Some time back I complained about the Google indexing of the site after the Big Daddy upgrade. For a good while before Big Daddy, there was usually about a week delay between me posting and there being a full crawl of the posted page which was fairly impressive. Post Big-Daddy the coverage of even previously indexed articles was lousy for a good while. As recent as a week or two ago there were only 900-1100 pages (including feeds which are of arguable value for google to index (maybe I should block those to googlebot?…hmm…) Anyway, I just noticed that they’re up to 1600 pages (still including those rss feeds.) It seems spotty still, but they’ve finally got a post-big daddy article. The inurl feature is still annoyingly buggy though.
Tag: MSN
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Google Maps upgrade
I’ve seen a couple places referring to some improvements in the way google maps handles zooming and so I decided to take a look in Firefox. The zoom handling of Google maps is the one thing that I’ve wished for an improvement in for some time. After noticing MSN’s virtual earth had the capability of scroll wheel zooming, I really wanted it in Google Maps.
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Google Site: search issues
This is interesting…. there’s been a lot of frustration among some (myself included) with the current state of Googles site indexing. For a good while I’ve been able to consistently find ANY post on my site using google if I quote a certain amount of text that I know is on the page. Currently, such quoted text searches for pages that show up as “supplemental” in a site:averyjparker.com search… turn up nothing. In theory, the supplemental results SHOULD turn up when there are no others. (If I understand correctly…) I’ve been able to duplicate this with other site’s supplemental results as well, so it doesn’t JUST affect this site. Well, there’s an update at the official sitemaps blog that tells of some interesting issues with the site: search operator. It sounds like there might be a connection….
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The Google Problem Part 2
If you know me…. you know I have a HARD time putting down a problem that’s unsolved. Even if it’s a problem that really doesn’t have a solution (in my control at least)… I have a tendency to look and analyze, turn it over and try and find out as much as I can about it. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to being able to find solutions to problems, or at least workarounds by gathering enough information… Anyway, after saying I was tired of trying to figure out why google doesn’t like a site and tired of trying to fix things “for google”….. well, I’ve spent more time “investigating”… or should I say “wasted” more time… I’m not sure which, but I did discover a couple interesting things.
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The Google Problem, or why I’m starting to use MSN and Yahoo more.
This weekend has been a bit of an introspective for me on why google is still the primary search engine I use. I know, I’ve been a big “fan(?)” of google for quite some time, I’ve obviously incorporated many of their products into my pages and used Google for 99% of my web searching. In recent months though, I’ve certainly had frustrations from the “site owner” side of the Google relationship. My North Carolina Genealogy site had traditionally been hosted as a subdirectory of averyjparker.com and had always enjoyed the lions share of traffic, so when I gave it it’s own domain, I did a 404 page not found for those following outdated links and I added an automatic 5 second redirect to the northcarolinagenealogy.net page. I soon learned that was a mistake, as the site vanished from Google around the first of December.
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Search engines to blame for malware spread?
There are a couple news stories about a McAfee SiteAdvisor report about the search engines responsibility for sites that distribute malware.
McAfee said Friday that the epidemic of spyware and viruses could be linked to search engines. According to research from the company, even seemingly benign search terms could bring up sites loaded with nasty payloads.
The study looked at the five major search engines — Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask — and covered a period from January through April. Researchers found that in every search engine, popular keywords returned sites that could be potentially dangerous.
What’s worse, in popular keywords such as “free screensavers,” “digital music,” “popular software,” and “singers,” as much as 72 percent of the returned results contained some kind of risky link.
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Windows Desktop Search
I got a first look at Windows Desktop Search today (bundled with MSN Search Toolbar?) I was told that it was new on the system and had not been used. The systems owner didn’t know when it was installed and thought it must have been installed when he did a windows update. It looks like the MSN search toolbar adds tabbed browsing to internet explorer. I’m a bit suspicious of ANY software that the system owner is unsure of how it got to be installed on the system.
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Search Engines Submission
This is what hopefully will be the begining of a series of threads on webhosting, web marketing, etc. The first topic up is search engines submission. (This may take several articles…) It’s important to get your web site up and mostly fleshed out before submitting to search engines. Why? Although many may take some time before they spider your site, it is best to make sure that there is a fair amount of content available for them to spider. Some may actually spider fairly quickly, within minutes initially.
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New IM worm using WMF vulnerability
There is news this morning of a new twist in the WMF vulnerability (it was only a matter of time.) There are reports of an instant messenger worm using the vulnerability to spread. Currently incidents.org is reporting that the worm is spreading through the MSN messenger IM network and contains a malformed WMF file called “xmas-2006 FUNNY.jpg” The original source of the warning is Kaspersky Labs viruslist.com
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IM worm acts as a come on to a Santa Claus site
According to Information Week, there’s a new IM worm out hitting the MSN, ICQ, Yahoo and AIM networks. It poses as a come on for a Santa Claus site. On visiting the site, users receive an unexpected “present” a rootkit which is hidden.