Namesco was down for about an hour tonight as a turkish hacker had attacked the server. There were apparently attacks yesterday on WordPress sites exploiting the wrong permissions on the wp-config.php file – the automatic set-up by wordpress sets the wrong permissions for this file and so if your website has been hacked you need to;
Continue reading “Hacker Attacks Namesco” »
No doubt due to the Haiti situation Twitter has gone down again for the second time today.
Bad news for anyone working in the web or design or seo industry as Google have decided that as a result of customer needs they will not list any of these businesses with the map at the top of the search results if you put “web design town” into the search box. Sometimes it will list the map entries at the top of the search results if you write “web design IN town” but how many searchers will know that!! Isn’t this just clear discrimination by Google against anyone involved in the web design business. Why would they do that particularly when we very effectively were selling Google’s services to our clients. Are we really going to promote Google’s services when they make our industry invisible in this way?
I found particularly disturbing the response in the thread below from Joel a Google employee; (my emphasis)
“Hi Folks -
Earlier thread, Brian (BB- baseonballs) noted that this may be related to a known issue regarding the display of local search results on google.com. After further investigation, they are slightly different, and I’ll explain our intent.Today, we’re intentionally showing less local results for web design / SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn’t display local listings today. We believe this is an accurate representation of user intent. In some cases, we do show local listings, however (as NSNA/php-er noted) [web design in bellingham]. I’m sure some of you feel we should be displaying local results for queries like [Web Design Vancouver]. I understand that concern, but based on our understanding of our users, we feel this is the right decision for now.I’ll give the usual disclaimer that we’re constantly working on improving the user experience and results will vary over time. So, this could change in the future, but I wanted to be explicit about what we’re doing today.”
Discrimination-Google confirms it no longer lists local map results for web design, seo unless the word in or near used!! http://goo.gl/4a52
“
10:38 AMJoel H: “some SEOs/web designers want their website, not a local listing, to be the primary destination”The local listings link directly to businesses websites, how could any SEO / web designer not want users to see their business shown in a group of local listings???Joel H: “we think this is a better user experience”“Using words in or near seem to be suggestive of a different intent”In what way is a search for something like “website design sacramento” any different at all from a search for “website design in sacramento” ??? The first search is just shorthand for the second one.Google gave users on screen hints for years and years along the lines of “in is a very common word and was not included in your search”, that’s how users have been educated to search and so now they quite reasonably expect to not have to use common words like in and near. They don’t have to when they’re searching for other businesses so why would it occur to them to use those words when they’re searching for SEO and web design companies???The other thing that hasn’t been addressed is why some searches for website design and SEO are still working as before? Why on earth would user intent differ from country to country?Working examples:Italy -website design romewebsite design milanowebsite design parmaAustralia -website design sydneywebsite design melbournewebsite design brisbaneFrance -website design pariswebsite design bordeauxwebsite design lyonIn short, how can any of what’s been happening with local listings possibly be considered a “better user experience”
Sorry Joel that is rubbish as said above everyone knows NOT to use “IN” that’s how Google has trained users. You are now using that to discriminate against the webs design and seo trade. This IS discrimination.Web design is the hardest area to seo for due to the number of businesses. All of us except the very large companies rely on local business so we optimise our sites for our business say website design but then rely on the map listing to bring us to the local areas attention. Now we will have to dilute our seo’ing to include local area place names.
Matt Cutts has indicated that the speed with which your website loads is going to be increasingly important and if you use webmaster tools you will see in the labs section an option on website performance. The fact that Google have added this section to their webmaster tools does seem to support the idea that website load speed is going to be increasingly important in search position.
Google Labs
If you look at this section you will see a graph showing where your website comes in terms of loading speed compared to other websites. The graph shows the 20th percentile ie the region within which the fastest 20% of websites fall. Ideally you want your website’s performance to be as close as possible to that section of the graph.
Website Performance
Under the graph you will see a list of your slowest urls with the average speed of download, bear in mind this will be over a range of servers and internet connections. Additionally there is a list of pages with suggestions as to how you could speed the pages up, most often by using gzip compression.
Average Load Speed
On the face of it this seems like a good move as nothing is more irritating than clicking through from a search onto a website that takes an age to load and locks your browser up, however there are much wider implications which may not be good. Many people have websites on servers over which they have no control and depending on their configuration these servers may run very slowly. The result is then that either your website suffers in searches or you have to move to faster more efficient servers which doubtlessly will be more costly and I can hear them hiking the prices up as I write! One possible consequence of this is that search engine results will over time be predominantly populated by only large businesses pushing the SME businesses out the bottom of the search results.
Another implication is for media based websites who use video clips etc as these always take a while to load and even I here in the UK find pages with videos a nightmare as I work with an internet connection via a mobile dongle. Your market may not involve countries outside the UK however your average website load speed will be calculated from everyone who tries to access your website whether they are in China, Russia, USA wherever and some of these countries have considerably less efficient broadband connections than the UK. So your website speed will be judged by download speeds in countries who are not relevant to your market.
There are many implications of deciding search position on website download speed and it will be interesting to see how this pans out over time.
Next year if you are one of the two thirds of people who use internet explorer you will find that you will be given a choice of browsers for the first time with Microsoft. Internet Explorer is bundled with Microsoft windows and as a result the vast majority of people end up using it. As I said 2/3 of people use IE and a quarter use Firefox with the small remainder using Opera, Sea Monkey etc. Next year however you will be given a choice of browser if you currently use IE and it will be interesting to see how the propertions of users change after that point.
I personally use IE, partly thru laziness and partly because traditionally websites can perform badly in IE however as most people use IE I feel it makes sense to design using IE so that initially I can be sure that the website will function in the browser that the majority of people use. We then check the website in other browsers and tweak anything necessary.
The website design industry is a funny one with most designers using only Firefox and then being frustrated when the website does not look right in IE. Browser snobbery, a lot look down on IE, means a lot of extra work for them. It will be interesting to see how the figures pan out and whether a considerable number move over to other browsers.