Web Trends

Neat YouTube video on Web2.0

2007-03-29T20:07:00.000Z

I've been looking at the finished web2.0 video on YouTube titled: "Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes". This title caught my eye, and I was not disappointed when I saw the video. Very neat and hits home very quickly what web2.0 and social engineering and interaction is all about.

It has some really good video techniques and shows details very quickly cramming in a lot of information in a very short time frame. Well worth a look if your interested in what's happening in the web space at the moment.

How to redirect a web page using Search friendly 301 redirects

2007-03-23T10:33:00.000Z

Are you looking for the best way to redirect your web site to a new web site and keep the search engines happy?

So you have redesigned and re-architected an existing site and now we're going to make the new site go live. If you want to keep the same domain name (e.g. mydomain.com goes to mydomain.com), but the individual pages will be in a different location - perhaps using a CMS system so that the individual page URL's will change.

As you all know, from an SEO standpoint, changing over to a new site can drastically impact your page ranking with search engines; i.e. the search engines have indexed your old site and then you turn on the new site and suddenly *your traffic falls off completely.*

Our current approach is to use 301-Redirects on a selected set of pages on the old site.

Effectively the 301 Redirects tell the search engine bots that the page they are trying to reach has changed and redirects them to that new page. Apparently a 301-Redirect is very bot-friendly and will help accelerate the changeover in the search engine indexes AND (most importantly) page rankings and traffic will remain while that is all happening.

Try this tool to check if your web site has a URL redirect working correctly:

Check out other web site tools at webconfs.com301 Redirect

301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It's not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it's the safest option. The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently".

You can Test your redirection with Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

Below are a Couple of methods to implement URL Redirection

IIS Redirect

In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL".
Enter the redirection page
Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource"
Click on 'Apply'

Redirect in ColdFusion

<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.new-url.com">

Redirect in PHP

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" );
?>

Redirect in ASP

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", " http://www.new-url.com"
>

Redirect in ASP .NET

Redirect Old domain to New domain (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain. The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with your actual domain name.

In addition to the redirect I would suggest that you contact every backlinking site to modify their backlink to point to your new website.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

Redirect to www (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Please REPLACE domain.com and www.newdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

Ever wondered who is linking to your web site?

2007-03-19T09:23:00.000Z

Ever wonder who’s linked to your Web site? Just go to http://www.altavista.com/web/webmaster. As you can see, this page uses the powerful engine technology of AltaVista to perform some helpful searches. The first search simply displays all the links that AltaVista has to the pages in your Web site. The second option allows you to locate pages that link to your site.

The only drawback is that these searches only reveal referring pages registered to the AltaVista search engine. This isn’t really that bad, considering that AltaVista is one of the most encompassing search engines available today.

You could also use Google to find who links to you but I find the results are not so good.

Try:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?as_lq=[domainname] replacing [domainname]with your own domain.

My experience is that the results are not that good. The Google webmasters tools are probably a better bet for analysis: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools. Once signed in with a valid Google account you can submit sitemaps and trace the hits to your pages (from the external links). The sitemaps can be created online very easily using tools such as http://xml-sitemaps.com (free online system) or http://www.freesitemapgenerator.com . Both will trawl through your web site and create an xml file that you can upload to Google.

Key search words on the net

2007-03-17T21:11:00.000Z

Do you ever want to check to see if you can make some money on the web by getting the domain name that matters? The following web sites may help you in that quest. These web sites and search engines show you the top keywords searched on the internet. Obviously if you can make a domain name out of these and register it before anyone else does you may stand to make some money by selling that domain.

Domain Name Warehousing as its termed, refers to the practice of registrars of domains controlling domain names by bulk purchasing domain names with the intent of using or selling those domains for profit. Can you beat them? It would be difficult given their wealth of tools available to them but it can be done. In fact it regularly does! Can you think of an up and coming technology that everyone will want to get into? Perhaps the new fashion or fad. You will have problems registering company names as they will usually beat you in court when it comes to the 'who is the rightful owner', but if you can find a generic name you will be onto a winner.

Look out for domain tasting or domain kiting as it's also called. This exploits a loophole in the 5 day "grace period" at the beginning of a domain registration where the suitability or marketability of a domain name is tested. (See also domain parking).

You could also use the domain name as a form of portal (see domain parking) where you register the domain name and because of its popularity you create links on that domain to other web sites. Using the "pay per click" model of advertising you can then earn money due to the number of visits to those sites by people clicking on your web page or portal. After all millions do that with Google Adsense every day. Some even make a living at it!

Yahoo! Buzz [read review]
Take a look at what's hot on Yahoo!
www.buzz.yahoo.com

Google Zeitgeist
Google feature on search patterns, trends, and surprises with charts and top 10 lists.
www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

Lycos 50
Reflects the 50 most popular user searches for the week.
www.50.lycos.com

eBay Pulse
Provides a daily snapshot of current trends, top searches, and most watched items on eBay.
www.pulse.ebay.com

Google Trends
Explore Google users' interest in search topics. Compare search terms, find out how popular searches are in particular regions, see related news stories, and look at the history of a query's popularity.
www.google.com/trends

000search.com
Provides suggested categories to search the web and a keyword search box with a link exchange program available.
www.000search.com

Technorati: Popular
Find out which searches, tags, blogs, videos, and news stories are currently popular.
www.technorati.com/pop

Dogpile: SearchSpy
View family-friendly or unfiltered real-time Web popular searches.
www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy

AltaVista Search Trends
Examines trends in the millions of terms that people enter in the AltaVista search engine every day.
www.altavista.com/about/trends

AOL Buzzline
AOL takes the pulse of today's topics and trends.
www.peopleconnection.aol.com/buzzline

Ask.com IQ (Interesting Queries)
Highlights top searches and popular queries from Ask.com the question answering and web search service.
www.static.wc.ask.com/en/docs/iq/iq.shtml

(article about registering domain names. Created by Jonathan Camp for http://www.microupdate.net/cms )

Free stock photos metasearch facility now available

2007-03-17T20:06:00.001Z

Sourcing Stock Imagery

We all need stock imagery from time to time and I think this is one of the areas of design that has steadily improved with the passing years.

Firstly, if you have very specific imagery needs and/or a lack of time, commercial stock houses like iStockPhoto, Corbis and (our sometime Design View sponsor) Fotolia.com have the range, and have become cheaper, more flexible (license-wise) and dramatically more usable over the past 3-4 years. Hooray for competition!

But perhaps the least expected development has been the continued rise of free image resource sites. It seems the breathtaking success of Flickr has helped to entrench the idea of sharing your imagery with the world, and free stock sites like SXC.hu, MorgueFile and Image:After have reaped the benefits in the form of an increasing influx of quality imagery from their communities.

Now, with the release of Picfindr.com, locating free stock imagery just got a little easier.

I'd describe Picfindr as a free stock site metasearch application, allowing you to query a handful of sites simultaneously, then review the results in a single window.

Rick Englert, developer of the service, describes it as "minimalist at the moment" -- somewhere between alpha and beta -- but already it provides some great features, including intelligent searching and allowing users to exclude images on the basis of their licensing requirements (i.e. author crediting, altering the image, or permission prerequisites).

Plans are also afoot for more advanced search options, including 'AND/OR' options and the ability to search by color, size or orientation.

All up, Picfindr is still a little raw, but already it's a handy, free service that only seems likely to get better. Check it out.

2007-02-19T13:23:00.000Z

What is Web 2.0?

This video shows web 2.0 in a 5 minute overview. This the future of the web transforming it into a fully interactive experience, application based with social interaction.