Tag: google

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.

[html]MySite[/html]

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.

April 19, 2006 / 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!

April 12, 2006 / Mambo / Joomla

Google is steadily building up it’s webmaster tools and winning over the hearts of webmasters. As covered in my Google Sitemaps and Verification post the feedback can be very, very useful.

I have run into problems though on Mambo and Joomla sites because they don’t throw true 404s so as far as GoogleBot knows every page is a good page. Google and Googlebot have given webmasters an incentive to change… access to the stats!

To get Mambo and Joomla to throw a 404 you need three things!

March 20, 2006 / Search Engine Optimisation
February 28, 2006 / Technical Discussions
February 10, 2006 / PHP & Web Development

I’m not sure I quite “get” GoogleBase just yet – in as much as Google is already indexing my sites so why do I need to submit my content all over again into this system… and who would actually use it to find stuff – surely the standard Google Search Engine is doing a good enough job?

I received my newsletter from the phpClasses today and noticed that there was a tool to make it easier to upload articles and information to GoogleBase so I thought I’d give it a try.

PhpBase

The code is still quite new and there are only a few options but it’s easy enough to extend and use. Documentation is needed and I’m sure it will follow. Given that the author appears to be Spanish I think it’s already pretty good.

February 5, 2006 / Technical Discussions
January 17, 2006 / Fun and SEO Games