Google has a reputation for never completing a project. GMail has been around for five years but is yet to lose its “beta” tag. Docs, Calendar and many other Google services are still beta-products despite having evolved radically since their initial release.

The company’s reasoning for endless beta cycles has never been clearly explained, and Google always insisted the tag would be removed once the product was ready. I suspect Google’s motivation for beta tagging is a combination of:

• It reminded users that the web application was experimental and undergoing development.
• It lowered user expectations of early web systems and gave us a pleasant surprise to find fully-functional online products.
• Version numbers rarely have much meaning when applied to web applications and services. Unlike shrink-wrapped disk-distributed software, web solutions can be incrementally improved on a daily basis. Few people, other than the developers, will care if it’s version 7 or 57.

However, Google has finally recognised that the “beta” label has different connotations in the business world and it could be damaging their prospects. Many business users are put off because they associate the term with incomplete or untested software.

It is possible that other Google products will follow the example set by Chrome. The web browser had a beta period of just 100 days and is already at version 2, even though it was only released in September 2008. Could Google’s beta habit be over?

Has Google’s use of beta labels ever confused, or put off any of your clients?

PageRank is a numerical calculation based on the numbers of links that exist to a site with absolutely no consideration as to their relevance and context for your site.

A part of our web site promotion services, a lot of our customers get worried when their sites drop PageRank, due to a new algorithm Google is ranking sites by usually.

Hopefully, this post should clear up the aspects of what you need else you need to be aware of in the current search marketplace.

PageRank is scored out of 10, and is measured by the relevancy of incoming links, site content and external links.

PageRank is, at best, a blunt geometric measure of the likely authority of a site, but frankly, it is the furthest thing from a real assessment of whether you have good link reputation. It is a red herring, let’s try to stop worrying about it.

To make real progress in SEO you must attend to:

• Visibility – the technical accessibility and structure of your content to
  Google
• Content – such that it is consistent with how your prospects actually search
• Reputation – do things that makes your site irresistible as a link target
  for relevant sites

People spend lots of money that they are wasting every month on that poor linking building and other SEO old school services like submitting to search engines.

The way to get your site ranked high involved little effort, just plain old relevancy. 3 amazing links are better than 10,000 paid for / irrelevant ones. PageRank is great if used properly, along with word of mouth, when journalists write about the URL, make sure they drop the link in the online article or it’s completely useless to anyone.

Videos of the experts explaining current SEO ideas at PubCon:

Interview with Matt Cutt’s which covers these ideas and changes at Google.

Interview with Bruce Clay’s ideas on the future of SEO

Google also lets you track the status of many international flights. All you have to do is enter the flight number into the Google search box. For example, to find out the status of United Airlines flight 116, enter ua116.

Google now displays links to three sites that let you track the flight status—Travelocity, Expedia, and fboweb. Click one of these links to view real-time flight status—including maps of where the plane is in its route.