Search Engines

In many instances, search engines can make or break a website. Search engine optimization (SEO), is a subset of marketing, the subject of much controversy and essential for most websites. The articles below cover some of my thoughts (and rants) on the matter.

Google, Yahoo! or MSN - Who sends you traffic?

Where is the beef? What does your data tell you? I'll get right to the meat of the issue: having access to stats for about a dozen or more sites - some tech related and some small businesses - I can say with a high degree of certainty that from my point of view, Google crushes the other engines when... Read more »

A Google Toolbar for Firefox?

This looks to be an interesting development, and perhaps supports the idea that Google does "get it", as the article also mentions that the e-mail claiming the software will work on Microsoft's Windows 2000 and XP platforms, Mac OS X 10.2, and "Linux 8.0+". It's nice to see them supporting these other... Read more »

Is Google up to Something?

While following up some back links for a site today, I clicked on a google search and found a little surprise! What's it all about? Probably nothing? Maybe something? Does it have to do with those 'biw' values that have been popping up in the request variables of googles' search urls (reportedly... Read more »

Linking to Your Home Page

Julian and his beautifully blue blog asks "Why link to index.php?". He also goes on to talk about to use or not to use www, which was discussed here not too long ago. He concludes that you need not bother linking to index.whatever, and I would agree. I have a feeling that many people simply aren't... Read more »

Google Desktop

Stickin' it to the big M$ Not much to say about this, except that I'm off to check it out. Google is really making it happen: first the search engine (remember that? ;-), then adwords and adsense, then gmail, and now desktop search. When is that browser coming out? Anyway, the new Google desktop... Read more »

Consistency, index.html and www

Updated on 19/08/2004 The following are two (of the many) little things that I've learnt over the years trolling the bounty of information that is WebmasterWorld. They're useful, and I've noticed that not everyone seems to apply them... Keep it clean an consistent Search engines sometimes... Read more »

Trailing Slashes Best Practice

I originally became aware of the issues surrounding trailing slashes in article #138 of Alistapart, "Slash Forward (Some URLs are Better Than Others)". Kyler Laird provides some additional information about trailing slashes. Inconsistencies amongst the ranks Having read those and put them to work (over... Read more »

The World of Search - March 9th

I guess I posted just a bit early yesterday. For those who want to know a bit more about what the following user agent is all about, check out John Battelle's post WebFountain, the Long Version User-agent: http ://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/crawlerHe offers a great little review of what it is, who it's... Read more »

The World of Search - March 8th

Happenings This year was supposed to be a very big year in the world of search, with Yahoo! and Microsoft launching new search engine services. As we all know, MS backed off, but Yahoo! has launched full scale. Yahoo! While Yahoo!s new search service was pleasing many people, it's new paid inclusion... Read more »

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SiteUptime Web Site Monitoring Service

Sitepoint's web devlopment books have helped me out on many occasions both for finding a quick solution to a problem but also to level out my knowlegde in weaker areas (JavaScript, I'm looking at you!). I am recommending the following titles from my bookshelf:

The Principles Of Successful Freelancing

I started freelancing by diving in head first and getting on with it. Many years and a lot of experience later I was still able to take away some gems from this book, and there are plenty I wish I had thought of beforehand. If you are new to freelancing and have a lot of questions (or maybe don't know what questions to ask!) do yourself a favor and at least check out the sample chapters.

The Art & Science Of JavaScript

The author line-up for this book says it all. 7 excellent developers show you how to get your JavaScript coding up to speed with 7 chapters of great theory, code and examples. Metaprogramming with JavaScript (chapter 5 from Dan Webb) really helped me iron out some things I was missing about JavaScript. That said each chapter really helped me to develop my JavaScript skills beyond simple Ajax calls and html insertion with libs like JQuery.

The PHP Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks

Like the other books listed here, this provides a great reference for the PHP developer looking to have the right answers from the right people at their fingertips. I tend to pull this off the shelf when I need to delve into new territory and usually find a workable solution to keep development moving. This only needs to happen once and you recoup the price of the book in time saved from having to develop the solution or find the right pattern for getting the job done..