The man who played Mr. Wizard (Don Herbert) died today at the age of 90. I remember spending lots of afternoons at my grandparents house watching shows like Mr. Wizard on Nickelodeon.
One of my favorite parts of the show is how he’d have a new assistant all the time. It spawned various jokes (cue the dinosaurs “we’re gonna need another Timmy!”) Looking back, Don and his show were a much larger part of my upbringing than I realized.
Don was responsible for getting many of my generation interested in science, and he will be greatly missed.
Are you the first person that’s ever owned your URL? Do you know how to find out? Why does it matter?
If you’re thinking of registering a new domain name, you might want to see if it was ever registered before. It’s possible that your new name might have been owned by a domainer or a spammer. If so, it can have some pretty bad consequences for your SEO campaigns.
Just ask Marianne Jones (no relation). When she registered her own name as a domain name for her business, she had no idea that it was previously owned by a domainer trying to cash in on the actor with a similar name.
That move was obviously unprofitable so he let it expire and she picked it up. The problem is, while owned by the spammer it managed to get banned from most major search engines.
As we all know, getting re-included in Google can sometimes be a royal pain in the ass.
First off, I’d suggest heading over to domaintools.com and running a WHOIS on the domain. It’ll tell you if it’s ever been registered before. If it is, search for the domain name and see what comes up.
You might also want to visit archive.org and see what used to be there before you owned it. This won’t work with all sites, but it will with some. dotCULT has a very rich history there if you’re bored.
Once you’ve got it up and hosted, you can also visit my ip neighbors and see if you happen to share an IP with any spammy sites. If you do, you might request that your host issue you a different IP address. While there’s no proof that sharing an IP with a spammy site hurts you, it also won’t hurt to be free of it.
so should you avoid previously owned domain names? No, not at all. In Marianne’s case it made sense to register her own name. Why would she not? Just be prepared to deal with the hassle of trying to get re-listed once you acquire such a name.
If you’re interested in learning how to get re-included into search engines you can find some more information here and here.
UPDATE: As of 6-12 Marianne’s website has started showing up again in Google. It took about 1 week from the time we submitted a re-inclusion request for this to happen.
It’s an interesting question. In other words, will searching for “coke” vs “coke®” yield different results.
It turns out they don’t. As we expected, Google simply drops the symbols in the name. They’re probably taking them out because they’re assuming most users can’t type them into a search engine.
Sadly, this issue arose while trying to do a search to see if more people used the ® mark vs not using it on certain registered terms. I’m still uncertain if it has to be used in every instance or if it’s just ok to use it once or mention it at the bottom of a page. If anybody knows the official rules on this please let me know.
Similarly, it’s also impossible to use a current search engine to see the amount of results for “Internet” compared to “internet” (anybody who knows me knows I’m totally against capitalizing words like internet and web)
If you know how to do searches that care about case please let me know… I’d really like to see the answer.
By now you’ve probably seen the news about the dangers of sodium benzoate (a chemical commonly found in diet cola.)
The fear mongering ranges from cancer causing to DNA damaging. But is it legit?
Personally, I think it’s all bullshit. If you look closely you’ll see that the amount of sodium benzoate in an apple is far higher than the FDA approved amount in cola.
Are they suggesting that we stop eating apples?
Maybe that’s why God forbid Adam and Eve to eat the apples from tree of knowledge (which probably weren’t even apples but pomegranates)
Yahoo announced today on their search marketing blog that click charges may be based on “quality of traffic.”
The announcement sounds good for advertisers, but is it good for publishers? That depends on how they judge quality of traffic.
The Yahoo blog defines quality as:
“Quality” is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability of our partner’s sites to deliver more interested, valuable customers to you
Again this sounds really great for advertisers, but not for content producers. Here’s why:
Up until now, everything that determined how much you got paid was up to the content producer. As somebody who runs sites that show ads I could choose what to write about (thus choosing the keywords for the ads to be based on). I could also choose where to put the ads, how many, the color scheme, etc. The more clicks I got the more money I made.
That’s not to say I cheated the system. Yahoo has many policies intact to prevent people from enticing users to click ads, and I follow them all. Ads aren’t just a way to make money; they’re a service to your users as well. If your users find themselves tricked into clicking irrelevant ads they’re not very likely to return to your site.
What I don’t like about this program is that the “quality” takes control away from me. Not only that, it’s ambiguous.
There are many things that can determine conversions. Suppose for a minute that I’m showing ads for a loan application site. Upon clicking the ad the user finds that the site is asking for their social security number but isn’t using SSL. Most likely they’re not going to fill out the application – and I’m not going to be paid for that click. My user wanted a loan, but the landing page didn’t do a good job of letting them convert. That’s not my fault and I should be paid accordingly.
Here’s another example: Earlier today I clicked on an ad for “hassle free ring tones” The landing page however didn’t show me any ring tones. It only offered some more ads for ring tone companies. Since I didn’t immediately see ring tones on the landing page, I left and went somewhere else. This type of page isn’t going to convert well. It’s common knowledge that ad landing pages should have the product that the ad is advertising.
With the old program, I got paid the same amount whether or not the user did anything. After all, I delivered a targeted customer; it’s your job to get them to buy.
The new system doesn’t work this way. Somehow I (the publisher) am supposed to get my users to buy (despite how crappy your landing pages are) without somehow enticing them to do so.
It’ll be interesting to see if any publishers jump ship for competitors like Adsense or Azoogle. What are your opinions?
In the last post, Avery made a comment about me moving to Canada. I’m not. I’m simply in Toronto for a hockey tournament. I don’t think I could live here.
For those of you familiar with Detroit… Imagine Detroit but with a few million more people. Heck, I don’t even think Detroit has 1 million anymore. Toronto has over 2.5 million.
I stayed in Mississagua… which is like the local town of Taylor but with over 1 million people.
I was lucky enough to be here during a smog alert. If you haven’t experienced smog it’s like a grey cloud that stinks and limits visibility. I was less than 1/2 mile from the CN tower (the world’s tallest building) and I still couldn’t see it. That’s how bad the smog was.
What surprised me the most though was how expensive things have gotten. I remember when you could exchange $100 American for almost $150 Canadian.
Now that same $100 will get you $105 Canadian. It still sounds like a good deal – until you realize that prices haven’t been updated to reflect the actual value of the Canadian dollar.
A 5 piece nugget at Wendys, for example, cost me $1.29. After taxes and exchange rate (which are much higher) I paid 25 cents more than I would in the states.
A coke in a vending machine ($1.25 here) was $2 in Canada. Again, I paid well over 50 cents more than I should have for that Coke.
All of these little things add up. My $100 hotel room came to $119 after taxes. (compared to $106 in the US) Some of you may say that you can get your taxes back at the border, but I asked at the border and they said they discontinued that policy.
So while I enjoy being able to go to non smoking bars and play against top hockey competition, I don’t think I could afford to live in Canada.
I’m leaving for Toronto in about 12 hours, but I just wanted to write a quick update to say that I’ve accepted a new job.
I’m now the lead SEO/SEM specialist at Brand Labs.
If you’ve read “the four hour work week” you’ll know that the book advocates outsourcing all aspects of your business so that you can free up time. In a sense, I’m doing the opposite.
See, Brand Labs is the company you’d call to handle running your business for you. From warehousing, to fulfillment, to e-commerce site development, PR, and SEO… we do it all!
It’s a neat idea. Instead of hiring a development company, SEO company, marketing company, PR firm, and fulfillment company you can just hire us and we’ll do it all for you.
We let the creative people free up their time to come up with more products.
It’s a pretty big switch from me. I don’t write code anymore (and if I do, it’s in ASP – a language I don’t really know yet) While it’s different, I like that I’m not getting burned out in LAMP development. I might just finish some of my personal sites now that I’m not doing PHP and MySQL all day long.
On top of that, I’ve finally got dual screens, a corner desk with a window, and a flat screen TV to watch while I work. I even ended up with more vacation time than the last job. It’s a neat environment.
Speaking of vacation, I won’t be reachable until sometime Monday. I’ll be in Toronto all weekend for a hockey tournament. After that though, I don’t think I’m going anywhere else for the month of June. July is another story….
He then goes on to list about 14 questions he’d like answers to.
While I’m sure that the search engines will never answer his questions, I thought it would be interesting to guess at what the actual answers are.
So, here’s my guesses. (Important: These are just guesses, in no way can I verify if any of these answers are correct or not. They’re just what I think the answers are. I’m only a computer scientist, I do NOT work at any of the search engines or have inside information)
What role do search quality raters play in determining rankings? I don’t think that the quality raters affect rankings in any way. I think that quality raters are used to determine a valid result set in which various algorithm changes can be tested against each other. Another possibility is that they’re used to view the “reported” sites – however I doubt this.
How much impact do the other domains owned by / registered by a site owner have on the way a site is viewed/treated algorithmically? This depends. If the owner isn’t doing anything shady then they shouldn’t matter. I, for example, own several unrelated sites all on the same server. They don’t cross link and they don’t have problems. If the “other” sites I own are part of a network of spammy sites then it can have an effect. The last company I worked for had a network of hundreds of sites (all of which were thin affiliates for the same site) that just targeted different keywords. I can see this type of setup hurting your sites. If it’s a normal relationship though, I wouldn’t worry.
What is the purpose/motivation behind obfuscating accurate, precise link data? The most likely answer is that it’s probably easier and quicker to do it the way they’re doing it. Another possibility is that they don’t want people to try to reverse engineer the algorithm. There’s 2 main things that make a search engine unique: The sites it has indexed, and it’s algorithm. Everything that goes into making a ranking decision is public; that is to say that there’s nothing Google has access to that you can’t get. If they made the links public, it’d be possible (for a small subset of sites…. say 1 query 30 sites) to try to reverse engineer an algorithm and guess what’s getting more weight.
Additionally, I don’t think it would be a good idea. When they released PageRank, webmasters went crazy trying to raise it. If they give total number of links, I’m sure there will be a huge race to achieve more links than your competitors – whether relevant or not.
In less than 100 words, describe why you choose to rank Wikipedia above accurate sources? I think this answer is simple too. Google’s main factor is links. Since wikipedia is so broad, it has links from TONS of places. Since PageRank carries on across the domain, links to one article can help boost the PR of other articles.
Another reason is that Wikipedia is peer edited. It’s not the view of one person (when you look at any more credible site, it’s only edited by 1 person.) I think though, that it’s all to do with links.
Do companies/sites that spend a lot with your engine receive any SEO benefits (free consulting time, a few tricks from an engineer, etc) This one I can honestly answer: No! My old company maxed out 2 credit cards / month on Google Adwords. We got cool things like pens, a shirt, and a USB key in the mail, and a phone number to call in regards to our adwords account – but we still had sites banned from the index and get penalized.
I don’t think that Google plays preferences to people who spend more.
Does your engine ever use the predictive abilities of search keyword demands to profit outside the world of search? This one is interesting. I don’t think they do it directly, but I’m sure it has something to do with what types of companies they acquire. For example: If you looked at a trend for job search site queries, I’d bet that they’re up. Why? Because MS, Yahoo, and Google are all buying job search sites right now. Either they’re predicting a big down turn in the market, or they’re noticing that a lot of people are looking for and using those sites.
I think that’s enough for now. For the full list of questions please see Rand’s site (linked above). There’s some more good questions in his comments. Feel free to leave some possible answers to some of the questions in my comments if you like.
I’ve got an interview in the Troy area this Friday, then Monday I (95% chance here) leave for Buffalo for another job interview.
Then, next weekend I’m up north Thursday – Tuesday.
The weekend after that (June 1-3) I’ll be in Toronto for a hockey tournament. It’s our “league championships” Check out these stats. Not bad for a fat guy eh?
Looking at my weight on that page though, I realize I’ve lost almost 10 lbs since the season began!
On top of all this I’ve got my first (and second) ever softball game today. In about 3 hours actually. I’m a little bit nervous. Other than practicing with my friends for the last 3 weeks, I haven’t played baseball since I was 12. That’s a long time.
I’ve gotten a lot better though. I still can’t hit a home run to save my life, but I manage to drop it down right between 2nd base and center field… so at least I’ll have a good on base percentage.
Hmm, haven’t been to Texas in a while… maybe I should squeeze that in somewhere too. Either way, if you’re trying to get in touch with me over the next few weeks and I’m hard to get a hold of – this is why.
What is the opposite of love? Most of you are probably saying “Hate”, but you’re wrong.
The opposite of love is indifference – not giving a damn about the person either way. If I love you, I care. If I hate you, I care. If I’m indifferent, I don’t give a shit.
See love and hate are 2 sides of the same coin, but they’re not opposites. Either way you’re still obsessively thinking about the person.
In fact, if we measure your brain activity and body chemicals etc during times when you’re feeling love and hate they’ll be identical.
Chemically, love and hate are the same.
So what’s the opposite of happiness? You can probably gather that sadness is wrong, and you’re right. Happy and Sad are just like Love and Hate.
The opposite of happiness is boredom. Think about what would make you happy. Many of you might say something like winning the lottery, or having lots of money.
But is the money what makes you happy? Or is it the ability to have free time to do what you want when you want? I’ll bet a lot of it has to do with quitting that boring job of yours.
It’s just an interesting thought I came across today while reading some books. What do you think?
