Thanks

New AdSense options look to help publishers and developers better target their users. AdSense for search ads only lets publishers include ads on pages and include them in native search results — above, below or beside the results. In the past, publishers could only use AdSense for search within Google results.

AdSense for Ajax solves the problem of serving relevant ads when content of a page changes. When a user is on an Ajax-heavy website, they can now be served changing ads based on the changing context within the page. In the past, new ads were only served when the page was refreshed. As Ajax does not require refreshing the page even when the context of the page changes, relevant ads were a problem.

There’s an added benefit of AdSense for Ajax. From Google, “In addition to the ads refreshing, you might wonder why the subject of the ads changed since the crawlable content on the page didn’t change much when the tab changed. The second benefit of AdSense for Ajax is that it allows you to provide hints about your site’s uncrawlable content with each refresh.”

Google Font API and Directory:

Google’s Font Directory and API are now available, providing “high quality open source Web fonts” for everyone. The fonts are enabled by CSS3 @fontface standard, hosted in the cloud and sent to browsers as needed.

Each font is cross-browser compatible, fully searchable and accessible to users with screen readers. Utilizing search-engine friendly fonts is a nice way to separate your website from others and provide a little “flair” for users to enjoy.

Google Wave (Labs):

Wave might have started slow, but Google’s new Wave (Labs) announcement might turn the tide. Wave is now open to businesses, schools and organizations. The focus is on collaboration within organizations. Members of a wave can play back previous developments within the wave and remove the discussion when the project is complete. Also, new extensions (such as maps and voting gadgets) allow for more collaboration, and developers can develop custom extensions within Wave to suit their needs.

More information about Wave is available, as is registration for a webcast that will detail new additions and answer user questions.

There are several specific reasons for writing valid HTML, and using an HTML validator to insure that what you write is valid:

Future compatibility
As browsers evolve, they come closer and closer to supporting the standard HTML as written by the W3C. Even if they don’t fully support the most recent version of HTML, the browser builders go in and make sure that they are compliant with older versions of the standard.

If you are writing non-standard HTML, there is a chance that as browsers evolve, they will no longer support your Web pages. A good example of this is a trick that some Web developers used with an older version of Netscape. If you included multiple body tags with different colors, Netscape would load them all in in succession creating a fade-in or flicker effect as the page loaded. This trick no longer works, as it relied on an incompatibility of the browser.

Unless you know for a fact that your entire audience is using a specific browser, you are setting your site up to annoy some of your readers if you make it inaccessible to them through invalid or non-standard HTML. Many HTML validators will check your HTML for browser specific entities and alert you to their use.

Browser specific HTML can be part of the standard (IE supports the iframe tag, but Netscape does not) or not a part of the standard (the <marquee> tag is supported by IE and the <layer> tag is supported by Netscape, but neither are a part of the HTML 4 standard).
For example, often people will design a beautiful page with tables and view it in IE. Then, a couple days later their friend calls them up to ask them why they have a blank page up on their site (as viewed in Netscape). The problem is that Netscape interprets the tables standard (the ending </table> tag is required) strictly and IE does not. You could argue that IE is being more flexible, but what if they decide in IE 6 to interpret the HTML standard more strictly? With the merging of XML and HTML into XHTML, this may easily become a reality. And suddenly, your pages no longer work for IE. But if you had written valid HTML, you wouldn’t have had that problem.

We have found that more experienced entreprenuers stick to what they know. Sure, I can paint the outside of my home but when it does not look good, whom is to blame? We have designed hundreds of websites over the past 8 years.

Let us do what we do best. Make happy web design customers.

Over-optimization may have played the biggest part in the dropping of many sites from the top 50 Google results. Filtering out web sites that have had readability sacrificed for optimization is a growing trend at Google. It started with the Sandbox Effect in late 2004, where relatively new sites were not being seen at all in the Google results even with good keyword placement in content and incoming links for about 6 months.

One aspect of search engine optimization that is also affected in a roundabout way is link popularity development. After observing the effects of strictly relevant link exchanges on many of our client’s sites recently, we’ve noticed incredibly fast #1 rankings on Google. It seems Google may be looking out for links pages designed for the sole purpose of raising link popularity and devalues the relevance of the site. After all, if a links page on a real estate site has 100 outgoing links to pharmacy sites, there has to be a lot of content on that page completely unrelated to real estate. Not until now has that been so detrimental to a site’s overall relevance to search terms. It goes back to the old rule of thumb: Make your visitors the top priority. Create a resources page that actually contains useful links for your site users. If you need to do reciprocal linking then keep it relevant and work those sites in with other good resources.

Keeping up with the online search world can be overwhelming for the average small business owner. Constant Google changes, MSN coming on the scene in a big way, and all the hype around the new Become.com shopping search function can make heads spin. But just keep things simple and follow the main rules that have been around for years. Google, as well as other search engines, won’t ever be able to ignore informative, well written content along with good quality votes from other web sites.

Take a look

This list is useful for 20-somethings, too. Now when the senior person in the office uses one of these terms, you’ll know what he’s talking about.

1. Intranet

Popular in the mid-90s, the term “intranet” referred to a private network running the Internet Protocol and other Internet standards such as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It was also used to describe an internal Web site that was hosted behind a firewall and was accessible only to employees. Today, every private network runs IP. So you can just use the term virtual private network or VPN to describe a private IP-based network.

2. Extranet

An “extranet” referred to private network connections based on Internet standards such as IP and HTTP that extended outside an organization, such as between business partners. Extranets often replaced point-to-point electronic data interchange (EDI) connections that used standards such as X12. Today, companies provide suppliers, resellers and other members of their supply chain with access to their VPNs.

3. Web Surfing

When is the last time you heard someone talk about surfing the Web? You know the term is out of date when your kids don’t know what it means. To teens and tweens, the Internet and the World Wide Web are one and the same thing. So it’s better to use the term “browsing” the Web if you want to be understood.

4. Push Technology

The debate over the merits of “push” versus “pull” technology came to a head in 1996 with the release of the PointCast Network, a Web service that sent a steady stream of news to subscribers. However, PointCast and other push technology services required too much network bandwidth. Eventually, push technology evolved into RSS feeds, which remain the preferred method for publishing information to subscribers of the Internet. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

5. Application Service Provider (ASP)

During this decade, the term “Application Service Provider” evolved into “Software-as-a-Service.” Both terms refer to a vendor hosting a software application and providing access to it over the Web. Customers buy the software on a subscription basis, rather than having to own and operate it themselves. ASP was a hot term prior to the dot-com bust. Then it was replaced by “SaaS.” Now it’s cool to talk about “cloud computing.”

6. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)

Coined by former Apple CEO John Sculley back in 1992 when he unveiled the Apple Newton, the term “personal digital assistant” referred to a handheld computer. PDA was still in use in 1996, when the Palm Pilot was the hottest handheld in corporate America. Today, the preferred generic term for a handheld like a Blackberry or an iPhone is a “smartphone”.

7. Internet Telephony

You need to purge the term “Internet telephony” from your vocabulary and switch to VoIP, for Voice over IP. Even the term VoIP is getting old-fashioned because pretty soon all telephone calls will be routed over the Internet rather than the Public Switched Telephone Network. It’s probably time to stop referring to the PSTN, too, because it is headed for the history books as all voice, data and video traffic is carried on the Internet.

8. Weblog

A blog is a shortened version of “Weblog,” a term that emerged in the late 1990s to describe commentary that an individual publishes online. It spawned many words still in use such as “blogger” and “blogosphere.” Nowadays, few people have time to blog so they are “microblogging,” which is another word that’s heading out the door as people turn Twitter into a generic term for blasting out 140-character observations or opinions.

9. Thin Client

You have to give Larry Ellison credit for seeing many of the flaws in the client/server computing architecture and for popularizing the term “thin client” to refer to Oracle’s alternative terminal-like approach. In 1993, Ellison was touting thin clients as a way for large organizations to improve network security and manageability. Although thin clients never replaced PCs, the concept is similar to “virtual desktops” that are gaining popularity today as a way of supporting mobile workers.

10. Rboc

In 1984, the U.S. government forced AT&T to split up into seven Regional Bell Operating Companies [RBOCs] also known as Baby Bells. Customers bought local service from RBOCs and long-distance service from carriers such as AT&T. Telecom industry mergers over the last 15 years have formed integrated local- and long-distance carriers such as AT&T, Verizon and Qwest. This makes not only the term RBOC obsolete, but also the terms ILEC for Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier [i.e., GTE] and CLEC for Competitive Local Exchange Carrier [i.e., MFS].

11. Long-Distance Call

Thanks to flat-rate calling plans available from carriers for at least five years, nobody needs to distinguish between local and long-distance calls anymore. Similarly, you don’t need to distinguish between terrestrial and wireless calls because so many people use only wireless services. Like pay phones, long-distance calls — and their premium prices — are relics of a past without national and unlimited calling plans.

12. World Wide Web

Nobody talks about the “World Wide Web” anymore, or the “Information Superhighway,” for that matter. It’s just the Internet. It’s a distinction that Steve Czaban, the popular Fox Sports Radio talk show host, likes to mock when he refers to the “Worldwide Interweb.” Nothing dates you more than pulling out one of those old-fashioned ways of referring to the Internet such as “infobahn” or “electronic highway.”

This brings us to his reviews. Yes reviews. John has taken it upon himself to post 3 fake reviews from fraudulent emails he created.
The first review states: “ This company is a scam. If you do research they operate under up to three different domains with different pricing for each. They are 7daywebdesign.com, Imarketingexpert.com and GoLocalLIsting.com and many more with just as many phone numbers and fake addresses. I would highly recommend staying away from this type of company. Any website firm that has a monthly fee is a ripoff. Stop paying and you no longer have a site. Invest in your company and choose professionals that will create a site that isn’t owned by someone else.”

Now he is correct about two things. The three companies he mentioned are owned by our corporation: Affordable Web Design Inc, but we do not use fake phone numbers nor fake addresses. This just makes no sense at all. The point of advertising is to bring in business. Not lead them to fake addresses and phone numbers that are disconnected. The second correct comment that he stated is that we do in fact charge a monthly fee for SEO work.

The second review states: “ I cannot even believe my eyes, how a business owner would not only try to cheat local listings with over saturation but to take a review meant for his company and remove his business names, create a false gmail account and slander all other companies in Temecula is too much. I’ve heard of this company before in a not so white light but this takes the cake. I highly suggest someone delete these spam comments before it hurts not just those businesses but also this companies reputation city wide.”

This one is just plain confusing. I have searched around and cannot figure out what in the world he is talking about. Sorry. I wish I could.

The third and final review states: “I try to set up a company website with Matt. He failed to meet deadlines. He only responded after weeks of calling and leaving messages. He finally set up a generic, cheesy website that didn’t even work and I thought my ten-year-old daughter created. He tried to make it sound like it was my fault that he couldn’t do his job. The truth is, he is unprofessional, unreliable, and should rename his company 7 Month Web Design or Ten Year Old Creations. Save your money and frustration and take your hard earned money elsewhere. God Bless.”

Now I am not sure what makes a web design customer get so malicious as this. He obviously wanted to cause more harm to our business and felt the previous were not enough. Well, we have never had a client that took 7 months. In fact, 99% of our websites are completed in 7 Days. Hence, the 7 Day Web Design concept. In fact, our agreement that every clients signs, states that the website will be completed in 7 Days. The strangest part about the whole thing is that HE owes us money. He is angry at us for believing he would pay us after doing 6 months work. It has never happened but if a client truly did not like the website we designed for them. We would give them their money back.

I have found that the pattern for fake reviews is:
1. No profile pic or any kind of contact information
2. Only bad reviews associated with the person
3. Over the top negative review.

So what to do when competitors or angry customers post bad reviews about your business on Google, Yahoo, Rip Off Report, Etc. I have pleaded my case with them all to no end. I have reported the reviews as fraud. Missed countless hours of sleep trying to figure out what can be done.
Unfortunately, the only solution I can come up with is to have your satisfied customers post good or true reviews about your business. I have asked all my clients to do this and many have responded with their own stories of unfair practices from upset customers, etc.