I was in the middle of creating a sitemap for a client when I realized how ridiculously easy, yet essential the procedure was. If you happen to have a website without a sitemap, your pages will still be crawled, but usually at a slower rate. Speed is everything when it comes to information on the web. When you have a sitemap, the crawler easily reads the map and knows exactly which pages to index for the search engine. There’s no guarantee that all pages in the map will be indexed, but it does lend a helping hand to the crawler and speeds up the process. Read the rest of this entry »
Et tu Google?
Google announced today that it’s getting into the URL shortening business with its own goo.gl. Why? Google says they are doing it to protect the user. They will make sure the links aren’t pointing to malware or viruses. To me the real reason is obvious. Google will now be able to collect traffic information from beyond google.com or AdWords, helping them better determine which sites are relevant.
To start, the service will only be available within the Google toolbar and Feedburner, but is expected to be available to the public down the road.
Running with the Bulls
As expected, this year provided no shortage of hype around “Black Friday” or what I’ve come to call “Running with the Bulls”. Although I personally didn’t take part in any of the madness, I did spend a lot of time staying tuned to various reports published throughout the extended weekend. I’ve done this for several years now – mostly out of curiosity. However, this year I noticed significantly more information flowing related to online sales and I think there are a couple of important things that should be pointed out. Read the rest of this entry »
New Google Ad Layout
Google has implemented a new ad layout that will change the lives of paid search advertisers. They are now inserting Google Shopping ads into the standard paid ad space. Google is shifting a great deal of their attention towards their shopping channel in order to compete with the rapidly growing Bing Cashback network. Shockingly, this update occurred without an official announcement.
jQuery Snippet: Self clearing text fields
Here’s a very, quick, easy javascript snippet. Non front end developers should look away now.
An increasingly popular technique for laying out forms is to combine the label tag and the input tag into one succinct element (as demonstrated in the search box on this blog). This technique cleans up your page and leaves more real estate for user input. A big downside, however, is that you have to add an extra dose of javascript to make your text fields behave as they should.
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