Using Excel for Search Engine Optimisation (part 1)

Excel, for all its shortcomings, is an ok tool for handling lots of data - databases are better than spreadsheets, but then you have to be a proper data geek to use them. Excel, on the other hand, is fairly ubiquitous and accessible to beginners. Search engines, particularly Google and latterly Bing, collect vast amounts of data, some of which they share with webmasters and SEO types (through tools like Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools), and which we can then use for search engine optimisation.

Playing with language

Today I was looking at Get TEDPad, where a chap has run some statistical analysis against transcripts of the first five hundred or so TED lectures, and figured out how to generate snippets of new, non-existent TED speeches that sound either convincing and good quality English, or (when he switches it to the dark side) good quality English spoken by an idiot obsessed by whatever the New York Times tells him is important at this particular moment in time.