Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools

• Want to be found and seen? Three simple rules: promote, promote, promote.- How do you ensure that your site is found and read by users? According to Ahmed Farooq on techsoapbox.com - you must promote. Actively. Relentlessly. Writing great content just isn't enough. I agree. I've noticed that good content can get you some traffic, but ultimately you need to get the word out about your beautiful creations. In at least one case, I've been lucky - some early 'link bait' I wrote (see WhyReboot) got noticed, totally without my intervention - mentioned on lifehacker, digg, and a thousand other secondary sites - but beyond that, much of the traffic to this site comes from a constant effort to make my site more visible - contributing to open source projects, leaving appropriate and on-topic comments on topically-related blogs and other sites, etc.
• Never Paint Your House With a Flamethrower-

  Blocking Firefox is a Bad Idea

  A friend of mine forwarded me a link to WhyFireFoxIsBlocked.com (no, I won't link to them, because I won't feed this particular bit of link bait.) He asked: what are these people smoking? My initial response probably makes him wonder what I've been smoking!

  AdBlock Plus Is Not The Problem

  In a nutshell, at least one webmaster has (and perhaps others have) decided to try to block site visitors who are using Firefox, because of the existence of a popular extension called AdBlock Plus, which has the ability to allow one to visit web sites and never see any ads. I've been reading up on the issue, and it seems that Firefox-blocking webmasters' position is may be summarized as:
  • Firefox users with AdBlock installed are engaging in "theft" (their words, not mine) because they are visiting sites that depend on commercial advertising revenues to support the site, and
  • AdBlock developers have taken steps to circumvent webmaster attempts to detect and defeat AdBlock use by site visitors.
  (There are other, non-essential and even more inflammatory arguments made about some Firefox users and promoters, but I won't bother with them here because they have nothing to do with the matter at hand.)
• Surprise! Ad blocking may not be completely legal...- It appears that the ad blocking wars are heating up. There are massive fortunes at stake, and you are fooling yourself if you think that advertisers and ad network owners will just sit back and let it happen without making any effort to defend their markets and income.
• Giving the Bum's Rush to BlogRush- So far it seems that BlogRush is pretty much useless. I can't see how it has added any traffic to any of my sites - actually, it's more likely to take away traffic since it's another exit point. At this point, I'm not even sure I understand why I should be using it - since it has generated little or no traffic to any of my sites, and the benefit of accumulating the BlogRush credits is unclear to me at this time, I see no point in devoting any of my sites' real estate to the latest widget. I suppose that one must promote BlogRush in order to truly benefit, and if that's the case, then it speaks volumes about the program. So... I'm removing it from all my sites for now. I'll check it out later and see if it's worth using.
• URL/site ranking and visibility links for your URL- URL: http:// "; return $output; } function ed_visibility_makeRow($servicename, $descr, $url, $rowcount) { static $attribs = array('target'=>'_blank'); $rowclass= $rowcount % 2 ? 'odd' : 'even'; return "" . l($servicename, $url, $attribs) . "$descr\n"; } $url = trim($_GET[d]); if (empty($url)) $url = "http://exodusdev.com/"; if ($url[strlen($url)-1] != '/') $url .= '/'; // fix relative URL if (strncmp(strtolower($url), 'http://', 7) != 0) $url = 'http://' . $url; $parsed = parse_url($url); $parsed['scheme']='http'; $hostname = $parsed['host']; $hostname_encoded = urlencode($hostname); $domain_only = $parsed['scheme'].'://'.$parsed['host']; $domain_only_encoded=urlencode($domain_only); $url = $parsed['scheme'].'://'.$parsed['host'].$parsed['path']; $cleanurl = urlencode($url); $technorati = $parsed['host'].$parsed['path']; $technorati_plain = check_plain($technorati); $technorati_encoded = urlencode($technorati); $delicious_md5 = md5($url); $hostname_clean = check_plain($hostname); ?>

  Site visibility and ranking links

  
  Note: URLs may be case-sensitive - be sure to use the same case used on your site!
  This tool provides handy links to various online tools you can use to check a site's ranking, backlinks, and 'visibility' in various search engines, social bookmarking sites, blog trackers, etc.
  Links for URL $hostname_clean?","http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=$hostname_encoded"), array('Live PageRank', 'Check PageRank across multiple data centers',"http://livepr.raketforskning.com/?u=$domain_only_encoded"), /* array('Links from .edu domains', "Find links to $hostname_encoded from .edu TLDs", "http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain%3A$hostname_encoded+site%3A.edu"), array('Links from .gov domains', "Find links to $hostname_encoded from .gov TLDs", "http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain%3A$hostname_encoded+%20site:.gov"), array('stumbleupon links', "See what's cooking on stumbleupon.com", "http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/$hostname$parsed[path]") */ ); $count = 0; foreach ($tools as $tool) { echo ed_visibility_makeRow($tool[0], $tool[1], $tool[2], $count); $count ++; } ?>
• New AdSense ad graphic- We've noticed some new visual elements in AdSense ads - namely, Google has been adding enhanced graphic elements where the old "Ads by Gooooogle" text used to appear. They are using transparent PNG files to overlay the border graphic. Here's a sampling of the new graphics: http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/abglogo/abg-en-100c-000000.png Here's what it looks like with an ad having a visible border:

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