is Dmoz corrupt?
Shoemoney has an interesting live experience with a DMOZ editor apparently attempting to extort money in order to keep his listing in the directory. There has certainly been a diminishing effect of how important Dmoz is in the post-google/blogosphere era. Read the full story at http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/08/26/dmoz-extortion/ Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
What is The Golden RSS Feed?
I came across a new site recently with a unique little spin on RSS feeds and apparently a shot at making some traffic. They call it The Golden RSS Feed. The idea is for advertisers to bid on spots within the feed and duke it out for rank. Bid more and secure your rank. Bid too low and slip down the feed. They also have a cute term for links who fall of the list, called "Penny Players". Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Problem With Google Cache: Not Working
Is it just me or is there a transient problem with the cache feature on Google? That is, when you do a search and click the Cache link to view Google's stored copy of the page. I noticed it this week and it seems to happen on certain computers. Growing pains? Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
How to Block the Google Search Cookie
There is an interesting post about how to block or delete the Google search cookie (for those of you serious about privacy) to help prevent Google from tracking keyword searches to your PC. It comes with a free download tool called G-Zapper, which was pretty easy to use. Check it out. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
RSS Submit with FeedBurner Integration
If you recall my post about using FeedBurner to monior RSS feed traffic, well a very handy feature has been added in the latest version of RSS Submit to allow users to view FeedBurner traffic stats right from the software. I have been using this product with great success for quite some time now, and am happy to see the FeedBurner integration. Certainly makes submitting even more satisfying. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
How to monitor RSS feed traffic
Since an RSS feed is just a plain XML file, by itself, it has no way of recording hits. How would you know if anyone has subscribed to your RSS feed? How do you know you're not just writing to an empty audience? Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
How do I use Technorati Tags?
I know it's a holiday July 4th, but I have a few minutes for a quick lesson blog on using Technorati Tags. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
A few podcast search engines
I've been catching up on the whole podcast movement, very cool stuff. I just thought I would provide a few links to some of the better podcasting search engines I've uncovered. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Searching blogs with ReadABlog and BlogDigger
Technorati is great, I'm sure many of you already search using it. But there are also a few other good players out there. I've decided to write about a few of my favorites. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Live8 and The Power of the Blog
If you have any doubt about the power of RSS and blogging, perhaps the world concert event of Live8 or Live 8 will help clear that up. A simple blog search on any of the engines for "Live8" returns an amazing number of up to the minute results. For example, just searching on ReadABlog http://www.readablog.com or Technorati http://www.technorati.com, I was able to find quite a few blogs already written on Live8. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Back in the Google index! The Blacklist has been removed!
Well, the story on a Google blacklisting has come to an end. About thirty days ago, I began this story by mentioning that a site of mine was blacklisted in Google. The site was completely removed from the index, PR meter was set to grey, and a query of site:domain.com produced no results. I talked about how I emailed Google support and kindly explained my situation and asked for reinclusion. They responded by saying they have forwarded the email to their tech department. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Speed of getting Googlebot and Yahoo Slurp to visit a new site
I recently performed an experiment of setting up a brand new web site domain name and hosting, creating a simple blog for it, and a simple rss feed. I then did a ping over to the blog search engines using Blog Blaster and submitted the RSS feed using RSS Submit. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Arg! Referer Spam is Annoying!
Maybe you have heard of this one before - referal spam! Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Trying for the Google Re-Inclusion Request
As a followup to the previous post on being blacklisted from Google, I have contacted Google via their help system web site. They sent back an automated reply stating sites are not manually removed from the index, but give little information other than that. Then there was a small line at the end which mentioned to reply with more information if your question remained unanswered. So I figured, it can't hurt to reply, and went ahead and wrote a bit more, always in a friendly tone. Maybe replying puts the email through to a different inbox or past a filter so someone actually reads it. We'll see. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Googlebot pays a visit today
For an update to the previous posts.. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Still no luck getting re-indexed by Google
Two emails to Google and only one auto-reply message back. The site is still removed from the results. I have been searching on the web about this and it seems the July 27th Google update has affected a whole bunch of high PR sites by deleting them from the index. I'm not sure what kind of filters Google added to this one, but it looks like they have caught a lot of legit web sites in their spam nets. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Blacklisted in Google, Now What?
With the most recent Google update on July 26th, I now have the experience of having a web site blacklisted in Google (not this one). How do I know? Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
What is the difference between a Blog and RSS feed?
There seems to be a general amount of confusion over the difference between a blog and an RSS feed. While it's true that RSS feeds originated with blogs, and often are accompanied by blogs (just like this one), RSS feeds have much more importance than simply being an extention of a blog. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
RSS spam and how to deal with it
RSS feeds are starting to appear everywhere as people realize the great traffic asset that they can provide. However, just like any other attention getter, RSS feeds are facing a growing threat from spammers making RSS spam. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Is Podcasting Here to Stay?
Recently, I've been experimenting with podcasts and trying to find out what the hype is all about. Podcasting is really just creating an RSS feed with embedded audio or video links, also called enclosures. Users can download your podcast, just as they do with an RSS feed, and listen to your audio recording, such as a news channel or radio station etc. For instance, try using GetAPodcast http://www.getapodcast.com Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Google Actually Responds by Email
Well, I am certainly surprised. I originally contacted Google through their web site to ask about the banning. I received the typical automatic reply and figured that was that. Then I noticed at the end of the automatic email they mentioned to reply if your question is still unanswered. So I thought it can't hurt any worse to reply to this one, what are they gonna do, double ban me? So I replied. Within 7 days (today), I have received a reply apparently from a real Google employee saying they have passed my message on to their engineering team for further investigation. The plot thickens.. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
FeedFlare Anyone?
In other news, has anyone noticed the little graphics and links FeedBurner is including at the bottom of their hosted feeds now? I believe they call it FeedFlare, but I find it somewhat distracting. I can picture this leading towards a PPC method, possibly competing with Google's Adsense. Interesting to see how that turns out. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
How Linking to Blogs Can Increase your Traffic
Things change pretty fast on the web, and this is especially the case with the blogosphere. If you're a blogger, you probably want to know how to increase your traffic, get more readers, sell more stuff, etc. One often overlooked feature of blogs that can instantly send a wave of traffic your way is called "trackbacks" or "pingbacks". Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Your RSS Feed Might Look Like Spam
This is an interesting article about RSS spam. You can read the full article at http://www.dummysoftware.com/article12.html Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm
Milliondollar wiki or milliondollar scam?
Another milliondollar site has popped up, this time in the form of a wiki. Just as the milliondollarhomepage and its similar counterparts (eg, 1000tags, the Golden RSS Feed, and other similar sites, the milliondollarwiki focuses on attracting large amounts of publicity to make it worthwile. A wiki itself, is not worth much to resell pages on. But when you throw in the publicity around the site as a whole, it gains value as shoemoney explains. Read more...
Pinging Your Blogs to Search Engines, May 9, 2:19pm