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Would you like to chat with your Facebook friends? Would you like to browse your friends' latest photos offline? Would you like to group your friends into visual groups?

If so, get this cool, free and powerful application of Facebook now!

Enjoy exploring!

System Requirements:
*
Windows XP (SP2 or later)
*
Windows Vista

Download here:

http://visual-sage.com/downloads.aspx
VisualSage: Facebook on Desktop

Okay, I’m finally out of the Windows 7 mania and have an interesting freeware to share that will be helpful to all Facebook-addicts (like me). I always wanted a complete desktop aplication for Facebook, and I’ve found one now.

Visual Sage for Facebook is an innovative Facebook chat and desktop application implemented by VisualSage, an innovative software technology company. This app is built upon Microsoft’s new technology WPF which shows all our friends at Facebook in a network.
This Facebook desktop application provides easy access to many Facebook’s primary functions, including Facebook Notification, Poke, Profile, Photo browsing, Chat and Instant Messenger. You can chat with your Facebook friends just like you do with your IM contacts. You can also arrange and optimize your network by grouping your friends to subnets. Its features are:

* Visualize your social network with interactive graph representations
* Browse friends photos in an interactive way
* Chat with your online friends online and offline.
* Group your friends into subgroups by drag and drop

These were just a few features. I’d recommend you to download and explore this app.

40 Unusual Websites you should Bookmark

Top 10:
1. beFunky.com - Awesome web app that turns images to cartoonized paintings and videos to cartoons.
2. DisplayWars.com - Incredibly simple tool that helps lots of people. Want to buy a new screen? DisaplyWars lets you compare screen sizes by mapping one display size on top of the other.
3. DocSyncer.com - Synchronize office documents in your ‘My Documents’ folder with Google Docs account.
4. JotYou.com - By using this service you can send messages to others so they get them only when they are in the area you specify.
5. Keybr.com - Online keyboard to practice your touch typing skills.
6. Mint.com - The simplest way to manage your finances.
7. Numbr.com - Free disposable phone numbers.
8. PDFHammer.com - Merge, edit and rearrange PDF documents online.
9. PhoneSpell.com - Ever wondered if you phone number spells something memorable ? PhoneSpell will find it out.
10. SecondRotation.com / BuyMyTronics - Want to cash in on your old iPod ? Or mobile phone ? Both of these services will buy your old (broken) gadget, regardless of its condition.
Other
11. BeamIt.com - Send pictures, music, videos, docs or any other file to your cellphone.
12. BooksInMyPhone.com - Download and read copyright-free books on a mobile phone. Comes with its own book reader.
13. CallTheFuture.com - Schedule text messages and get them delivered (as a voicemail) on any desired date in the future.
14. CameraSummary.com - Extracts so called EXIF data from the images. Shows what model of digicam was used, image creation date and time, resolution settings, location and so on.
15. CanYouRunIt.com - One-click web app that inspects your PC’s hardware and software settings to determine whether or not it meets gaming requirements for a game of your choice.
16. CellSwapper.com - Transfer your current mobile contract to someone else. Or get a free plan with only a short term contract.
17. CivilAnswers.com - Free legal assistance.
18. ControlC.com - This small cross-platform (Win, Mac, Linux) monitors your clipboard and saves everything online.
19. Definr.com - Incredibly fast online dictionary. It takes abt 14 ms to lookup a word.
20. Drop.io - By far the coolest service for private file collaboration and transfers. Add files by email, send voice messages from phone, etc.
21. File-Destructor.com 2 - Generates files (Doc, PDF, … ) that look genuine but won’t launch properly. Basically, it’s a tool that helps you put all the blame on your “faulty computer”.

22. File-encryptor.com - Secure encryption tool to freely encrypt/decrypt sensitive files online. Quite handy for sending over sensitive files.

23. FlashPhone.com - Free flash-based SIP-softphone. Simply add your SIP account and you’re good to go. No need to install anything.

24. Google Mobilizer.com - Makes your fav. websites mobile friendly. Must-have for your mobile bookmarks.

25. GetMyFBIfile.com - Here you can generate letter templates that you can use to request for a free copy of your FBI file.

26. LetterMeLater.com - Offers one feature that your email doesn’t have, ‘the ability to schedule when an email should be sent’. Coolest part about, you can use it directly from your email program (GMail, Outlook, etc.).

27. Mailbucket.com - Finally, a tool to help you forward emails to your feedreader.

28. Mobical.com - Over-the-air mobilebackup and restore service. Backup phone contacts, calendar, bookmarks and settings.

29. MoDazzle.com - Access Facebook, LinkedIn and dozens of other web services (weather, stock quotes, etc.) via email or mobile text messaging. Update Facebook ’status’, get un-read messages from Facebook inbox, get someone’s profile info from LinkedIn, and lots more.

30. Nanoscan.com - Super fast yet compehensive online virus scanner.

31. OhDon’tForget.com - It does only one thing, but does it really well: Schedule text message reminders to any phone.

32. ProQuo.com - Reduce junk mail by removing your personal data from telemarketing lists.

33. PPCalc.com - Comprehensive Paypal fees calculator.

34. Rondee.com - Fast, easy and free way to arrange phone conference calls with as many people as you want.

35. SpokenText.com - Convert PDF, Word, plain text, PowerPoint files, ,RSS news feeds, emails and web pages to speech.

36. Sullr.com - Obtain information about telephone lines in reverse mode. Get address, location, owner’s name etc.

37. WakerUpper.com - Schedule wake-up phone calls. Lots of useful features.

38. WebMarkers.com - Adds additional option to your ‘Print’ menu that lets you print documents (or webpages) directly to the web.

39. WhatShouldIReadNext.com - Book recommendation service. Simply enter the author and title of your latest book and it will give you a list of recommended readings.

40. WorldTaxiMeter.com - Calculate the cost of a taxi ride in a number of top cities worldwide (London, New York, Rome …). Accessible both from the web and mobile phone.
10 Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Stupid


These days, we tend to communicate via the keyboard as much as we do verbally. Often, we’re in a hurry, quickly dashing off e-mails with typos, grammatical shortcuts (I’m being kind here), and that breezy, e.e. cummings, no-caps look. It’s expected. It’s no big deal. But other times, we try to invest a little care, avoiding mistakes so that there’s no confusion about what we’re saying and so that we look professional and reasonably bright.

In general, we can slip up in a verbal conversation and get away with it. A colleague may be thinking, Did she just say “irregardless”?, but the words flow on, and our worst transgressions are carried away and with luck, forgotten.

That’s not the case with written communications. When we commit a grammatical crime in e-mails, discussion posts, reports, memos, and other professional documents, there’s no going back. We’ve just officially gone on record as being careless or clueless. And here’s the worst thing. It’s not necessary to be an editor or a language whiz or a spelling bee triathlete to spot such mistakes. They have a way of doing a little wiggle dance on the screen and then reaching out to
grab the reader by the throat.

So here we are in the era of Word’s red-underline “wrong spelling, dumb ass” feature and Outlook’s Always Check Spelling Before Sending option, and still the mistakes proliferate. Catching typos is easy (although not everyone does it). It’s the other stuff — correctly spelled but incorrectly wielded — that sneaks through and makes us look stupid. Here’s a quick review of some of the big ones.

These days, we tend to communicate via the keyboard as much as we do verbally. Often, we’re in a hurry, quickly dashing off e-mails with typos, grammatical shortcuts (I’m being kind here), and that breezy, e.e. cummings, no-caps look. It’s expected. It’s no big deal. But other times, we try to invest a little care, avoiding mistakes so that there’s no confusion about what we’re saying and so that we look professional and reasonably bright.

In general, we can slip up in a verbal conversation and get away with it. A colleague may be thinking, Did she just say “irregardless”?, but the words flow on, and our worst transgressions are carried away and with luck, forgotten.

That’s not the case with written communications. When we commit a grammatical crime in e-mails, discussion posts, reports, memos, and other professional documents, there’s no going back. We’ve just officially gone on record as being careless or clueless. And here’s the worst thing. It’s not necessary to be an editor or a language whiz or a spelling bee triathlete to spot such mistakes. They have a way of doing a little wiggle dance on the screen and then reaching out to
grab the reader by the throat.

So here we are in the era of Word’s red-underline “wrong spelling, dumb ass” feature and Outlook’s Always Check Spelling Before Sending option, and still the mistakes proliferate. Catching typos is easy (although not everyone does it). It’s the other stuff — correctly spelled but incorrectly wielded — that sneaks through and makes us look stupid. Here’s a quick review of some of the big ones.

1. Loose for lose
No: I always loose the product key.
Yes: I always lose the product key.

2. It’s for its (or god forbid, its’)
No: Download the HTA, along with it’s readme file.
Yes: Download the HTA, along with its readme file.
No: The laptop is overheating and its making that funny noise again.
Yes: The laptop is overheating and it’s making that funny noise again.

3.They’re fortheir for there
No: The managers are in they’re weekly planning meeting.
Yes: The managers are in their weekly planning meeting.
No: The techs have to check there cell phones at the door, and their not happy about it.
Yes: The techs have to check their cell phones at the door, and they’re not happy about it.

4.i.e. for e.g.
No: Use an anti-spyware program (i.e., AdAware).
Yes: Use an anti-spyware program (e.g., AdAware).
Note: The term i.e. means “that is”; e.g. means “for example.” And a comma follows both of them.

5.Effect for affect
No: The outage shouldn’t effect any users during work hours.
Yes: The outage shouldn’t affect any users during work hours.
Yes: The outage shouldn’t have any effect on users.
Yes: We will effect several changes during the downtime.
Note: Impact is not a verb. Purists, at least, beg you to use affect instead:
No: The outage shouldn’t impact any users during work hours.
Yes: The outage shouldn’t affect any users during work hours.
Yes: The outage should have no impact on users during work hours.

6. You’re foryour
No: Remember to defrag you’re machine on a regular basis.
Yes: Remember to defrag your machine on a regular basis.
No: Your right about the changes.
Yes: You’re right about the changes.

7. Different than for different from
No: This setup is different than the one at the main office.
Yes: This setup is different from the one at the main office.
Yes: This setup is better than the one at the main office.

8. Lay for lie
No: I got dizzy and had to lay down.
Yes: I got dizzy and had to lie down.
Yes: Just lay those books over there.

9. Then for than
No: The accounting department had more problems then we did.
Yes: The accounting department had more problems than we did.
Note: Here’s a sub-peeve. When a sentence construction begins with If, you don’t need a then. Then is implicit, so it’s
superfluous and wordy:
No: If you can’t get Windows to boot, then you’ll need to call Ted.
Yes: If you can’t get Windows to boot, you’ll need to call Ted.

10.Could of, would of for could have, would have
No: I could of installed that app by mistake.
Yes: I could have installed that app by mistake.
No: I would of sent you a meeting notice, but you were out of town.
Yes: I would have sent you a meeting notice, but you were out of town.

Bonus peeve

I’ll just throw one more thing out here: My current burning pet peeve. At some point, who knows when, it became common practice to say that something is “hit and miss.” Nuh-UH. It can’t be both, right? It either hits or it misses? “Hit OR miss.” Granted, it’s a small thing, a Boolean-obsessive sort of thing. But it’s nonetheless vexing because it’s so illogical. Okay, that’s mine. If you’ve got a peeve of your own, share it in the discussion (or post a comment and tell me to get over it).
Great Website Links Collection for IT Geeks!



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Google Q&A Reference

Q: I’ve got a question about internationalization: I have a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and I’ve registered these as such in Webmasters’ tools, will this be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning uk/us/aus ?
A (John Mueller): That’s generally ok. I would still make sure that the pages are obviously well-targeted for those audiences. It wouldn’t make sense to send users from specific areas to one general page. In that case, I would use a single page without geotargeting.

Q: Hi Maile - thought you might be here - remember playing pool against me at the SEOmoz party and getting your ass whooped?!
A (Maile Ohye): The sun was in my eye.

Q: what’s the time now at your location ?
A (Matt Cutts): I have 2:01 p.m. Pacific time, Moh Design

Q: Just Curious - Why does a yellow background occasionally appear in the bottom search box of the SERP?
A (John Mueller): This sounds like a plugin in your browser .

Q: Does Google look negativly on all caps? <–i can spell i swear
A (John Mueller): nope, we take the letters as they come :)

Q: Q: can Google crawl Flash sites/
A (John Mueller): Somewhat — we can extract some information from the Flash files, but it’s generally not the same as with HTML sites/pages.

Q: Hi Matt, Stephen from Adverted, I;m headed back into China to manage Alibaba, hoping that we can get you and Jainfai over for SMX this next year :)

A (Matt Cutts): Stephen, my wife is pretty harsh on me traveling these days, but I’d like to get someone from Google out there to present/speak.

Q: I’ve got a question about internationalization: I have a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and I’ve registered these as such in Webmasters’ tools, will this be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning uk/us/aus?
A (Susan Moskwa): Geographic targeting doesn’t affect the fact that we only want to show one version of a piece of content in search results; we will still try to filter out duplicates when we serve search results.

Q: The question everyone wants to ask. What is more detail about the Google and Yahoo paid partnership, and what do we need to know?
A (Susan Moskwa): http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/our-agreement-to-provide-ad-...

Q: Is there a limit to the number or % of results from a single site in the Google News home and category pages? Would it perhaps be better for a company to have multiple news sites (different domains) in order to get more links on Google News pages?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Mark, I would recommend taking this question to the Google News Help Group here: http://groups.google.com/group/googlenews-help.

Q: Hi John, I wanted to know more about Google webmaster tools stats.. How can we automate it? Why are there special characters like “[" when we download excel file
A (John Mueller): Hi Ankit, I have a python script on my site at http://johnmu.com/ that will convert those files into more readable ones.

Q: Hi! I'm new to the interactive industry this week. I'm learning about search marketing, specifically keyword search. Any advice you have for a newb in the industry?
A (Susan Moskwa): I'd recommend getting to know some of the popular blogs in the industry and follow a couple that you like. There's a lot of great free information available if you know where to look!

Q: I'm interested in the huge SERP flux I'm experience for my main keyword.
A (Susan Moskwa): I'd start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444

Q: does Google 'value' a website incorporating a relevant blog and forum
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Paul, I would say that an organic blog or forum definitely adds value to your website by creating a community effect.

Q: How sensitive is Google Local to differences in addresses? Will a difference of a space or a dash create confusion in the matrix?
A (Matt Dougherty): Quentin, your question is probably best answered by the Local experts here: http://local.google.com/support/

Q: If a website's Robots.txt file is goign to a 404 error will it be removed from the index? What if it is missing altogether?
A (Michael Wyszomierski): If there is no robots.txt file Google will assume that there are not any crawling restrictions, as long as there are no other robots directives via meta tags or the x-robots HTTP header directive.

Q: Hi, I am not sure is it good question at this moment, but am i allowed to crowl Google result?
A (Susan Moskwa): Making automated queries to our web search results is against Google's Terms of Service.

Q: In regards to the Flash files, I believe it is possible to create Flash movies with extra accessible content, correct?
A (evan t): We encourage building Flash sites with html accessibility for googlebot to crawl. For more information check out our blog post on flash: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/best-uses-of-fla...

Q: Does Google differentiate between searches in lower case and searches with proper capitalization?
A (John Mueller): We may take this into account if we can recognize that it is relevant to the query.

Q: Our pages are using mod_rewrite to strip ".html"-- Will Google think of "process" and "process.html" as separate pages?
A (Susan Moskwa): If both URLs serve content, we will interpret them as two separate URLs. If the one redirects to the other (e.g. with a 301 redirect), this will let us know that one is the preferred/permanent URL.

Q: Question: Suppose you rank #1 for inanchor: intitle: and intext: But for just the keyword phrase you?re on second page. Any tips on what to do to get up for just the phrase as well?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Peter, echoing what John just talked about, I'd say making sure your content is useful to users is the best approach.

Q: After a reconsideration request, do you typically notify webmasters that the penalty has been lifted?
A (John Mueller): If you recognize that your ranking / indexing has improved, chances are that it has been accepted. if not, I would recommend posting in the Webmaster Help Groups.

Q: It appears that many (not all) the website in the top 20 are boucing positions all over the place. #7 one minute, #13 the next. But a few websites are not exepriencing this at all
A (Susan Moskwa): Jonathan will do a presentation on this later in this chat.

Q: is an empty robots.txt bad?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi ralf - an empty robots.txt by default will allow all Internet spiders to crawl through all the pages on your site. If that is not something you want, then consider modifying your robots.txt file to set permissions.

Q: Does Google take anything from links taged nofollow, for example does it read the anchor text and credit that to the destination?
A (Susan Moskwa): No, it basically drops that link from our link graph (it ignores it).

Q: beside content, what are the top 3 things to do to your site to reank high ( short version)
A (Susan Moskwa): http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349

Q: I was getting Google organic traffic until last week and all of a sudden it dropped. Now I don't get any traffic from Google organic except just few. my site still getting indexed
A (Susan Moskwa): http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444...

Q: Is there any way to speed up the time between selecting a country for targeting and it actually beign updated in the system?
A (John Mueller): We're working on improving the webmaster experience with Webmaster Tools, including speeding up the reaction time for specific features.

Q: Is there a comprehensive list of the tags that GoogleBot can read somewhere?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Quentin, try this Help Center doc - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...

Q: whats matts cats name?
A (Matt Cutts): I have two cats. One is Emmy (she's a scaredy cat) and the other one is Ozzie. He's a handful.

Q: What about a feedback status on Spam Report? I mean when I report spam site, I immediately get a message that the suggestion will be taked on mind, but nobody let us know when, or if the reported site or submission are right or not.
A (Matt Cutts): Andrea, normally we're able to take a look at the reports pretty quickly. I like the idea of giving a little more feedback though.

Q: How do Google handle microformats? Will I get a better seo if I use them?
A (John Mueller): As far as I know, we mostly use the rel=nofollow microformat. I don't think that we handle other microformats. We will however keep track of what's going on to make sure not to miss anything :)

Q: Where is the best place to see what keywords people are typing in ?
A (Susan Moskwa): This tool gives feedback based on user queries: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Q: Is this an unfair "algo". Just to clarify, the website that were escaping the flux were at #1 and #3, the #2 spot bouncing like a tennis ball.
A (John Mueller): We are constantly working on our algorithms and changes can and will take place over time.

Q: And a follow-up to anybody, do you count links from papers indexed by Google Academic, or Google books?
A (Matt Cutts): Morris, I don't think that we count publications from Google Scholar in our backlinks right now unless we already found the document on the web anyway as if it were a regular web page.

Q: Is there any limit on the number of redirections 301, a Web site?. In a large site, if you change the URL structure, is the optimum time to do it with 301? or is best done gradually
A (Matt Cutts): There's no per-page limit on the number of 301s you can do, so you could move 100K pages to 100K new location. However, if we see a really long chain of redirects, eventually we will decide to stop following the chain.

Q: Do 301 redirects send PR to its destination? I have several domains that 301 to 1 domain, and a couple have PR. Will it now send that PR to the 1 domain now that it is 301 redirected? Thank you.
A (Susan Moskwa): 301 redirects are the best way to let us know that you'd like a particular URL to get "credit" for factors from another URL; we'll pass those signals across a 301 redirect as appropriate.

Q: I've got 3 cats,.. cindy, caty and penelopy..
A (John Mueller): cute

Q: Does Analytics incorporate Google Maps/Local traffic within the organic traffic or does something additional need to be set up?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Russ, I'd suggest asking this in the Analytics Help Group here: http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help. There are definitely experts on the topic there.

Q: Matt, I was going to ask you about your cat - I've got two Persians - is that cat grooming tool you posted on your blog as good as you make out?!
A (Matt Cutts): Pete, I wouldn't recommend the tool unless I thought it was really good. I think it would work well for Persian cats, esp. because they have very long hair. :)

Q: if the site is designed with css, does the crawler throw out the .css and look only at the HTML?
A (Matt Cutts): Typically we wouldn't crawl CSS, Kien, but in a few limited circumstances we can (e.g. if we're checking for hidden text).

Q: Further on Geotargetting. I run a multinational site with about 12 different languages being supported. We are implimenting geotrageting so users are directed to the appropriate language page for their country. The concern of some is that Google may penal
A (John Mueller): I would recommend not redirecting users based on their location. This can be a bad user experience. It's better to allow a user to choose his version based on his searches.

Q: What is the explanation for Google finding and registering a site and then having it disappear completely a few days later? They don't recognize that they registered it at all?
A (Susan Moskwa): By "registering" do you mean "indexing"? Sometimes a site may fall in and out of the index when it's very new, but this usually stabilizes after awhile. I'd give it some time.

Q: Is Google hiring in Florida?
A (Bergy Berghausen): unfortunately, we're from Webmaster Support, not hr. Check http://www.google.com/jobs

Q: does Google work with any seo companies?
A (Matt Cutts): Brian, I don't believe that we recommend any specific SEO companies. What we typically do instead is try to work with as many users/webmasters/site owners/SEOs as we can, e.g. by going to conferences, via chats like this, and on the webmaster discuss grp.

Q: if there is code commented that contains keyword phrases, is that seen by Google as spamming/spoofing?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Gregory, commented code is ignored by robots, therefore it will have no influence in anything

Q: I have a competitor who is using cloaking to to cover up site design and a client linking directory. Is there anything we can do to inform Google of this?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Matthew! You can submit a spam report from within your Webmaster Tools account to report a site which you think displays spammy behaviors

Q: how do you define and penalize duplicate content? are syndication deals excluded?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Seth, we just did a post on duplicate content on the Google Webmaster Central blog which has a lot of useful information that may be helpful for you

Q: Can you explain the efficacy of the Link: operator in regard to it's "accuracy" ?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi again Quentin, The link: operator is only intended to give you a sample of your backlinks. Logging into Webmaster Tools will give you a more comprehensive list.

Q: @Matt Cutts. Is quoting, or "block" quoting for this matter considered as duplicate content? Does it "hurt" at all? And to what extend it does if it does indeed.
A (Matt Cutts): I would be careful not to "block quote" an entire article and then not add any of your own info (that's essentially spam scraping), but just regular quoting would be fair use and shouldn't cause you any issues.

Q: Has Google started crawling video sitemaps faster than 2-3 months as stated in the last session?
A (John Mueller): I'm not aware of changes in this regard at the moment. However, we're always working on improving our processes.

Q: I Jianfai coming to this event?
A (Adam Lasnik): no, unfortunately not.

Q: I know a blogger spammer that uses my wp themes and turns them into blogger templates without crediting, I tried to connect to the spam office, but no luck
A (Susan Moskwa): You can submit a spam report to let us know about this: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35265 You could also file a DMCA takedown request if they're stealing your content.

Q: To what extent is Google developing LSI in it's search algo?
A (John Mueller): As a webmaster, you generally don't need to worry about details such as that. Writing content for your users is still better than creating content based on artificial metrics.

Q: If a site had a noindex meta tag and was removed from the index, how long before it could come back into the index? Would that removal carry over to another domain if that site was 301'd to a new site?
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Brian, the site (or just one URL) can return to the index once it's recrawled with the noindex tag removed. Also, you can't really noindex a separate domain, even if you 301 (so no mean webmasters can easily exclude your domain from being indexed).

Q: What about a beter improvement of ~ operator? I mean, for english thesaurus it's perfect, but ever you tried to use it in italian? Every suggestion return most of the time a no-sense result.
A (John Mueller): Thanks, I'll pass it on to the appropriate team!

Q: MSN is thinking of having a generic 404 error page option with links from the MSN organic results. How will this affect Google search results?
A (Matt Cutts): Alan, I haven't looked into this myself, but my hope is that MSN would preserve the 404 HTTP status code. Then users can use the page but search engines will still see that the page is 404.

Q: Will we ever have control over sitelinks to bring searchers to the better pages on our site, vs the ones Google thinks are the best pages?
A (evan t): Sitelinks are automatically generated by our algorithm and are meant to help users navigate your site. While you cannot opt into having sitelinks, you are able to block Sitelinks using Google Webmaster Tools.

Q: Matt, what is going on regarding site in frame spam? I mean a kind of directory site with thousands of pages and sells advertising. But shows the site in a huge iframe.
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Peter, if you have noticed behaviour that you think might be spammy, please submit a spam report -- Google does look at all spam reports

Q: my site disapeared for 7 days and came back today. Should I be worried that it might be a warning of a problem
A (John Mueller): It's always good to be on top of changes.If you can't recognize anything, I would recommend posting in Webmaster Help groups.

Q: can you use geotargeting to target a region or a # of countries?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Seth, geotargeting at the moment is only possible to target single countries, no regions are supported at the moment.

Q: what if your URL path is in english and the content of the site is in Spanish, on a .com.mx domain? would it be better to use spanish language in the URL paths?
A (John Mueller): It's best to keep URLs in a way that users can recognize what the content is about.

Q: Matt, How come you don't enter the Crawling, indexing, and ranking forums more often?
A (Matt Cutts): I feel like there are a bunch of Googlers that do that really well, but that's fair feedback. I tend to roam all over the web since I know a bunch of Googlers are already keeping an eye on that forum.

Q: I think my site was hacked through an XSS hole (search functionality). How can I protect that hole in the future?
A (Matt Cutts): http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/check-your-search-box-for-xss-exploits/ talked about this a bit and pointed to a good blog posts.

Q: this is a general question - how is Google dealing with code that is commented out. I am coming across a lot of sites I deal with were a programer will have commented out code instead of removing it - I am wondering if this has a potential adverse effect.
A (John Mueller): We ignore it.

Q: Whats the average time after which a site's PR gets updated? any defined rules for that ?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi Abhijeet - Google's index is continuously updating itself so there are no defined timeframes when a site's ranking will change

Q: Matt, AZEA uses hidden text with it's image nav links (-999ems indent), is that likely to be regarded as suspicious?
A (evan t): Hi Rich,
A (evan t): We appreciate your assistance in maintaining the quality of our search results.
A (evan t): If you've found a particular site that's spamming our index, you can report it via the "Report spam in our index" link in Webmaster Tools.

Q: if a site had sitelinks, then suddenly lost them, is that a sign of lost trust, links, or something else?
A (evan t): Hi Ben,
A (evan t): Sitelinks, the links shown below some sites in our natural search results, are automatically generated by our algorithm and meant to help users navigate your site.
A (evan t): While you can not opt into having these features shown, if your site does qualify sitelinks, you can block the ones that you do not want shown.
A (evan t): For more advice on optimizing for sitelinks, I would suggest visiting the Webmaster Help Group at http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help. They have loads of experienced webmasters and Googlers providing answers and feedback.

Q: About the robots.txt: I read today a deep post in the net where is specified that whenever gbot is unable to get back result for an existent robots.txt file in a shorten time, Google crawler start to ignore web site page indexing. This sound a bit strange.
A (John Mueller): If we are not sure whether or not we are allowed to crawl a site, we might play it safe and not crawl the site. Of course if the robots.txt is unreachable, chances are the rest of your site might be too (which is bad).

Q: Matt, can you comment on the number of links leading to interior content/category pages, that appear on the index of a site - and the impact of having many internal links on the index or not having that..
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Jeff, by index do you mean Sitemap or index.html type page. In general, if it's index.html (not a Sitemap) then keep is user-friendly and navigatable. We usually say 100 links or fewer. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...

Q: Does Google support or plan to support hCard microformats?
A (John Mueller): I'm not aware of changes in that regard, but we are always open to new ideas!

Q: Will hiding navigation items with css (that are displayed on certain pages/directories) have a negative impact when Google indexes the site?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Jonathan, when building your site and considering hiding navigation elements, it's best to always think, "is this good for my users?" and "would i do this if there were no search engines?

Q: My blog moved to a new domain, but I still have both blogs running with the same content, so that old visitors dont miss my blog.... Is this treated as duplicate content ?
A (John Mueller): I would recommend moving old content to the new blog and using a 301 redirect to move users to the new site. This helps us & users to keep track of things.

Q: How do i get hold of my local Google office, South Africa
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Simon, Unfortunately we don't have local one-to-one support at local offices. If you have a specific question, we recommend posting it in our Help Groups.

Q: Whats the average time after which the PR of a site gets updated?
A (Matt Cutts): We typically do pushes to the toolbar every 3-4 months, so it can take that long between toolbar data pushes.

Q: Is there a way to see search listings from the past? To see how ranked yesterday or the day before for example?
A (John Mueller): Not at the moment, but that's an interesting idea!

Q: What can we do to get the geo-target country correct when ccTLD isn't available and Webmaster Tools declaration (3-4 months ago) did nothing.
A (Matt Cutts): Tim Dineen, I think we offered the feature in the frontend and then started supported it in the backend a little later, but I believe that we handle the geotargeting in the webmaster console pretty quickly these days.

Q: How often are the external links updated in Webmaster Central? I've seen instances of links no longer being reported there, even though they still exist
A (John Mueller): These are updated regularly, though it is impossible to give a hard timeline.

Q: I've been using Google Analytics for a while. Since then, some customers complains about slow access. Could it be related?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi Juan - if you're experiencing problems with Google Analytics, feel free to check out the Analytics Help Center to troubleshoot: http://www.google.com/analytics/support_overview.html

Q: With the increasing amount of sites using nofollow tags. Is Google looking at those links and taking anything away, like anchor text?
A (John Mueller): We ignore links that have the rel=nofollow microformat.

Q: When is your next PR update scheduled for please?
A (evan t): At this moment we are unable to answer questions about individual sites. We highly encourage directing these questions to our Webmast Help Group which has Googlers and users alike: http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/

Q: Currently the SiteLinks displayed for my site aren't very helpful for users. Does the design of my site effect how these links are compiled? What can I do to help Google compile better SiteLinks?
A (John Mueller): You can have bad sitelinks removed in your Webmaster Tools account & give general feedback while doing that.

Q: why is search history more secure than things like adsense, Google checkout, adwords, which has to do with real $$$. The $$$ items need secondary passwords
A (John Mueller): I'll pass that on to the appropriate team, Jeremy.

Q: Abhijeet: Is that update period just for the toolbar, or for search results as well? What's the time it takes for page rank changes to affect search results?
A (John Mueller): Our search results are updated all the time! The pagerank in the toolbar however is only updated a few times a year.

Q: How long does it take for 301s and 410s to take effect?
A (Bergy Berghausen): 301s and 410s can't "take effect" until after we've had a chance to crawl them--that's the real variable. After we crawl the URL and get the status code, your removal / move should happen within a short period of time, most typically within a few days.

Q: What about paid links? Does Google really manage to identify paid links?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Mike, yes Google does identify paid links.

Q: I'm thinking about serving up an optimized version of my site for accessiblity reasons (no javascript, high contrast css, reduced usage of forms), would Google be ok if we served them this version?
A (Matt Dougherty): Michael, this sounds reasonable as long as the user doesn' t get something they didn't intend on. There are plenty of sites that link off their flashy home page to an HTML version of their site.

Q: Under webmaster the crawl rate trails by how many days on average?
A (John Mueller): The graph is usually fairly up to date, though the labels might be slightly off to the side.

Q: I have been trying to figure out why Google is showing different search ranking for my website. I see a spike one week and i see drastic fall for my Google organic traffic
A (Matt Cutts): That could be personalized search. It's also the case that our rankings do change naturally as we crawl different docs, too.

Q: Is there a review process related to reviews in personalized search, i have reviewed local businesses then did not see those reviews posted
A (John Mueller): We use data from various sources, but it might take some time for it to propogate to us.

Q: How does Google index reviews (I noticed that when I get a map of a specific business it gives a link to reviews)? Is there a specific microformat that is best?
A (John Mueller): We pull this data from only a few sources, I'm not aware of ways to import it directly from your website.

Q: What reasons may cause Google to ignore a small percentage of pages in a small sitemap (less than 1K pages submitted by Console).
A (Matt Cutts): We do look at the number of links when we decide how much to crawl, so just submitting a sitemap doesn't guarantee crawling.

Q: Stupid Question.. should i submit my site to Google monthly/yearly ( told by seo site to do this)?
A (Matt Cutts): Brian, I wouldn't bother. You can submit it once at at google.com/addurl.html

Q: Any comments on the seomoz article "why apple isn't UK enough for google?" Any other tips/tricks about UK sites which are physically hosted in the USA and not on a .co.uk?
A (evan t): Great question. In Webmaster Tools you can set geotargeting. For more information please see: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-in-world-i...

Q: If a client uses the no cache to stop old pages with different prices to be shown as a cache result, what are some of the problems with this?
A (Matt Cutts): I wouldn't expect this to be a big problem. Plenty of sites don't want to show a cached link for various reasons.

Q: How does personalized search effect businesses who are naturally optimizing their site?
A (John Mueller): If your website is optimized and being well-received by users, this will generally be mirrored in each user's search results.

Q: Where does Google stand on Sub-domain spam/doorway pages right now? In some verticals, sub-domain dw pages are more than 50% top 10 serps.
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi Brian - just caught your question. Google still considers doorway pages and obviously webspam as violation of our Webmaster Guidelines.
A (Reid Yokoyama): If you see spam in our search results, feel free to submit a spam report to us at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport

Q: Is there any truth in the rumour that, to get around people buying links to boost PR, Google will start valuing links based on the number of people actually clicking on them, rather than the relvancy of the link and the PR of the page it's actually on?
A (John Mueller): I'm not aware of any such changes, but we are constantly working on improving search quality, using information that is relevant and important.

Q: We have noticed that Google indexes/displays our content within 24 hours and then removes it from the index and then re-returns it. Is this right?
A (Matt Cutts): Sean, that can happen at times. I wouldn't worry about it.

Q: I'm worried that we'll miss new visitors because personalized search will drive them to their frequently visited sites instead of those based on organic search relevance. Should I be concerned about this?
A (John Mueller): No :) -- we try to show variety in the search results and additionally smaller sites are generally quicker in adopting to new trends, allowing new sites to rank for new terms faster.

Q: Do you see personalized search and behavioral metrics as a strong spam fighting tool? It seems to me greater adoption would help in the never ending fight against spam. And could folks Do you see personalized search and behavioral metrics as a strong
A (John Mueller): We are constantly working on improving search quality and if these metrics are relevant, they might be taken into account (though I'm currently not aware of it at the moment)

Q: does Google track what i'm searching for on other sites if i'm logged in with my gmail account? if not, how come i see Google serch results that seem to be related my previous search elsewhere
A (John Mueller): In general, your Google account is probably what you're using for gmail. If you're logged in, those searches may be tracked if you have search history turned on.

Q: Does PPC influence organic, personalized search?
A (John Mueller): Not that I am aware of.

Q: I have a question: why does Google give an "estimated results" number that is different from the actual number of pages indexed from a site (ie using site:url.com)? How would one ensure that the numbers become the same.
A (John Mueller): When we have a high number of possibilities, it is generally not worth the effort to find the exact number of pages that would rank (especially since the user can only see the first 1000).

Q: Does googlebot ignore links that use the nofollow tags or does googlebot follow the links and not assign any value to the link?
A (John Mueller): We ignore links with rel=nofollow

Q: How are noral users aware of the fact that they are being personally targeted?
A (John Mueller): Personalized search results are always tagged in the search results pages.

Q: does the spider index dashes in words like self-employed? How is this treated in search results?
A (John Mueller): I would not worry about punctuation like that. Write your content naturally :)

Q: As we take 301 I understand that retain the backlinks of the pages and therefore their PR, does the value in the Google toolbar not be visible on the bar to publicly update it?
A (John Mueller): It might take some time for changes to be reflected in the toolbar.

Q: subdomains are case sensitive, right?
A (evan t): Subdomains are not case sensitive.

Q: Why should anything ever be case sensitive online?
A (John Mueller): Flexibility :)

Q: Hi Matt, Are there any guidelines available on keyword density we have pages that are about 1 single subject and the keyword density is quite high
A (Matt Cutts): Antony, you may not believe this, but we tend not to think much about KW density here at Google, b/c our algorithms handle it pretty well. My advice is to pull in an innocent/non-search friend and have them read the text. If they raise their eyebrow, ...

Q: when comparing keyword A and keyword B why does Google trends and Google adwords disagree on which provides a higher traffic level?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Greg, This would be a better question for our Trends or AdWords support teams. Try dropping by one or both of their Help Groups.

Q: is it possible to talk to a tech by phone?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Roy, if you have a question, it is best to post it to our Webmaster Help Group
A (Jessica Wong): help group can be found here: http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help

Q: If I click a PPC listing, will that visit influence organic, personalized search results?
A (John Mueller): I believe this is tracked only if you have the Toolbar, are logged in and have web history enabled.

Q: I've heard "SEO Gurus" say that Google considers www and non-www domains separately resulting to duplicate content if not taken care of properly. same goes with domain,com/ and domain.com/index.html
A (John Mueller): You can use the preferred domain setting in webmaster tools. I would recommend doing a redirect if possible. We try to figure it out ourselves, but sometimes it helps to push your preference.

Q: Matt Cutts, First THANK YOU for all your videos they are very helpful.
A (Matt Cutts): Glad if you like the videos! :)

Q: Does choosing a display URL in your webmaster account fix a duplicate domain URL issue (www vs. non www)? Or is a 301 neccessary?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Mike, Either one should work

Q: IS there a problem with URLs that end in .0 like example.com/seo2.0
A (John Mueller): I think this has been resolved.

Q: Are Google going to give any weight to geo location meta tags - if so is there an 'accepted' standard
A (John Mueller): No, we don't use them.

Q: How does Google differentiate between UK and US spelling differences? EG: Jewelry and Jewellery, colour and color
A (John Mueller): We try to figure out what the user is looking for and bring the best results.

Q: What if you use a wild card, still case sensitive?
A (Bergy Berghausen): the wildcards aren't case-sensitive (since they're wildcards), but the other characters are still case-sensitive.

Q: Will Google consider giving any incentive to webmasters/users who helps Google to fight spam? Maybe some sort of point based system would be interesting..This will certainly motivate all the webmasters to come forward and help Google to Keep Spam out..
A (Matt Cutts): Saad, I do like that suggestion a lot. Something for us to think about.

Q: Does GoogleBot tend to have a preference for long or short filenames/directory names?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Quentin. No Googlebot doesn't have preference on short or long filenames/directory names, usualy short names are preferred by users for usability purposes.

Q: I have some Amazon Associates webstores. Obviously they have the same content that Amazon has. And obviously Google sees duplicate content and dont indexes a lot of my webpages. Do you have any suggestions on how to solve this?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Wall-E, as long as your Amazon Associates store provides added value to users, there's nothing you should be worried about

Q: whats the link to that webmaster help group?
A (Jessica Wong): Hi Roy, here is the link to the Official Google Webmaster Help group http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help

Q: Does Google make a website crestor?
A (John Mueller): Yes, we have Google Sites and Google Pages (and Blogger too)

Q: is 301 redirect considered as SPAM?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi Rabin - a 301 permanent redirect is not considered webspam itself, but if you end up on a page that IS webspam, then that's another problem :)

Q: is there any way to make java based client application around Google result
A (John Mueller): Not at the moment.

Q: Why aren't crawlers clever enough to know the server type that's returning results and react accordingly?
A (John Mueller): IIS servers can be case sensitive (and are always, with regards to URL parameters). Apache servers can be case insensitive too.

Q: Clean code is better code - but is making sure code is w3c verified worth while?
A (John Mueller): Sure - it can help more users to view your pages properly, which is always good (and can result in more links too). However, we generally try to figure out what is happening on a page, so it's not vital.

Q: Is there any chance, that problems in receiving robots.txt can completely prevent site from indexing?
A (Mariya Moeva): In addition, you can use the robots.txt analysis tool in your Webmaster Tools account to analyze your robots.txt file

Q: is it true that Google first gives free organic traffic and after a while stops giving free organic traffic and encourages to use Adwords?
A (Susan Moskwa): No; there is no relationship between paid search and organic search.

Q: When you use the robots.txt tool in Webmaster Tools does it abide by this case sensitive rule?
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Alan, yes. The robots.txt analysis tool is case sensitive in the correct areas. Directives like "disallow" can be lower or uppercase. Path and directories are correctly case sensitve.

Q: I recently got one of my sites de-indexed out of Google, i believe it was becasue my adsense account got banned for invalid clicks, is this a valid reason to de-index the site? and if so, how long does it take to my site back in there?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Siukin, if your website suddenly disappeared from Google Search results, and you suspect it might have been due to a violation of our quality guidelines, it might be a good idea to submit a request for reconsideration after fixing the issue

Q: Typically, what % of the websites' pages does Google index from large sites
A (Bergy Berghausen): That depends on the size of the site, its PageRank, and a bunch of other factors. This is hard to generalize for.

Q: If another website is copying my content, is there any place where I can report that?
A (Susan Moskwa): www.google.com/dmca.html

Q: Hi John. You do a great job on the forums BTW. Do you have to think about EVERY SINGLE WORD you type knowing it can hit the entire net?
A (John Mueller): Yes - it takes a bit of practice, but posting something that I am not 110% sure about can be problematic when users try to implement it.

Q: Are there any amount of duplicate content pages that are acceptable? In other words if we have 2 pages serving the same content is that just as bad as 40 pages serving duplicate
Best Free Anti-Virus Software

If you are looking for the best possible protection my top recommendation is Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Classic [1]. Although its detection rate is outstanding there are some reservations. First it lacks email scanning; this is only available in the paid version. That means that AntiVir won’t warn you about any infected emails before you open them. However should you open an infected email then AntiVir will still spring into action, so not having an email scanner doesn’t mean you are not protected from email based infections. My second reservation is that AntiVir is quite an intrusive product - you will certainly be well aware of its presence. Finally AntiVir Personal Edition Classic has a time limited license. It is renewable but be aware you will have to periodically go through the hoops.

If you not prepared to accept the drawbacks to AntiVir I would suggest either AVG Antivirus 7 Free Edition [2] or the Avast! scanner [3]. Neither is quite as effective in detection as AntiVir however they are both more complete products and less intrusive in use.

AVG Free has been continuously refined since it was first released in 1991 and the latest version V7.5 makes further improvements to an already solid product. Additionally, it’s relatively small, light on resources, has regular automatic updates and handles email scanning. There is a free and a pro version, the only difference being that the free version has a few non-critical features disabled and has no technical support other than a free user forum.

Equally effective is the free Avast! scanner [3] though its funky media player style interface is not to everyone’s taste. Avast! also required periodic re-registration while AVG does not. However Avast! does not seem to suffer the signature file update problems that plague some AVG users.

AVG and Avast! are excellent free products that will meet the needs of most users. However none of these offer the best malware detection available. That title belongs to commercial products like NOD32, F-Secure, the full versions of AntiVir, Kaspersky AV and others. They are however capable packages that offer the financially challenged a real alternative to the major anti-virus suites.

However if you use AVG or Avast! in conjunction with a sandbox for surfing (see section 4) and an anti-spyware product (see section 3) you can achieve a level of protection approaching that offered by the best commercial AV products.

Further improvement is possible running regular on-demand scans with a different anti-virus product.

On-demand scans should be run regularly, at least weekly, to check for viruses and other malware that may have been missed by your main scanner.

A good option for on-demand scanning is the free version of the commercial AV product BitDefender [4]. It’s a first class product with excellent detection rates but as the free version lacks an email scanner and a resident virus guard, it’s only really suited for use as an on-demand scanner rather than your main AV product. There are some other limitations as well. First it has an annoying habit of detecting malware products that have been quarantined by other security products and you can’t exclude these areas from subsequent scans. Second, it is only available on a one year non-renewable license.

[1] http://www.free-av.com Windows 95-Vista, 20.3MB
[2] http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/ Windows 98-Vista, 29.0MB
[3] http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html Windows 95-Vista, 16.1MB
[4] http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-14-en–BitDefender-8-Free-Edition.html Windows 98-XP, 13.2MB
HTML to PDF Converter

If you'd like to save a web site for posterity without the mess of saving the page and all its files, the web-based HTML to PDF Converter can crank out a PDF.

The service is pretty straightforward, with a spot to plug in the link to website you want to convert, then click Make PDF and either save or open the file. Out of curiosity I tried non-HTML files from the web, including TXT files and image files like PNG and JPG. The site will convert all of them to PDF, but with mixed results for image files—it appears if an image is larger than an 8.5x11 sheet when "printed" at its native resolution, it gets chopped up. If web-to-PDF is a regular thing for you, try the PDF Download extension we've previously written up. HTML to PDF Converter is a free service and the PDF files it produces are not watermarked or labeled.


It's a simple service to convert the web pages to PDF files. No need to install applications on your computer.
It's free and without registration!
http://html-pdf-converter.com/
'Print What You Like', and 'Xtravo Explorer'

Print What You Like

Tired of printing web pages only to find your printout is full of ads, empty space, and other junk you don't want? Print What You Like is a free online editor that lets you format any web page for printing in seconds.

http:/www.printwhatyoulike.com/
Xtravo Explorer

Xtravo Explorer is an alternative browser built for performance. It opens heavy websites in 10 seconds when using DSL128/kbps and a dial up connection. Now, imagine its speed if you use even a standard DSL or cable connection!

http://www.jawoco.com

Today's fresh software picks were provided courtesy of Bob Helmer at Shell Extension City. Please note that the below software descriptions are provided solely from the developer and are absent from any guarantee or warranty. You are encouraged to review the Shell Extension Software Policy for more
This is great, common mistakes. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers!
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