Month: December 2007

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Invitation to Microsoft Analytics Program

Click this link to be invited to Microsoft Web Analytics – Gatineau Beta http://advertising.microsoft.com/microsoft-adcenter-gatineau

Microsoft is testing a new analytics package similar to Google Analytics and you’ll want to try it out. The link adds you to the waiting list to check it out. You will need a MSN adCenter account in order to try the program out. You will also pay $5 for the account.

I for one have signed up to see if the product is better than Google Analytics and what the differences may be. You may want to sign up as well.

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Ding, Dong, The Wicked Witch is Dead- Google Kills the Supplemental Index

Yahoo! Well really Googlehoo!, The Wicked Witch is dead. Google has just announced that it has killed the Supplemental Index.

Google’s Supplemental Index has previously been affectionately known as “Google Hell” and if your site arrived there, there was simply no getting out. There were many tips on the Web that had been widely circulated on how to get out, but the reality was that short of changing the content on every page and even changing your page name and starting all over, you were stuck.

Now, Google has announced in their Search Blog that they have killed the Supplemental Index. In about July this past year Google had dropped the additional descriptor “Supplemental Index” next to search queries which had been the bain of all professional webmasters. After that change, we could only guess by poor website performance if a site had landed in “Google Hell”.

Google has now stated:

“…From a user perspective, this means that you’ll be seeing more relevant documents and a much deeper slice of the web, especially for non-English queries. For webmasters, this means that good-quality pages that were less visible in our index are more likely to come up for queries.”

Google has stated that this change has been due to new technology and their unabashed “amazing technical feats” allowing a full search of the entire index for every search query.

So… ding, dong, the Wicked Witch is finally dead! Good Riddance!

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The Drudge Report – Why Design in Blogs Doesn’t Matter

That’s right, the design of your blog simply doesn’t matter attested to the article linked to our title. In this article the writer values the Drudge Report, a popular political blog at around $40 million. Is is worth it?

Take a look at the Drudge Report here http://www.drudgereport.com/. This is a very lame layout and design and now I am not being tongue in cheek here.

The lesson learned from the Drudge Report is that it’s the content stupid not the design! To me it looks like Matt Drudge could easily spend a couple hundred dollars and get a really great blog design that was interesting to look at and would communicate visually his message better, but who am I to point a finger. According to Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com blog the Drudge Report is visited by 1.3 million unique visitors every month. Go figure! Great content will always excuse bad design, but really Matt, you need an overhaul.

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Forums Aren’t Dead

With the proliferation of blogs, some have thought that forums were dead or on a down hill slide. Personally, I feel that there will always be a place for forums.

I watch some important forums myself and am a regular poster. One of the best I like for my own industry is Webmaster World. I can pick up tips, keep up-to-date on topics, and sometimes even hear of an issue there first.

But forums are not for everyone! I do not recommend the addition of a forum to the typical business owners website, in that case I recommend a blog. The reason for this is that unless a forum is trafficked, has a moderator, and lots of activity, it simply cannot be sustained. A forum with no activity may actually be a liability for you. For smaller websites and business owners the one way action of blogging is a much better match.

So from my point of view, forums have their place and blogs do as well. What forums are you watching and lurking in?

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Google Video File Uploader Needs Improvement

Google Video really needs to develop a better upload tool for large videos. I have a client who has some one hour long movies that they wanted to distribute free on Google Video. The videos are documentaries on the health effects of energy waves from cell phones and cell phone towers.

The videos were large. One in fact very large, nearly 1 GB. I needed to use the video upload tool. I have to tell you it was excruciating. It took one week connected to Google for one of the videos to load. A full week online! The other I had to have broken into two pieces and then it still took over three days to load. Now I know that some of this is a factor of file upload speeds using DSL and a factor of my ISP, but why can’t I use FTP to upload a file? Why did I have to use this arcane video file uploader?

I routinely use FTP to load Flash and video files, even big ones, but I don’t know what is happening at the back end of Google but this file uploader really discourages use. It is prone to crashing or locking up mid-way through a large load and cannot go back to where it is.

Additionally never overwrite a file on the server with the same name, the tool simply cannot do it in reality. If it does load, the file on the Google server is corrupted, you cannot open it and then you have to start all over again. It took a painful three weeks to load six movies! That is really outrageous. Come on Google if you want to do video, help us out and improve the upload tool!

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Another New Quick Launch Website Launched

We’ve just launched this nice looking Quick Launch website for Michael P. Taylor an attorney in Baltimore, Maryland. You can click our post title or visit it here http://www.mptlaw.com/.

This very simple yet attractive website is five pages and uses one of our Quick Launch pre-made templates. Quick Launch allows for an affordable and super fast web presence. Check out the site and see what you think.