Does Google Hate Web Standards?
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: Continue reading »
Perishable News: Site Upgrades, Upcoming Interview, and PageRank Update
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 […] Continue reading »
Optimizing Google Analytics Performance
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 […] Continue reading »
How to Verify the Four Major Search Engines
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. So it’s always a good idea to implement a procedure for […] Continue reading »
Stop WordPress from Leaking PageRank to Admin Pages
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: Continue reading »
Seven Ways to Beef Up Your Best Pages for the Next Google PR Update
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 […] Continue reading »
Allow Google Reader Access to Hotlink-Protected Images
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 […] Continue reading »
Smooth Operators: Sharpen your Google Search Skills
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 […] Continue reading »
Automatic Language Translation Methods
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. Continue reading »
Get Back
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. Continue reading »
Meatspace via Cyberspace
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, downloadable software application that brings that literally brings the world to your desktop. A few minutes after downloading and installing Google Earth, […] Continue reading »
Google Analytics Invitation
Earlier this year, we decided to implement the much-hyped, visitor-tracking and website optimization tool called Google Analytics. Google’s free data analytics service offers enterprise-level statistics capabilities and provides “high-end web analytics” and works with or without Google AdWords. Sounds great, however the service currently is available through invitation or “approved” signup. Skeptical that we would ever hear anything, we decided to submit a request anyway. Continue reading »
Gizoogle Gonna Break it Down
Gangsta lean. Gangsta tuff. Da Gizoogle.com Search Engine and Translator delivahz da roofless bidniss fo’ da previous post. Continue reading »
Robots Notes Plus
About the Robots Exclusion Standard: The robots exclusion standard or robots.txt protocol is a convention to prevent cooperating web spiders and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website. The information specifying the parts that should not be accessed is specified in a file called robots.txt in the top-level directory of the website. Notes on the robots.txt Rules: Rules of specificity apply, not inheritance. Always include a blank line between rules. Note also that not all robots […] Continue reading »
Praise and Criticism
Subject: praise & criticism Message: Hello Google, i have been using the google homepage (google.com) as my personal internet start page for several years now. i have emailed before with praise for the page’s very simple & elegant design asthetics. however, i am occasionally annoyed with the periodic advertising frequenting the page. For example, today i discovered the return of the pesky “google toolbar” advertisement. yuck. (strictly speaking of the start page) i realize that i am scrutinizing a bit […] Continue reading »
