what the google sandbox looks like

I thought people might find this pretty interesting. it's from a relatively small mini-site (few dozen pages at most). we did a 301 on the entire domain to a subdomain on an existing domain that wasn't sandboxed. and there was an immediate increase in traffic- it was impressively fast, actually, the increase happened within 24 hours.

the graph.

pretty much solid confirmation that the sandbox doesn't apply for subdomains, in case anyone was still kicking that question around in the back of their head

an email harvesting tutorial

a little bit of a preface might be required for this. I'm in no way condoning or supporting spamming. I found myself in a situation recently though, where I had a long list of URLs that I needed to get contact information for. it's extremely hard to find information (or an application designed to do this) is next to impossible.

but I'm not talking about on a massive scale. I feel I can give this out without much of a problem because it's simply not going to be of much use to someone trying to use it on a massive scale, at all. if you're spamming, I'm sure you've got much more sophisticated software available to you.

that being said: if you have a list of URLs you need to get contact info for and don't look forward to searching each individual site, you might find this helpful.

you'll need arelis, microsoft excel and, well, something to email with.

control-c the list of urls. open arelis, open a new project, and go to project -> import manager. make sure "import list of manually entered urls" is ticked and hit next. paste the urls here, and hit next. go through the next two screens (your selections don't really matter much). now sit and let arelis crawl for the contact info. you can increase the number of connections to 16 if you're not very patient. next go to project -> export manager. tick only "domain" and "contact."

save the file, and then open it with excel. you can sort the data by the contact info, and the urls that already have contact info will be seperated from those that don't. all that's left is to email 'em.

fundamental flaw in sandbox theory?

there's no doubt in my mind that some sort of new-site filter exists in google. I've seen it first hand, and read plenty about it as well.

I'm not questioning the existance of the sandbox. what I am questioning, is how a site is determined to be "new"- the common, well-accepted theory seems to be that google simply follows the domain whois. seems like it'd be a logical, normal way to determine the age of a site, right?

somehow I'm guessing this isn't how it's done. most SEOs out there seem to be of the opinion that new pages or folders on an existing site will rise in the ranks more quickly than they would if they were on a fresh domain. subdomains, however, are supposedly treated as a new fully-qualified domain name.

but these two don't mesh: subdomains are going to have the same whois information as that original domain.

what's this mean? either we're flat-out wrong in our assumption that subdomains have been treated as new domains, or google determines how new a site is by something other than simply the domain whois.

surprise backlinks

any SEO's familiar with the cliche adage that if you create decent content, backlinks will follow.

I've neglected my blog a bit as of late. actually, I never even got entirely in the habit of updating regularly yet (or getting a new layout for this thing...) however, after google's recent backlink update I ran to check a few sites, especially newer ones. while most of the results were most or less what I had expected, the backlinks for my blog definitely weren't.

I haven't really put any insane amount of work into this thing- I made a few moderately interesting posts, I think, but not a ton- but even with just that (only 7 entries!) some natural links were alreading showing up.

suppose that's reason enough to start updating more regularly, eh?

"if modified since" and google

I've been practicing a bit of php lately, especially things relating to http headers. While I was at first a bit annoyed that there was no easy way to detect the http headers in php4. there's a get_headers, but apparently this is only implemented in php5.

I did, however, stumble into something else while searching for it. since I was going over and over the headers section in the php manual, I noticed that you can send out the last modified header.

since this could be so easily abused (you'd just have to have it send out the correctly modified current date/time), I assumed there was no way google or other search engines could possibly use this much at all. however, apparently I'm wrong, googleguy endorses its use.

interesting, to say the least. drawbacks of doing a modified since "hack"? more bandwidth (if you want some sort of medium, you could have it be changed on a certain frequency, not all the time). but hey, that's not too much to ask for in exchange for more frequent visits, is it?

the state of dmoz

I typically can't stand people that just jump on bandwagon for some particular school of thought. it's definitely quite trendy to hate dmoz- there are long queues, corruption in a lot of the cats, and pompous editors to deal with. I never really bought into it (and I'm definitely not going to try to convince you to, either).

some problems in dmoz are never going to go away; there will always be angry webmasters that are convinced it's impossible to get their site in, there will always be people trying to voice how corrupted the place has become, and there will always be queues. however, dmoz does need to start dealing with some of the technical problems in a more reasonable manor.

in case you're not aware for what's going on, over the past two weeks or so, not one site has been added to the existing queues. there's no mention of this anywhere on the public site. these submissions may have been lost completely (they're not quite sure yet).

I just hate to think of someone submitting their site, waiting six months, asking in resource-zone what the status is, and them finding out it never made it into the queue to begin with.

generic website templates and credibility?

this was just a random thought that crossed my mind, but certainly, using a template (as opposed to a completely original layout) is going to have some sort of impact on how users perceive your site- or blog, even.

I've personally never been all that terrific at creating layouts. I'm not too bad at distinguishing a layout I like from a layout I don't like- but actually creating them? I'm not quite as talented at that bit.

for my commercial sites, I've gone a number of routes. I've paid acquaintances for simple designs (usually something modest, like 100$ or so), and I've taken and modified "completely free" web templates to far beyond the point where they'd be recognizable. I've tried to create my own, but I usually don't end up terribly satisfied with the results.

when's going the template route worthwhile, and when isn't it? it largely depends on what you can get away with- if it's absolutely critical that you need to come off as professional, don't opt in for the cheapest options available to you. if your visitors are more likely to somehow notice it's a template, it's probably not the best idea- you may be able to get away with taking a free obscure web template from somewhere, but using a generic dreamweaver or blogger template for a commercial site is a definite no-no.

if you want a template, but can't afford to pay someone for a complete custom job, you can purchase templates. why bother purchasing them? they're not as available. it'll be much, much less likely that someone would recognize them. if you're going to buy one, you want a reliable company, but hopefully not a huge one- unless they have an absolutely huge inventory (so it'll be less likely that any individual template can be recognized).

what could it potentially impact? return traffic and conversions. this applies to anything you're "selling" though- it doesn't need to be something that's sold for money. if you're trying to pitch an idea, using a template may have an impact on your credibility.

yeah. I really should do something about this blog layout.

building link popularity and pagerank in blogs

pretty much anyone with the google toolbar that's had a look at a few blogs has probably seen how high some of them can be with pagerank. since this is a brand new blog, I've basically been trying to do a bit of research into how it's accomplished.

I've stumbled into a few helpful dmoz categories so far: a list of blog directories you might want to submit to, a tech-blogs cat, and a personal blogs cat. I'll be submitting mine shortly- although I might wait until I have at least a few more entries.

beyond that, it seems like most of the incoming links seem to be just coming from other blogs- I figure I'll start a thread at the DigitalPoint Forums and try to find a few people willing to do some exchanges. again, though, I'm thinking I'll at least get a few more entries and wait for google to cache this so it's a bit more attractive to link to.

I suppose I could even turn this entry into a bit of self-promotion, too- if you're interested in doing some exchanges, just leave a comment.

getting started in PPC affiliate marketing

recently I just decided to take another stab at this- my first time around I earned around 100$, but spent around 130$. I guess this is supposed to be a bit better than most people manage during their first run.

the first time around, I tried advertising a high-pricetag item- the commission I'd earn would be anywhere from 50$ to 150$. however, the conversion rates I was getting were absolutely dismal- if I would've managed to get 1%, or even .5%, I probably could've managed to make it profitable. however, I was getting even less than that.

I'm hoping maybe I'm just having trouble with conversion rates because of the high prices. this time around, I'm just buying a lot of cheap clicks (with adwords) to promote ebay. since I already make a decent chunk off of ebay the performance incentives may be able to make things quite do-able... assuming there aren't any bids/BINs, I'd only need one out of every 100 clicks to end up registering. if the performance incentives kick that up to 13.00$, 16.00$, or 17.00$, I'd be able to deal with even lower conversion rates.

the nice thing about ebay, really, is the 30 day cookie. with their massive popularity- even if it wasn't directly because of anything you've done- some people will end up bidding or registering anyway.

the disgusting premiere.

well, I decided to start a blog. I'm thinking that I may change the url soon, but I really needed to get a post or two up, it looks so damn empty right now. I'm contemplating having two different blogs- one as more of a personal thing, and one as a sort of journal of my SEO/affiliate marketing/PPC/website promotion adventures.

hm. promise the next update'll have a bit more conent- and hopefully it'll actually be useful to some people. I'll drop a link, too, if I do start that personal blog.