SEO Consultant & WordPress Web Designer
Some of you have asked that I haven’t been blogging for last few months. I don’t see myself starting again in near future due to time constraints and client load. Now, I see that my time is better spent on design and marketing in other ways.
I would like to thank everyone who reads and comments here. I don’t take your participation here for granted. You’ve all helped me on my own journey.
Thanks so much for reading!
Google has finally official confirmed that new large sitelinks (per query from 8 to 12) are available online now. You all can see in below picture:-
Google said, “Sitelinks will now be full-size links with a URL and one line of snippet text—similar to regular results—making it even easier to find the section of the site you want. We’re also increasing the maximum number of sitelinks per query from eight to 12.”
Google also improved sitelinks algorithm. Google said, “a significant improvement to our algorithms by combining sitelink ranking with regular result ranking to yield a higher-quality list of links.” Google said this “reduces link duplication and creates a better organized search results page.”
On 20th June 2011, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has approved the expansion of top-level domains in Singapore which will help to big companies and organisation to create domain names for their brands (.nike or .nokia) or more generic names (.blue or .sports). ICANN’s TLD expansion plan was first announced three years ago on 26th June 2008, at the 32nd ICANN Meeting in Paris.
According to ICANN, as per new program between 300 and 1000 new TLDs could be created per year.
ICANN’s Board approves the New gTLD Program during a special session held on Monday, 20 June 2011 in Singapore. (Photo Source: ICANN)
Applications for new gTLDs will be accepted from 12 January 2012 to 12 April 2012. Subsequent application periods will become available in the future. The evaluation fee from prospective applicants is $185,000. According to the gTLD Applicant Guidebook, a $5,000 deposit is required “at the time the user requests an application slot within TAS, and a payment of the remaining $180,000 submitted with the full application.”
Finally Google has launched NEW official Google search blog – Inside Search – The official Google Search blog.
Google has launched the “+1” button yesterday. Google has integrated it as a part of search results and Google AdWords and hoping it will be available for websites as well. Google’s product is 
looking similar of Facebook Like button but limitation of share information Like button or Twitter.
Google’s Rob Spiro, the product manager of +1 said, “Today we’re taking that a step further, enabling you to share recommendations with the world right in Google’s search results. It’s called +1—the digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool.” To recommend something, all you have to do is click +1 on a webpage or ad you find useful.”
“The primary benefit is that search gets better. It gets better in the user interface immediately, and we’ll look at it as a potential signal to improve search quality as well. I find social search extremely useful, especially with the recent updates. This change continues the evolution of social search, and it’s a natural progression to improve the search experience,” said Matt Cutts, a Google engineer who is most known for leading Google’s search spam fighting team but who also helped launch Google Social Search in 2009.
I am excited about using +1 button and hope you are excited too. 🙂
Mozilla Firefox browser has overtaken Internet Explorer in Europe in December 2010, a web analytics firm StatCounter said.
As many of you know the Firefox is open-source browser tool 38.1 % of European marketing share and Internet Explorer move down to 37.5 percent. Google Chrome also gaining market share in Europe to 14.6 % from 5.1 percent.
"This appears to be happening because Google’s Chrome is stealing share from Internet Explorer while Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share," Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter chief executive, said in a statement. He also said "We are probably seeing the impact of the agreement between European Commission competition authorities and Microsoft, to offer EU users a choice and menu of browsers from March last year."
Globally, Internet Explorer’s share slipped to 46.9 percent in December, while Firefox was at 30.8 percent and Google was at 14.9 percent, StatCounter said.
As the new year blossoms, may the journey of your life be fragrant with new opportunities, may God give you the wisdom to explore it, your days be bright with new hopes and your heart be happy with love in 2011…
Happy New Year 2011 🙂
In a Google Webmaster Help thread, a webmaster asked how to make a adult site with family friendly content under the same domain.
Googler, JohnMu, suggested to PREFERABLY go with following points:-
Here is John’s advice:
Generally speaking, if you can, I’d recommend separating your adult content from the more general content, so that it’s easier for search engines to separate that on their side as well. Using a separate domain or subdomain is a pretty clear sign, subdirectories alone may be little bit harder to recognize (but if that works for you, why not), and using URL parameters is probably even harder. One thing I would watch out for, especially with a site focused on user-generated-content, is that you keep your homepage clearly adult or non-adult focused. For example, if you were to list posts & photos from all parts of your site on your homepage, it might be that we end up classifying your homepage as being adult-oriented, which might not be what you’d want.
Here John also commented on the home page and said if user don’t want to home page to be associated as adult, then need to think this out a bit.
Google just informed that they are rolling out a brand-new AdSense interface to all publishers. New interface is more user friendly then previously. According to Google it will heps in three main ways:-
– More insights. We’ve built in simple, graphical reporting and more options for you to easily slice and dice your data, so you can see at a glance what ads are working and which are not, and adjust your strategies accordingly.
– More control. We’ve made our ad controls richer and simpler to use, so you can better control which ads and advertisers you want to appear on your sites.
– More efficiency. It’s now much easier to quickly see earnings and payment information, to run reports, to find relevant features and help, and to make account changes. Our engineers have spent countless hours making sure that the interface is stable and blazing fast. We’ve also spent many hours in our usability labs with publishers, focused on making the interface easy to learn and use for all types of publishers.
For new interface of Google Adsense visit at http://google.com/ads/newadsense
Recent news from Google is the new launch of faster version of Google’s URL shortening website. A new URL shortener, we can use while logged in or out of our Google accounts.
Now, you can simply visit goo.gl and not only to shorten your URL but to also create a list of all the URL’s you’ve used with their service. That list will save us so much time.
Google is going to release an API for developer too.
Check it out if you haven’t yet.
Mostly websites are configured to serve the same content for www.domain.com; domain.com and www.domain.com/default.aspx (or index.html, index.asp, index.aspx). All three URLs will reach to same page of content. It could hurt your ranking in Google and other search engines because they will be indexed as three separate Urls. Google calls this process to “canonicalization”.
You may check out (using the Google Toolbar) the PageRank (PR) for www.domain.com, domain.com and www.domain.com/default.aspx – you will not get the same PR of all three URLs.
For resolve this issue you have to implement a 301 redirect from non-www version to www version or vice versa. For Apache server you can do 301 redirect via .htaccess easily and for IIS server you do also 301 redirect via web.config as well.
How to resolve default.aspx redirect problem?
1- always use http://www.domain.com instead of www.domain.com/default.aspx anywhere in your site, whether you are using absolute or relative links.
2- Put the javascript based redirect on your default.aspx page. This script will automaticall redirect to root folder of the site. Below is the simple javascript, which you put in your /default.aspx page:
<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
var u = ‘http://www.domain.com/’;
if (self.parent.frames.length != 0) self.parent.location=u;
if (self.location != u) self.location=u;
//–></script>
Technically search engines robots don’t process a client-based redirect, but if the /default.aspx URL never show in the address bar, then it should never get bookmarked or linked by anyone else.
UPDATE (8th September 2010):
My colleague (Mr. Anoop) has also sent me another java script which also redirect default.aspx to root and it is working fine.
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var url=location.href;
if (url.toLowerCase().match(“default.aspx”)) {
location.href = url.toLowerCase().replace(“default.aspx”, “”);
}
</script>
