ajb{log}: learn something new each day

First off, what is Baidu? Why does it make sense to submit all your websites there? Ok, simply put, Baidu provides an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files. According to Compete, the Baidu has more than 1.5 million monthly visitors. And that’s the main reason why.

I can’t understand Chinese. How and where do I submit my site? Here’s how:

1) Go to this URL: http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html

2) You should see something like this:

Just enter your URL (web address) on the first input box.

3) Enter the code that you will see just right at the bottom (It’s Y2C2 in my case. That code changes randomly).

4) Click the submit button beside it and you’re done!

Easy huh?

Here’s the URL again http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html, bookmark it for future use.

Here’s the English translation if you really wanted to know.

We’ve updated Egghub recently, optimized some pages and it should be loading a bit faster.  We’ve also enhanced/optimized for search engines. More cool stuff on the way.

What is Egghub? Think of it as your aNobii or Shelfari for Discs.

Check it out!

–aj

RWW wrote a very interesting article today about Google’s plans into crawling through HTML forms.

Quoting an excerpt:

“For text boxes, our computers automatically choose words from the site that has the form; for select menus, check boxes, and radio buttons on the form, we choose from among the values of the HTML. Having chosen the values for each input, we generate and then try to crawl URLs that correspond to a possible query a user may have made,” explained Jayant Madhavan and Alon Halevy in a blog post. “If we ascertain that the web page resulting from our query is valid, interesting, and includes content not in our index, we may include it in our index much as we would include any other web page.”

Does this mean we now need to add additional access permission for the Googlebot to index our dynamic form results if we wanted to? What about forms with CAPTCHA? What If we didn’t want Googlebot to access our form results and forgot to deny it on our robots.txt file, will it be fast and easy to request removal from the Google.com SERPs?

I wildly assume that most webmasters already know that it takes time to request pages to be taken out of the Google’s SERPs. It sometimes takes days, even weeks.

There’s so much questions right now with this news that just came out. But I guess only time will tell what will really happen when it happen.

What’s your take?

–aj

Yahoo! AMP (Advertising Management Platform) coming in the 3rd quarter of 08. Will this be the “real” worthy Google Adwords competitor?

–aj

Most website owners and webmasters wonder if the site they’re managing is on Google. We often search our domain, our company name, or even our own name and some specific keywords to see if the website we’ve done a few days back has been crawled and placed on the massive index of Google.

Yes, most SEO (Search Engine Optimization) professionals already know these things. However, for the newbies and for the rest of us, here’s a quick tutorial to know if your site’s status is in the Google index or not.

It’s a basic 2-step process to be in the know. But, you can further move forward enhancing your SEO efforts like verifying your domain, adding a sitemap, getting to know your search rank, top keywords search for a specific time, etc. at the Google Webmaster Tools.

Let’s start. Here’s how:

1) Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitestatus

2) Enter your domain on the input box (ex. http://www.mployd.com). Click on the “Next” button

Now, if your website is in the Google index, you should be able to see this notification

And you will be asked if you want to go and manage your website at the Google Webmaster Tool

If your website isn’t listed yet on the Google index, you should see something like this

Google will also suggest that you submit a Sitemap on their Google Webmaster Tools (which will eventually help your rankings on the Google’s search engine results).

Pretty simple huh? Go and check your website now if it’s listed and I hope it is.

Cheers!

–aj

5 Deadly Sins Guaranteed To Kill Your Link Requests
by Eric Ward

Link Week Here in the Link Week column, we mostly discuss intermediate to advanced linking related subjects, but I’m compelled to cover a very basic topic this week. Link requests. The link builders are out in force this summer. The proof is in my inbox. Over the two weeks since my last LinkWeek column, I’ve counted the number of link requests I’ve received. The total? Forty-two.

This is both funny and tragic. It’s funny because I do not give out links, I do not swap links, I’ve never had a links page, and the only place I’ve ever provided outbound links is within my LinkMoses blogscroll, and even that is limited to about twenty-five other sites, all of whom are run by people I know and have great respect for. So any link builder seeking a link from me has either not visited my site, does not know me, or does not care who he/she spams. Funny!

It’s tragic because you would think that with all the attention link building has received over the past few years, people would better understand the right and wrong way to ask for a link. For me, the single most important rule of all is to realize you must respect the person on the other end of your email. You must send a different link request to each person based upon the site and context you are seeking a link for. I don’t send a casual all lowercase email to a college professor and I don’t send a formal three paragraph grammatically perfect email with a Microsoft word attachment to 14 year old blogger. But the links from each are just as important.

There are many ways to screw up your link requests, but I’ll start with the following four Deadly Sins of link request emails. Why are they deadly? They are deadly because they each occur before I’ve even considered reading the body of your email. You have treated me like I do not matter before you have even gotten your URL in front of me. That’s deadly.

Deadly Sin #1

The email address you used to reach me does not exist anywhere on my site. Since my server is set to catchall, I get every email sent to my domains. However, there are only 3 or 4 specific email addresses to be found on my site. If you sent me email to an address that is not one of those addresses, then you’re a spammer, and you have been deleted.

Deadly Sin #2

Your subject line has an exclamation point in it, usually “Check out my site!!!!!”

Deadly Sin #3

Your subject line does not have an exclamation point but says any of the following:

* Check out my site
* Let’s swap links
* Link request
* Press Release
* Awesome new site
* How much for a link?

Deadly Sin #4

Your email begins with:

Dear Webmaster…
or
To Whom it May Concern…

or, as Mike Grehan has said many times, Dear Mr. Inquiries…

Deadly Sin #5

You apologize in the first line of your email, and/or write this:
I apologize if you are not the correct person to handle this inquiry. Please forward it to the proper person.

That’s five Deadly Sins—and I haven’t even started reading your email yet.

Eric Ward has been in the link building and content publicity game since 1994, providing services ranking from linking strategy to a monthly private newsletters on linking for subscribers. The Link Week column appears on Mondays at Search Engine Land.

Here’s your answer (PDF).

–aj

BlogPerfume just launced Feed Analysis version 1.1. This handy tool is a very useful addition to your blog analytics.

In their own words:

By the use of Feed Analysis, the number of subscribers for each month is neatly shown on the column chart. You can also view the number of subscribers, hits, views and clicks for every single day from the line chart. The best/worst day of the week is also available which is displayed on the pie chart. And also, Feed Analysis can give you an estimated value for your blog / site according to the number of your subscribers.

Check it out!

–aj

More information here

Zune 2 Launches

Fact: 25 iPods for every 1 Zune sold. Still a long way to go huh? But at least iPod has a competition. It’s always hard without one.

Zune 2.0 Social Network, anyone?

More scoop here

Google Reaches $2000 and TechCrunch Sells for $100M

TechCrunch scorns Blodget’s claims. Says Henry Blodget is crossing a line.

Sony BMG Says Burn Just One Song Your a Thief

Under oath, Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to even make just one copy of music which they have purchased. Jennifer Pariser’s reply, “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’,” she said.

Whole story at Geek.com.

Lifecasting at Justin.tv just became popular

You can now create a channel for yourself and broadcast. Unfortunately the site’s traffic is continually surging and all I can see is…

Sorry Justin.tv isn’t working for you! Please email info@justin.tv for help.

Yahoo! Updates search adding search assist, keyword suggestions, related concepts, embedded videos and pictures on search results and more.

Head over to ysearchblog for more.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta opens up to pre-registrations.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta is an online place to store, access, and share documents and files just like Google Docs which is already available and Zoho and docstoc etc.

Speaking of Zoho, Zoho Brings Database & Reporting Online

Zoho DB lets users easily create, share, and collaborate on database applications and reports online (yes, web based!).

More here

Internet can be dangerous, that’s why Myanmar regime shut it down

But don’t worry. We still have IRRAWADDY to see what’s going on over there.

Over here, it’s going to be a long-weekend again. Happy Thanksgiving!

–aj