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April 11, 2008

Dear Google, It’s my site, let me scan!

Posted by Sarah King in Technical Discussions

I’ve just discovered the Goolag Scanner.

It’s a handy dandy tool for using Google queries to identify if there are any known holes in a website. Googlebot has already checked every crevice in the site, I just want to know what it knows!

Now Google, being all security conscious and that, gets a bit sensitive about you running these queries. They know that it’s possible you’re going to use the results to do bad things. More »

December 15, 2006

Where the bloody hell are you?

Posted by Sarah King in Technical Discussions

That’s the catch phrase from an Aussie ad campaign but is quite apt when looking at some picks posted by lad called Ottodo.

Ottodo found some picks and in one the rock formations and sky look quite unusual so he posted them online. I was curious so I googled the photo’s image name and Google returned two pages of candidates and there at the bottom of page #2 was the photo.

Ottodo says the series of shots in the photo gallery aren’t his… but they are cool. See http://g.ozq8.com/categories.php?cat_id=647

July 8, 2006

Testing Google Alerts

Posted by Sarah King in Search Engine Optimisation

A couple of days before the launch of WDANZ I thought I’d use the opportunity to analyse how effective Google Alerts are. I wanted to test the breadth of indexing and how quickly the reactions of bloggers might be picked up.

In the table below you can see how Google indexed the sites talking about this breaking news item.

Curiously, the reports seem to be out of date - the ComputerWorld example is the best - by the time the alert comes through the story had been buried in the archives.

This doesn’t spell doom for Google’s alerts - where they can direct you to a permalink - but it does render the homepage alerts virtually worthless.

More »

June 25, 2006

Nintendo Wii ranking dilemmas

Posted by Sarah King in Search Engine Optimisation

A while back I mentioned how a short lived forum demo lasted months in the SERPs. Another effect I’ve found with new sites is that the sites you use for dropping links will kick butt in the SERPs for a couple of weeks until the search engines fully index and propogate the results around the data centers.

A couple of weeks is no biggie and eventually you’ll pop out on top. The thing is, you drop the links from sites you know are indexed well because they’re going to help you and quickly.

So, I was amused to see, on a forum I frequent, that one site owner was requesting link exchanges and a site review for his Nintendo Wii site. More »

June 23, 2006

Online advertising and the petty criminal

Posted by Sarah King in Technical Discussions

Back in the beginning of my web life, before OO and web frameworks and CMS systems and even blogs there were banner exchange programs. Being an honest kind of girl I never cheated the system but those who did used auto surfing programs to boost their hit counts.

The owners caught on and started tracking IP addresses and looking for trends so that they would weed out the cheats and reward the honest webmasters.

Then came paid online advertising, More »

May 17, 2006

NoFollow Nonsense

Posted by Sarah King in Search Engine Optimisation

NoFollow was hailed as the saviour of our sites, the answer to comment spam, forum spam and poorly maintained sites.

The idea was that by adding the "rel" attribute to a link the search engines would know that the link isn't endorsed by the site.

The syntax isn't difficult and easy enough for a spammer to find, and walk away from.

Sadly, the spammers haven't caught on, and continue to employ unfortunates to do their dirty work, hoping that one day someone will see the light and spend some money on their ridiculous sites.

A spam filled site is a neglected site, one where the owner has had good intentions but not the time or inclination to follow through. The spam becomes a red flag to Joe Average that the site isn't maintained and to look further for the information sought. That the site will eventually be downgraded in the search engines is appropriate - it is after all, stale and abandoned.

More »

April 19, 2006

Guaranteed Google in 7 days

Posted by Sarah King in Search Engine Optimisation

A common question in the forums is

I've had an email from a company saying they will guarantee my sites will be indexed by Google within 7 days. Is this a good deal?

that would be from a company saying things like

Based on our research, G-Submit ensures that the vast majority of web pages will be included in the main search engine results pages of Google within 7 days of service completion. And the good news is that G-Submit is totally within the guidelines of best practices set out by Google, so you won't be penalized.

Bollocks! Ofcourse it's within the guidelines, but should we pay for it? No Way!

More »