Victor's Blog

No More FTP with Blogger

2010-04-30T16:55:00.002-04:00

I just received another warning from Google that they will no longer be supporting FTP to upload blog entries. My thoughts on this can be summarized as whatever... What features are they trying to support that they can no longer support good old file transfer protocol.

I'm at the limit of wondering why I use blogger.

How is it that Wordpress (made by a bunch of unpaid people) has a great open source blogging platform and Blogger is well, second rate. How is it that small organizations make better software products than multi-billion dollar companies?

What is up with that?

IE 9 is coming...

2010-03-17T09:50:00.002-04:00

Internet Explorer 8 was released last year and while it does represent a step forward in compatibility it is still fairly slow in terms of running javascript.

Microsoft is looking to change that with IE 9. Surprisingly, they intend to do it by compiling it. Preliminary results indicate a significant improvement which will bring them to the level of Chrome.

Many other features have been announced too:

The three main ones being: HTML 5, CSS 3 and SVG (scalable vector graphics) support. They have also moved to improve compatibility with browser standards. Personally, I'm glad to hear this because getting webpages to look right in different browsers can be annoying.

The only downside to Internet Explorer 9 is that there are no plans to make a version for Windows XP which is currently still Microsoft's most popular operating system.

Flash Development for Free

2010-02-28T21:32:00.006-05:00

Until recently I thought that you needed to have Flash CS4 or an earlier version to make flash files. There are exceptions of course. For example, you can upload a video file to youtube to create a flash movie.

If you want to make flash files without Adobe Flash you could use Adobe Flex but neither of these are free. Fortunately Adobe provides a free Flex SDK (software development kit) that you can use to generate flash from Actionscript. If you have nightmares about dos prompts then this method probably is not for you. For more information of Free Flash click here.

Adobe is also nice enough to let you use Flash CS4 free for a month and it is easy to see why CS4 is so popular. It is fast, fairly simple and, of course, because the output is Flash the resulting code works on all browsers provided they have a suitable flash player. (The flash player which uses a web browser is available free.)

Flash is almost univesrally supported with one major exception. Flash requires a fair bit of computing power and as a result cellphones don't typically support it. That will be changing soon though according to Wired Another surprising omission is the new iPad from Apple. The iPad would make an ideal system for video etc. however flash is so ubiquitous that right now it won't play a vast majority of videos available on the Internet. As far as I can tell, the iPad is basically an overgrown iPod touch (iPhone minus the phone ). I have a netbook with an Atom processor that is the size of an iPad costs less then half and it plays flash but I digress.

In any case I hope to have some examples of flash available soon. If you have a request for some flash please let me know and I will see what I can do...

Google Web History

2010-02-11T11:03:00.006-05:00

While most people just think of a Google as a search bar for the Internet there really is a lot more going on than that. Google modifies the algorithm it uses to order websites a fair bit. Since being on the first page for a given search result can affect the value of an online business that order is very important to a lot of people. Google does not share its algorithm.

So here is a question for you: If you do two searches for the same criteria at the same time will you get the same result. The short answer is "probably not".

You see Google keeps track of how you use www.Google.com when you are logged into it. So if you sign into gmail and then do a google search before signing out your searches are stored. If you want to check it out just log into gmail and click here for to see the search history on your computer. Google has been doing this for a while according to Anil Dash.

So is this Orwellian? The answer to that question is that it would depend on how that data is being used. So how is it being used? The answer is that there is only one answer and it comes from Google... Evidently most people do not care.

Search Engine Algorithm

2010-01-22T23:05:00.002-05:00

I recently came across this post which claims that randfish over at SEOmoz has developed an approximation of Google's algorithm. I say "claimed" because I did not find the post by randfish however I did find a variety of very good articles. Anyway, the algorithm is given in the linked post. Since the algorithm is a secret there is no telling how accurate it is though it seems to support conventional thinking.

The algorithm itself is really not important though. Since the various criteria are not exclusive the obvious approach is to cover all of them. All of the terms of the equation are well known to be important and while I doubt that this is how Google ranks sites it is probably as a good an estimation as I have seen.

Here is the formula:

GoogScore = (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1) + (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) - (Automated & Manual Penalties)

While I do not have any specific data to back this up I feel that the inbound links are more important than domain strength and keyword usage combined. (That just my 2cents though.)

Nexus 1

2010-01-05T17:21:00.003-05:00

As far as I knew Google was strictly a software company whose focus has always been to make things faster and easier. (And yes... they sell advertising too...) Today, Google has launched the Nexus 1 which looks curiously similar to Apple's iPhone.

(I'd like to thank AppleInsider.com for this photo I snagged from their site.)

The question on my mind is: Why? Google introduced an operating system for phones called android. I would not say that it flopped but right now the iPhone and the Blackberry hold a certain level of snobby appeal that no phone running android has. Evidently, Google wants to raise its own profile and diversify itself.

Does this represent a change in Google's direction and, if so, what would be the logical next step? There are rumours of a netbook or perhaps tablet device coming soon. Apple is likely to launch such a device this year which will give them a first to market advantage. I am inclined to believe that Google will not target markets that are saturated with adequate products that are very inexpensive. (The Nexus 1 costs $530 unlocked. That could buy you decent entry-level laptop these days and my guess is that the next device will be more expensive than their phone.)

Looking beyond the tablet what is there??? There are a lot of niches (both in hardware and software) that Google could get into. How about Google Navigator? Is it software that integrates with Google Maps and Google Earth or is it a GPS device? The answer is yes!

Google Games? (They could provide an API to developers and allow free use of games while splitting advertising revenue with game developers.)

Google Virtual Office? (A more intuitive approach to an operating system where devices and floor plans are clear. When your printer has a GPS in it the virtual office will ensure that documents a provided to the right location instantly. If your office is in Toronto and your colleague works in New York you print documents to the printer in their office automatically, provided you are authorized to do so.)

Google Archive? (Store a copy of everything you have for free in exchange for watching some advertising when you store it.)

I see Google facing a serious problem in the future. That problem is not brand identity. It is that Google is simply getting too big. Microsoft had difficulties when it gave away Internet Explorer with Windows. As a company some of there practices were determined to be anti-competitive. While that may be it is apparent that they were also ahead of their time. When Google released the Chrome browser, which is free as well, they did not have that kind of difficulty. That said, Google does not have a lock on the operating system market the way Microsoft did with PCs. The problem is that their presence on the Net is ubiquitous almost to the point of being overwhelming.

As much as I like Google there comes a point where they are big enough to take over markets for the sole purpose of pushing their own advertising. (For example: if you Google "best smart phone" how do you know if Google salted the results to help out the Nexus 1?) When that point gets closer things will get very interesting.

Ancient Chinese Curse: "May you live in interesting times."

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T10:23:00.001-05:00

2010 is not far off! I just want to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

On the SEO side of things your domains are likely all one year older which gives them a little more credibility with Google...

(Seriously...)

Different Google results on different computers

2009-12-10T10:10:00.002-05:00

One of my clients called me about his ranking in Google. More specifically, he wanted to know why a competitor was placing at the #1 position in Google for keywords that we had worked very hard to target. While Google does not share their search engine algorithm they did shed some light on this issue here. This link is also very helpful because it provides instructions on how to disable this customization.

To summarize, Google tracks your computer's use of their search engine and will customize your results based upon your previous search behaviour. Additionally, the amount of customization increases if you are signed into your Google account.

Since I happen to have access to my client's Google account I signed into it and tried to duplicate his search results but that did not work. Presumably Google uses a cookie or similar file on the client's computer to store search history.

Blogs and SEO

2009-12-01T11:46:00.006-05:00

Some of my clients have expressed interest in adding a blog to their site but are uncertain about how to do it. Generally, my experience is that most businesses look at a website as distraction to their business. Any business which pays good money for a website should make the effort to use that investment and enjoy the benefits.

Here are a few pointers for any business considering starting a blog:
1. Blogging is cheap. Blogger and Wordpress along with other blogging services will allow you to set up a blog on their servers at no charge.
2. Blogging is easy. The software packages allow integration of pictures and video content too. It is no more complicated that then sending email with an attachment. If you do not care about adding pictures and video then it is easy as sending plain old text emails.
3. When done correctly, a blog can drive traffic to your site. When done poorly, it will not.

Currently search engines are very sensitive to links meaning that sites that link to your site add to your relevance for given content. Thus, if you have a blog on a Wordpress server and you point to it from your site that link association boosts the credibility of the wordpress server as far as the search engines are concerned. Linking back to your website from the blog will mitigate this.

A better way to run a blog is to have the blog integrated into your site. This site uses Blogger. I've customized the look so that it matches the rest of the site. I've also produced an example blog which uses Wordpress. When the blog is integrated into your site any links to your blog are now links to your site.

Integrating a blog into an existing website can be a fair amount of work. Here is an example of a blog that I customized for a client of mine. Here is there existing site (which I did not produce).

Wordpress

2009-11-20T13:03:00.003-05:00

When I first created this website I made the site with a text editor. Making a site look really good with a text editor is quite a challenge but using a text editor means that you learn. Also, my experience with most website building programs is that they work really well until something does not work. Once something does not work you have choices:

Call tech support

Start over with a different builder

Learn to use a Text Editor

There are a lot of good reasons to use a program to build websites. They are fast and easy. Sometimes you can find images that give your site a professional look. Lately I have been using Wordpress and I have to say that I am very impressed. It produces very high quality websites. There are all kinds of themes out there and some support modifications from the Wordpress dashboard. As open source software, Wordpress gives you access to the code that it uses. That means that if you do not mind using a text editor there are some amazing things you can do with a wordpress template.

I have been playing with Wordpress quite a bit lately. I keep an example blog too. You can check it out here.

A few free tools that every SEO consultant needs

2009-11-16T09:51:00.002-05:00

There is a lot of great free software out there and I'd really like to thank the people who make it available.

When you develop and optimize web pages it is really important that they look consistent and things are positioned where they belong. Unfortunately different browsers use different rules. Microsoft has done a lot to ensure that Internet Explorer now complies with HTML standards however this means that it had to change. Although Internet Explorer 8 is available as a free download there are still people out there who use Internet Explorer 6. That brings me to the first tool:

IE tester is free software that mimics different versions of Internet Explorer. It is not perfect but my experience is that it works very well.

Designing webpages can be complicated when you don't use a conventional builder and it is nice to be able to make small changes without altering your code. Firefox is a great browser and it has a
great webpage development plugin. This plug-in allows the developer to change all kinds of parameters quickly and easily. I use it all the time and it is great. I have to thank my buddy Jay, the SQLite guru for that one.

The next tool that I'm very thankful for is Firebug, another plugin for Firefox. Firebug is very helpful in web development too but it really shines when you want to debug javascript. Javascript is great but finding errors on in javascript can be very tedious and unproductive. Firebug really helps.

Last, is SEO Toolbar. In search engine optimization it is really great to get information quickly and this Firefox plugin does it.

Top 10

2009-11-08T17:35:00.003-05:00

Looking at the title you might think this is a top ten list. Instead, this post is about getting into the top ten.

I have seen a variety of techniques discussed a dozen different ways but the simplest technique is the best.

1. Choose the expression you expect a user to enter into a search engine.
2. Enter that expression into the search engine.
3. Review what comes up.
4. Ask yourself if you can beat anything presently in the top ten.

That's it, that's all. If your site is as good or better than the results that do come up but you are not in the top then you have ten examples to look at and learn from. A big part of how search engines rank sites is based upon the links that sites have. Reviewing your competition involves finding out what links they have.

If you follow these simple steps you should be able judge if your site can get into the top ten.

PC vs. Mac

2009-10-28T10:11:00.002-04:00

There are a lot of people out there with an opinion regarding the whole PC versus Mac competition. Which is better? Which will win? Does anyone really care? For most people its important that they are able to run a quality software suite and surf the web. (For all you power gamers out there, sorry dudes you're a niche. Most game development is for consoles and the continuing trend is to modify console games work on computers so... You might be better off just getting a console.)

Since just about every computer fits this description, the next task is to find a computer that will be reliable. This is the bridge that Microsoft is trying very hard to cross with Windows 7. I feel that for the most part they have done so successfully. Mac OS X is already there and so is Linux. That said, reliability is a funny thing because how reliable your computer is depends on who fixes it when you think there is a problem. As Windows is pretty ubiquitous there are a lot of people who are familiar with it. The Mac is fairly simple and reliable so this is less of an issue but most Mac users are either very tech savvy or know someone who is. This is problem for Linux. If something does not work on a Linux system what do you do? The people who know the answer represent such a small fraction of the population that Linux is likely to remain a fringe product for the next little while.

Right now if you own a Mac you may be considering the upgrade to the Snow Leopard OS. I would not blame you $30 for an operating system is a great deal. For the PC user Windows 7 Home Premium is roughly four times as expensive.

Mac is looking pretty good... It comes fully featured. It's trendy to own one. It's pretty stable. Most hackers don't bother writing viruses for it. There is just one little problem with the Mac... It's very expensive. Even at the low end, a Mac mini is hard to find for under $550 (monitor not included). Paying the equivalent for a PC (assuming you shop around) will give a lot more computing power. The PC architecture is far more open. That leads to problems in compatibility but it also leads to competition and low prices. Mac notebooks start at about $1300. PC notebooks start at about a third of that.

Apple is content to keep that Mac brand as is. "High Quality and Expensive" If you were Steve Jobs you would do the same.

Microsoft officially launches Windows 7

2009-10-22T16:49:00.004-04:00

As you probably know Microsoft officially launches Windows 7 today. It has been available to beta testers for the last few months and generally the consensus is that is very good. Effectively it provides everything that Vista should have been but was not along with some other features such as touch support.

Next year Google plans to launch Chrome OS.

Google announces Chrome OS...

When most people look at Microsoft think of two products: MS Office and Windows operating systems. If you are feeling generous then you might add their game console (Xbox) division. Google has already produced an operating system called android which is designed to run on high-end phones. Chrome OS is a little different in that it is intended to run on netbooks.

Based on the article Chrome OS seems to be a lot like Linux. It will even be open sourced so anyone with the time and inclination to modify their operating system can.

Although Windows 7 and Chrome OS are aimed at different markets it is now very clear that Mircosoft and Google are in direct competition. The next few years will likely prove to be a difficult fight for both companies.

The Next Wave

2009-10-15T15:30:00.003-04:00

What's next for a company that dominates Internet advertising revenues? While I am certain Google is pursuing a variety of new technology and services one that has many very technical people very excited is Google Wave. Never heard of it and want a 80 minute video introduction?

The Google Wave Video Introduction!

In short Google is in the process of "reinventing" email. The "send" is not needed as Google Wave sends data immediately, even when different people are editing at the same time. Additionally, photos and media are easily shared. Individual "conversations" can easily be modified to include new participants. The conversations can also be integrated into a blog where blog responders who also have Google Wave enter the "conversation". When the conversation is updated the blog entry is also updated automatically.

It is designed to support instant messaging and mobile devices.

The spell checker is rather nice too. It takes context into account to indicate when a spelling error occurs even if the word exists.

Google versus the Yellow Pages

2009-10-05T09:48:00.004-04:00

A good client is worth their weight in gold. I firmly believe that most businesses are run by people who remain ignorant of the importance of the web. For example, there are plenty of companies out there who spend a lot of money for yellow page ads but are reluctant to pay a fraction of that for a good website. What these companies often do not appreciate is that many people do not have a land line and therefore don't have that yellow book at home. Chances are people already have a cellphone so what do they need a land line for?

The other aspect to this is that the most valuable consumers are people with good disposable income who tend to be older. Thus, using the yellowpages is still very effective at this time because most people with high disposable incomes have land lines. That said, a smart business should focus on bringing in new clients and a young client who likes your service may eventually graduate to being an older wealthy client.

Based on this one would think that every business would want to ensure they have a good presence on the Internet. My experience is that many businesses think they do but they do not. For example, I've yet to meet someone in a business who did not claim that their page was optimized for Google. That's great. Unfortunately, the people who tell me this have rarely understand what it means.

Modern search engines rank your website according to on page factors and links to your site. Of these two, the links to your site are more important provided the links have some relevancy to the content of your site.

The truth is clients don't care about website optimization. They just want to be at the top of Google for keywords that potential clients will enter into a search engine to find them. If you are #1 on the results page would you care about website optimization?

You would if you were proactive...

Things Google does not do

2009-09-28T11:05:00.004-04:00

I was talking with a friend this weekend who told me that he had received a call from Google and that they had offered to build a website for him and charge him a monthly fee. My friend is an accountant and he has been considering getting a website. Thus, he was considering the offer.

My first reaction was that Google does not do that and who ever spoke to my friend was misleading him. Google does many things, many things I probably don't know about. I've never heard of them offering to build websites for people. If Google were to offer a service like that would it be optimized to rank well in their search engine? If the answer is "yes" then this is a clear conflict of interest. If the answer is "no" then why would you want them to build a site for you.

Google does offer tools for building websites. This blog is made with Blogger which Google owns. Google also offers free hosting and domains however pages that are hosted on their servers rarely rank well.

Anyway, if someone tells you that Google will build you a website and charge you monthly for it do yourself a favour and hang up.

Duplicate Content: Is there a penalty?

2009-09-20T10:43:00.002-04:00

Since the algorithms the search engines use are not public it is hard to provide a good answer. Generally, my advice is to avoid duplicate content. Specifically, if you are quoting a source then it is proper etiquette to quote only what you need and provide a link as a reference to the content being quoted.

Alternatively, there are a variety of perfectly legitimate situations in which you may have duplicated your own content and provided it to different URLs. Fortunately, Google provides guidelines regarding how their search engine works along with a few suggestions for how to structure duplicate content.

Guidelines regarding duplicated content

While there is no "penalty" associated with duplicated content there are issues associated with relevance. Here are a few simple rules to keep in mind.

#1. There is no penalty to your site for duplicate content. That said, if Google detects duplicate content on a set of pages it will try to provide only one result relevant to that content. The rational being that Google wants to provide variety in the results.

#2. The webrobot used by Google to read your pages avoids pages with duplicate content. If the page with duplicate content does not receive regular updates it may take a very long time for Google to read the page. Using rel="canonical", a webmaster can tell the Google webrobot that the relevance for the page's content and links should be directed to another URL.

All that said, if you don't need to have duplicate content the simple solution is to avoid it.

Link Farming

2009-09-14T09:35:00.004-04:00

Recently one of my clients asked for help boosting their ranking. I have worked with the client and the webmaster to provide really good quality content for the site. Since the site is rarely updated the changes took roughly three weeks.

Unfortunately the results were not as strong as I would have liked. I took a closer look at the websites of our competitors and it was clear to me that their content was weak and poorly optimized. I then checked their links and the situation was suddenly very clear. Our competition had very strong links. In one particular case the site that was providing a variety of high page rank links was in dutch while the sites being linked to were in english.

Google provides a lot of weight to links. Although they do not support link farming (ie paying for links to your website) it is apparent that the practice is alive and well. I suspect it will remain strong until Google finds an effective way of getting rid of it.

I'm not a fan of link farming for a couple of reasons. First, the search engines will find a way of overcoming it and penalizing sites that use it. Second, other than the fact that you have managed to fool a search engine it accomplishes very little. I would rather have a few people come to a site and like the content enough to continue using the site than have a bunch of people come to the site and leave immediately.

The importance of Capital Letters

2009-09-02T22:18:00.002-04:00

Long ago, Kepler determined that the planets followed elliptical paths. He did not know why he just made very careful observations and reported his findings. Working in SEO can be like that. I don't know how Google ranks webpages but I do notice things and make a note to myself when I find something unexpected. I use this blog as a record of some of those little discoveries.

The discovery I made recently came as quite a surprise. I was doing some research for a company and I typed some information into Google and found the company listed at #19. I use an SEO software package to simplify much of my data collection but sometimes I just plug keywords into Google. When I plugged the same keywords into it, it ranked the website at #9. I checked my spelling but that was not it. As a programmer I know that computers give very consistent results so I looked very carefully for any difference and I found it.

When I enter a project into my SEO software it looks better when the first letters of the key words are capitalized. When I did the search in Google one of the terms was not capitalized. That was the difference.

->As I don't yet have the client I will not provide enough information to duplicate the exact result but you can try it for yourself and see the difference.

Free Stuff Online... Swagbucks

2009-08-27T19:25:00.002-04:00

Long, long ago it was almost a novelty to type something into Yahoo and get a bunch of results that were related to what you had just typed. The net was new and nobody knew where to find anything. At the time content was provided by organizations, often with substantial budgets. In many cases we paid money to register for the data. Web 2.0 changed that taking content from ordinary people and using it to make money.

When I look at Swagbucks.com I wonder if I'm looking at a game changer. Swagbucks is a search engine that reimburses its users for using it. After registering, using their search engine will earn you swagbucks that you can use to buy prizes. It reminds me of those ads on the backs of comics that rewarded children for selling cards but there is a critical difference.

Selling cards is not something children do. Surfing the net is. The swag prizes are clearly aimed at a young generation. If the they choose it they may stick with it. So the question then becomes: What is it really worth to know what someone types into a search engine? The next question is what other things do we all do online that are worth tracking and how much is that knowledge worth?

Trying to fool a search engine

2009-08-26T11:18:00.003-04:00

Recently I was talking with a client who asked a very simple question, "What would happen if we repeated a heading many times but did not actually display it on the page?" The idea behind this tactic being that when a search engine webcrawler reviews the site it will notice the headings and (presumably) determine that the website has a very high relevancy for whatever is contained within the headings. This technique has been around a long time, it may well be the original "black hat" technique of SEO and I would astonished if it still worked. By the way, there are many techniques for showing one set of content to people and another for webbots and I expect that some of them work very effectively.

The answer to my client's question is that (assuming it is done correctly meaning that the web bot is fooled into thinking that the content is real) the search engine ranking of the site will improve based upon the phantom content. That's a short answer and an accurate one however it does not tell the whole story. The crawlers are getting better all the time and phantom content is something they are learning to recognize. (For example, I would expect that many webcrawlers ignore headings that are not followed by content relevant to the heading.) A technique that works today may not work tomorrow. That's not a big deal though.

Using phantom content violates the terms of service that you have with the search engine companies. That does not make using such a technique illegal. The risk is that your website will be penalized or even banned from a search engine. The search engine companies have no obligation whatsoever to list your website. Once your website is banned or penalized it is a very slow process to get a good ranking again.

Redirection with .HTaccess

2009-08-25T11:03:00.003-04:00

One of the first lessons of search engine optimization is the importance of the text in a url (the text that appears in your navigation bar, such as www.google.com for Google) Often older sites have built good trademarks for themselves but put together a site with little thought to optimizing the site for Google. Thus, it is good to improve your urls so search engines give them better ranking but, at the same time you may not wish to loose the urls that people already use and have linked to.

This problem is easily solved with something called a 301 redirect. Here is a tutorial on 301 redirection. The 301 redirect allows you to change the url that websurfer goes to when they type in a url that belongs to your domain. As an example if you type "www.googlerank.ca/aboutseom.html" into your navigation bar you will find yourself at a site with a different name.

I've linked to a tutorial that breaks it down nicely here. Be very careful modifying the .htaccess file. Back it up if you have one before you make changes. Once you have made the changes verify that your site is working the way you want it to. If there are problems put the old .htaccess back.

There are a variety of ways of redirecting a page but the .htaccess is by far the best. It is very efficient and it will not negatively impact your search engine optimization.

Knowledge on Demand: Google Knol

2009-08-23T12:41:00.008-04:00

Google has a wide variety of services and I would bet that most people have never heard of them. Google Knol has been around for a while but it was news to me. It strikes me as a combination of Wikipedia and a blog. Users post entries and others may leave comments. Entries are grouped into categories.

How is that different from a blog?

The entries stand on their own. To be effective a blog should have regular updates. In Google Knol each entry is independent and likely not updated once written.

If you guessed that Google Knol has advanced searching features you'd be write. The top level searching system is very similar to a Google search bar but the search toolkit is what sets Google Knol apart.

The search toolkit includes many options similar to the advanced search features from regular Google. The main difference I've noticed is there are a variety of date options for searching in Google Knol. The date options are useful in this context because every entry has a precise date. Thus, you could search for information on events years after the event has occurred.

Answer: What is Google Squared?

2009-08-17T21:29:00.004-04:00

In researching Caffeine, Google's modified search system, I found Google Squared. Google Squared is quite different in that data from a set of results is categorized and presented on a table. Images and addresses are in there own columns while other columns are chosen based upon common information.

The search results are sometimes odd. For example if you were to type "cash for gold ottawa" you would expect to find companies that recycle gold. Guess what you get using Google Squared...

Ratings, ratings and more ratings. Most of the ratings are for hockey players and hockey teams. One is for a television show.

Alex Trebek: This search engine returned "ABC's Lost delivering the highest ratings of the season on Wednesday" using the phrase "cash for gold Ottawa".

Answer: "What is Google Squared?"

Please try a search with Google Squared and post your results in the comments section!