URL.com Beta Pilot
url.com has launched a public pilot of their new social search engine. I was part of the "secret" pilot and enjoyed the features it contains. I have used and tested it out quite a bit.
I like how it pulls the results from Google Yahoo! and MSN and gives you the ranking for each. The option to add comments and approve of and reject result pages is nice. I enjoyed approving my own Ironvine Search Marketing and seeing how the results stacked up between the big 3.
I do find that the limit of the TOP 10 results a bit limited. If you are searching for something specific and its not in the TOP 10 for the keywords you used you cannot dig further to find it. The other downside is that the result pages url in the address field is the www.url.com search result and not the actual web site itself. I can live with that but its not as user friendly as I would expect for programmers and marketers at least.
Overall I think www.url.com is a beneficial service that should be able to grow to produce good quality results and user comments.
Banks provide every sort of loans and insurance you need. To buy a house you can get home loans; these loans are normally type of mortgage loans. Insurance companies not only do home insurance but also go after homeowners insurance. Many students are able to get unsecured loans and also facility of student loan consolidation, which helps them to continue their studies. Now people who have declared bankruptcy can also get special bankrupt loans.
Kirupa.com
JasonR let me know about a great resource for Flash, PHP, Photoshop and CSS tutorials [http://www.kirupa.com]. They include lots of video tutorials as well as code walkthroughs. They have a good selection of tasks that they walk you though.
Writely Becomes Google Docs
Writely has moved out of beta and has been integrated into Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It has been totally rebranded by Google to match their Personalized Homepage, Calendar, Spreadsheets, and Gmail, etc look.
I may miss the Writely look and branding, but the functionality seems to be the same. You are able to post to blogs and quite a few other features. They have also migrated the documents you had previously created at Writely so nothing "should" be missing during the conversion.
The Google Docs tool is a very well worked web application and works just as well as Microsoft Word for basic and intermediate document authoring.
Here is a look at an old document I published publicly about 7 weeks ago: Writely.com (beta) Open to the Public
Soapbox Revisited
In my earlier post about being included in the Soapbox beta from MSN Video, I mentioned that I reviewed the functionality a little and got and error, but started the upload on a sample clip. Well the clip never did finish uploading after about 3 hours.
I still get the same error message if I try to do anything except view the 6 clips on the initial page I get an error. Trying to view my profile I actually get a pop up error and the normal on page errors under every topic listed. There are just a few bugs they need to work out it looks like.
I think Google went the right direction when they bought YouTube instead of looking at Microsoft.
Google Aquires YouTube
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 9, 2006 - Google Inc.
announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer
media company for people to watch and share original videos through a
Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction.
Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to
preserve its successful brand and passionate community.
If you want to prepare for your 642-825 or the 650-173 certifications then you can try the different brain dumps available on Internet. Books available in market can help you to prepare easily the Cisco 70-272 exam. The MCSE training kit for 70-292 and also 70-284 is a great help for examinations. Several websites are offering free practice test for 642-892 and as well as 70-290 MCSA Microsoft certification.
Soapbox Beta on MSN Video
I was accepted into the beta finally. Gave it a look this morning. Unfortunately browsing videos yields the result of "We're sorry, Soapbox is experiencing technical difficulties."
The only videos that seemed to work were the 3 newest, and the 3 most viewed. The video labels need a lot of work as well especially for translation. I think there will be a lot of issue with videos being listed in Chinese or other languages, especially when they are listed as the top 3 newest clips uploaded.
I uploaded the internet help desk video comedy, just to test. Took a while to upload.
Firefox launches 2.0 RC2
Last Friday saw the latest update to Firefox, 2.0 RC2.
Get your Firefox latest release here.
Improving your site’s indexing and ranking – Sitemaps Blog
With the launch of the new Google Webmasters blog here is a repost of an older but valuable post about indexing and ranking a website from earlier this year. I would call this more of a "what not to do" post than what to do, but is valuable none the less. Call it reverse search engine optimizing.
Improving your site's indexing and ranking
You've submitted a Sitemap for your site. As we explain in our docs, a Sitemap can help us learn more quickly and comprehensively about the pages of your site than our other methods of crawling, but it doesn't guarantee indexing and has no impact on ranking.
What other things can you do to increase your site's indexing and ranking?
Make sure your site is full of unique, high-quality content.
Google's automated crawling, indexing, and ranking processes are focused on providing quality search results. Is your site a high-quality result for the queries you want to rank highly for? Look at your home page. Does it provide information or does it consist primarily of links? If it is mostly links, where do those links go? Do they lead visitors to good information on your site or simply to more links? Look at your site as a searcher would. If you did a search, would you be happy with your site as a result?
Does your site follow the webmaster guidelines?
Take a close look at your site and our webmaster guidelines. Remember that your site should be meant for visitors, not search engines. It's a good idea to read these guidelines and evaluate your site to make sure it meets them. If it doesn't, your site probably won't be indexed, even if you submit a Sitemap. Here are a few things to check.
Does your site use hidden text?
Hidden text is generally not visible to visitors and is meant to give web-crawling robots, such as Googlebot, different content. For instance, a site might add text in a very small font that is the same color as the page's background. Webmasters sometimes do this because they want to provide more information to the web-crawling robots, and this hidden text is often a list of keywords that the webmaster would like the site to be ranked highly for. Don't use hidden text on your site. Since Google's automated processes are focused in giving searchers high quality results, our guidelines are clear that sites should show Googlebot the same thing they show visitors so our processes can accurately evaluate them.
Does your site use keyword stuffing?
Webmasters sometimes use keyword stuffing much the same way as hidden text. They want to give Googlebot a list of terms that they want their site to rank highly for. But Google's automated processes analyze the contents of a site based on what visitors see, not on a laundry list of keywords. If you want your site to rank highly for particular keywords, make sure your site includes unique, high-quality content related to those keywords.
Does your site buy links from other sites or participate in link exchange programs that don't add value for visitors?
You want other sites to link to you. So, guidelines about links may seem confusing. You want genuine links: another site owner thinks your content is useful and relevant and links to your site. You don't want links that are intended only for Googlebot. For instance, you don't want to pay for a program that spams your link all over the Internet. You don't want to participate in link schemes that require you to link to a bunch of sites you know nothing about in exchange for links on those sites. Do you have hidden links on your site? These are links that visitors can't see and are almost always intended only for search engine web-crawling robots. Think about links in terms of visitors: are the links meant to help them find more good content or are they only meant to attract Googlebot?
Do you use search engine optimization?
If you use a search engine optimization company (SEO), you should also read through our SEO information to make sure that you aren't using one who is unfairly trying to manipulate search engine results.
If your site isn't indexed at all (you can check this by using the site: operator or by logging into your Sitemaps account, accessing the Index stats tab and then clicking the site: link) and you violate these guidelines, you can request reinclusion once you modify your site.
If your site isn't in the index, but doesn't violate these guidelines, there is no need to request reinclusion. Focus on ensuring that your site provides unique, high-quality content for users and submit a Sitemap. Creating a content-rich site is the best way to ensure your site is a high-quality result for search queries you care about and will cause others to link to you naturally.
Google Renames Itself!! Just For Me!
Yes it is true, the Google logo has changed from Google to Stoogle just for me, Steve, or Stoogle as I am now referred to by millions around the world. What you dont believe me? Just go to www.google.com and see for yourself!!
Quick Tip – CAPS to lower case in Word
If you have text that is in ALL CAPS you can copy it into Word and press [Shift]
+ F3 to make it all lower case
Orthodontists in Spokane WA Comparison
Small project of comparing site rankings of a couple websites in Spokane, WA.
URL Trends: http://www.eportho.com
URL Trends: http://www.drdwengen.com
| URL | PageRankâ„¢ | Google Links | Yahoo! Links | MSN Links | Alexa Links | Archive.org Listed |
| http://www.drdwengen.com | 0/10 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 0 | No |
| http://www.eportho.com | 3/10 | 0 | 11 | 0 | 2 | Yes, 9 |
eportho = archive.org has records of pages going back to 10/28/2003
drdwengen = launched 2/28/2006
Google Results (WebPosition4):
orthodontist spokane wa = eportho(6) drdwengen(16)
spokane wa orthodontist = eportho(NA) drdwengen(4)
Yahoo Results:
orthodontist spokane wa = eportho(22) drdwengen(10)
spokane orthodontist = eportho(22) drdwengen(3)
Design differences:
eportho has really no text on the page other than the address and doctors names. drdwengen has a flash intro with a noscript tag and has text and navigation on the home.html page.
Install IE7 RC1 in Standalone Mode
Jon Galloway has quite helpfully written a batch script that allows IE7 to be installed in Standalone Mode. What this means is that you will be able to have IE6 (which is fairly stable) and also be able to run IE7 (which is not so stable).
What does the program do?
"IE7s.exe" will create a .exe.local file. After that it will add
values to more than a thousand registry keys in your Windows Registry.
Internet Explorer 7 should start then. 10 seconds later the program
will perform a cleanup, remove all the registry keys and close itself.
It is OK to run multiple instances at once.
What does NOT work?
- Openning a new window and IE7's context menu.
- Bookmarks,
RSS reader, and the search box. The search box works if you install
IE7s using the installer. Alternatively, you can directly add search
providers to the windows registry (article coming soon). - Visiting pages that need HTTP authentication (username/password)