Warmest Greetings,
:: Thursday, August 22, 2002 ::
Fast Information on Search Engine and Directory Submission Fees
Added to the Cre8pc Web site. You can get the submission information you need and click the Add URL button to submit, all from one page.
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 8/22/2002 05:39:07 PM
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UK Ecom Sites
You gotta new law, eh? Does it take your Parliament as long to make and pass new laws as it does it in the US. Let us know how this one goes, okay? Is your website illegal? What the new ecommerce laws mean for your business...
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 8/22/2002 02:41:16 PM
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Don't A href Me
Did you know the Disney site can "disable" your link to their site? (Inquiring minds want to know how they do that!) Or that sites such as the American Cancer Society, Realitytv.net, The Council of Better Business Bureaus, Verizon and many other high traffic, popular sites have strict link policies?
'Stupid' linking policies come under fire discusses the policies of media sites and others who forbid deep linking or demand certain linking restrictions.
Someone from Law.com didn't know they had restrictions. Okay......so does this mean nobody is actually checking to see who is linking? How do we know link policies are even enforced? Are there penalties for linking to Web sites who don't want to be linked to?
From the article:
"Other sites, such as the American Cancer Society, say restrictions on deep linking are in the best interests of people seeking information.
"Our policy is nothing out of the ordinary," American Cancer Society spokesman David Sampson said. "We like people to go through the main page so they find out about the right cancer, and they see the broad range of information we have here. Our aim is to support people as advocates, lead them to support groups, which if people go to a page on a new medicine, they don't see."
This problem could be solved by making usable navigation. It doesn't matter where the user lands on a search or from following links as long as there's adequate user feedback, instructions, navigation, links to the homepage, etc. Any inside page can contain user instructions that say "For further information on blah blah click here" or even a recommendation "If you arrived here via a link from another Web site, we recommend starting at our homepage for the best path to obtaining accurate information." Or something like that.
It takes more effort to be peaceful, usable, and easy to get along with on the Internet, but the alternative is court cases, bad feelings, and articles written about how stupid you are for restricting links to your Web site. If something is so important it can't be linked to, don't put it on the server. If the content is licensed, do what they do in Mission Impossible and make it "self destruct" when clicked on.
They put a man on the moon, and yet we can't manage something like links on the Internet? Crazy.
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 8/22/2002 02:10:35 PM
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Just Click It Baby...
Or hit the "Add Comment" link at the bottom. You'll get everyone's attention (unless you say something dumb and I have to delete it), and help me test some new toys I've added to my Blogs. The other thing you can do is link directly to a post you like by clicking the "Link" link. Wink.
If you see a Blog or Web site worth mentioning here that's related to Web dev, user interface, usability and/or search engine optimization, please send me the URL. I may add it to Cre9pc.com, or here, or both, or ignore it completely. Ya just never know! But it never hurts to try...kimkrause@cre8pc.com (has spam filters and an army of soldiers protecting it by the way).
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 8/22/2002 12:55:57 PM
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:: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 ::
Jill and Phil Sitting in a Tree
h.u.g.g.i.n.g
I have two friends I like a lot - Jill Whalen, of High Rankings and Phil Craven, of WebWorkshop.net. They disagree and debate on some popular SEO forums (such as ihelpyou) and sometimes it gets a little heated.
Well, I wouldn't say they kissed and made up, but Jill did get the opportunity to share her views on her approach to search engine optimization in a post to the Cre8asite Club (soon to be a real forum once we get the server setup and new Board programmed.)
Phil took things quite well, but says he wants to debate more. So, we shall see how long these peace talks last....
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 8/21/2002 11:05:52 AM
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:: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 ::
Overdose on Usability
Everything you ever wanted to know about usability stats, testing and stuff related that you didn't know you wanted to know...
Chi Web archives
I could be up for DAYS!!
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 8/20/2002 11:18:23 PM
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It's about Blogs. It's about marketing. Seemed to fit in, ok?
I didn't know "blogs" and "marketing" could be spoken in the same sentence, did you?
Read on...WTF is Weblog Marketing?
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 8/20/2002 10:52:46 PM
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Robots. Spiders. And Google Bears. Oh My!
(The following is reprinted by permission of the author. Originally posted to the Cre8asite Forum.)
Okey dokey. The robots.txt file is a text that contains rules to exclude spiders from getting certain named files and the contents of certain named directories. There are no rules to tell spiders what they CAN do - just what they CANNOT do. We probably all know about the file and what it's for, but if you are not familiar with it, read http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm. Ignore the second sentence on the page. It's wrong. The file tells spiders what they cannot index and not what they "can download".
The robots.txt protocol, which is voluntary, tells spiders what they cannot index. It doesn't mean that they cannot download the files and look at them if they want to. In fact, robots.txt can be used as signpost to files and directories that spiders would otherwise have no way of knowing about. I mention this because it is possible for a spam hunting spider to examine the files that we didn't want it to see. But that's another story.
The robots.txt file must be contained in the site's root directory, as that is the only place that spiders look for it. It's up to the webmaster to create the file. Servers don't do it. It isn't something that is automatically included with hosting.
The spiders of major engines will always request the file in case it contains any rules for them. Many, if not most, sites don't make use of the file at all and, therefore, it doesn't exist. Many servers will return the default 403 page (Forbidden) when a requested page doesn't exist so, since the spiders are requesting a non-existant page, they, like everyone else, will get the 403 page.
Until recently, Google's spider would not continue to crawl any website that returned a 403 instead of the robots.txt file. Now it does crawl those sites. There was never any reason for Google not to crawl sites when the robots.txt file didn't exist, but for some reason they made the decision to do it that way.
When Kim asked why her client's sites were not being crawled, I said that some of mine had been waiting from 6 to 12 months. Google had sniffed at them by getting the index page and the robots.txt file but never crawled any further. I honestly thought that there was some sort of semi-ban on the IP address.
Now it all makes sense. My sites were fully crawled a couple of months ago and Kim reported that her client's sites had also been crawled in the same cycle. A friend of mine (Grace) told me that exactly the same thing happened with some of her sites.
Why on earth they would choose not to crawl sites where there was no robots.txt file is beyond reason. But, thankfully, they do crawl them now. It would have been nice to know about it in the past though.
Posted by Phil Craven of WebWorkshop.net
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 8/20/2002 08:57:12 PM
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:: Monday, August 19, 2002 ::
JN says "Font You" to Microsoft
Ok. Jakob Nielsen didn't say that really, but he's making a case for font sizes based on his opinion that size matters to us and we should be able to control what we see on our monitors.
"I'm hereby launching a campaign to get Microsoft to make user preferences override any fixed font size specification in Web designs", he states in his latest Alertbox - Alertbox
"Another example of harmful Web technology comes with the increasing use of style sheets, which let web designers specify the exact size of text down to the pixel. Unfortunately, many designers are using this ability, leading to reduced readability of an increasing number of websites."
He's not entirely wrong here, but of course he's going to rile up the CSS troops. I agree with the reduced readability aspect, especially when older versions of Netscape render CSS font sizes to be even smaller than how MSIE renders it. Some of my clients say if it looks good and is readable in MSIE, that's good enough for them. Who cares if with Netscape the user needs a magnify glass, or the boldface doesn't work properly? (I do, but I'm not paying the web design bill.)
JN says:
"So, why is so much website text so hard to read in the first place? Two theories:
· Most web designers are young, and so have perfect vision. Tiny text doesn't bother them as much as it bothers people on the other side of 40. Designers also tend to own expensive, high-quality monitors that are easier on the eyes.
· While creating a website, designers don't actually read the information on the pages. They simply glance at the text to make sure it looks great. In fact, many designs are approved with "lorem ipsum" standing in the place of real copy. When you don't have to read the words, it doesn't matter that the characters are small.
BALONEY!
First of all, I'm 44, and blind as a bat without my contacts. I even have reading glasses to wear over my contacts so I don't squint at the monitor and I have a 21" "high quality" monitor.
Secondly, my goodness. It's time I raise my web design hourly rate! I'd NEVER design a site and not read the copy. For starters, is the copy usable to readers? Is it optimized? Is it constructed to help users navigate the site and/or recognize immediately the objective of the page or site? This is what I'm paid to be checking for. What kind of web design house wouldn't provide this service?
Anyway, aside from the occasional ruffled feathers response I had, this Alertbox has some really good info in it, esp. the pointers for CSS at the bottom. Worth checking it out...
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 8/19/2002 12:22:04 PM
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You Get What They Paid For
The FTC (US Federal Trade Commission) has been dancing with search engines lately and learning the Fee-Based Tango.
We know that "sponsored" links at the top of search results are paid for, and in some cases the highest bidder gets the highest spot. But what's easily forgotten is nearly all search portals accept web pages for a fee. Even lower ranked pages have likely paid to be there. Each page is a paid advertisement. Only Google accepts web pages for free and offers unbiased indexing
So, is it a search engine or an advertisement delivery system?
If most crawler-based engines such as Inktomi and FAST still "crawl" the 'Net, adding pages on their own, why are we paying fees to be included?
Inktomi, Alta Vista, Teoma, and others offer, as part of their fee-for-inclusion programs, to reindex pages every 48 hours, (or longer in some cases.) They provide reports for traffic tracking and other perks for the fees. This is designed to help sustain the search portal economically. But, truth be told, search engines are still following links and adding pages on their own. It takes longer. But, some are increasing their schedules from monthly crawls to every 2 weeks.
"Inktomi, for example, recently increased the frequency and depth of its search engine to "crawl" about 2 billion documents on the Web every two weeks--a benchmark that rivals Google and Fast. Just a week ago, it searched only about 500 million documents about every month, according to Vish Makhijani, vice president of Web search at Inktomi. Fast in the last week announced that it is searching 2.4 billion documents.
All of the companies say that the paid indexing does not affect the ordering or relevance of search results served to consumers and they comprise, in general, less than 5 percent of the total results."
Read more at Search sites work to clean up their act
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 8/19/2002 10:50:07 AM
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