Ahhh….Google Dropping Pages

2217 days ago

Oh no, looks like Google is going to deal me another painful blow. Yes, it is not enough that they are sending my webpages into supplemental, they are now throwing my...

Oh no, looks like Google is going to deal me another painful blow. Yes, it is not enough that they are sending my webpages into supplemental, they are now throwing my pages out of their index altogether! I had my Singapore Business Directory about 3000 pages indexed before, but now, it has dropped to about 1400 pages (plus supplementals as well). It is no wonder my traffic from Google is dropping steadily.

Is it because I did some changes to my directory? I had added a few more internal links to each of the listing’s directory page. But somehow I don’t think it is the cause. My other directories didn’t have their webpages thrown out of the index and they have the same additional links. Can anyone enlighten me, I am really in the dark here. Does having more outgoing links result in some penalty by Google? That’s stupid right? This isn’t really some serious breach of some ethical code. I mean Google is basing their entire algorithms on links. It doesn’t make sense to devalue a site because of internal links. In fact, it would help in navigation which is something Google encourages all webmasters to do – making the site human user friendly.

I think the worst thing about dealing with Google is you can never understand what is happening. I am not the only one, I believe a lot of webmasters are also confused about why their pages are in supplemental too. And why Google remove some pages from their index. The funniest thing, Google doesn’t even tell you why. At most they give you a little vague and virtual useless answer about this or that little excuse.

Power Surge/Trip/Something

2219 days ago

Wow, today, the entire building where I was working had a power trip and we had no power! Yes and it lasted for several hours! So we were left without air-conditioning...

Wow, today, the entire building where I was working had a power trip and we had no power! Yes and it lasted for several hours! So we were left without air-conditioning (I am working in Singapore, a tropical country) and no fans too during these time. And thus you can imagine how freaking hot it was for all of us! No air-condition, no fan, no wind and the sun is blazing heat down on poor us – it was pure torture. I was sweating my pants off! And it feels like being baked in an oven set to the maximum. What most of the staff in the office did was to take a piece of hard paper and start fanning themselves. I don’t think that would work, right? And the pump driving the water to the toilets was also down. Guess what is the result of a building full of people with no working toilets? Gross to the max! Thank god for the nearby public toilets.

I think the problem is that we (Singaporeans) take things for granted. Even the basics like electricity which nearly everything depend on. That’s the telephone system, the PCs, the fax machines, the lifts, the shutter door even the handphone charger all down! Everybody sitting around with nothing to do at all. So I guess this is a good experience for us, never take anything for granted. Just imagine the day when there is suddenly no power for a long period of time. What will happen? Chaos?

Interview With Scolls of Webwobot

2219 days ago

I just pop by to inform you of an interview I did with Scolls (Paul le Roux) of Webwobot a while back. You can read: Interview with Paul le Roux of...

I just pop by to inform you of an interview I did with Scolls (Paul le Roux) of Webwobot a while back. You can read: Interview with Paul le Roux of Webwobot. WebWobot is actually an UK Search Engine but with an international focus as well. What this means is that you can search for specifically for UK sites or on the general internet. But no, Webwobot doesn’t discriminate between UK sites or not. What only matters with WebWobot is your content. And it loves content. I mean, it doesn’t care whether you are a big business with a gazillion dollars or some lowly webmaster, if you have good quality content on your site, Webwobot will gobble it all up and then serve it nicely to you. I think that Paul believes that content is king, everything else is second place. This is exactly what I like about Webwobot. Not links or meta tags, but content. Sure, it is small now, but it is growing. I have to say, this is one good unique Search Engine to look out for in the future.

If you are a webmaster and would like to submit your site for crawling to this Search Engine, please visit this priority submit page. Or you can join their PageTrade program in which webmasters exchange “pages” instead of just doing link exchange. This way, you can add content on your site while providing a powerful link to your partner( and vice versa).

Catfight at Digitalpoint Forums Again

2221 days ago

Hmmm…remember I was talking about John Scott’s post about annual fees for directories being for greedy directory owners? Well, it seems that the owner of Aviva Directory, Jeff, responded by saying...

Hmmm…remember I was talking about John Scott’s post about annual fees for directories being for greedy directory owners? Well, it seems that the owner of Aviva Directory, Jeff, responded by saying that Annual fees is the correct way and one-time fees are for Quick Buck Crew (fly by night directory owners). Exactly opposite of what John Scott said. Break out the popcorn, looks like we have one big catfight in our hands.

John’s post: No more annual listings

Jeff’s post: Annual Fees Rock; One-Off Fees are for the Quick Buck Crew

Jeff’s argument is that as a directory gets more listings, the cost to maintain such a big directory increases. And if directories don’t have annual listing fees, then it will not be around for the long run. Why? Well, as Jeff puts it, they can’t sustain themselves and did not plan ahead. So they are “Quick Buck Crew”. Yes, big directories will cost more to run. It will make use of more bandwidth, more webspace and more server resource. Good point. But seriously, how much more webspace or resource will a directory need? It’s not a search engine for god’s sake! I mean, even if it cost more to run, the fees you received from the listings should have covered it. And the bigger you get, the more popular you will become, which actually ensures it’s survival.

Ironically Jeff’s Aviva Directory once offered one-time listing fee too. It only recently changed to yearly fees for it’s listings. Hmm….so what was Jeff thinking when he wrote that article? He was once a “Quick Buck Crew” but now he has tranformed to a beacon of hope for directory owners? I doubt so. I believe that it all boils down to making money. The more the merrier. No, no, I myself have no problem with people making money, but in all seriousness, charging another fee to retain a listing is just not right. In fact, from a outsider’s perspective, it feels like downright extortion.

But then perhaps I should be looking from the directory owner’s perspective? Annual fees are a common business model for many offline directories like Yellow Pages. Annual fees also ensures that the listing is still active and around (for the time being), thus keeping the directory fresh and up-to-date. Furthermore, annual fees provides incentive for directory owners to keep on working hard on their directory.

But please, let’s not stop here. Let’s see how these two big directory owners would respond to each other. Will we see hair pulling? Or clothes ripping? Will there be name calling too? We can hope!

HMS Belfast

2221 days ago

What’s that you ask? It’s a floating museum berthed at the Thames River (London)! Some old cruiser or something that was converted to a museum. And I have tricked Peter into...

What’s that you ask? It’s a floating museum berthed at the Thames River (London)! Some old cruiser or something that was converted to a museum. And I have tricked Peter into writing an article about it and allowing us to place his article on my directory. Am I persuasive or what? Perhaps it was my undeniable sense of humour? Whatever it was, it did the trick. He had been to this museum and loved it! I bet you would too.

Please take a look at Peter’s HMS Belfast Article. Wow, this huge monster really looks impressive. And those twelve 6 inch guns! Must really pack a mean punch to it’s enemies. Not as powerful as those battleships with their 18 inch guns, but these are actually light cruisers with very heavy armament – battle cruisers. I think those sailors living in these steel monsters feel like they can take on the entire world and come out unscaved until they see another much bigger ship pointing their bigger guns at them.

This museum is for those interested in history and military warfare. But if you like something unique, this looks like one nice place to visit too and it acts as a reminder that Britain was once an impressive naval power. The ship officially became a floating museum on 21 October 1971. The best thing about visiting this vessel is that you won’t get seasick on this ship! For some, it’s like heaven.

Google Hates Me, But Yahoo Loves Me!

2222 days ago

Wow, it seems that Yahoo, for the first time gives me more traffic than Google! This is stats from my Singapore business directory. Finally it overtakes Google for driving traffic to...

Wow, it seems that Yahoo, for the first time gives me more traffic than Google! This is stats from my Singapore business directory. Finally it overtakes Google for driving traffic to my directory. But MSN is still not doing well for me. I believe Microsoft don’t like me much because I always make fun of them. At least I know quite a lot of Singaporeans are using Yahoo as their main Search Engine. Hopefully anyway. With Google being so big and mean now, it could all change in an instant so it’s better to be prepared. I will continue to monitor this till the end of the month and see what has to be done. Maybe I will do even more optimization for Yahoo than for Google and see what’s the outcome.

From what I can see, the problem is with the supplementals. I have a lot of pages being shaft into Google’s Supplemental hell and these don’t rank at all (or rank poorly). Thus, they hardly appear during searches. With this, people don’t visit my little business directory from Google. So screw you, Google! I am loving Yahoo.

Miserable User

2222 days ago

This is somewhat interesting. It’s called Miserable User Mod. Basically it is for vBulletin forum webmasters who don’t want to ban users but would like to “punish” annoying users. You know,...

This is somewhat interesting. It’s called Miserable User Mod. Basically it is for vBulletin forum webmasters who don’t want to ban users but would like to “punish” annoying users. You know, those kind of users who goes around forums and stalk your other users or those who keeps on pestering other users for this or that. Wait, kind of like me! What this mod does is make this “miserable user” group surfing experience in the forums so bad that he/she will leave your forum by their own accord. Something like what my ISP is doing to their customers. The mod slows down server response, shows “server busy” messages, displays blank pages, force redirect to another preset page and so on.

No wonder, I think I have been delegated to this group in many forums. It’s all so clear now. Every time I visit forums, I suddenly get these kinds of weird slow downs and messages but no one else in the forum complained about this. I am the only one. And when I do surfing on other sites, no problems. Hmm….am I that annoying? The world hates me I guess.

There’s More to the Directory Script World Than just PhpLD

2222 days ago

- by wildweb (Digitalpoint forums). Link here. Hell yes! There are way more directory scripts out there than most people know! In fact, there are probably more than a hundred such...

- by wildweb (Digitalpoint forums). Link here.

Hell yes! There are way more directory scripts out there than most people know! In fact, there are probably more than a hundred such scripts. Not trying to push PhpLD down or anything, but it is very true. I think that it is because PhpLD is very popular and no one than looks at other scripts. Heck, no one even bothers sourcing for other scripts. There are a lot more good scripts like OpenLD, PhpLynx, IndexU, IndexScript and so on. And some even have more features than our dear PhpLD. Currently I like PhpLynx. It really have some of the best and sometimes unique features that you cannot find in other scripts. And it’s control panel is just so damn powerful. It’s just too bad it is not open source.

But in all seriousness, being popular has it’s advantages. One of the most obvious, the sheer amount of templates, mods and add-ons available. And if a script is popular, it means a lot of people is using it and thus, you will likely be able to find more help from other users, especially if the community is a strong one.

But again, some scripts are good for some things. So, if you are planning to start a directory, you need to plan ahead when you are choosing your script. It’s going to be a pain in the arse if you change script midway. Just think of the lost in rankings, the database conversion, the downtime, angry customers, the adding of categories…….

If you are looking for more directory scripts, please take a look at our Big List of Directory Scripts.

Google Adsense for Domains

2223 days ago

Looks like this one is for Domain name registrars – Google Adsense For Domains. So I guess if you are a domain name registrar and you feel that you are not...

Looks like this one is for Domain name registrars – Google Adsense For Domains. So I guess if you are a domain name registrar and you feel that you are not making enough money from selling domain names, you can use Google’s service to make even more money. What you do is place Adsense on your parked domain names.  It supposedly makes use of their powerful semantic technology to understand the meaning of domain names and then service relevant ads on those parked domain pages. Google’s vision is to provide relevant advertising on errr….non-existant websites. Real cool huh? What is more moral than to be the provider of advertisements for a page with nothing more than advertisements? Forget about MFA(Made For Adsense) sites, this one is even better. And it is all shown very neatly like what you see on their search results.

Oh, of course Google will not make use of their powerful semantic technonolgy for anything less than making easy money. Why waste such valuable asset to something as trival as Search Results? Let it be links and nothing more. Don’t want to overtax their servers. They cost money you know. All the rest, they just place them into supplemental index.

John Scotts Says Annual Fees for Directory Sucks

2224 days ago

You can read here: John Scotts of V7N says annual fees for directory sucks. Yes, what he is saying is that if your directory is offering yearly fees for inclusion, it...

You can read here: John Scotts of V7N says annual fees for directory sucks.

Yes, what he is saying is that if your directory is offering yearly fees for inclusion, it feels like greed. I have to admit, this is a grey area in my opinion. I agree with some of his points like a directory listing should be permanent and if a site is removed if an annual fee is not paid, then it feels like link leasing. And in regards to having good high quality sites in a directory, if it is approved in the first place, why is it removed after one year just because a fee is not paid? If it supposedly adds value to your directory, it should remain.

In my opinion, a “review” is done and if the listing is approved, then it should stay. Unless if the site is down or had become no longer acceptable to the general public. Annual fees should be for featured or sponsored listings only. Something to stand out from the rest of the listings, you should pay more and perhaps pay yearly.

But everything on the Internet is about money. So I guess if a directory wants to charge someone an annual fee for inclusion, it’s their choice. And if people are willing to pay for it, all the better right? However, I think the annual fee can come back and hurt the directory industry in the near future if a lot of directories does that. Why? Well, I think that the directories will lose it’s usefulness as a source for high quality relevant sites. It will become just a crappy listing of rich website owners.

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