Google AdPreview Feature Update
Google has now made the ad preview feature MUCH easier to use. Instead of having to manipulate the URL of the page utilizing a ‘cheat sheet’ (which Google has now taken down but you can see below for a general idea…) you can now select from a drop down menu of choices to check the location of you ad/natural listing from almost anywhere in the world. For those of you not familiar with this tool what it does is allow you to check your ad position without incurring impressions. This is great when trying to preserve ad quality as your CTR does not suffer due to anxious repetitive position checks. (I recommend telling your clients to use this feature to check their ads!!) This preservation will help in keeping cost down and positions up. The Old Way...
Prevent Harry Potter Spoilers on Digg with Greasemonkey
So, it is inevitable. Some idiots are going to read the last page of the Deathly Hallows and spout out “Harry Potter Lives!” or “Harry Potter Dies” before the rest of us even get home to pick up the book, much less read it like a real person. In anticipation of these spoilers, I went to look for what I could do to exclude stories by keyword when browsing Digg. (this is also very useful for getting rid of paris hilton and iphone stories, which are growing very tiresome). The solution: Digg Washer. This beauty of a Greasemonkey script makes it very easy to hide stories based on keywords. Unfortunately, it has not been updated since the last Digg revision, so you can either make a slight code change yourself (mentioned in the comments on the...
Bad Stats are Holding Back Web 2.0
I use “stats” generically here because, at its simplest meaning, what is holding back web 2.0 is bad statistical planning. You have to ask the right questions with the right controls to get the right answers so you can make the right recommendations. The napkin business plan generation apparently has not learned its lesson in the web 2.0 sphere, with new sites and communities launching by the dozens. Unfortunately, web 2.0 communities commonly make the following assumption: massive data, regardless of its quality, is sufficient. What we need is a more complete measurements (questions) and common, controlled subjects (wines). To illustrate this point, I would like to identify 3 wine Web 2.0 communities (Corkd – BottleNotes – TasteVine), 2...
Simplest Trick to Optimize Body Content
So, the general rules of thumb for body content are this… Keywords in important tags (h1, h2, h3, b or strong, em, maybe alt tags) Unique content as close to the top of the page as possible. The first issue is quite easy to handle, and has been spammed to death across the internet since the inception of search engines. However, moving unique content to the top of the code while maintaining an attractive, Google-guidelines-compliant page has proven more difficult. Let’s take a look. Headers, advertisements, navigation and more normally precede the really unique content on the page. But how much code and duplicate content does that create? In the case of FindArticles.com, we are looking at nearly 370 lines of code between the body tag and the unique...
Google Personalized PPC/CPC Results – Hurts Advertisers
I have been noticing something over the last couple of weeks in regards to rankings of paid search listings in Google and their odd propensity to show up differently in different browsers. Odd you say? Yes I say. Thinking of why this might be, the only logical conclusion I could come up with was cookies. So I decided to test it out. I took a screen shot before I deleted my Google based cookies and then one after. Here are the before and after screen shots. (Obviously this is anecdotal at this point!) Before Cookies Cleared After Cookies Cleared So Google is personalizing Paid Search results, thanks for the heads up Google. Good for advertisers? Not really. By doing this Google eliminates some listings all together, or pushes them to never-never land, thereby...
Profitable Web 2.0? That’s Probably Worth $5.35 Million
It was bound to happen. Many people have pointed out the link between the tech crash and today’s Web 2.0 venture frenzy. It always seemed backwards (traffic -> venture capital -> make money). In the “real world”, businesses are expected to prove their worth before they get venture backing. You know, actually posting profits before getting funded. Well, it has happened. iContact (formerly intelliContact by Broadwick) has managed to do just that. With over 11,000 clients, the company turned itself to Web 2.0 by building RSS / Blogs and Syndication into its already hugely successful Opt-In Email Marketing Platform. Updata Partners recognized that, for once in the history of the world, a young, successful, profitable company was able to seamlessly...
XSS Hole in Reddit Allows Gaping Access: Proof of Concept
Fixed by Reddit. So, a few months back Digg added a new feature that allowed users to invite and add friends more easily. Unfortunately, as I reported then, this hole allowed a site to automatically add friends if the visitor was still logged into Digg. This story did quite well in Reddit, often considered rivals, actually out performing the story on Digg which was, unsurprisingly, quickly buried. Nevertheless, an XSS hole in the handling of non-existing 404 pages has created a gaping hole which can allow a site to perform almost any site function we would want. To be fair to Reddit, I figured the Proof of Concept should mimic the same one as I did for Digg, an auto friend adder. If you are reading this page and are logged into Reddit, assuming the hole has not...
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