Posted July 30th, 2008
by 
admin (Check me out)
Caught one of those tributes from Google’s homepage again. July 29, 2008 marks the 50th Anniversary of the The National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA).
“It may well be argued that NASA has become the world’s premier agent for exploration, carrying on in “the new ocean” of outer space a long tradition of expanding the physical and mental boundaries of humanity. Fifty years ago, however the agency that pushed the frontiers of aeronautics, took us to the moon, flew the space shuttle, built the International Space Station and revealed the secrets of the cosmos, was in its birth throes, and fundamental decisions were being made that profoundly shaped all that was to come.”
- Quote from 29th in a series of essays on exploration by NASA’s Chief Historian, Steven J. Dick
Here’s to 50 years of exploration and discoveries into the unknown. Here’s to 50 times 50 times 50 more!! 
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Posted July 27th, 2008
by admin (Check me out)
This site recently upgraded to Wordpress Version 2.6 and we’re currently testing the latest feature called “Turbo.” This is a link located at the upper right portion of your Wp-admin or Dashboard.
When you click on it, it will lead you to install a Google (yes, yes another Google product!) application named “Gears.” Gears in a nutshell is a plugin like Flash or Quicktime that “extends your browser to create a richer platform for web applications,” says Google.
It is designed for use with google or non-google websites and if you’re using Google Reader and Google Docs, then you’re already using Gears.
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Posted July 3rd, 2008
by admin (Check me out)
In case you didn’t get the memo from the Google Adsense team, effective on the last week of August 2008 the Adsense Referrals program will cease to exist.
This is in line with their continuous efforts to find ways to “improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for (our) publishers,” according to its official statement in their blog.
It further recommends its publishers to consider the following alternatives in lieu of the referral spots:
* Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers
to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork.
* AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense for content (AFC) ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AFC ads.
What to do?
If you are currently running an Adsense referrals spot on your site, you do two things: one is remove the code from the site. They’re not suggesting right away but hold off until about the end of August, just don’t forget about it because after August, you will only be seeing an empty white space on your page where the ads were and you’re not earning anything anymore. Second is to run and save all referrals reports on your desktop so you can go over and review your campaign information.
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Posted June 25th, 2008
by admin (Check me out)
We saw an article from USA Today that caught our eyes. It was an interview of Google’s Matt Cutts talking about the basics on optimizing one’s site. He didn’t really say things we didn’t know about already nor did he explain extensively on the hows and whats but it is a good read for those just starting to create their own websites.
He pointed out five ways to optimize a website:
1. Spotlight your search term on the page.
2. Fill in your “tags.”
3. Get other sites to “link” back to you.
4. Create a blog and post often.
5. Register for free tools.
To read the explanation for each. Visit the 
site!
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Posted June 12th, 2008
by admin (Check me out)
Ever since Google introduced sitelinks two years ago, it remains a mystery to this day how one website shows sitelinks and the other none. What do we do to get the coveted sitelinks and why should we care?
First things first, what are sitelinks? Sitelinks is a term coined by Google to refer to the set of links that shows below some sites in the Google search results. It appears below a particular website offering more links to that website instantly without even leaving the Google search page.
In essence, it makes life of the searcher one click faster as they are “meant to help users navigate (a) site… that will save time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for.”
Very well but how do we get them to appear on ours? Unfortunately after 2 years since they started implementing it, only a handful of blog sites has it while most popular company sites seem to be enjoying the added feature.
Google’s Take
Google’s explanation is short and vague: 
“Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts… If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them… Sitelinks are completely automated.”
Why should we care? because Google is saying that: “we only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user.” Ergo, if your site doesn’t carry sitelinks it means that your site isn’t important enough to have them! It means simply that your site doesn’t show any useful links so we will ignore putting them below your site in search pages. Our blog is less than a year old and doesn’t carry sitelinks; of course one day we hope to have that extra bonus from Google! Right now, from our Google webmaster tools links section it says “Google has not generated any sitelinks for your site.” Ouch!
Curious about a particular site we’re secretly following, we typed the keywords “John Chow” and was greatly surprised to find that his website johnchow.com is nowhere on the first 20-30 site results and so we clicked and clicked some more and there it was on the sixth page! Interestingly all the other 60 results shows his name being capitalized upon with johncow.com showing on the very first page at the top with sitelinks and all to boot! How did that happen? Only Google can answer.
Factors affecting sitelinks display
From our random search of keywords, here’s what we found out on those with sitelinks:
1. The site must rank no.1 on that keyword. Amazon, ebay, Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Circuit City, Best Buy, etc. all have sitelinks and they’re no.1 on the result.
Our main keywords “Blogs That Follow” show us at no. 2 in search but even the no.1 doesn’t have sitelinks on its result.
2. Keywords with one or two words and rank no.1 on it seem to show sitelinks more than those with 3 or more keywords. “Yahoo!,” “Yahoo Directory,” “web awards,” “tshirt design,” “Pandora radio” have sitelinks. Keywords “make money online,” “Blogs that Follow,” “Do Follow Directory,” don’t.
3. Only websites with huge traffic (maybe based roughly on PageRank, Page views, backlinks, authority, etc.) will display sitelinks.
4. Age of site will be a factor as well. The older your site is, the more credibility you have on the web. We think two year old sites and below will not get sitelinks. Then again, it may be case to case depending on how much a website gets for traffic in its first 24 months being online.
5. The number of indexed pages counts! and the more popular that page is, the more likely it will appear as part of a sitelink. Our best bet is that links appearing on our navigation menu either as pages or pure links to articles, are the most likely to appear as sitelinks.
Bottomline
We all want that credibility and branding that associates with sitelinks. From an ordinary searcher or reader’s standpoint, the site with sitelinks appear more “trusting” than the ones without it.
While sitelinks have been discussed and explained time and again since it first appeared on Google search, there is still no way to decipher for sure what goes on with Google system analytics responsible for discriminating one site over another in displaying sitelinks. We can only follow the 5 guidelines we came up with and continue blogging and hope for the best!
Sitelinks info also appear on Google’s Webmaster Help center.
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Posted May 26th, 2008
by admin (Check me out)
According to the latest Nielsen online report released in May 19, 2008, Google is the top search provider in the United States garnering a whooping 62% share of all search queries made in April 2008. Yahoo! Search came in second with a mere 17.5% while MSN/Windows Live Search has a lousy 9.7% .
To represent the huge difference in numbers, it means that Google easily handled roughly 5.1 billion searches in the United States in April alone while Yahoo! Search had only about 1.4 billion and MSN Search, about 796 million.
Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, delivers comprehensive, independent measurement and analysis of online audiences, advertising, video, consumer-generated media, word of mouth, commerce and consumer behavior. The Nielsen Company is the leading internet media and market research company in the world.
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