Many bloggers, designers, and developers take advantage of Google’s free Analytics service to track and monitor their site’s statistics. Along with a Google account, all that’s needed to use Google Analytics is the addition of a small slice of JavaScript into your web pages. For a long time, there was only one way of doing this, and then in 2007 Google improved their GATC code and established a new way for including it in your web pages. Many people switched over to the newer optimized method, but may not realize that there are now three different ways to track your pages with Google Analytics. The latest method uses asynchronous tracking to minimize negative impact on user experience. Let’s take a look at each of these three methods for tracking your web pages with Google Analytics..
..and so on. These directives all function in different ways, but they all serve the same basic purpose: control how Google crawls the various pages on your site. For example, you can use meta noindex to instruct Google not to index your sitemap, RSS feed, or any other page you wish. This level of control over which pages are crawled and indexed is helpful, but what if you need to control how Google crawls the contents of a specific page? Easy. Google enables us to do this with a set of googleon/googleoff tags.
In my recent guest post at The Nexus, I discuss Google’s new nofollow policy and suggest several ways to deal with it. In that article, I explain how Google allegedly has changed the way it deals with nofollow links. Instead of transferring leftover nofollow juice to remaining dofollow links as they always have, Google now pours all that wonderful nofollow juice right down the drain. This shift in policy comes as a terrible surprise to many webmasters and SEO gurus, especially those who have invested vast amounts of time, effort and money engaging in supposedly lucrative PR-sculpting pursuits.
Of course, this new policy leaves many of us wondering how to deal with it. If (and it remains a big “if” until Google clarifies their position) — if nofollow link equity simply vanishes into the ether, the repercussions may be significant. For example, webmasters who now rely on nofollow to salvage link juice otherwise leaked through lengthy comment threads will need to devise another strategy or suffer an inevitable loss of valuable PageRank. There are many good strategies available, including everything from long-term reorganization of site structure to short-term fixes involving much-despised tricks such as iframes and JavaScript links. Personally, I wouldn’t touch iframes with a ten-foot pole, but in the case of an emergency, I certainly would take a look at using external JavaScript to get the job done.
One way to prevent Google from crawling certain pages is to use <meta> elements in the <head> section of your web documents. For example, if I want to prevent Google from indexing and archiving a certain page, I would add the following code to the head of my document:
I’m no SEO guru, but it is my general understanding that it is possible to manipulate the flow of page rank throughout a site through strategic implementation of <meta> directives.
I checked my Feedburner subscriber count on April 2nd and was surprised to see that the number of RSS subscribers had dropped from around 1800 to around 1100. The next day, my subscriber count decreased again, this time to around 700. Today, my Feedburner statistics increased slightly to around 1000 subscribers. So, in the course of three days I lost around 40% of my loyal readers, according to Google Feedburner. Will I get these subscribers back? Will my Google subscriber count return to normal? Why did my Feedburner count drop in the first place? Let’s explore the issue and try to answer these critical questions.
With the recent Feedburner service outage, many sites across the Web experienced severe drops in their Feedburner subscriber counts. Apparently, Google is requiring all Feedburner accounts to be transferred over to Google by the end of February. In the midst of this mass migration, chaotic subscriber data has been reported to include everything from dramatic count drops and fluctuating reach statistics to zero-count values and dreaded “N/A” subscriber-count errors. Obviously, displaying erroneous subscriber-count data on your site is not a good thing. Fortunately, there are several ways to ensure that this doesn’t happen.
Over at CSS Newbie, author Rob Glazebrook weighs in with an excellent point about covering your bases when displaying your Feedburner subscriber count. As explained in the article, Feedburner’s handy API makes it easy to tap your data and display your subscriber count on your blog. Despite its best intentions, however, Feedburner occasionally returns inaccurate data or even no data at all for the subscriber count. For those of us who care about the accuracy of our publicly displayed feed statistics, displaying information like this on your site is simply unacceptable:
Ever wanted to provide automatic language translations of your web pages without installing another plugin? Here is a valid, SEO-friendly technique that takes advantage of Google’s free translation service. All you need is a PHP-enabled server and you’re good to go. Just copy and paste the following code into the desired location in your page template and enjoy the results. Once in place, this code will produce translation links for eight common languages for every page on your site. Grab, gulp and go:
I recently added OpenSearch functionality to Perishable Press. Now, OpenSearch-enabled browsers such as Firefox and IE 7 alert users with the option to customize their browser’s built-in search feature with an exclusive OpenSearch-powered search option for Perishable Press. The autodiscovery feature of supportive browsers detects the custom search protocol and enables users to easily add it to their collection of readily available site-specific search options. Now, users may search the entire Perishable Press domain with the click of a button.
And you can do it too! Adding customized OpenSearch-powered search functionality to your own site is a great way to foster site awareness and reinforce brand identity, while providing a tool that will benefit your visitors and improve the usability of your site. Even better, implementing OpenSearch functionality is extremely easy, completely free, and requires zero maintenance. In this article, I provide an easy, 3-step tutorial on how to add OpenSearch functionality to your site in less than five minutes. After the tutorial, we will look at the many different ways to customize your OpenSearch implementation, including examples, search options, and much more.
A great way to save bandwidth is to take advantage of Google’s AJAX Libraries API to serve your favorite open-source JavaScript libraries. Here is how Google explains it in their official documentation:
The AJAX Libraries API is a content distribution network and loading architecture for the most popular open source JavaScript libraries. By using the google.load() method, your application has high speed, globally available access to a growing list of the most popular JavaScript open source libraries.
A great way to improve your CSS skills is to check out the stylesheets used by other websites. Digging behind the scenes and exploring some applied CSS provides new ideas and insights about everything from specificity and formatting to hacks and shortcuts. Learning CSS by reading about ideal cases and theoretical applications is certainly important, but actually seeing how the language is applied in “real-world” scenarios provides first-hand knowledge and insight. While there are millions of standards-based, CSS-designed websites to explore, studying a few of the Web’s elite players and CSS experts helps to put things into perspective by providing context for subsequent CSS investigations. Prime candidates include industry leaders, standards buffs, CSS specialists, professional bloggers, and other successful establishments. In this article, we reveal the CSS implementations used by the following “rich and famous” websites:
Aaron Wall on SEO, the future of the Web, Google dominance, and life as a professional taste tester
As someone who keeps a close eye on the mystical world of Search Engine Optimization, one of my favorite sources of information is SEO-guru Aaron Wall. Aaron is the author of the immensely popular SEOBook.com, where he shares his knowledge, ideas, and opinions on a wide range of SEO-related topics. I have always admired the direct, informative way in which Aaron presents his content, which itself is always insightful and intriguing. Having read much of Aaron’s thoughts on SEO and marketing, I wanted to “zoom out” and ask Aaron a few questions about the possible future of SEO and life on the Web in general. Recently, Aaron was generous enough to respond to some of these rather eclectic questions, including some interesting “behind-the-scenes” questions revealing how Aaron works on the Web..
Picture it. You have just prepared some recent snapshots of your buddies from a gathering over the weekend. Special care was taken to choose the images, and resize the images appropriately. As you sign in to your favorite social networking site to upload these images, you realize your credentials are invalid. You type in permutations of your user-name and password, check the “Caps” Key, but find that you are still not allowed access to your account. Your account could be have been hacked, removed, or just made unavailable. The site that you swore would hold and keep your memories, thoughts, feelings, and treasured moments are inaccessible or worse, gone forever. How could this happen? Just as we get attached to material things in life, we become attached to our email, blogs, podcasts, bookmarks, and images. In other words, this is our new digital existence. Some would call it our digital baggage.
Consider the Google home page — arguably the most popular, highly visited web page in the entire world. Such a simple page, right? You would think that such a simple design would fully embrace Web Standards. I mean, think about it for a moment.. How would you or I throw down a few lists, a search field, and a logo image? Something like this, maybe:
Ever since writing that last review article, I have been feeling the need to cut loose, relax, and blog about something a little more “down-to-earth,” like recent things that have been happening around here. If you are new to Perishable Press, rest assured that I try to keep these “site/personal news” update posts down to a minimum. Whenever possible, I save up a bunch of interesting off-topic things that I want to talk about, and then cram them all together into a multipurpose article like this one. I have found that consolidating and summarizing multiple news items into one post helps keep noise to a minimum while providing a more complete “snapshot” of current events. That said, let’s see what’s been happening ‘round here lately..
Toggle High Contrast Style
Due topopulardemand, I have implemented an alternate “high-contrast” CSS stylesheet for the current theme. If you find the content difficult to read due to the low-contrast, “grey-text-on-black-background,” click on the small sun icon located in the lower-right corner of the browser window to brighten things up a bit. Conversely, to restore the original (dark) appearance, click on the moon icon in the same location. This “toggle-contrast” functionality has been around for awhile, but I have not found the opportunity to mention it until now.
It has occurred to me lately that I no longer use Google Analytics for Perishable Press. Instead, I find myself keeping an eye on things using Mint almost exclusively. So, the question now is: do I continue serving the GA JavaScript to keep the profile active just in case I ever need the additional stats? I mean, Mint already does a great job at recording all of information I could ever need, so I no longer see the use for Google Analytics. I do wonder, however, if Google ranks GA-enabled sites a bit higher than non-GA sites. Hmmm.. it seems to me that there are several options going forward..
Option 1: Continue with Google Analytics
The easiest thing for me to do at this point would be to just leave it alone: continue serving the extra 6.3K/21.4K GA JavaScript (i.e., urchin.js) to site visitors. Sure, I may never actually use the volumes of data I am collecting via Analytics, but hey, who cares, right? Of course, delivering the urchin.js file requires bandwidth and other server resources, and also tends to slow things down a bit, especially on those rare occasions when the Google server bogs down.
Keeping track of your access and error logs is a critical component of any serious security strategy. Many times, you will see a recorded entry that looks legitimate, such that it may easily be dismissed as genuine Google fare, only to discover upon closer investigation a fraudulent agent. There are many such cloaked or disguised agents crawling around these days, mimicking various search engines to hide beneath the radar. Thus, it is a good idea to implement a procedure for scanning and checking select agents for authenticity. In general, the verification process involves a “forward/reverse” DNS lookup, which is then cross-verified with the search engine in question. Let’s have a quick look at how to do this..
First, visit and bookmark the following articles (and/or this article). These resources explain how to identify and verify the agents for each of the four major search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live, and Ask.
During the most recent Perishable Press redesign, I noticed that several of my WordPress admin pages had been assigned significant levels of PageRank. Not good. After some investigation, I realized that my ancient robots.txt rules were insufficient in preventing Google from indexing various WordPress admin pages. Specifically, the following pages have been indexed and subsequently assigned PageRank:
WP Admin Login Page
WP Lost Password Page
WP Registration Page
WP Admin Dashboard
Needless to say, it is important to stop WordPress from leaking PageRank to admin pages. Instead of wasting our hard-earned link-equity on non-ranking pages, let’s redirect it to more important pages and posts. In order to accomplish this, we will attack the problem on three different fronts: admin links, robots.txt rules, and meta tags. Let’s take a look at each of these methods..
Time is running out! Soon, it will be time for the next Google PageRank (PR) update. While it is difficult to predict how your site will perform overall, it seems likely that your highest ranking pages will continue to rank well. The idea behind this article is to improve your site’s overall pagerank by totally beefing up your most popular pages.
Of course, every page on your site is important. Ideally, you would want to employ these techniques to every article on your site. But time is short, and Google is coming soon! The next PageRank update is slated for any day now, probably before I manage to post this article. ;) Thus, our strategy is to focus on pages that already have some Google juice flowing to them. Your most popular articles. Your best-ranked pages. Your top ten posts.
In our previous article, we explain the process of allowing Feedburner to access your hotlink-protected images. The article details the entire process, which covers the basics of hotlink protection and involves adding several lines of code to your htaccess file. In this article, we skip the detailed explanations and present only the main points. The discussion is very similar for both Feedburner and Google Reader, and may be extrapolated to serve virtually any purpose.
If you are using htaccess to protect your images from hotlinking and have yet to check your feeds in Google Reader, you may be in for a little surprise. Unless you explicitly permit Google Reader access, your htaccess rules may be inadvertently preventing subscribers from viewing the images in your feeds. The same is true for Google Reader Mobile, which is probably far more popular than you may realize.
Coming soon to the World Wide Web: Everything. The perpetually evolving sum of human knowledge available online. Anywhere. Anytime. So, what are you looking for? Information concerning something, somewhere, about somebody.. You know it’s there somewhere. Sure, you could waste time by digging through that immense labyrinth of browser bookmarks, maybe eventually finding that one link that may or may not lead you to the page that you remember.. No thanks. The Web is far too rich in information to limit it with a few bookmarks. Ah yes, tags — that’s it! Social bookmarking to the rescue. Okay now, let’s see, under which tag will I find those two great links on "postmodern existentialism"? Maybe check three or four tags before realizing that several months have passed and that newer, more relevant information is probably available elsewhere on the internet. Hmm..
As you may have noticed, Perishable Press recently added automatic language translation to each of our articles. The free, automatic translations are available as a series of image links (via corresponding country flag icons) next to each article’s individual post view. We have found that providing this free service is important as many of our visitors come from countries other than the United States, and therefore may be unable to read our articles as presented in the English language.
Although there are several excellent translation services currently available, our research has determined that Google’s free translation service exceeds our expectations and serves as an excellent online translator that remains fast, effective, and (best of all) free. Another excellent online translator service is provided by BabelFish, which is also highly efficient and free of charge.
Using either of these free online translators and a little .htaccess or PHP magic, it is very easy to serve alternate versions of site content in a wide variety of languages. This article presents two excellent methods of incorporating automatic language support using either .htaccess or PHP. We also provide the (X)HTML source code necessary to manually include automatic translation links within static (X)HTML documents. The translation configurations covered in this article include the following:
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a trip into the online past, offering glimpses of ancient website relics. Reaching back through the virtual dark ages of 1996, the Wayback Machine chronicles over 55 billion pages. Although many of the pages appear incomplete due to missing images, the Wayback Machine provides an invaluable resource, enabling users to experience and learn from the arcane internet of yesterday.
Within the last few years, the convergence of satellite imagery, digital technology, and the world wide web has spawned a host of sophisticated online navigational applications. Perhaps the most significant development involves Google's relatively new map technology, which brings users Google Maps and Google Earth. Whereas Google Maps provides an online navigational resource, Google Earth is a free, fully downloadable software application that brings that literally brings the world to your desktop. A few minutes after downloading and installing Google Earth, we found ourselves amazed, surfing the globe from Seattle to Paris, zooming in from thousands of miles above the earth, checking out old haunts, and reeling in the years. Google Earth enables users to label key points, add extensive notes, and seamlessly integrate the power of the internet. There are more features than there is time to explore them all. Such an incredible tool is definitely a must.
Other useful "mapplications" include GeoURL and TerraServer-USA. GeoURL is an online service providing a "location-to-URL reverse directory." GeoURL enables users to "find URLs by their proximity to a given location." This is useful for bloggers, who may wish to rally together in meatspace. As of this posting, GeoURL lists over 217,658 sites. Click here to see GeoURL-listed addresses near the Perishable Press Headquarters. Although not nearly as robust as Google Earth, "the TerraServer-USA Web site is one of the world's largest online databases, providing free public access to a vast data store of maps and aerial photographs of the United States." Here is a 1996 satellite-view of my neighborhood via the TerraServer-USA database. Fascinating.
There are also several online mapplications providing website visitor tracking. Although free versions of these tools are available, they are typically limited in statistical scope, which theoretically encourages users to promptly upgrade to the full, "paid" versions. Right. Anyway, there are some prime aps available, including gVisit, ClustrMaps, and even Frappr. Whereas gVisit and ClustrMaps provide similar tracking services, Frappr is more of an online community through which users may create and share map-related information through digital maps, photo galleries, and chat rooms. Fine if you have the time to invest in all of that. Otherwise, nothing beats gVisit and ClustrMaps for free geographical visitor tracking. Although both of these services provide similar features, ClustrMaps apparently provides a greater degree of analytical insight than does gVisit. Both services involve pros and cons, and both are worth checking out.
Check out these newly created Frappr and gVisit maps for Perishable Press. Finally, for a different application of modern online map technology, check out National Geographic's MapMachine or even Wikimapia, a wiki-map hybrid inviting and enabling users to "describe the whole earth" by adding interesting geographical information. Well now, …if you have read this far and are still wondering what exactly "meatspace" is, follow this link and discover the truth.
Earlier this year, we decided to implement the much-hyped Google Analytics visitor-tracking and optimization tool. The free service offers enterprise-level statistics capabilities and provides “high-end web analytics” and works with or without Google AdWords. Sounds great, however the service is available through invitation only. Skeptical that we would ever hear anything, we decided to submit a request anyway.
Several months later, after having completely forgotten about signing up for GA (Google Analytics), we received our official GA invitation and immediately began the registration process. The invitation included a “secret code” and required us to create a free Google account, which enables access to a variety of Google services, such as “Analytics, AdWords, Google Groups and [a] personalized Google home page.” After verification of the account email, we were ready to register for GA.
GA registration involves entering your secret password some personal information. I hope they were not looking for any authentic personal data. After floating the password, you’re in the business. The final steps include dropping the following lines of JavaScript into any pages that need analyzing:
The JavaScript code should be placed near the end of the document source code, preferably just before the <body> tag. Once the script is in place and online, login to your GA account and activate the target page(s) via the “validate tracking” tool. Once this happens, Google Analytics begins tracking, analyzing, and reporting visitor activity at your website. Nice. There are now a plethora of high-end statistics tools and resources at your command.
After successfully setting up GA for Perishable Press, we immediately requested an invite for Monzilla Media. Apparently, it is only a matter of time.
Gangsta lean. Gangsta tuff. Da Gizoogle Search Engine & Translator delivahz da roofless bidniss fo' da previous post:
Osseus Website Yo Multimedia artist extraordizzle Kenneth Paul Schrag — betta known as Osseus ta his fellow DLa posse — is currently in tha process of updat'n his personal design portfolio website (Flash required) aww nah. Ken's aww nah. work is diverse, wit online samples cover'n both graphic design n illustration.
We finally met up wit Ken n Yasuko several months ago before they Japanese tizzle. They call me tha black folks president. We shared coffee in tha Desert Oasis n shared recent experiences n creative happen'n where the sun be shinin' and I be rhymin'. Ken n Yasuko hizzy bizzy busy work'n as Graphic Designa in tha Seattle area, n have big plans ta start a potentially lucrative design-based service business so bow down to the bow wow. Beyond this, they have worked several interest'n freelance jobs rang'n from model'n & sculpture ta illustration & design.
In related news, tha possible releaze of DLa #20 — The Elusive Texture Issue — has resurfizzles wit potential ta catalyze tha swift develizzle n re-establizzle of tha Dead Wanna Be Gangsta Art empire fo' sheezy. Website plans is in tha works, n several DLa-related graphic-dizzles projects hizzy been discussed with the gangsta shit that keeps ya hangin'. Especially rhymin' is ideas involv'n rappa press n archaic doggy stylin' methods. Stay tuned..
Sweet. But as if that weren’t dope enuf, repeated Gizoogle translations seem to increasingly multiply da def shizzle. Check it out cold gangsta: retranslate this translation and compare the results. Strictly fo' my nizzle…
![[ Google Analytics ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2010/misc-chunks/google-analytics.png)
Many bloggers, designers, and developers take advantage of Google’s free Analytics service to track and monitor their site’s statistics. Along with a Google account, all that’s needed to use Google Analytics is the addition of a small slice of JavaScript into your web pages. For a long time, there was only one way of doing this, and then in 2007 Google improved their GATC code and established a new way for including it in your web pages. Many people switched over to the newer optimized method, but may not realize that there are now three different ways to track your pages with Google Analytics. The latest method uses asynchronous tracking to minimize negative impact on user experience. Let’s take a look at each of these three methods for tracking your web pages with Google Analytics..![[ Dynamic Flow ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2009/misc-chunks/dynamic-linkage.jpg)
In my recent guest post at ![[ FeedBurper ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2009/misc-chunks/feedburper.jpg)
I checked my Feedburner subscriber count on April 2nd and was surprised to see that the number of RSS subscribers had dropped from around 1800 to around 1100. The next day, my subscriber count decreased again, this time to around 700. Today, my Feedburner statistics increased slightly to around 1000 subscribers. So, in the course of three days I lost around 40% of my loyal readers, according to Google Feedburner. Will I get these subscribers back? Will my Google subscriber count return to normal? Why did my Feedburner count drop in the first place? Let’s explore the issue and try to answer these critical questions.![[ Robin Leach of 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2008/css-implement/lifestyles.jpg "Somehow, 'happy' just doesn't say it..")
A great way to improve your CSS skills is to check out the stylesheets used by other websites. Digging behind the scenes and exploring some applied CSS provides new ideas and insights about everything from specificity and formatting to hacks and shortcuts. Learning CSS by reading about ideal cases and theoretical applications is certainly important, but actually seeing how the language is applied in “real-world” scenarios provides first-hand knowledge and insight. While there are millions of standards-based, CSS-designed websites to explore, studying a few of the Web’s elite players and CSS experts helps to put things into perspective by providing context for subsequent CSS investigations. Prime candidates include industry leaders, standards buffs, CSS specialists, professional bloggers, and other successful establishments. In this article, we reveal the CSS implementations used by the following “rich and famous” websites:![[ ~{*}~ ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/network-nightmare.gif)
Picture it. You have just prepared some recent snapshots of your buddies from a gathering over the weekend. Special care was taken to choose the images, and resize the images appropriately. As you sign in to your favorite social networking site to upload these images, you realize your credentials are invalid. You type in permutations of your user-name and password, check the “Caps” Key, but find that you are still not allowed access to your account. Your account could be have been hacked, removed, or just made unavailable. The site that you swore would hold and keep your memories, thoughts, feelings, and treasured moments are inaccessible or worse, gone forever. How could this happen? Just as we get attached to material things in life, we become attached to our email, blogs, podcasts, bookmarks, and images. In other words, this is our new digital existence. Some would call it our digital baggage.![[ Photo: Perishable ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/perishable-profile.gif "Hard at work..")
Ever since writing that ![[ Image: Global Map Icon ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/google-analytics_.gif)
It has occurred to me lately that I no longer use Google Analytics for Perishable Press. Instead, I find myself keeping an eye on things using ![[ Image: Grotesquely muscular older man ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/beefed-up.jpg)
Time is running out! Soon, it will be time for the next Google PageRank (PR) update. While it is difficult to predict how your site will perform overall, it seems likely that your highest ranking pages will continue to rank well. The idea behind this article is to improve your site’s overall pagerank by totally beefing up your most popular pages.![[ Image: Google Reader Icon ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/google-reader.gif)
In our 
