Google’s april fool’s jokes are usually very dry and boring.  This is the first time they’ve done something that I actually thought was funny.   Here’s an example of Gmail’s ability match your personality style.

TiredRobot.com does not use any google adwords campaigning.   If we review (in google analytics) the top traffic sources, I see “google / organic” as source #1 and “google.com / referral” as source #2.   What is a referral from google.com if there are no AdWords campaigns running (which should be tracked as cpc anyway)?    If they were unsponsored search result clicks, then wouldn’t they appear under the “google / organic” results?

I decided to post this answer since my initial search on Google was fruitless.   I had to go straight to analytics help (RTFM) and search:  “What is the difference between  ‘google / organic’ and ‘google.com / referral’?”

What does google[referral] mean?
Not all referrals from Google.com domains come through organic search or AdWords ad listings. Referrals may come from a variety of sources, including Google Groups posts, base.google.com listings, or static pages on related Google sites. Such visits are tagged as [referral] instead of [organic] or [cpc].

Gog is let’s you create tinyurl’s for google searches using the following syntax:

http://gog.is/This/Is/Your/Search

gog.is simple google slapper

Is Digg.com being a suspicious website? Well I was digging some stuff at Digg.com when I got this message in Firefox:

I got back to Digg and it was alright. I got back to the site that had the content that I was digging and it was alright.

If you hit the site www.antispywaremaster.com you will see the same message.

So why it was blocked? check this out

There’s no easier way to add your site to Google index than using Google Webmaster tools.

The steps are simple: You create an account (if you don’t have one), add your site and verify it.

There are 2 ways to verify the site, you can either add a meta tag with one code that the tool will provide you or you can create a .html file with the code.

Once your site is verified, you will access usuable information such as:

• If your site is indexed (surprising enough, I had one that wasn’t)
• How Google webcrawler see your site
• Adding a site map only for helping the web crawlers (more known as Google bot)
• Keywords and phrases most searched
• Manage how fast the web crawler will search for your site (I’m still trying to understand how this works and why should affect your index position)
• Add tabs on your iGoogle with all information for each site you manage
• some other stuff that might be useful

I do recommend to use Google Analytics and AdWords together with the info from the webmaster tools to get more traffic to your site.

This May, Google released the Google Friend Connect.

This must be one of the most boldest and simpler concepts of social networking I have seen so far and, even without being able to actually see how it is going to work, this are my first impressions about the new tool.

• It’s simple enough that a simple user can do it. If you are capable to use Google Anaylitics, you will definitely be able to use this.
• No matter what you have selected to use as a gadget on your site, the user gadget is the main one and has to be added to the site always. This gadget will actually connect all users of your site and if the user is already a Google account th registration process becomes simpler. You can add friends from Facebook, Orkut, GTalk and, soon, HI5.
• Reports will be provided to see how your site is growing as a social network site

The main goal of all of this will be transforming a simple blog into a strong social network site based on other big known social networks.

So far everything looks a little bit too unclear, since nobody had access to the tool, but imagine how viral a simple blog can be with this.

Let’s wait for Google new tool to be release and right now if you want to take a first look at it, you will have to register: http://www.google.com/friendconnect/

Meanwhile here is a cool site that is already using the Google Friend Connect: http://www.ingridmichaelson.com/

Yes a cheat sheet for search optimization.

I was looking for search optimization tips when I have came around this PDF and it give the basic idea of what you need to take care about when optimizing your site for search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc.

This cheat sheet was created by the SEOmoz.org and it is a very good website to check on some ideas.

Enough talking. Just click here to download the pdf .

Every developer knows that Apache rewrites rules to break down urls with lot’s of query strings are one of the most efficient ways to  optimize your site  for search engines.

Recently I have to create a series or rules to work with a extensive directory list in one site and here are some of the things that you can use when creating your rules.

1. If you are working with a directory listing or if you will use an address as part of the search on the query string, then, when creating the url create in a ordered manner way, but at the title, write it in back order way.

Think like this:  When you search for a product or service on a search engine you will probably do service + city + state, right!? Then writing the title with service, city and state will increase the chances that you have to appear on the first pages on the search engine results.

2. When creating the rules be sure to put them in a logic order way. Apache will not understand too similar rules pointing to different pages if one contains less requirements than the second.

Consider this:

1st. RewriteRule ^directory/([A-Za-z+]+)/([A-Za-z]+)/([A-Za-z+].+)/?$ /list.php?&c=$1&s=$2&v=$3 [NC]

2nd. RewriteRule ^directory/([A-Za-z+]+)/c/([A-Za-z+].+)/user/([A-Za-z+,.]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ /detail.php?&c=$1&v=$2&name=$3&id=$4 [NC]

With this disposition, apache will not understand the second rule, even knowing that the rule is there, because the first rule requirements will became true before the second, but if you invert the rules, apache will understand both, since the second rule has more requirements than the first and not all the requirements where matched.

3. Try to create a rule that is a catch all for something that you are not expecting. This will avoid the user and search engine view something that is not supposed to be there.

I’m trying Digg’s contact importer right now and it appears as the Gmail portion of it is not working. Any body else experiencing this problem???

Zoho is the online MS Office Suite Premium edition:   Word, Excel, Powerpoint, NetMeeting, NoteOne, Access, Outlook, Project, Business Contact Manager, and more.

What strikes me about their interface is how very Google it was.   Now part of the similarity may be that I’ve come to assocciate default internet blue (#0000CC) with Google as part of their more is less approach, but I think there’s more to it (or less to it :)) than that.   Take a look:

Google

Zoho 

Google Labs

Zoho Projects