Mashing Windows

MashingWindows.com has made its appearance on Yahoo

and the number of pages indexed by Google is escalated to 6

while the new Alexa Rank is now 1,229,116.

written by lorenzo

Interesting curiosity, Google at one point had indexed 8 pages, while today, 11 blog entries later, there are only 4 pages indexed:

For current Google indexing, click here.

written by lorenzo

Somehow the very first entry of this blog (link here) has disappeared from Google, interesting . . .

Will it be back on the next pass?  Googlebot last crawled the site about an hour ago (31 Oct 2007 – 20:44).

written by lorenzo

Isn’t this another version of the question: “Is it Quantity or Quality that it’s important?”

The answer is within you, and more than an absolute answer is a question of the right mix, the right balance between frequency and relevance. A lot has to do with the intended outcome for the blog, its authenticity and how it fits within the overall meta outcome of your project, congruency still rules.

Once a day seems to be the rule for the majority of A-list Bloggers, voice on the blogosphere has the magic number at at least once or twice a week; in all effectiveness still dealing in terms of Quantity. Lately the discussion is migrating to Quality, and there have been a few interesting posts like Erik Kintz’s , David Chen’s and Seth Godin’s, who make the argument that relevance to your audience is more important than frequency.

So, here’s your answer: be authentic, stay congruent, and blog for quality.

written by lorenzo

All Hosting services give you some type of web stats, Hostgator gives me AWstats and Webalizer. That and Google Analytics will give you too much information, contributing to your information overload.

I check Google Analytics every day, and once in a while I will also check the AWstats, especially on a new site to verify that it is indexed by the search engines.

Looking at the stats for Mashing Windows, it seems that Google and Yahoo have found it, by MSN is missing in action.

The good news is that Alexa, the Web Archive and Ask have found this blog, along with 4 other robots in incognito.

written by lorenzo

Aaron suggested that I use Yahoo’s Site Explorer and Authenticate the site and the XML feed in order to expedite Yahoo’s indexing of the blog.

Pretty simple procedure:

1. Go to siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com;
2. Log in with your Yahoo account, otherwise sign up for one (free);
3. Enter the url of your site or blog to the box on top of the page, then click on “Add My Site”, and your site will appear in the list below the box;
4. Click on the “Authenticate” button;
5. This will bring you to a new page, where you’ll have two methods to authenticate your site:
   - Uploading an authentication file to your site;
   or
   - Adding a META tag to your home page.
6. I opted for the first option, so I downloaded the proper file and uploaded to the site (link);
7. Click on “Ready to Authenticate”;
8. If you have a plain web site and no blog, you’re DONE!. If your site has feeds, as in a blog, you need to do one more step: click on the “Manage” button;
9. On the next screen you’ll enter the feed path of your site or blog, usually “/feed” or “/feed/atom”;
10. Click on “Add Feed”;
11. DONE!

written by lorenzo

What a difference one day makes, today Google is playing catch-up and has now indexed 8 pages. Still no sign of life from Yahoo or MSN.

Screenshot obtained using Pearl Crescent Page Saver Firefox extension.

written by lorenzo

Strange. Google indexed ONE more page, and only one, this one; which is also the most recent post. In the process Google skipped other pages/posts between the first one and this last one.

The mystery continues, further proof that SEO is pure alchemy: part science, part art.

written by lorenzo

The favicon is the little image that shows on the URL bar, right before the “http://….” . It also shows up on the browser tabs, and in your favorites once you bookmark the site.

It’s just another touchpoint for branding.

1. Select the image that you will use for the favicon.
2. Go to html-kit.com/favicon.
3. Upload your image.
4. Download the ZIP file containing the favicon.ico, an animated .gif file of the same icon, and the instructions.
5. On a WordPress blog is not as straightforward as on a website, but it is still manageable:
   - open up your site manager, I use either Microsoft FrontPage or Microsoft Expression Web;
   - open header.php within the folder containing the theme that you are using;
   - within <head> and </head>, insert the following lines:
   <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico” />
   <link rel=”icon” href=”favicon1.gif” type=”image/gif” />
   where favicon.ico and favicon1.gif are the names of the icon files.
6. Save theheader.php file.
7. Upload the favicon.ico and favicon1.gif files to the root directory of your site.
8. DONE!

written by lorenzo

Google has indexed the site, but only one page shows up, could be that Google is lazy or too busy.

You can make Google’s life easier by building a XLM sitemap, practically showing Google what pages to visit on your site. There are many ways to do so. If you have a web site, you can use xml-sitemaps.com to generate the sitemap, then upload, and direct Google to look for it using Google Webmaster Central.

If you have a WordPress blog, there’s an easier way: Arne Brachhold’s Google XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress 3.0 plugin.

1. Install the plugin;
2. Go to Options\XML-Sitemap;
3. The first line should read: “The sitemap wasn’t built yet. Click here to build it the first time.” Click on the link to build the sitemap.
4. Done! The plugin has built the sitemap, and has notified Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com. The plugin will also update the sitemap as you update your blog.

What we want is something similar to the following for Google, Yahoo and MSN.

written by lorenzo