork’ even if the imagery is supplied entirely by the client.

If the client wants a content management system, the Website Builder costs £1000 (in addition to all the other charges for setting up a website! But wait – it gets better – because even with the Website Builder, the client must still pay another £100 for the privilege of adding each new page, even if they provide all of the content!!

When all said and done, an awful-looking website with Yelldirect is likely to set you back somewhere between £1000 and £2000.

So Your Problem is with Price? That Doesn’t Sound So Bad Does it?

Well, no, the problem is worse than this. The user gets a maximum of around 300 characters to play with on each page, and has no control over where these appear. Some testing from myself revealed that any website created with Yelldirectwill face a penalty in Google. Why? I think one of the reasons is that the CMS system will copy the entire page of content as your META description, ensuring you have long, and the keywords are made up of the various services you offer, giving you no control over what appears here, and forcing you to generate a page that is so spammy, it will struggle to get listed well in Google. But wait! It doesn’t stop there – in Yell’s own search, they will not list you on your own domain (which you paid over £50 for) they will – in fact – link through to your mysite.sitebuilder.yell.comdomain, ensuring they pinch all of your good PR for themselves, but take your money for the privilege.

Proof That YellDirect Will Give You a Spammy Site

Just try doing : site:http://sitebuilder.yell.com in the Google search bar, and have a close look at the META tags of all the sites that are returned. It’s fair to say that Yelldirect have gone to some extraordinary lengths to ensure their clients are penalised in Google with websites that will never perform anywhere near as well as a regular domain registered with a average company with a ‘normal’ hosting arrangement..

Why Their Claims are Scandelous

Let us take a look at some of the claims made on their homepage. ‘Generate more business leads with Yell.com’, ‘Cost-effective advertising to suit all budgets’. When I inform the reader that the average site will cost around 2000 GBP and upwards, and will struggle more than a normal domain to get listed in Google, I feel that these statements are not just misleading, but are designed to prey on entrepreneurs lack of knowledge about the Internet and SEO, exploiting their deepest hopes and desires of making money through the web.

I hope other SEO consultants will join me in condemning the scheme. The moral of the story? Yell, please leave the web marketing to the SEO bods who know what they are doing. And as always caveat emptor.

Okay, so the purchase of a brand new Apple iPhone this weekend reminded me just how accessible and easy to use the Internet has become. I find myself excitingly closer to the wishy washy aspirations of Web 2.0

Had you asked only a year ago what the word ‘Web 2.0′ meant to me, I would probably have drawn a bit of a blank. I might have pointed out that labels give us a vocabulary with which we might classify and discuss the world around us. Arbitrarily labelling something ‘Web 2.0′, simply because it appears to demonstrate a subjective set of ideals that matched our future expectations of the Internet seemed a little disappointingly unscientific. In many ways the ballet of technology that provides the Internet remains based on the same foundations it always has since it was a twinkle in Tim Berners Lee’s eye.

Perhaps it is not so much Web 2.0 itself that has changed, but the backdrop of worldly events it’s growth is set against. We have seen journalists use Twitter to network from locations where journalists would not have been able to take cameras. We have seen the British military use SEO to combat terrorism. Ordinary citizens can reach anyone in the world and sharing ideas in blogs in a way that gives the average person a voice that is taken just as seriously as those in Westminster. There are entire TV shows emerging that are driven entirely by user generated content such as Rude Tube, allowing us to see funny animal behaviour and peoples’ gaffs that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. Google News has now opened it’s doors to other news sources and peoples’ blogs, and with the launch of Google Social Search and comments within these news articles, we will see this trend continue.

In the new world that is emerging on the other side of this Web 2.0 renaissance, it will prove much more easy for ideas to be free, and increasingly difficult for any world leaders to hold their people intellectual hostage. Countries that would otherwise be isolated will find they are unable to prevent their citizens learning what it means to be free.  It will become virtually impossible for any large scale conspiracies or any wars based on false pretenses, simply because citizens themselves will have access to far too much information. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Web 2.0 represents the freedom and the casting aside of mind shackles in a way we have not seen since the beheading of King Charles I.  To me, Web 2.0 represents freedom itself.

And yet, nothing changes the fact that the Internet works on the same principles it always has. There are some new and emerging languages such as jQuery and AJAX which help to enhance existing technologies but for the most part, it is the way we use the Internet that is evolving.

Being able to carry it all around with me in my pocket, might just be the best thing I have experienced for quite some time.