Live Search Webmaster Tools Beta Invitation
We at Caribwebdev.com have been invited to take part in the Live Search Webmaster Tools Beta. So far their have been a few hiccups with the service, but we are now able to access it and will be looking at it’s features over the next few days using caribwebdev.com and other websites in the Heat Ray Media group of websites.
So look out for our first impressions review in a few days.
Extend the Functionality of Flash
Flashloaded.com is a website dedicated to creating and providing cost effective add-ons or components for the Adobe Flash platform. Flash components add new functionality and features to Adobe Flash and helps web developers to add features to their websites with little or no coding or other intensive work necessary. Flashloaded.com is a retailer of various Flash components in many categories such as 3d, sounds and video, menus, navigation, charts and more.
Using ready made components is very advantageous and web developers can save time and money by using a streamlined product from a third party such as Flash Loaded instead of trying to develop the component themselves. Flash Loaded specializes in Flash components so you can rest assured that they are competent in their business and have thousands of satisfied customers.
designersPoll by Flashloaded.com
An example of one of the useful components created by Flash Loaded is 3DPieChart. 3DPieChart helps users to create professional, interactive 3 dimensional charts in little or no time. These charts are perfect for online presentations and projects. Another example of a very useful and easy to use component created by Flash Loaded is designersPoll. This component helps to create simple, clean and stylish web polls to collect feedback from website visitors, it collects and stores data using an XML file instead of a database and prevents multiply votes by a single user by using browser cookies.
These and many more Flash components are available on Flashloaded.com.
Yahoo Search Builder – customizable search engine
Google may be the leader in the search engine market, but Yahoo Search is still a important search industry player and internet powerhouse. Yahoo Search Builder is a powerful, easy to use tool provided by Yahoo which enables anyone (primarily web professionals) to create customizable search engine experience for any website. All that is needed is a yahoo email address and in literally minutes anyone start using Yahoo’s search technology on their own website to search the entire web, within a specified website and much more.
Simple Steps
- Navigate the Yahoo Search Builder homepage
- Log in with your Yahoo id
- Define your search engine by choosing a name and search type
- Design search box by choosing the width, colours and encoding
- Customize and brand your search box with your logo, fix it to match the colours of your website among other options
- Test created search box and add the generated code to your web page.
Graphical Representation of Steps
Create multiple engines for multiple websites and view statistics independently with this very useful tool provided by Yahoo. Please read through the Yahoo Search Builder help files if you have any problems with these steps or ask your questions in a comment.
Technical Terms and Abbreviations Explained – IP Address
The “IP” in IP address stands for Internet Protocol. An Internet Protocol Address is a unique address assigned to computers and other electronic devices connected to a network. The network can vary in size, from a simple home set-up of a computer connected to a printer, a corporate set-up with an internal network connecting various devices or a massive network such as the internet which connects billions of devices to the global network which is known as the World Wide Web.
An IP Address acts a unique identifier or “address” for a device and this allows the various devices connected to a network to communicate by helping them to tell one device different from another. Devices that can be connected to a network and all having their own unique IP Address include, telephones, printers, routers, scanners, computers and various other electronic devices.
Google Chopping Pageranks in Latest PageRank Update
PageRank is a link analysis and measuring algorithm created by the cofounders of Google Inc Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It measures the relative importance of a webpage on the internet by analyzing the links pointing to the specified page and then assigns a number from 0 to 10 to the page with 10 being a very important page and 0 being a not so important page. Google updates these rankings every couple months and many websites, advertising agencies and search engines put great value of the pagerank of websites. Over time however many websites have begun to abuse the algorithm by selling links on their high ranked pages to boost the rank of the buyers page or linking to webpages in a network with the main purpose being to influence a higher pagerank for linked pages.
October 2007 Updates
Before this month’s update, Google’s last update to pagerank scores came in April 2007 and many were speculating that Google would have lived up to it’s word of devaluing the links of offenders in the next update. This speculation became reality when Google began decreasing the ranks of many known link sellers or link farms, especially blogs and mainstream sites like Forbes.com, Engadget.com and the website of the Washington Post.
Coverage in the Blogosphere
Read more at popular technology blog Techcrunch.com and also visit Dailyblogtips.com who are compiling a list of major sites and blogs affected negatively by the pagerank update.
Microsoft’s Live Search Engine Updated
Microsoft Corp has updated their Live Search engine and has focused mainly on improving searches related to entertainment, shopping, local and health.
“With this update to Live Search, our engineering focus is on the areas that matter most to our 185 million consumers who use our service every month. We have made dramatic progress in delivering a better search experience to our customers,” said Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of the Search and Advertising Platform Group at Microsoft. “We know what kinds of things consumers are searching for, and we have invested in those key high-interest verticals, including entertainment, shopping, health and local search. With the core platform in place we intend to win customers and earn their loyalty one query at a time.”
[ Read full Press Release from Microsoft ]
Live Search Homepage
What does this mean for Caribbean Web Developers?
Google is the undisputed king of search right now with Yahoo a distant second and Microsoft third. Microsoft is focusing on improving it’s search engine to prevent further slippage in it’s already small market share as well as to keep up with improvements being made by Yahoo and Google to their search products. This is good news for Caribbean Web Developers, especially those who follow proper web standards and understand the importance of proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google is on top and more than like many of us receive the highest percentage of our search engine traffic from Google, but improvements in other search engines allows us to receive good traffic from all major search engines, not only Google.
W3 Schools – vital resource for Web Professionals
W3school.com is a free online resource for tutorials related to web development, web programming, scripting and other web building topics. The information on w3schools.com is vital to any web developer looking for a free, easily accessible and professionally created resource.
Newcomers or Professionals
No matter what level of web development you are at or how many years you have been professional you will always find this website as a useful tool to acquire new information and skills or to practice or brush up on existing skills. If you are new to web designing or a student your learning experience will be helped by the streamline and step by step format of each lesson, complete with examples, tests and quizzes.
Technical Terms and Abbreviations Explained – RSS
RSS stands for really simple syndication. It allows users who frequently access the internet to get updates from sites they frequent without having to visit the site. The content of RSS Feeds can be can be displayed in software called RSS Readers, these software may be online based or desktop based. Feed readers check feeds that you have subscribed to at regular intervals to see if there is any new information added to the website.
Most popular websites have RSS feeds and if you are a web developer you should ensure that your website supports and displays RSS feeds.
How does your website look on a Mobile Phone?
In 2008 over one billion users are expected to access the internet via a mobile phone. Ever wonder how your website(s) display on a mobile device? The dotMobi has a very useful online JAVA emulator that allows website owners to see how their site would display on a cell phone. With such a large and growing market, it’s not a bad idea to register the .MOBI extension of your website(s) for future use.
Caribwebdev.com displayed on a Mobile Phone
Google Webmaster Tools Simple Tutorial
Google Webmaster Tools is a free online toolkit provided by Google to website owners. It provides important information to website owners related to their website(s) which allows them to better optimize their websites to attract traffic from search engines.
Registration and Verification
Anybody with a website can sign up for and use Google’s webmaster tools. After signing up users will have to verify each website they add to their account by added a generated html file to their web server or by adding a special meta tag to one of their pages. Once verified users can configure many options related to their site such as how often they want Google’s bots to index their pages, stop certain pages from being indexed, set a preferred format to represent their domain and so on.
Diagnostics, Statistics and Linkage
After registration and verification it will take a few weeks for sufficient data to be collected about your domain but after this waiting period you will be able to access detailed information about your domain. Web crawl errors will point you to troublesome pages which are missing, unreachable, timing out, or returning errors to Google’s crawlers. Top search queries and clicks for domains are displayed so that website owners can track their SEO progress and optimize their content. The Index Stats display the various pages already indexed by Google while the Crawl Stats display average pagerank of your pages while noting the page with the highest rank. Subscriber Stats show a link to any RSS feed or any other form of syndicated content found on your pages by the crawler and the amount of users subscribed to them through Google’s services such as Google reader. The very important links tab allows you to view links within your site as well as links from other sites that point to pages within your website.
Screen shots of Help Page, Homepage and Dashboard
Sitemaps
A sitemap is a file which lists links that are available for crawling on a domain. Some websites have a special page where all links on a site are listed where users can go to better navigate the pages available on a domain, but technically such pages are not sitemaps although they do allow easier access to domain links by site users and search engine bots. Google Webmaster Tool’s supports the adding of text, XML and even RSS sitemaps to a domain listed as long as it is verified and the sitemap file is listed in the root area of the domain. For Example:
http://www.sitename.com/sitemap.xml – correct placement of sitemap
http://www.sitename.com/sitemap.xml – incorrect placement of sitemap that will return an error
Help Centre
Visit the excellent Webmaster Help Centre to find help any issues related to Google Webmaster Tools, adding sitemaps or getting your site listed in Google’s search engine.
