SEO News Update

SEO in the news

Search Google News for SEO.

Go ahead. Try it.

At first you might be dismayed about the general coverage of the SEO space and its importance in the industry.

But when you consider people like Jason DeMers, an SEO with a blog / guest column regularly appearing on Forbes, it seems an increasing number of SEOs are pushing the topic forward, and helping to demystify the things SEOs do.

Whether or not that play is as wise as it may seem, is not a universally accepted view. Some SEO experts view it as a way of informing lots of SMBs who don't know about SEO, but they may get the wrong ideas relative to their own SEO needs.

Of course, anytime anyone tries to lift the veil of secrecy off of any trade or profession, some incumbents will reject the notion as a lowering of standards, in one way or another.  And in time, the naysayers are consumed by the overwhelming market size that make the formerly secretive knowledge normal, common, almost banal.

The trouble seems to stem from the typical washed down coverage of almost generic topics, rather than deeper insights into more advanced topics that experienced professionals might be concerned with or interested in.

And of course, in the case of SEO, the elements of Desktop and Mobile SEO are a big topic which get constant coverage, even if more fundamental issues remain under the surface.

Regardless of one's stance, of course, an SEO must remain on top of the current issues related to doing the necessary work.  So even if you don't like reading about SEO in major media, the fact is you have to read up on what they're publishing. At least, you must do this from time to time, just to make sure you don't fall behind your competitors. Remember, they are focused on bringing home the bacon, and damn the consequences of ignoring the more significant issues that newbies do not understand.

For example, Google Now On Tap, an insightful feature, is one new tool that SEOs are starting to use to improve their SEO/SERP results. But not every SEO agrees that this is a good use of their time, at least not yet. Yet the coverage of it is almost ubiquitous in secondary and tertiary media outlets that feature search engine optimization in their news conetnt.

And that's it, for now.  Your latest SEO Science & Arts Update, from Randy Marshall.

Note: If you are interested in learning more about the best ways to maximize the effectiveness of SEO for Google News, watch the following video from the Google Webmasters channel on YouTube.

Drunk Chimps

Drunk Chimpanzees

Fermented fruit in nature has higher alcohol content than you might think at first.

The frequency of episodes involving drunk chimps happen somewhat rarely, but when they do drink, they do it for a span of time ranging from a few minutes to over an hour.

There are also cases in Africa, researched by scientists including Dr. Tatyana Hummel and Prof. Katherine Hill of the Royal Society Open Science, where chimps will avail themselves to drinking when given the chance, while others will get to the fruits used for making the alcohol. When they do, they make themselves unpopular with the local villagers who use fruit to make things like banana beer and other alcoholic elixirs.

They are not seeking out the fruit for alcoholic effect. It seems to be more opportunistic.

This is different, of course, from recent studies that showed chimpanzees prefer cooked food to the raw variety, and that they would actually wait for food to be cooked, even bringing raw food to cooking devices, knowing that the output of their effort would result in cooked food.

Chimps also smile, just like we do. It's been known that they grin, though we did not know why.  Although scientists have noted the behavior of humans found that making faces was a very human response to things like fear, it is evident now that chimps smile in much the same biomechanical way, and that you can trace this behavior of smiling back probably around 5 million years. The research found that our evolutionary ancestors smiled when they played.

The fusion fantasy : Fact or fiction?

Gone Fission

Remember fusion?

A long time ago, on this very planet, scientists dreamt of a working fusion reactor.

Fission vs. Fusion: Fission reactors exist in many places.  Fission splits heavy atoms (Uranium, Plutonium)


So why is Fusion so elusive?  (the combination of light atoms, ie: Hydrogen atoms, to make a Helium).  The power of fusion is massive. see any footage of the H-bomb for reference.

Protons and Neutrons are key to fusion.  Deuterium and Tritium are the two base combination of a Proton and a Neutron, or a Proton and two Neutrons.

For a little bit more scientific learning, watch the following video about fission and fusion and how they work.

Scientists are now getting to the point where they (deuterium and tritium) are almost close enough to fuse. In 2011, Livermore Labs was expected to reach the "break even" ingnition phase.  Despite that, we remain nowhere near having the capability of producing more energy than we're putting in, and certainly not for large markets.

Even though physicists have reached the break even point, they are using all (and more) of the "excess" energy produced, to power the process itself.  Energy used to power the lasers needed to fuse the atoms is still massive and more costly than the output energy gain from the process.  So essentially there is no real gain in energy yet.

Also, the process of using the energy produced to convert into applied energy, involves heating an element, ie: water.  To do this, a "blanket" is put around the water, and a particle that hits it, causes it to heat up. Eventually it gets to a boiling point, and that's what you need to generate higher amounts of usable energy. The problem is that sometimes the particle hits the blanket AOK, and often it hits in different directions and fails to heat the water as desired.

This and many other technical problems are standing in the way of the challenges scientists face.

Is "The Big Lie" (the name given by doubters to the whole idea of practical fusion) on its way to a final defeat?  That may well depend on the success or failure of current experiments underway to prove or disprove the potential of better conversion rates of some pellets.

Right now the pellets necessary to do this project are cost prohibitive for any significant scaling up.