The other day I received an email from Google. A small transcript is below.
Dear site owner or webmaster of voodoochilli.net,
While we were indexing your web pages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&hl=en_GB. This appears to be because your site has been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Often, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index.
It goes on to say that they are going to remove my site voodoochilli.net from the index for at least 30 days.
Within 30 minutes of being alerted to the fact that one of my sites had been hacked I managed to remove the spam and change my passwords as well as other security precautions to stop it happening again. Still, it didn’t matter, my site has now had all 35 thousand pages removed from its index without any notice. Now, you may wonder why the title of this blog piece says “for no reason”, after all there was spam on my site, right? Wrong. There was spam on www.voodoochilli.net’s home page, but not on any of the other pages which make up the majority of the site, and more importantly from a business perspective there was not any spam on my completely unrelated company website http://design.voodoochilli.net
I am completely furious with Google. For almost 10 years I have been sticking to Google’s guidelines and being a good boy. I have worked really hard to get my sites indexed in Google. And one day, one of my most popular sites eventually gets a very minor spam attack (3 words and a link) which was a long time coming considering the site gets tens of thousands of visitors per day, and Google deletes all of my hard work just like that. It kind of makes you wonder why Google would take such a hard line. Sure spam needs to be fought but 30 minutes notice and a deletion of thousands of pages and my company website as an additional punishment? Come on! Other people might be considering paying Google for advertising at this point in an attempt to keep traffic levels high. Well it just so happens that we are inundated with work right now, and if anything need a little less to come in so it suits me just fine. I will however be looking at our advertising strategy in the future and will be looking at alternatives from Google in regards to adwords and adsense. The combined revenue that Google sees from my company is substantial and I don’t think I have exactly been rewarded for being a good customer.
I am also angry about the fact that they deleted all of the pages from Voodoochilli.net. There are currently over 8,000 registered members on that site, each with their own portfolio, their own little website and sub domain. Should they get reprimanded because some jerk managed a bit of sql injection on the home page? Because in 10 years there was one and only one successful attempt to put spam onto the site? It’s not like it was hurting anyone anyway. I once received an email from Facebook that directed me to someone’s profile that was hijacked. I am sure the same email was sent to hundreds if not thousands of other people and would have been reported. I don’t see Google deleting all of the pages there for over a month. Most likely the admin team would have received a polite call from Google telling them about it and advising what action to take. We have all seen spammy comments on Wordpress and Blogger hosted blogs. How mcuh would it have cost Google to call me before dexinging my site? Fifty pence? How about just an email with a days notice? I suspect they would have been sued if a site like Facebook, MySpace, WordPress or Digg was just deindexed like that, sites that often get spam placed on them. That’s the problem here. Voodoochilli.net is a pretty big site, but we are small fry when compared to the people that Google really don’t want to piss off. All I can do is have a little moan here and halt advertising with Google. Well my moan is over and I do feel slightly better because of it. I just hope someone from Google actually reads this and learns from it. Remember your mantra, Google - “Don’t be evil”. Maybe its time your had a big long look at yourself as I’m seeing ideals being broken.
I guess one good thing about the poor state of the pound right now is that a dollar is worth more to us. Why do I care? Well our Google Adsense revenue is all in dollars so we are earning more from the same advertising. Ok, it doesn’t completely outweigh the negatives, but it does help, slightly.
First there was Irie who have been trading since 1991, a stable company to say the least. They used to be based just down the road from us when we were based in Broad street, Hereford. It came as quite a shock when I first heard about this, considering how close (literally) they were as competition. Only recently I have noticed that WyEd has also ceased trading. It saddens me to see web designers go out of business, even through they are competition. I know how hard small companies like this work for a living. I know exactly the sort of work they have to do, and the hours they have to put in to pay the bills.
It is a reflection of the overall economy, and although in a previous post I pointed out how many designers should not be affected by this so called credit crunch, of course there will be some casualties.
How have you been through the recession? It seems to me that being small, efficient and most importantly smart helps during times like this.
It’s been really hard lately keeping up with all these blogs I run lately let alone do much personal work. This is a shame as I have quite a lot I want to get done! The reason for this, believe it or not is that we have been inundated with work. A client of mine believes this is because smaller companies like ours are very attractive during times of financial crisis as our overall costs are lower than bigger companies with larger overheads.
Although it is true that by being competitive a company is likely to survive where more bloated companies cannot, I do not believe this is the only reason smaller companies are doing well right now. I think it all has to do with people being smarter with their money. Companies need to make money – this we all know, and when there is a downturn in the economy it becomes harder and harder for the majority of businesses to keep going as at the end of the day they are all affected in some way by the the demand and disposable income of the general public. When times are hard it affects the average family quicker than anyone and this has a knock-on affects to nearly all business. People just don’t spend as much when they are feeling the pinch.
So with shrinking advertising budgets due to lower turnovers what should a business do to survive? Keep pumping more money into the same methods of selling? Or try something smarter? It really does amaze me that some clients approach me with successful businesses that have only recently considered getting an online presence. A website can not only act as a non paid salesman for a company, it can also be used as a tool to increase efficiency and do many of the tasks that normally take a lot of time, money and effort. Why post or fax documentation that is needed before a sale when your website can email it straight to your customer, for free and within minuets? That’s just one example, and I am sure you can think of loads yourself, you get the point, I think this kind of thinking will benefit companies prepared to adapt to a changing financial climate. It’s survival of the smartest.
Facebook fascinates me, not because of the countless annoying messages I get on it about quizzes and vampire fights, but because of its exponential growth. This exponential growth pattern occurs because the more members it has, the more people are referred, and the cycle continues. However I believe this may be about to change.
Having signed up myself a few months ago, I am now totally bored with the site. I’m not the only one either, many people I have spoken to have said the same thing. Facebook was very fun at first but is now a bit tedious.
There is a possible downturn in traffic too. Please see below.
It is widely known that Alexa is not very accurate at measuring the traffic levels for smaller sites, but for one of the major contenders such as Facebook, we can assume these statics are fairly reflective of the overall traffic trends.
It could be a seasonal trend, maybe every December sites such as Facebook received lower traffic, possibly because people are preparing for Christmas, who knows. It is interesting to note that MySpace.com does not have the same downturn. Personally I think Facebook could be in trouble.
We have just recently launched another website created for a solicitors based in Hereford. You can visit the site by clicking here. Our full portfolio can be seen here
I get this all the time. Some bloke phones me up, seemingly my friend. He’s got a heavy Asian accent, but his name is Jonathan and his favourite football team is Manchester United. He likes beans on toast. I know all of this because he makes a big point of telling me. He asks me how my day has been and what I’ve been up to. He’s too nice. You just know he’s after something; usually he’s trying to get me to switch my phone company or to out-source all of my work to some other country. Nowadays I just say something like “Is this a sales call?†and then after he eventually admits it is I tell him a polite no thank you.
Now a friend and client of mine has a different approach, it goes something like this: Read the rest of this entry »
I think the best tool I use often in developing a website is the internet itself. If there is anything I don’t know or am stuck with, I Google it. As you probably know Google is now actually a verb in English dictionaries. This is due to the fact that so many people use Google to research and seek out information due to its superiority over other search engines.
Over the last few years I have come across many tools and utilities that have helped me complete various tasks and I have decided to list them here in the hope that the will be of help to some else. They are not listed in any particular order as they are all great.
Edit Plus
Download
Edit Plus is a great text editor that supports probably every known programming and database language there is. It has great colour highlighting, ftp, customisable scripts and extensions and much more. Its a 30 day free trial, but in the past I have used it for much longer than 30days meaning, I guess that purchase is voluntary. No doubt you will find it so useful you might consider paying the shareware fee.
I have been doing a lot of research about this lately, there are loads of sites telling you how to make thousands from the google adsense affiliate program. They all make it sound so easy. In reality you have to put in a lot of hard work. From my research there are three main factors which will enable a high payout from google:
Lots of traffic
There are untold strategies to boost traffic to a site, including well optimised pages and keywords (meta data), inbound links, paid advertising etc. in my opinion the best way to drive visitors to a site is to have decent content. If you offer something to your visitors, be it information or advice or the free use of a service you will undoubtedly get a certain level of traffic
A good click through rate (CTR)
Positioning of ads can help increase this, either by blending in your ads or making them stand out from your content. Some people place images next to the ads, which apparently increases CTR by attracting more attention to the advert.
High paying keywords
Now this is tricky. Making a site only to generate high paying key-worded ads is a bad idea, and not allowed by google. This doesn’t stop people doing it though! I personally think if you don’t know what you are talking about, then don’t bother writing about it. Pick a subject you are interested in, your visitors will have a far more informed and enjoyable visit and will keep coming back.
One way of increasing the keyword price is by using section targeting. This allows you to emphasise or ignore certain content from the site. Results aren’t immediate as you have to wait for google to re-crawl your site before there is any noticeable difference.
It’s now just coming up to Christmas and we have recently been approved for another web project. This particular job is going to be part funded by Business Link. If you are a UK based design company or individual I strongly suggest you consider signing on to the Business Link Consultants Register as your clients may then be eligible for up to 50% funding. The main advantage of this is that your client generally has twice as much money to play with meaning that he or she will be able to get a bigger website or more designs etc. You will also be listed in their directory so you will often get proposals sent directly to you.
To be eligible, you first need to contact your local Business Link which is normally based at the same offices as the Chamber of Commerce. They will then need to assess you for professional qualities that are required to be listed. They will speak to previous clients about the success of projects you have undertaken for them and will ask you to fill in a report outlining your working methodology. Initially you will need to pay them a fee of around £300 to cover all of the research and assessing. You will also need Professional Indemnity insurance and Public Liability insurance to cover up to a certain amount. Mine covers up to a million pounds each and I also have Products Liability to cover for the same amount and Employers’ Liability to cover up to a whopping 10 million pounds. Basically you need these insurances so that if anything happens (i.e. you accidentally deleted a client’s hard drive) you would be able to compensate them. My insurances cost me a total of about £350 a year, but shop around.
So the initial expense is quite high at least £650 setup in total and £350 a year thereafter for insurance, but I think it is well worth it in the long run if your clients can afford to give you projects twice as big. The reason the government provide this type of funding is to encourage regional growth and to help those companies that work by abiding to high levels of professional practices. I think it’s a great initiative.
