Archive for September, 2006
An IMPORTANT notice from the Writely team
Another Google Property integration…just got this email from Writely…oops i meant the Google Writely Team.
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Dear gautham,
In a few days, we will update your Writely account to use your gautham@maediratta. com Google Account registration settings.
This means you’ll need to use your Google Account password when signing in, not your Writely password (if they’re different).
If you’ve forgotten your Google Account password, just go to https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd
Thanks!
Google Writely Team
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Getting back onto the Hotbot Search Index
Marketleap revealed that HotBot had chosen to drop me from their index. I hopped over to Hotbot’s page and used their help service to find how i could submit my site to lycos search.  So i found my way to http://help.lycos.com/faq.php?do=article&articleid=542 where i discovered that Ask.com has starting powering their results. Hopped over to Ask fom where i found bloglines (also owned by IAC Search & Media), signed up and started the process of claiming my blog. (Users can do this by selecting My Blog and then clicking on publisher tools.) I have been asked to place a unique code code  anywhere on my blog and some other code on my template. Will check back in a week or so, lets hope this helps!
Blog Basics - Check the number of pages of your blog indexed by Search Engines
To continue from where i signed off last time, it is imperative that major Search Engines know that your site exists and have a majority (if not all) the pages of your site in their index. Industry folks call this Search Engine Saturation.
The logic is simple…the higher the number of pages indexed, the higher the likelihood that a Search Engine throws up your site in their Search Engine Result Pages (SERP).
Marketleap.com has some brilliant meta tools, that are FREE & allow you to understand
a) Search Engine Saturation
b) Link Popularity &
c) Keyword Verification (where your site appears for a particular search phrase)
The importance of each one of these parameters cannot be emphasised enough and the relatinship between all three are interwoven. The higher the number of links pointing to your site, the higher the likelihood of a meaty index. The link text forms the base for the terms associated with your site. (So for e.g. if all the links that pointed to my blog were Netreaucrat my site would be associated with the term Netreaucrat and figure higher in SERPs for that particular phrase). Lastly, keyword verification allows you to check where your blog features for pertinent search terms across different engines.
The last time i checked my Search Saturation i was pleasantly suprised to see the statistic at 477. Appears that this has now crawled up to 685 with the MSN index still being the largest.
| Engine | Current | Min | Max | Avg |
| maediratta.com | ||||
| Google/ AOL/ HotBot | 159 | 3 | 159 | 99 |
| HotBot | 0 | 25 | 25 | 25 |
| MSN | 400 | 71 | 400 | 171 |
| Yahoo!/ FAST/ AltaVista | 126 | 1 | 126 | 57 |
| Total/ Current | 685 | 71 | 685 | 289 |
| Click on the links above to view trending for each engine. | ||||
Blog Basics - Robots.txt
So you have your blog set up and you’ve started pouring your heart out. It’s natural that you expect your name to be all over search engines, loads of traffic, money, fame, your face on the cover of Forbes…hold it…not yet…nothing begins if a search engine doesn’t know you exist! No traffic, no money, no fame…
The next natural question is….how does a search engine find my site?
Text links from external sites (which lead the SE crawlers/robots to index your site) and manual search engine submissions requesting your site to be crawled. Web Robots are programs that travel across the Web. They’re also known as Web Wanderers, Bots, Crawlers or Spiders. They invariably find their way to sites on the back of embedded text links and check back for updates from time to time.
(The names are misleading and make them sound like independant adventurers moving from site to site and transmitting data home. This is not the case, these bots are couch potatoes, firmly planted home birds that constantly keep pinging new sites…disappointing, huh?)
You need to ensure that your site has a functional Robots.txt that allows all search bots to crawl your site. A Robots.txt is a simple text file that you need to upload into your root directory for e.g. http://maediratta.com/robots.txt. Feel free to copy the lines below and upload after correcting the URL.
# http://www.yoursite.com: robots.txt
#
User-agent: *
Disallow:
What this particular robots.txt has done is allowed all Bots to index the site and hasn’t banned any. If however, you do not want xyz bot on your site simple add them to the disallow list.
If you are keen on reading up, you should check http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html. Advanced users should check RoboGen. RoboGen is a Windows-based program that helps you easily manage robots.txt files for your websites. Instead of the time consuming manual management process, described in the tutorial, you can either edit your robot exclusion files on your local computer or on a remote FTP site.
Just remember that the Index of a Search Engine is built on the data gathered by these bots, so the more they crawl, the better your chances of featuring on a search result, getting traffic, money, fame, the cover of forbes and so on… 
Increase Traffic to your blog using Pings
It’s not just about putting content up on the web, the trcik is all about getting people to find this ifnormation. So far the easiest way to get people to your site/blog has been to get on the right side of the Search Engine and cross your fingers and hope for the best. However, today Pinging would stand as the single best way to drastically increase the number of visitors to your blog .
There are several services on the Internet that track Blogs for new information and announce updates in one form or another. These services are monitored in turn by the major search engines, so if you can get your Blog information to appear in these services, you then have your foot in the door for Yahoo!, Google and others. It can take months of hard work if you are not Blogging and Pinging.
Most half-decent Blog softwares offer services to ping the major services after you create a new Blog. To add the list of pings to your WordPress Blog all you have to do is Sign-in and from your dashboard choose Options/Writing and paste the list below into the ‘Update Services’ box.
Happy blogging!
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping.php
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
http://ping.blogg.de/
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.britblog.com/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.wpkeys.com/
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://www.imblogs.net/ping/ http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
Resources for Bloggers
Decided to give my blog some much needed attention. Had wanted to add a host of tweaks, a resonable amount of syndication, and lastly get listed on all the Blog Directories i could think of. Have added a detailed list to this entry and also created a permanent set of links in the sidebar (phew!…learning HTML was the easy bit…getting all the stuff to work perfectly took some energy)
Blog Directories
http://www.blogcatalog.com
http://www.blogflux.com
http://blogs.botw.org - A highly regarded Blog Directory. Needs editor Approval quite like http://dmoz.org/
http://www.blogtopsites.com
http://www.blogrankings.com
Resources on Blogs & Bloggers
www.blogpulse.com - A service of Nielsen Buzz Metrics is everything from a Search Engine for blogs, to a set of buzz-tracking tools that are applied to blog content daily to track blog activity on key issues, people, news stories, news sources, bloggers and a fun look at real-world Trends as reflected through blogs. There are some interesting ideas like daily blog stats that measure activity in the world of blogging (number of blogs identified, new blogs created, number of blog posts analyzed), trend charts comparing buzz in the blogosphere on up to three specific topics, a Conversation Tracker that follows and captures the discussion, or conversation, that emanates and spreads from individual blogs or individual blog posts, blogger profiles and a showcase of blogs.
http://www.feedburner.com - FeedBurner is the world’s largest feed management provider. Their Web-based services help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the Web. FeedBurner also offers the largest advertising network for feeds that brings together an unprecedented caliber of content aggregated from the world’s leading media companies, A-list bloggers, blog networks and individual publishers.
http://www.blogexplosion.com - These guys ROCK! I’ve been with them for a while and they have been a source of loads of quality traffic.
http://www.pingomatic.com - A one stop shop to send a ping to every major RSS aggregator in the wild west of the internet. For e.g. if you click here you’d update something…and hey, Thanks! 
http://www.ipings.com - Another pinging service that is a must.
http://www.bloggerswap.com - Fundamentally a Banner Exchange where bloggers can swap banners which display their content. Users are allowed to swap banners only within their category of blogs.
http://bloggerads.com - A Marketplace to Buy Sell and Trade Blog Adverts.
http://www.bloggerhub.com - Blogger Discussion board.
Also attached is a list of pings that you should perform. I have integrated them with Wordpress so that this automatically happens when I post my post, if you get what i mean!
I quite enjoyed researching and posting the Blogger Special so expect more…and much sooner! Stay smiling!
The ! in Yahoo!
This one is courtesy Govind Menon
If you go to Yahoo.com & click on the exclamation mark in the Yahoo! logo, you can hear the yahoo yodel. Just make sure you speakers aren’t turned too high. And if you may want to save the Shockwave file used.
If you go to Yahoo.com & click on the exclamation mark in the Yahoo! logo, you can hear the yahoo yodel. Just make sure you speakers aren’t turned too high. Rocking Stuff!
Google & Apple: What’s up doc?
Eric Schmidt recently joined the Apple Board. I thought is really strange since a Bill Gates owns a substantial amount of Apple. Ran a couple of searches and stumbled across some dizzying info.
Al Gore is a senior advisor to Google and is an Apple director.
Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell is an Apple director and Google advisor.
Arthur Levinson (CEO Genentech) sits the boards of both companies.
Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel , which supplies Apple’s microprocessors, sits on Google’s board.
At WWDC 2006 Steve Jobs mentioned apples 13% marketshare in new notebook sales in the US. Macs now run Windows, is more stable bla blah blah…for a complete list on why Macs are better check www.apple.com/getamac/ads
If anything does ever culminate, (Apple hardware, ilife & Google cloud..and add Open Office 2.0 to that) it could redefine the way the world computes…which brings me to the question….what’s up doc?