Panda 4: Reducing #indexed pages. How much is enough?

I've been hit by panda 4 (40% decrease). I didn't see any change during panda 1-3. From what I've read it and when compared to my site, the change is probably due to the fact that I have over 30M pages indexed on Google, and they've starting seeing that as some sort of bad indication. Although I feel all of the pages have a unique value that Google should crawl, it seems I should make some tough calls and deduce the indexed pages according to some prioritization I will conduct. The question is what should be my target, or what factors should help me figure out a relevant target. How many pages should I try to reduce to?   - 25M   - 15M   - 1M   - 2000 Is it enough to add `noindex` to low priority pages or should I also remove all internal linking to them? UPDATE: just to clarify, all of my pages are such that I believe will provide value to my users. But as I understood, in times like these I should still consider de-indexing some of them, because just because a user might get value, doesn't mean Google will see this as a quality page, which is a very subjective definition actually.


SEO words: Information Technology vs IT

IT is in common usage as an abbreviation for "Information Technology" and people may search on it as that, such as "IT Support". However, it is also a "stop word". Any suggestions for optimal SEO usage? **Edit** : In line with the answers, on reviewing the search engine results, it seems that they are mostly interpreting "IT" correctly. The overall context I'm sure helps, so thus far, I'm going to stay with "IT".


Can shortened URLs on my pages hurt my SEO?

There is a certain part of my blog (part of my homepage) that contains shortened urls to external pages. If I don't add the `rel="nofollow"` property to those links, can they hurt the SEO of my page? I read a few articles here, but as I understood, all of them were focused on the impact of the incoming shortened urls to a website. I'm interested to know if short urls to other websites can hurt the ranking of my homepage?


Should I nofollow a link to a noindex page?

If I have a page on my blog that is marked noindex or blocked by robots.txt should I mark all links within my blog that point to that page as `rel="nofollow"` or not? _Example:_ I publish a post on my blog and mark it as noindex. That post will show up on my blog's front page and all links on the front page are do follow. So when a bot comes on the main page it crawls all the links but when the bot gets to the link to a noindex post does it take note that the link and crawl that page?


Is it SEO-acceptable to do an automatic redirect based on accpept-language header value

We are launching a big international web site, that has local web sites on other domains. We are planning to configure the web site to behave in the following manner: Of a user with German (de) accept-language header visits "mysite.com", he is automatically redirected to "mysite.de". If on "mysite.de" he selects to go to "mysite.com", the specific "no redirect in future" cookie is added. Now, when he visits mysite.com, he is no longer redirected. Will this "initial redirect" behavior have any negative implication of website's reputation in search engines?


When to use page level versus session level custom variables

We run a radio station site with 5 markets. The value of the market is saved as a cookie and last week I started tracking the value of that cookie in a page-level custom variable. The problem is that when reporting on the page views of this custom variable, GA alerts that only 80% of the data is being reported on. So, I'm wondering whether I can increase that figure if I swap to session- level custom variable so there is less data accrued to report on? Thanks for any advice.


How can I make my flash website more search engine friendly?

I've got a website where just about all the content is in a flash movie. Is there anything I can do to improve my search engine ranking or make my content more indexable?


Similar domains using my business' content, and stealing SEO results

I've been hired to create a website for a restaurant in my city, let's call it "Flying Dragon" Chinese restaurant. The restaurant has never had a website, though the business itself is about ten years old. However, if you Google the restaurant's name, the first site that comes up seems to be affiliated with the restaurant itself, even though it is not. This site - let's say, flyingdragonchinese.com - is also the one that Google has apparently selected, in its results, to be the official website of the restaurant - in essence, the first Google result is flyingdragonchinese.com, and directly beneath it, within the same entry, are the Google reviews and contact information. Upon visiting flyingdragonchinese.com (again, not the actual name), I see that the website has taken the menu content from the restaurant, in the same manner that Yelp does, but it also seems (to the untrained eye) to be the restaurant's official site. Basically, someone has created a fake website for the business (I am not sure why) using its actual menu and contact information, and is hogging the search results. The concept is similar to a "scraping site" except that the information seems to have been stolen manually. The main problem is that visitors to this site will have an inaccurate impression of the restaurant. I feel like the obvious solution is to register a new domain for _my_ site, and simply beat out this competitor (or whatever it is) with smarter SEO and business verification with Google. However, the Conan-the-Barbarian-web- designer part of me wants to somehow bash this other site (deservedly?) into oblivion. But I don't know what I can really do, besides maybe issuing a cease-and-desist letter, or trying to contact the web host for the site, although there is no contact information available on this "fake" site for the site owner. Has anyone ever experienced something like this? Is there any solution?


How to change hosting?

I have a website, here both domain and hosting are presently on crazydomains.com.au Now I want to change hosting to Godadday but domain control should remain unchanged. I already purchased hosting from Godadday. I want know how to configure the domain?


Any way to compare multiple Google analytic Accounts

I have a Google analytic's account on my website that makes use of 10 properties. Each property has its own tracking code. In few words, my website displays 10 different Google analytic tag scripts. Each tag has its own purpose. I'm searching for the best way to see a report that could compare all of the channels. Is there any way to do this?


Video monetising and simple shop, platform?

I have this client that wants a single-product website. The product is a training-video that they want to deliver virtually and optionally physically. I usually do all the front-end design and back-end development but the budget is close to $0 to start with. So I'm looking for a platform like shopify or something where a shop/cart can be set up quickly and simply with minimal up-front cost - but which can accomodate some kind of paywall (DRM too?) for the online video with an option to purchase for an aditional cost the physical DVD. Am I approaching the wrong way all together? Or do you know of any platform that will accomodate the specs?


Does Google bot always treat dot as word separator?

One of our products is a grid control called iGrid, and we have two versions for two different platforms. One is iGrid ActiveX, the other is iGrid for .NET Framework WinForms called "iGrid.NET". At some point we noticed that in the snippets on Google's SERP the ".NET" suffix is treated as a standalone word. For example, we can see highlighted text in bold (what Google highlights looking at the search query) like this: ... iGrid. **NET** is an advanced **DataGridView alternative**. Is that right? How to check whether Google treats "iGrid.NET" as two separate words? And if so, tell him not to do that?


Waiting for googleads.g.doubleclick.net

When I load my pages, I see the ads are not showing up and there is this message at the bottom of Chrome saying that the browser is waiting for `googleads.g.doubleclick.net`. How can I speed this up so the ads display quicker? Is something wrong with my domain?


What can I do to take control of a domain from a client's previous developer?

A client of mine has a website that is incomplete. The last developers quit from this work, and they need get this work done. The problem is that I can't get cPannel access, and the first developer doesn't answer my e-mails. I've also checked the WHOIS records, that tell me that my client is not the owner of this domain/hosting service. The first company didn't register the service with the client's name. I've already contacted the host company to ask for a password reset, and they tell me that for security purposes they only can do that for the domain/host owner. Is there any way to solve this mess?


posts appearing in wordpress media library

when searching from the media library I am seeing posts and when clicking on them to edit the edit post window opens and not the media edit window. could anyone shed some light on this?


What russian search engine or social network service is this?

![What search engine is this?](http://i.stack.imgur.com/coCZT.jpg) The above logo of a search engine is supposedly the top in russia. I would like to know more about the company so I can do SEO for it. When I google for "Russia top search engine" I only get Yandex. Does anyone know what search engine is it? PS: I am chinese.


google analytics - how to see the name of the pages which has been viewed by certain countries

I want a list of my site pages which has been viewed in any country. I could not find such option in analytics. How to do that. So that i can know the people who view certain pages. so that i can display content according to that.


Indexing internationalized pages

I've noticed that many websites use different URLs for different languages, e.g. de.wikipedia.org. I thought that was the entire purpose of existance for the `Accept-Language` HTTP header. It would be easiest for me to just use that header, but I was wondering how that would be indexed. For different URLs, there is hreflang. But could I point out, "Hey request this page with a different `Accept-Language` header and get translated content"?


Domain purchased long time ago by me is not mine?

4 years ago, I bought a domain `www.example.fr` on the French website `1and1.fr`. It was some sort of parked domain to be used in future. I payed for 2 years at the beginning. Now, after 4 years, I see that domain name bought before by me, no longer belongs to me, but to some company `www.company.com`. Isn't this against law, to buy something you owned before without even getting you know about this manipulation?


Weird CSS-behaviour

<!DOCTYPE html>                                                       <title>PakHet</title>                     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/basis.css" />

Start

Over PakHet

Over Ons

Uw pakket

Aanmelden

Traceren

Hier komt de titel van de website

Dit is de tekst van de content. Dit is de indexpagina.

                                        And this is the CSS:                           /* CSS RESET */                      html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,                 h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,                 a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,                 del, dfn, em, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,                 small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,                 b, u, i, center,                 dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,                 fieldset, form, label, legend,                 table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td,                 article, aside, canvas, details, embed,                  figure, figcaption, footer, header, hgroup,                  menu, nav, output, ruby, section, summary,                 time, mark, audio, video, *{                     margin: 0;                     padding: 0;                     border: 0;                     vertical-align: baseline;                 }                 table {                     border-collapse: collapse;                     border-spacing: 0;                 }                      /* Einde CSS RESET, nu echte code */                 html, body{                     background:url(../images/bg_picture.jpg) fixed no-repeat;                 }                 .wrapper{                     margin:0 auto;                 }                 .header{                     margin:0 auto;                     background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4);                 }                 .content{                     background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4);                     width:600px;                     margin:0 auto;                     margin-top:50px;                 }                 .content p{                     color:white;                     text-shadow:1px 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0, 0.5);                     font-family:"Lucida Grande", sans-serif;                 }                      #cssmenu{ height:37px; display:block; padding:0; margin: 0;  border:1px solid; }                  #cssmenu > ul {list-style:inside none; padding:0; margin:0;}                  #cssmenu > ul > li {list-style:inside none; padding:0; margin:0; float:left; display:block; position:relative;}                  #cssmenu > ul > li > a{ outline:none; display:block; position:relative; padding:12px 20px; font:bold 13px/100% "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:center; text-decoration:none; text-shadow:1px 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0, 0.4); }                  #cssmenu > ul > li:first-child > a{border-radius:5px 0 0 5px;}                  #cssmenu > ul > li > a:after{ content:''; position:absolute; border-right:1px solid; top:-1px; bottom:-1px; right:-2px; z-index:99; }                  #cssmenu ul li.has-sub:hover > a:after{top:0; bottom:0;}                  #cssmenu > ul > li.has-sub > a:before{ content:''; position:absolute; top:18px; right:6px; border:5px solid transparent; border-top:5px solid #fff; }                  #cssmenu > ul > li.has-sub:hover > a:before{top:19px;}                  #cssmenu ul li.has-sub:hover > a{ background:#3f3f3f; border-color:#3f3f3f; padding-bottom:13px; padding-top:13px; top:-1px; z-index:999; }                  #cssmenu ul li.has-sub:hover > ul, #cssmenu ul li.has-sub:hover > div{display:block;}                  #cssmenu ul li.has-sub > a:hover{background:#3f3f3f; border-color:#3f3f3f;}                  #cssmenu ul li > ul, #cssmenu ul li > div{ display:none; width:auto; position:absolute; top:38px; padding:10px 0; background:#3f3f3f; border-radius:0 0 5px 5px; z-index:999; }                  #cssmenu ul li > ul{width:200px;}                  #cssmenu ul li > ul li{display:block; list-style:inside none; padding:0; margin:0; position:relative;}                  #cssmenu ul li > ul li a{ outline:none; display:block; position:relative; margin:0; padding:8px 20px; font:10pt "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#fff; text-decoration:none; text-shadow:1px 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0, 0.5); }                  #cssmenu, #cssmenu > ul > li > ul > li a:hover{ background:#333333; background:-moz-linear-gradient(top, #333333 0%, #222222 100%); background:-webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#333333), color-stop(100%,#222222)); background:-webkit-linear-gradient(top, #333333 0%,#222222 100%); background:-o-linear-gradient(top, #333333 0%,#222222 100%); background:-ms-linear-gradient(top, #333333 0%,#222222 100%); background:linear-gradient(top, #333333 0%,#222222 100%); filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#333333', endColorstr='#222222',GradientType=0 ); }                  #cssmenu{border-color:#000;}                  #cssmenu > ul > li > a{border-right:1px solid #000; color:#fff;}                  #cssmenu > ul > li > a:after{border-color:#444;}                  #cssmenu > ul > li > a:hover{background:#111;}                 #cssmenu > ul > li.active > a{                     color:orange;                 }                 .header{                     clear:both;                 }      The problem is that, whenever I hover on the dropdown-menu, that a 1px margin appears in between the menu and the header. Can I solve that? I can't seem to find the solution.


Test if Google+ is already with my Website

How can I verify or check if a website is already linked with Google plus? I already added `<link href="https://plus.google.com/{+PageIdGoesHere}" rel="publisher" />` this to my head tag of my page.


Will doing this improve somewhat improve my site ranking (SEO)?

So I like to post a lot on forums. And often times, I'll link images. I usually use imgur as the image provider. But this thought just came into my head. Would it be a good idea to have the image on a page of site, thereby increasing my site ranking (right now, I'm the only person who's ever been on my site hah). So basically, instead of linking http://i.imgur.com/veCBW.p ng, I would link mysite.com/pagethatincludestheimage . And inside it would just contain img src of the image. It would basically appear exactly the same. Is this a decent idea? Is there any other way it may help my site? Btw, I also use amazon s3, so hotlinking will not be an issue.


Having trouble moving Website

Some acquaintances of mine inherited a website running a custom wordpress template and the previous owner asked them to take over and to get it set up on their own server. I was asked to assist since I was the only one they knew with some technical skills. The previous site owner send me a backup of the web files and the mySQL database and recommended using site5.com for hosting. I got the files installed, things seemed to be OK and we were then ready to transfer the DNS. The domain is registered through GoDaddy and the prior owner issued a transfer to me, I got signed up accepted the domain and then went in and set the nameservers per site5 instructions: dns.site5.com and dns2.site5.com I expected that this was all that would be required and would just wait for the dns entries to update. However, at present when I browse or ping the Website. I get Server not Found. Is there anything else that I should have done or am I just in DNS Limbo? WHOIS.NET reports that it is registered to me and has the nameservers correct. You'll have to excuse me, while I've set up several websites internally at my work, this is the first time I've worked on an internet website. Thanks for any help you can offer.


Google crawling the site but refusing to index dynamic content

I am trying to get Google to index an AJAX site (davidelifestyle.com). It's crawlable with JavaScript turned off and I have also recently implemented _escaped_content_ snapshot mechanism but all that's indexed is a home page and PDF files that are not directly available from the home page. Also when I use Fetch as Google in Webmaster Tools, it downloads the dynamic page but does not index it ("Submit to Index" just reloads the page). Any ideas what might be wrong? Edit: Today Index Status in Webmaster Tools showed: `Total indexed: 0, Not selected: 178`. According to documentation, pages are "not selected" because they are regarded duplicates.


Why does Google sometimes show fewer than the standard pair of lines for the "snippet"?

Normally websites listed in Google's results pages are shown with a standard excerpt comprising two lines with a [...] at the end of the second line. Occasionally Google allows the website a full sentence without a [...] and in these cases the excerpt or summary is typically limited to a single line. Why? ![alt text](http://i.stack.imgur.com/VQqpm.jpg) Also occasionally Google shows no excerpt at all. Why is this? ![alt text](http://i.stack.imgur.com/hRo8F.jpg) We're trying to rescue a customer from virtual invisibility on Google (up till now they have been nofollow, noindex). Wondering if the fact that Google only gives them a single line is a clue to how Google sees (or doesn't) this site. Screenshots are just examples, these sites are not my client.


categorize website based on visitors count

my site is having around 300 unique visits/5000 pageviews per day.   i want to know how many unique visits/page views (approx.) a site should have to be called   low , moderate and high traffic website. also how can i test strength of my website, like how many requests my website can process simultaneously.   http://loadimpact.com/ -- iam looking for some tool like this. i want these figures to choose a proper webhost as my new project is very big as compared to this one.   Also what are the things we should look for when choosing a web host. Ram and CPU are important for webservers to process requests but most of webhosts never talk of cpu and ram allotted to us. They only provide disk space and daily/monthly allowed traffic in GBS.


Legal to modify game art and screenshots for my own site?

I'm currently working on building a video game related website, and I'm wondering if it's legal to use screenshots or concept art that game studios post on their official sites. At most I would want to crop these images to create links with. I see other sites like IGN, Gamespot, etc doing this at length, but I'm wondering if they have to have permission.


How to calculate maximum number of request in 128 MB VPS performance?

I am a newbie here, please let me know if I'm using wrong webmaster terms. I am currently setting up a VPS for a multi site WordPress. The VPS uses Debian 6 LNMP setup and the DNS is being taken care by another service. Currently the VPS is running non multi site WordPress with -+ 83 MB RAM out of 128MB. As far as I know the performance is relative to the number of request, not the number of sites in the multi site setup. ## The question How do I calculate maximum number of request in with that setup? If the information is not enough, what other factor do I need to know? Thank you in advance.


Is it good idea to put a captcha on credit card payment form? I am thinking to put one on my asp.net mvc application's payment section to make it more secure but I have never seen anybody doing that.


How to find whom a registrar is reselling?

In case a domain is registered not with an ICANN accredited registrar and only the reseller is mentioned in the whois, how can I find out whom is the reseller actually reselling? For example, whois record for 24creation.com has it that the domain has been registered with fc2.com, but the latter doesn't seem to be an ICANN accredited one, so it must be reselling someone.


Where to find Joomla components for 1.0.X?

I need to add new functionality to an old Joomla 1.0.15 installation. To be concrete, I need to add a component that allows me to add custom javascript to my content. I know that there is the option to edit the html source of the content but I rather would like to use a module for this. So I see two options (correct me if there are more):   1. Update Joomla to at least version 1.5 (From some forum posts I found out that can be somewhat complicated). I don't know if it is worth the effort since new functionality requirements come rarely (and I think my client doesn't want to pay for a Joomla version update).   2. Find an appropriate component and leave the old installation as it is. Can anyone point me into the right direction?


What to do if Google has banned my site?

What should I do if I suspect that Google has Banned (refuses to list pages for) my Site?


301 redirect for a page with a space in it

I have some pages from a client's old template-based site which have spaces in them. For example, one of the pages looks like this:               example.com/page.php?domain_name=example.com&viewpage=Gallery %26 News      I'm thinking that the correct way to do an htaccess 301 redirect is to include something like this:               Redirect 301 /page.php?domain_name=example.com&viewpage=Gallery%20%26%20News http://www.example.com/gallery/      where the new page is:               example.com/gallery      Is this correct?


Chat solution, that integrates with VBulliten forums

I'm wondering if there any software that adds the chat capability of on page chat (facebook-like), to the VBulliten forum system, with the following requirements:   1. Requires no plugins (Pure JavaScript) or has alternatives (Uses anyone that available of Flash, or Silverlight of Java).or just throw a link.   2. Integrates with the members system, utilizes the Username, User avatar.   3. Utilizes the friendship featues that is already implemented in VBulliten. So you can see online friends and private-chat with them. And if it supports the public chat rooms it will be better. I would like to hear about software you've experienced: commercial, property free-ware, or free/open-source. And what services they offer or just a brief about their Pros/Cons from your point of view. Thanks in advance


"Email This" button with sideways counter

I've been asked to build a design that has a "share this" area like below: ![share this stuff](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XJFZ5.png) I've built every aspect except the Email part of it -- any idea how best to do that? I've found http://getmailcounter.com/, but that displays a counter above. I'd personally just do a link, but it seems they're wanting some sort of analytics built in... Failing that, does anyone know of some sort of sharing system that looks like that and has all of those options? I'd just use AddThis, but its designs don't look very close to that... Thanks! Related: How to implement an email this link button


Nofollow: a good thing for SEO or not?

I read a while ago, on this site, (sorry, can't find the link), that Google sees anchors with `nofollow` attributes as _paid links_ and mentioned for _affiliates_. I thought that using a `nofollow` for external links is good and not harmful as Google sees it as a less valuable link. I am confused and don't know what to think really. Can someone give me the right answer on this? Right now, I am using a `nofollow` on all my external links. Should I step off of this one?


How to monitor traffic from domains forwarding?

I have suppose 10 domains all redirecting( using godaddy forwarding) to example.com. Is there a way I can monitor traffic from these 10 domains ? Probably some how in Google Analytics or some other way out ? I am using Google Analytics on example.com


Copyright word or symbol

After reading this post I was wondering which is best to use for websites out of the following,   * Copyright (C) 2010 "COMPANY"   * (C) 2010   * Copyright 2010 Also, if we license everything we produce under the GPLv3 license, should we also include anything about that at the bottom?


Another company has my domain in Japan

I own a company and have the company name registered as a trademark. I just discovered that someone has already bought my company name domain in Japan. So say I own this company japancompany.com and I want to get the domain japancompany.jp but someone else has already bought it. Can I somehow get it back?


Google Analytics - two visitors between August 13th and September 12th

So I was recently given access to our Google Analytics, and it appears like we only had TWO visitors between August 13th and September 12th... this is for a site that typically has between several hundred to over a thousand visitors per month. What could have caused this error? Almost certainly we didn't only have two users during this month.


Facebook like and share buttons will have impact on SEO in future?

I read in blogs that Facebook features will be crawled in future. Maybe like how many Likes are done for a specific page. In that case is it good to use third party widgets like ShareThis to integrate Facebook Likes or do I have to directly use the Facebook code on my website?


How to exclude total sessions when comparing segments in Google Analytics

In previous versions of Google Analytics it was possible to uncheck total sessions when comparing segments so that only the checked segments would be graphed. But now I can't figure out how to quickly exclude total sessions. And I'm left with a graph that looks like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nmWSs.png) Is it still possible to exclude total ("Sessions" in the graph above)?


Robots.txt and pattern matching

Adding this to my robots.txt               User-agent: *     Disallow: /*action=*$      How does robots not recognizing wild cards handle this?


How to protect the contact us page from spammers? Even using captcha, validation etc I sitll receive spam letters

I have on my site, every field validation + captcha protection + math validation + server scripting validation, but still this a spammer keeps sending me spam mails. Is there any better smarter protection protect those ugly face's? special sites like: `http://mysite.com/contact.php`


Developing from scratch vs. Wordpress

I am facing a dilemma, over the past six months I have been building my website from scratch and I put plenty of hours into it using standard html/css/php/mysql/javascript and jquery... My website provides a service on a membership only basis, I was wondering if it is smart decision to start transitioning to wordpress? At the moment, I have no experience using it although I heard of the many advantages... I am a freelance web developer/designer and I am trying to decide if regularly working with wordpress is worth it? are there any drawbacks? I enjoy the 'coding' part of web development which is why I tried to stay away;)


How can I organize my domain names?

I have some domains registered with 1and1 and some with dreamhost and hosting on both companies but some point to hosting with dns. It's all a mess! Is it best to register your domains through a registration company and then just point them to hosting company? Any recommendations how I can clean this up?!


Should I still use the <b> tag?

A while ago I learned to use proper CSS stylesheets on my websites. However, on Wikipedia and eBay and other sites I see the deprecated `<b><i>` tags being used. I was going for `<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span>` but I **_never_** see it done that way. So what's up with the WC3 standards. Are `<b>` tags back in style?


Tracking with Google Analytics both a page and a file linked from it

I have a page located on a subdomain (downloads.easyjob.net) that links to an executable. The download of the executable is correctly tracked by google analytics (following these indications). However, I'd like to track the page itself too. How can I do this?


Does someone knows of a free asmx webhosting?

I wrote a webservice (*.asmx) and I want to host it for free. Couldn't find a website that alows web service hosting. Does someone know of such ?


Any websites out there that showcase beautiful and pure css? (no images, flash, etc)

Something like the css zen garden but without the images used, just showing off what css can do on it's own? Or in general a site that gives an overview of pure css techniques to beautify web pages.


Does putting more ads on a page necessarily generate more revenues?

It seems 'logic' that if you put more ads on a page, it 'should' generate more revenues. However, someone could argue that too many ads repel users, and therefore, pages with less ads are would be visited more often. Has anyone got practical experience to share about this? Does putting more ads on a page necessarily generate more revenues in practice?


Does Google penalize daily updated <lastmod> tags in sitemaps if the data is not daily updated?

I've got a sitemap that is generated daily with a lot of links to product pages. These products are imported daily from another data source. Because the update consists of throwing away all current product info and replacing it with the new imported info the last modified date always jumps one day. This is also used in the sitemap. Even for products that haven't changed. All product pages pretend to have been updated. Will Google penalize the website for pretending the pages have changed from day to day while they haven't? My solution would be to only change the entry only if the new imported product data differs from the previous data. I just want to make sure this is a useful upgrade to make, while I could also spend my time on other improvements.


Google Search results show one link but no description

Search for this term in Google: cop-groningen or click the link to get to the page without typing. It shows you a link at the top of the search results page: `www.cop-groningen.nl/`. Below it I see neither a description (in black) nor a breadcrumb (in green). The preview is not working either (it says: no preview available). If you click the link, the site loads as expected. This is a snippet from the website's homepage:                   < meta name="keywords" content="COP, groep, COPgroep, peuteropvang, slochteren, kidsfirst" />           < meta name="description" content="Stichting COP groep - Organisatie voor gesubsidieerde peuterspeelzalen en opvoedingsondersteuning in de stad Groningen" />       **EDIT:** The website has been on air for ages, and has had a description before. I now also see in Google Analytics that no visitors were reported after 15 january 2012. There have been visitors, however. Anyone get any idea why this is the case? I try to analyse with Wireshark but I'm not good for analysing packets. I just don't get it.


Pages crawled with Cloudflare

I activated Cloudflare on my blog a few days ago and in their Analytics it shows me that there are 255 pages crawled by Bing, 16 by Yandex and only 1 by Google. Why only one page for Google? Should I worry about it?


Duplicate content issue between two sites having same ‘website navigation steps’ in home page

My client has two websites `www.example1.com` and `www.example2.com` those websites are same in structure and content. First site is old one and the second site is fresh site that was registered in this month only (not crawled by Google). I have been working to change the contents of the new one. In the home page of both sites we have ‘How to navigate this website’ section that contains 4 steps to tell our customers about the website and the working methods. Those steps are similar for both sites so I plan to leave that section from checking copyright, which means, I’m going to give same details in both the site. But our home page has some other details like introduction etc and those contents are different so I can’t provide canonical tag in that page. I need Google to consider both the sites as good sites. What can I do? Is there any attribute to notify Google that both the sections are same?


How do you track display impressions in Google Analytics on non Google networks?

Google Analytics has a Multi-Channel funnel analysis feature that we’d like to use to understand assisted conversions and how each channel has impacted on conversion beyond just last interaction attribution. My current understanding is that the impression tracking part of this feature works really well when playing within Google’s search and display networks. Outside of Google’s network I suspect that impression tracking will no longer “just work” and feed back into GA appropriately. What our options are for tracking display impressions on other advertising networks so that we can be attributing value correctly with GA?


Forum is removed but still being visited by Googlebot

I've removed Simple Machine Forum (SMF) from my blog and from Google's index . I've even removed the sub-directory /forum from my blog techwayz.com and blocked it through robots.txt file. Unfortunately, it is still being visited by Googlebot. Every time Google visits the forum, I receive a 404 error alerts in webmaster tools. How can I resolve this?


Change Apache +Indexes language

I have a webpage with Index activated. I have this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/F60wy.png) Is there any way for change language of this, using `.htaccess`? I've already tried this `Directives`:               AddLanguage pt .pt     DefaultLanguage pt-PT     RewriteEngine On     RewriteBase /     RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Language} ^.*(pt).*$ [NC]     RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [env=lang:%1]


Website analytic software compliance

I need to find a program which can crawl a site and show what various search engine spiders will parse (or not parse) and use for information. What we are looking to do is have a program go through the our site and tell us what images don't have alt tags (because engines use the alt tags on images at times to determine some site information etc.), or which content is written such a way that the SEs can't pull the information and use it in their rankings.


display product price in google search result

While I search for the magento module in google, I noticed the price is displayed in google search. Can we display the price of the product in google search by using any tag or any other way. Someone tell me what method is used in this. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/oE7Sb.png)


PayPal IPN/PDT for multiple sites

We have 4 websites that sell 4 separate (and unrelated products), and all of them use the same PayPal account. All 4 sites provide options for paying with PayPal Standard, and PayPal Website Payments Pro. The 'Pro' side of things works fine. The area we have a problem is with the IPN settings. As we have 4 "Notification URL's" what should we enter in the IPN settings? Has anyone found a way to set this up properly? (I use quite a few other SE sites, but this one looked most likely to answer a PayPal question. If it's not, please migrate it or tell me and I'll delete and repost. Thanks)


SEO penalty for landing page redirects

Using ebay as an example- lets say I have a large number of items whose URLs' look like this: _`cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1981-VW-Vanagon-manual-seats- seven-/250953153841`_ I want to give my client the ability to put links to these items on their website EASILY, without knowing or checking my URL. So I created a redirect service that will map their identifier with my URL: _`ebay.com/fake_redirect_service/shared_identifier9918`_ would redirect to the link above. This works great- my clients can easily setup these links with information they already have, and the user will see the page as usual. So on to the problem... I'm concerned that this redirecting service will have a negative impact on my SEO ranking. Having a landing page redirect you immediately to a different URL seems like something a typical spam site would do. Will this hurt me? Any better solutions?


Google Analytics Goal Flow

How does Google Analytics tracks users?Each user is tracked as unique user? I have a doubt about a goal flow in Google Analytics. I'm working on an ecommerce site. I set the goal as reach the "thank you" page after purchasing something. Before reaching the thank you page, users have to complete a checkout process. My doubt is about what happen if a user leaves the checkout process and comes back to site for add to cart another object and then returns to checkout and completes the order? What do I see on the goal flow? 2 entry in the checkout process (the first access and then the second one, after the user has added something to the cart) and 1 abandonment? I want to know if the user which has leave the checkout process and the user which completes the order is the same user. How can I track this?


phpbb banning multiple users by username/email

On phpbb, we usually select many user names and put it in the ban list. This is fine. but here's my key question: Are these banned users banned by their user names only OR emails OR both? If they're banned by user names only, is it possible to black-list their email addresses as well?


Testing Silverlight Installation Experience

In my web app I use Silverlight. Since I already have Silverlight installed I cannot test how my webapp behaves in case a user has no Silverlight installed, or has old version of it, or their computer has configuration which is incompatible with Silverlight at all. Is there a recommended approach in reproducing these types of environments for testing purposes, or the only way is to delete/install browser many times?


Managing Xampp on USB for Mac and Windows machines

I am working on some PHP projects (Wordpress mostly) with MySQL databases and primarily use my Windows Desktop to do the work on whilst running Xampp. This all works great until I need to take my work on my mac via my usb hardrive. I copy my files from my windows machine on to my USB external and then I go to my macbook and fire up my USB hardrive. What I need is for my Xampp to just pick up from where I left off at my Windows Desktop, I'm just wondering if this achievable? Or if I'm going the wrong way about it? What I tried today was changing the document root of _httpd.conf_ to my USB files directory. This actually worked great, it showed all my sites, except I was getting MySQL errors. I did however copy them across, but windows and mac Xampp are different where they store these databases it seems. Mac is in the var folder of Xampp and the Windows xampp databases are elsewhere. I could do this the manual way of each time I go from my Windows machine > Macbook I could copy the files and drag the exported databases with me, but this is time consuming for every time I just want to quickly move from one machine to the next. What I'm essentially asking if there is a way to solve my above problem about moving from Windows Desktop to Macbook on a USB external hardrive in the quickest way possible. Any insight would be great and I'm open to suggestions that people use in my situation.


Does SharePoint Designer only use jpeg images and not tif images?

I uploaded a tif image into SharePoint Designer but it will not display on the web page. Does it have to be jpeg? I have uploaded jpeg images and they work fine but I erased a background on an image and saved it as a tif. Thanks


Does hosting the pre-release website on domain affect SEO?

Until now and still going strong I've always hosted my pre-release websites (my own and customers) (test builds / beta versions) on a test domain, before uploading the whole content to the official domain, purely based upon the assumption that, even with a `<meta name="robots" content="index, nofollow">` it would affect your future/current SEO score on the official release of the website. _But I was wondering: Is that actually true?_ Of course, without a no-follow, Google (and others) would index all unofficial and, often not completed, content, combined with a (often) worse coded website than the official release, resulting with a lower SEO score. However, -with- using a `<meta name="robots" content="index, nofollow">` your SEO score (might?) not be lower, but for a longer time not indexed. I'm known quite a bit with SEO, but always wondered if this assumption was true. My question: Is this assumption true and what could be my best bet of having the website online for testing/showing opportunities, besides just testing locally.


Misalignment of Facebook & Twitter buttons

Here's a minimal example of my problem. It contains two buttons, from twitter and from facebook. What I'm observing in Firefox 3.5.15 is:   1. While the page is loading, the buttons are more or less aligned (I mean their bottom sides)   2. When the page is loaded, the facebook button moves a few pixels down, so that it's bottom side is lower than the bottom side of the twitter button.   3. If I reload the page, the buttons are again aligned, and remain in this state even after the page is loaded. Can someone please explain what's going on and how to fix it?


The SEO Impact of Migrating from Free Hosting on WordPress.com to Own Hosting

I have a blog (which serves as a commercial site) hosted on free wordpress.com. Since I now want to customise and get ownership of the whole thing I am thinking of either self hosting or upgrading through (the quite expensive) wordpress.com upgrade. My question is: what is the best way/procedure not to lose SEO? The site ranks very high on a very specific query, and it's been sitting there for many years. (I only recently checked it out and want to revamp it.) I am afraid I would disappear from search results when changing the server to a self-hosted solution (by far the cheapest.) I'm not sure if I would keep the same SEO by internally upgrading to premium wordpress.com hosting.


How can I find the number of users who visit my site via a redirect?

My domain `foo.com` redirects (via a permanent 301) to `bar.com`. I want to know how many visitors to `bar.com` come from having first visited `foo.com`. I'm using Woopra - originally, I thought the referrer would be `foo.com`, but it turns out that this is not the case. I'm fine with writing custom JS if that is required, but I have a pretty "user friendly" hosting account, which means that I can't really fiddle with Apache or whatever to log the redirects. Is there a way to do this?


Persistent 404 requests from Facebook

Not a huge issue for anyone using my site but those who are checking errors logs but for **months** , Facebook has been requesting an image on our server which hasn't existed since December 2012. I'd understand if it was a piece of content but the actual image it's requesting was part of an old design. This is just a selection from today:               [Mon Aug 19 11:08:00 2013] [error] [client 173.252.73.116] File does not exist: /var/www/r/img     [Mon Aug 19 11:08:00 2013] [error] [client 69.171.234.113] File does not exist: /var/www/r/img     [Mon Aug 19 11:08:01 2013] [error] [client 173.252.73.119] File does not exist: /var/www/r/img     [Mon Aug 19 11:08:01 2013] [error] [client 69.171.234.117] File does not exist: /var/www/r/img     [Mon Aug 19 15:23:19 2013] [error] [client 69.171.224.119] File does not exist: /var/www/r/img     [Mon Aug 19 15:23:19 2013] [error] [client 69.171.224.118] File does not exist: /var/www/r/img      The Image (and User Agent):               grep 173.252.73.116 /var/log/apache2/access.log     "173.252.73.116" - - [19/Aug/2013:11:08:00 +0100] "GET /r/img/elem/fptv.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 1126 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)"      As I said, this is only an inconvenience but I was wondering if there was any way to invalidate URLs with Facebook? I apologize if this is the wrong site to ask on, I was torn between here and Server Fault.


Unknown file automatically created on root folder

I am not sure if it is the correct place to ask such a question. One of my websites got malware. It is hosted on a 1&1 server and the website is developed in WordPress 3.3.1 (now upgraded to 3.5). A few things I noticed are:   1. A file named `1278bd2dc5f89296044af950a96cd9d0` automatically created in public root directory. If I delete it, it reappear in couple of minutes.   2. This file has IP address separted by a pipe sign. Every few minutes, a new IP address is added to the list.   3. Initialy, it also overwrite the `index.php` and `wp-admin/admin.php` files with lower permissions. I could not view what the have but I could only delete them.   4. I SSHed to server and see there are no unknown processes running.   5. I have one single FTP user. whose password I have changed a while ago. Can anybody tell me? What and where should I check to stop this happening? Maybe it's remote process but how to track it down? Contents at this time are: > 157.55.32.83|199.21.99.106|173.255.233.124|


Import huge SQL file(6GB+) to MySQL on VPS

I'm trying to import a DB from .sql file, but it's impossible, cause like I said is over 6GB with a lot of records in it and I hit the limit of max_allowed_packet. I use my cPanel user to login in mysql via PuTTy, but it requires SUPER privileges to set this variable(max_allowed_packet).


Blocking path scanning

I'm seeing in my access log a number of request very suspicious:               /i     /im     /imaa     /imag     /image     /images     /images/d      /images/di     /images/dis      They part from a known resource (in the above example /images/disrupt.jpg). All comming from same IP. Requests varies from 1/sec to 10/sec, seems somewhat random.   It's obviously they are trying to find something and seems they are using a script. How do I block this kind of behaviour? I though of blocking the IP request, at least for a given time. Keeping in mind that:   * Request intervals seems legitimate (at least I think so).   * I don't want to end blocking a search engine bot, which may find 404 urls too (and that's a different problem, I know). ¿Do they use always same IP?


Is it possible to set up a subdomain and link to it from the main site?

I have a store hosted on big cartel which I want to set up as a subdomain on my website. Something like: `http://store.mysite.com` Is it possible to do this somehow? If so, how do links to the subdomain work? Would a link to `store.mysite.com/product1.html` be the same as `externalsite.com/product1.html`?


How to find out what is causing "Entry Process" limit?

We're using an OpenCart 1.5.5.1 custom theme for our site. Well it hasn't been smooth sailing for us and we are facing problem after problem. So far the gist of it is we're currently on a business SSD host (still shared I believe) to test the performance of the site (uniqpcs.co.uk), it is on a trial period so that we can load test the site (using load impact). Every single instance, when running the test it seems that the entry process limit is reached, causing the site to become unresponsive and eventually crashing (the entry process limit is set to 20 on our cPanel - even tried 40 but still same issue). Been in contact with host provider (NameCheap) back and forth through email and live chat without any real help unfortunately but they mentioned a few things to me that I hope you can help clarify: From what I understand the _Entry Process_ limit is reached when a process (most likely PHP scripts) hangs much longer than expected and the delay causes more and more process to pile up hence the site becoming unresponsive and eventually reaching its limit. From their MySQL error log they determined that the database is 'apparently' not optimized very well with 126 tables and a total of 26791 rows and said there is a SELECT query in MySQL which processes too long because of a large amount of rows: Please find MySQL server logs below:               # Time: 140501  8:37:23     # User@Host: auniqpcs_uniqpc[auniqpcs_uniqpc] @ localhost []     # Query_time: 12.059221  Lock_time: 0.004748 Rows_sent: 1 Rows_examined: 26731     SET timestamp=1398947843;     SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT p.product_id) AS total FROM category_path cp LEFT JOIN product_to_category p2c ON (cp.category_id = p2c.category_id) LEFT JOIN product p ON (p2c.product_id = p.product_id) LEFT JOIN product_description pd ON (p.product_id = pd.product_id) LEFT JOIN product_to_store p2s ON (p.product_id = p2s.product_id) WHERE pd.language_id = '1' AND p.status = '1' AND p.date_available <= NOW() AND p2s.store_id = '0' AND cp.path_id = '211';          # User@Host: auniqpcs_uniqpc[auniqpcs_uniqpc] @ localhost []     # Query_time: 12.081561  Lock_time: 0.004338 Rows_sent: 1 Rows_examined: 26746     SET timestamp=1398947843;     SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT p.product_id) AS total FROM category_path cp LEFT JOIN product_to_category p2c ON (cp.category_id = p2c.category_id) LEFT JOIN product p ON (p2c.product_id = p.product_id) LEFT JOIN product_description pd ON (p.product_id = pd.product_id) LEFT JOIN product_to_store p2s ON (p.product_id = p2s.product_id) WHERE pd.language_id = '1' AND p.status = '1' AND p.date_available <= NOW() AND p2s.store_id = '0' AND cp.path_id = '258';     # Time: 140501  8:37:26          # User@Host: auniqpcs_uniqpc[auniqpcs_uniqpc] @ localhost []     # Query_time: 13.821338  Lock_time: 0.005288 Rows_sent: 1 Rows_examined: 26746     SET timestamp=1398947846;     SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT p.product_id) AS total FROM category_path cp LEFT JOIN product_to_category p2c ON (cp.category_id = p2c.category_id) LEFT JOIN product p ON (p2c.product_id = p.product_id) LEFT JOIN product_description pd ON (p.product_id = pd.product_id) LEFT JOIN product_to_store p2s ON (p.product_id = p2s.product_id) WHERE pd.language_id = '1' AND p.status = '1' AND p.date_available <= NOW() AND p2s.store_id = '0' AND cp.path_id = '245';     # Time: 140501  8:37:32          # User@Host: auniqpcs_uniqpc[auniqpcs_uniqpc] @ localhost []     # Query_time: 16.426658  Lock_time: 0.010242 Rows_sent: 1 Rows_examined: 26746     SET timestamp=1398947852;     SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT p.product_id) AS total FROM category_path cp LEFT JOIN product_to_category p2c ON (cp.category_id = p2c.category_id) LEFT JOIN product p ON (p2c.product_id = p.product_id) LEFT JOIN product_description pd ON (p.product_id = pd.product_id) LEFT JOIN product_to_store p2s ON (p.product_id = p2s.product_id) WHERE pd.language_id = '1' AND p.status = '1' AND p.date_available <= NOW() AND p2s.store_id = '0' AND cp.path_id = '245';       While processing, load tool sends another PHP request which "passes" the request to MySQL (while the 1st SQL query is still being processed). It is also possible that PHP requests that are referred to MySQL are badly coded. pingdom: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/bzzDid/uniqpcs.co.uk I would really like to know what is the exact cause of this problem, is it badly coded PHP script, is it the MySQL database queries, or is it the host? Now I'm not too sure what to do.... any advice is appreciated.


In Google Analytics's social reports, how can I look at the opt_target parameter used by _trackSocial?

After implementing social interactions tracking using `_trackSocial`, how do I look at the `opt_target` parameter in my reports? I can only seem to drill down to social source and action. For example, I'm using...               _gaq.push(['_trackSocial', 'Twitter', 'Follow', event.data.screen_name]);      ...bound to Twitter's follow event to track when the follow buttons on my site are pressed, using the opt_target parameter (as per the social interactions documentation) to track the username of the Twitter account being followed. However, I don't know where to find that data in my reports, e.g. if I want to see what the most followed account is. If I go to Traffic Sources > Social > Plugins, I can see Twitter, and I can see the Follow events, but I can't drill down any further to see which accounts are followed: ![Twitter follow stats](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6BbsU.png) I'm pretty sure I've seen this in a previous version of Google Analytics. Was it removed? How can I access this data?


Which HTML+Javascript source editors support continuous validation and preview?

For programmers, Eclipse continuously compiles source code and highlights errors as you type. This greatly accelerates edit-test iteration cycles. I'm looking for a similar sourcecode editor for HTML and embedded Javascript that:   * highlights document errors in the HTML or Javascript source as I type   * has a second view that continuously renders the page as I type Which tools support these features? I'm principally interested in speeding up edit-test cycles for Javascript (so I need a source editor, not a WYSIWYG editor). --- Added: Even if continuous preview is not supported, are there any source editors available that highlight Javascript errors directly in the source (and let you edit the source)? This would be very useful.


htaccess and 301 redirects - multiple domains

I have the following which redirects `mydomain1.co.uk` and `mydomain1.com` to `www.mydomain1.com` perfectly.               RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(.*)\.mydomain1\.com$ [NC]     RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain1.com/$1 [R=301,L]      I am trying to add an additional rule for a second domain, that will redirect all non www traffic for `mydomain2.com` to `www.mydomain2.com`. Thanks!


Trying to create my first sitemap

I'm inserting a website map for the first time. I found this page: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html That page shows examples about sitemaps with xml, should I insert and xml code in my html? any advice for my first sitemap?


How do form submissions affect PageRank?

I notice that large sites like Facebook and Twitter redirect users to alternative login pages if they do not enter their login credentials properly. I'm still fairly new to SEO, but my UX knee-jerk reaction is that this is probably done for a reason, since the better experience clearly would be to keep the user on the first page they were on and append them with a "bad username"/"bad password" message (like what stackexchange does). My reasoning is; since logins are a form, pushing to a new page after any submit — proper login or not — might be an easy way to squeeze more hits out of a site. I'm wondering if I'm correct about this, as there are likely many other reasons for redirecting on a bad username and password.


What is a good robots.txt for WP?

What is the "best" setup for robots.txt?   I'm using the following permalink structure in Wordpress: `/%category%/%postname%/`. My robots.txt currently looks like this (copied from somewhere a long time ago):               User-agent: *     Disallow: /cgi-bin     Disallow: /wp-admin     Disallow: /wp-includes     Disallow: /wp-content/plugins     Disallow: /wp-content/cache     Disallow: /wp-content/themes     Disallow: /trackback     Disallow: /comments     Disallow: /category/*/*     Disallow: */trackback     Disallow: */comments        1. I want my comments to be indext. So I can remove this, right?   2. Do I want to disallow indexing categories because of my permalinkstructure?   3. An article can have several tags and be in multiple categories. This may cause duplicates in google. How should I work around this? Would you change anything else here?


facebook share and opengraph

I'm managing a video blog. The blog contains a main youtube video on the homepage and several thumbnail images of other videos elsewhere. I have a share button for the main page and the single posts pages and have added opengraph to specify the used image. For some reason facebook ignores my opengraph image and uses othe images it finds in the page... the header looks like this: (for the homepage)                   <!-- Facebook Opengraph -->         <meta property="fb:app_id" content="155967927783206" />         <meta property="og:url" content="http://mttv.co.il/2010/12/%d7%9e%d7%a4%d7%92%d7%a9-%d7%a1%d7%99%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%92%d7%a0%d7%a0%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%93%d7%95%d7%a8%d7%aa%d7%99%d7%94%d7%9d-1959-2010-%d7%91%d7%9e%d7%a2%d7%9c%d7%95%d7%aa/"/>         <meta property="og:title" content="מפגש סייעות גננות לדורתיהם 1959-2010 במעלות" />              <meta property="og:description" content="מפגש מיוחד של סייעות גננות במעלות לדורותיהם   משנת פעילות 1959 ועד 2010     אירגון  המפגש באחריות הגב' שוש דהן ונערך בחצר מוזיאון המייסדים  במעלות ע"ש יעקב חזן ז"ל     עריכה וצילום     שרביט שלמה     08.12.10      " />         <meta property="og:type" content="article" />         <meta property="og:image" content="http://www.mttv.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Gvi91UEjCAw_mid-135x77.jpg" />      The website address is: http://mttv.co.il Any help will be appreciated


Converting Free / Paid Fonts via fontsquirrel for Web Use

I was trying to upload a **GillSansMTPro-Book** font to fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator      But I got this message > Monotype has requested that their font Gill Sans MT Pro Book be blacklisted > by the Generator. You will not be able to convert this font. But if you google "GillSansMTPro-Book" the first link you get is this which allows you to download the font for free.        1. Why does Monotype disallow the conversion of a free font ?     2. What if I buy a paid font - how will fontsquirrel 'know' that its a licensed one ? How can I convert that for web use ?


Tables: How to achieve "normal" td widths, but 100% table width?

On our site we have tables containing data. We like the column widths we get with a normal `table`, but we like the border-bottom of `td`s to stretch the entire width of the page like we get with CSS: `table { width:100% }`, as can be seen on a demo table widths page. Is it possible to achieve the same column widths as with a normal (non- width-100%) table in a table where the border-bottom stretches the entire width? Btw, is there _a better way_ (tm) of showing HTML snippets than linking to an external page? I can show just source, but having HTML rendered too is _so_ illustrative. We need a solution that works in at least IE6-8 + FF.


how do I programmatically upload pictures to facebook?

Ok, so here was my first question:   How do I allow visitors on my site to share my photos on their facebook news feed? After implementing it I realized what I really want is a link that uploads the image as a photo to their photo album. How would I got about getting an image on my site to upload to their photo album when they click on a facebook icon next to the image? Any thoughts at all are appreciated. Thank You.


Cookie being assigned on website

I am updating our privacy policy and was checking what cookies were being assigned to visitors from our website. I found one that I am unaware of. It is a Drupal 6 site and there is no module being used for cookies. Here it is:               NAME  SESSdc9c27ea8a315c880910709856639859      VALUE  dh82otuopssampaguospoh26a7      DOMAIN  mydomain.ca      PATH  /      EXPIRES  10/3/2013 7:18:36 PM


Impact of migrating whole site from HTTP to HTTPS

We migrated our website to HTTPS everywhere and we have setup a 301 redirect on all the pages when the protocol is HTTP. However, one of the SEO experts who is helping us with all things SEO sent us the following email: > Currently I have found a workaround where I'm using https as the base URL as > **301 redirect to https has removed all http pages from Google index** which > means I'm starting from scratch as far as indexing is concerned, because of > this redirection and removal of all http pages from Google index, traffic > numbers are affected and I'm working hard to restore them. Is this true? Does Google lose all the indexed pages from HTTP when HTTP is migrated to HTTPS using a 301 redirect?


Should I specify both <a rel="alternate"> and <link rel="alternate"> for multilingual websites?

I have read Google's recommendations regarding `<link rel="alternate">` in the `<head>` for multilingual websites. As far as I know, we can also use `rel="alternate"` on `<a>` tags, and so far I've been using this technique on visible links to switch between different languages of my website like this:

             English

             Français

      The Google Webmaster Tools answer doesn't mention this technique in regards to `<a>` tags though, so should I use `<link>` tags in the header in addition to `<a>` tags in the body, even though they are redundant?


Tool for RSS "Archive" in XML

Does anyone know of a web app or some such tool that simply checks an RSS feed and archives each news item and has the ability to export rss or generic xml (or even better, automatically saves it). I'm having a surprisingly hard time finding anything like this. A programmatic solution should not be difficult, but I'd like to identify a user-friendly tool for a client.


Why would someone log everything you do on their website?

I was searching on Google and I clicked on 1 of the ads related to my search, I noticed on that website that every time I do something like scrolling or selecting text there is a request sent to a file called `log.php` and the request submits the timestamp, the event type `dom.stream`, the page url, and some events like the following:               [{"timestamp":1378835757,"event_type":"dom.scroll","x":0,"y":559},     {"timestamp":1378835757,"event_type":"dom.scroll","x":0,"y":570},     {"timestamp":1378835758,"event_type":"dom.scroll","x":0,"y":629},     {"timestamp":1378835758,"event_type":"dom.scroll","x":0,"y":747},     {"timestamp":1378835763,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"1239","cursor_y":"1018"},     {"timestamp":1378835763,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"842","cursor_y":"985"},     {"timestamp":1378835763,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"841","cursor_y":"985"},     {"timestamp":1378835763,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"663","cursor_y":"1054"},     {"timestamp":1378835764,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"661","cursor_y":"1054"},     {"timestamp":1378835764,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"459","cursor_y":"1125"},     {"timestamp":1378835764,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"414","cursor_y":"1143"},     {"timestamp":1378835764,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"261","cursor_y":"1174"},     {"timestamp":1378835766,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"263","cursor_y":"1177"},     {"timestamp":1378835766,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"596","cursor_y":"1116"},     {"timestamp":1378835766,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"596","cursor_y":"1115"},     {"timestamp":1378835766,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"1074","cursor_y":"967"},     {"timestamp":1378835766,"event_type":"dom.movement","cursor_x":"1189","cursor_y":"947"}]      also the request sends the visitor id and the referrer, all of these are sent with everything I do on the website. This is the first time I see something like this, and I'm wondering if it's for legit purposes or not ? and how does it help the site webmaster ?


Allow access to WordPress site only by links in email newsletters

I send out a personal email newsletter, and have been looking into sending it via some service like MailChimp, or sendy.co. Many of these email services suggest, or require, the email newsletter content to be available online, in case the recipient's email app doesn't render it properly, or at all. The thing is I don't want my newsletter contents visible to the whole world. Nor do I want to require existing recipients to make accounts/be assigned accounts, with passwords. So, the question is: **How can my WordPress site content be viewable _only_ by clicking on the link to it in the email newsletter.** It can't be found in a Google search; but once at the site the visitor can view previous newsletter contents. It seems an .htaccess file would do the trick, but I have been unable to figure out the syntax for this. Thanks for your help. I have copied below two other questions, and answers, which have helped me word my question clearly. Similar to this request about allowing access to a certain group while still restricting access to the world: Is there a way to password protect directory only in cpanel. But the user should not be prompted the password, when they try to access it via web? This persons question is the closest I could find to my situation: Restrict direct folder access via .htaccess except via specific links


Should each heading tag include text related to the page title for dynamic content?

New pages are created within my website by users who add new content. Currently the heading tags are the same for each new page. For SEO purposes, would it be better to relate the heading tags to the page title or keep them the same static throughout the website? I have done some research and it seems that heading tags that related to a specific page's content (and not the overall website niche) seem to perform better, or is this just coincidence?


canonical link to the home page

A friend and I are debating the use of the canonical tag. I say if I'm on               http://www.example.com/page.html      but my site has moved to               http://www.BetterExample.com      my canonical tag needs to be               <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.BetterExample.com/page.html" />      while my friend says it's OK if it's               <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.BetterExample.com/" />      I'd like not only a "who's right" but ideally a link to an article that discusses my friend's example.


Controlling robot crawling concurrency using robots.txt and the undocumented setting "host-load"

I'm not much of a network guy, and I am troubleshooting an issue where one of our sites intermittently becomes unresponsive to a reverse proxy: it simply starts turning down connections, and then after 30 minutes or so, everything is fine again. The server doesn't appear overloaded, responds just fine to loopback traffic, but is just apparently turning down connections from the proxy... This will likely be a multifaceted problem. Looking at the server as a whole, I noted we do get a lot of traffic from external web crawlers, and even more so from an internal Google Search Appliance (GSA). I wanted to explore whether the degree of parallelism in the crawling is the problem. I am aware of the crawl delay setting which would help reduce overall traffic, but would also affect the frequency of crawling and add delay to indexing. It doesn't seem like the most optimal way to control load from crawlers anyway. At any rate the frequency of requests should not be a problem... If Google wants to crawl constantly all day long every second, it's fine. As long as they don't hold too many connections open while this is done, it shouldn't really impact our ability to service other connections. It's hard to tell with `netstat` how many concurrent Googlebots are originating connections, as the only established connections I will see at a given time are the ones that take a little longer to finish. At any rate, I'm not seeing more than two active connections at a time, and many more `TIME_WAIT` connections (i.e., Googlebot finished, closed its connection, and we are waiting to close on our side for a few minutes...default TCP stuff). Then there's this: Robots.txt Q&A with Matt Cutts This page talks about an apparently undocumented (not a part of Robots Exclusion Protocol) setting called `host-load`. This setting should in theory allow me to specify how many Googlebots will connect concurrently, and it's perfect because I can use one thing to tell our GSA and any other Googlebot hosts looking at us the degree of parallelism we can handle... So that seems cool, however since no one but Matt Cutts (being a Google engineer heading up their webspam team) apparently has even mentioned this setting, I was curious if anyone else is using it? If I knew for instance that the default `host-load` for Googlebot is 2, I can completely rule out parallel web crawlers as part of the problem. So that's one question. The fact that he used 2 for example in the Q&A seems to imply that 2 is the default `host-load`, and it correlates with what I've seen from `netstat`. The bigger question is: Is anyone aware of a list or reference of extended _robots.txt_ properties that aren't formalized in the Robots Exclusion Protocol? I would assume with so many crawlers out there, there would be all kinds of proprietary settings.


Signing into Google account refreshes already open webpage

I have noticed that signing into my Gmail account, automatically causes some webpage to refresh. For example, signing into Gmail while keeping http://poetsandquants.com/2014/01/10/the-spaceship-enterprise-comes-to-yale/ open in another tab causes the page to refresh once signin/out is done.   * How is this done?    * I am guessing this is some sort of tracking mechanism. Is this a known "feature" and legal? How can I implement this for my own website?


Please advice Canadian hosting

please advice good Canadian hosting could offer different c-class IPs Thanks a lot, J


403 Forbidden Error?

I recently ran Xenu link checker on my site. I link to several Wikipedia pages and ever wiki page generates a 403 code. Here is an example of the message:               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska         error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s):     http://www.mysite.com/page.html      I know a 403 error code is:               A 403 Forbidden is an HTTP status code returned by a web server when a user      requests a web page or media that the server does not allow them to. In other      words, the server can be reached, but the server declined to allow access to      the page.       My question is why does it generate that error? I can click the page without issue. Does it have something to do with the checker running scans?


Just re-mapped my Squarespace site to my own domain, how about my tracking snippet?

I just re-routed mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com to redirect (sorry wrong word, the URLs are actually using mydomain.com) to mydomain.squarespace.com using the custom mapping for squarespace and godaddy DNS manager. My question is this, the proprietary, host analytics should still work. However, will Google Analytics still work right or do I need to tweak to get it to actually work right? I checked that Analytics is receiving data after the transition, however, I have a few questions:   1. will it still be referring to mydomain.squarespace.com, or mydomain.com?    2. is traffic between the two the same/equivalent?    3. do I need to update my tracking script somehow?


PHP permissions

**Can someone please explain best practice for permissions with PHP.**   What case should something be writable, executable, what owner is best, etc. ? Using an apache server Moved to http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/16032/php-permissions


Robots.txt and specific file inclusion

Is it possible to use robots.txt to disallow crawling of a folder, but allow crawling a specific file in that folder?


Where do I find traffic sources for same-domain traffic?

I have two different Google Analytics accounts set up. One that is used everywhere on `example.com`, and another that is used only within the `example.com/blog` path. I'm trying to figure out where within my `example.com` GA account I can track users who are navigating from the `/blog` GA account. I tried looking under Traffic Sources > Referring Sites, then filtering by `example.com`. This does show as a source there, but when I clicked on it to view referral paths for that source, none of the referral paths were for `/blog`; instead, they were all just other pages within the same domain (and thus the same GA account). Where should I be looking?


Where can a list of Desktop web browsers be found at?

I have another question posted in regards to the practicality of whitelisting. In this question I'm simply looking for an frequently updated list of top known used Desktop web browsers to use as part of my whitelist. I'm not trying to target any specific OS so please show one, show all. The list of browsers for desktops isn't exploding, but it does grow. I've only recently been made aware of other browsers that have multiple rendering engines. I'm not always on top of the text based browsers found out there either. I'm aware of the mobile browser platform and there is an active list used with regular expression for identification purposes that I will use as well as whatever I can find for the desktop platforms.


Google Analytics: Ecommerce, set Source / Medium

I added standard Google E-commerce code to my page. Everything works fine, just the `Source/Medium` value is just always my domain. How do I get the normal source, or set it? In short, how do I get a reference to where people came to shop from? Test script:               <script>       (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){       (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),       m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)       })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');            ga('create', 'UA-XXXXXXX-1', 'my-page.com');       ga('send', 'pageview');          </script>     <script>     ga('require', 'ecommerce', 'ecommerce.js');          ga('ecommerce:addTransaction', {       'id': '111,                     // Transaction ID. Required.       'affiliation': 'Affiliation name',   // Affiliation or store name.       'revenue': '3.29',               // Grand Total.       'shipping': '1',                  // Shipping.       'tax': '3.11'                    // Tax.     });          ga('ecommerce:addItem', {       'id': '111',                     // Transaction ID. Required.       'name': 'Prod1',    // Product name. Required.       'sku': 'SKU00011',                 // SKU/code.       'category': 'Prod category',         // Category or variation.       'price': '155.21',                 // Unit price.       'quantity': '1'                   // Quantity.     });          ga('ecommerce:send');     ga('ecommerce:clear');     </script>      What i need get: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GcPJn.png)


Google jQuery hosted library - is it any good?

Is there any REAL touchable benefit of using the Google jQuery hosted library? Or shall we just download it to our server? What are your opinions on this?


Name of virtualhost (apache)

I need to create virtualhost with name "virtualhost_name". To access it with `http://virtualhost_name` I have a pattern:               <VirtualHost *:80>         ServerAdmin jan@novak.cz         DocumentRoot "path"         ServerName Name_of_server         ErrorLog "logs/error.log"         CustomLog "logs/log.log" common     </VirtualHost>      _**Where should I write the name?_**


What is using so much of my disk space?

I have a 768MB VPS, on which I host 1 website. That website has WordPress installed and a MyBB forum and it fills 22 GB in space. It shouldn't have more than 1 GB. And a few weeks ago it had 15 GB in space, so it's increasing even though I haven't added/uploaded anything. The email service is disabled and I've looked through the files on the website and didn't saw any file that could be responsible for so much space usage. Where else can I look?


Linux HTML/XML W3C Validation Utilities

What programs can I use to validate HTML/XML markup? Basically, I want a local, command-line based, version of W3C HTML validation service (like `lint`) that I can use for detecting errors. **Update** I would also accept a solution that uses the W3C web service from the command line. **Related Questions:** http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/1802/how-can-i-validate-html- offline


"manage brand terms" option in GA

As of today I have a new setting in one of my Google Analytics Accounts in Admin->Channel Groupings which is called "Manage Brand Terms" (see screenshot). I have not found documentation for this feature. Obviously this has to do with search, but from the sparse info in the tooltips - " _We'll use this to classify your queries_ " - I do not quite understand what this does or how to use the setting. The settings don't seem to be reflected anywhere in the reports. If anybody knows what this is about and is willing to share I'd be grateful. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YkAaY.png)


SEO: Using the same image on separate webpages with different 'alt' tags.

If I use same image URL on separate webpages with different `alt` tags for each, will it have any negative impact on SEO? What is the best practice to utilize the same image on separate webpages?


using gmail for automated site emails - recommended? allowed?

is it okay to use gmail to send automated emails for your website via SMTP? i know there are services like Amazons SES, but i don't know if i need it. I want to only send the following types of automated emails:   * Payment receipts   * Password reset codes   * Anything related to the user's money or security I do _not_ want to send newsletters or any types of mass emails. I have no idea how many emails i'm potentially going to send. My concerns:   * Is this reliable?   * Is it allowed by google's TOS? i am using a free google apps account anything else i should know? thanks


How to handle the empty Google AdSense ad block

Now I have a case that ad block is empty for some reason. Is there any way to force Google to show at least something in this block (let say a blue rectangle)? Or may be I can skip the empty ad block to avoid the empty white areas? It looks weird if the part of page is just empty. Thanks!


How can I add 'sub1.sub2.domain.com' to my GoDaddy hosting account?

I'm using GoDaddy's Ultimate hosting plan, and I'd like to know how to add `sub.sub domain` to it. For example, I want to create a site as `es.n.domain.com`. However, GoDaddy tells me when I add the dot that it cannot be added because of forbidden characters, saying: `Your Subdomain name(s) can only contain letters, numbers, and dashes`. But I've already created it in the "DNS Zone Editor" and it successfully accepted it. As a test I forwarded that `sub1.sub2.domain.com` to my IP-address with a local web server I have installed in my computer and it ran just fine. I was able to access the domain `sub1.sub2` as a vhost on Apache. Is there a way to do this in my GoDaddy hosting account?


What if my HTML snapshot for Googlebot doesn't contain the same content as the dynamically created page?

According to Google here: > The HTML snapshot must contain the same content as the dynamically created > page. What if my returned HTML Snapshot doesn't contain the same content as the actual dynamically created page in my site? I just want to add some more keywords for SEO purposes which I can't put in my actual pages!


Showing schema.org aggregate rating in Google rich snippets

After adding schema.org microdata markup for reviews and aggregate ratings, I expected review and rating information to show up in rich snippets. Unfortunately, neither are being shown. Google's Structured Data Testing Tool finds the microdata, and there're no errors or warnings on the page. Any idea what's wrong with the microdata markup? Example 1:   * Live Page: http://www.shelflife.net/ljn-thundercats-series-3/bengali   * Google Test: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shelflife.net%2Fljn-thundercats-series-3%2Fbengali Example 2:   * Live Page: http://www.shelflife.net/star-wars-mighty-muggs/asajj-ventress   * Google Test: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shelflife.net%2Fstar-wars-mighty-muggs%2Fasajj-ventress


Can I bypass PayPal's button generator and submit item details to PayPal using my version of their form?

Getting started with a super simple PayPal shop on a flat HTML site. Seems to me there are two ways to go: **1. Use PayPal's button generator**   You follow their instructions and they'll generate a button for you. The button will have a 13 digit code which identifies your item's details. You paste that into your HTML. **2. Submit your own form to PayPal**   You copy the nuts and bolts of the PayPal form as above, but you haven't gone via their generator so there's no 13 digit code. You have to pass through the item details (in the form of `item_name`, `business` and `amount` fields). The `business` field is your email address in plain text. In both cases you're submitting to `https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr` Is that a fair summary? I can see that the advantages of **method 1** are:   1. Your business/email address doesn't have to be in plain view client side   2. User can't change the price/item details client side    3. PayPal is making some sensible default decisions about currency etc that you don't have to worry about. Also, w3d's comment in this answer is that using PayPal's button is "more secure". In what way it's "more secure" isn't specified. However the advantage of **method 2** is that you generate all your own HTML form code and if you've got dozens of products it's much easier and more flexible not to have to labour through PayPal's generator button by button (I know they let you create a new button from existing, but that's still slow). Basically you don't need to duplicate your inventory inside PayPal's site. Is there anything else fundamental that we're missing, because right now we're minded to go with method two for the sake of speed, flexibility and manageability.


Wordpress install directory, how to change it?

I have my wordpress installation on mywebsite.com/blog I now want to turn my entire mywebsite.com site into a CMS by use of the Wordpress CMS, whilst still maintaining /blog as the blog area. Rather than exporting my blog posts, then creating a new WP installation on the top-level directory mywebsite.com and then importing my blog posts.. is there an easier way to do this with use of the existing WP installation? If it's easier to transfer the files via FTP from /blog/ into the top-level and then adjust the wordpress URL settings that's be amazing! I just don't know how to go about the URL settings side of things.. Thanks!


Can I legally use a competitor's business name on my site to compare products?

Simply put, does a company have any grounds for legal recourse if their name is used on a competitor's website in the following manner? > **{Product Title and Description}** (Comparable to {Competitor's Name} > product). and in the "Glossary of Terms": > **{Competitor's Name}** : A company that {... about them blurb ...} Source: > http://www.competitor-website.com/about-us-page The reason for using the competitor's name in the first place is that their brand name is often confused with the actual name of the product being sold - similar to saying "Kleenex" when you really mean "tissues". The reason for this question is that a representative of the competitor contacted my client threatening legal action. Jurisdiction: USA. * * * _My client has since removed the references, this is more of a question of curiosity than a "what should I do now?!?" question._


If I blocked a directory, is a 301 error expected?

I blocked a directory in my site that is not secret but meant for internal discussions that are not relevant for search engine results. After running "Search as Google" at Google Webmaster Tools, the result was a 301 - Moved Permanently. Is this supposed to happen or can this be a black hat cause for my website?


How do I edit/modify a file on a webserver using php file in the same location?

I have an XML file on my server. In the same directory I have a PHP file which modifies the content of the XML and saves it. In this, the save part doesn't work. In my knowledge the code is alright and the problem is with the file access persmissions. More details available here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3351652/how- to-save-an-xml-file-on-the-web-server-using-php ( There is nothing wrong with the code. I provided it to give more insights. The problem seems to be with the access permissions ) The permissions of the XML file is: rw-r--r-- (644) My question is, am I doing it right? How do I modify a file in the same directory?


Streaming videos using Wowza

I need to view the streaming videos in my website. For that I have searched and get the answer to use Wowza (just like FMS). I need to know how can I stream the videos using Wowza and how to store the video files in the server. Have to use any encoder for streaming the videos?


Does the average user care about the URL?

I was having discussion with a co-worker for a project regarding URLs. My question is does the average user care how the URLs are formatted? Whether it's descriptive or relevant to the content they are looking for. I do realize that a more descriptive URL is better for SEO but I'm wondering about an average user perspective.


How to convert Shockwave Flash 5 files to newer version

How would you go about upgrading old Shockwave Flash files to a newer version? In my case, I have files from Shockwave Flash 5 and see that Adobe is currently on version 12. I want to be sure to upgrade these, so that our users don't have compatibility problems viewing them on our site in the future (i.e. if Adobe stops supporting version 5).


Creating a "presentable"/filtered twitter profile widget

I would like to include a subset of tweets I make on my professional web development site. Now, twitter provides two applicable widgets: a profile widget and a search widget Unfortunately, the profile widget shows everything I tweet (including off- topic tweets that I don't want shown on my site). On the other hand, the search widget generally only shows tweets that I have made in the last 24 hours, and apparently doesn't search back very far. Here's an example of the search widget in action on my site: http://royronalds.com/log.html (showing only one match of what should be many, because that's the only recent match). And here are the widgets: http://twitter.com/widgets Is there any way to create a topic-filtered widget, to show only on-topic tweets?


Is there a way to setup Clicktale tag in Google Tag Manager?

Since GTM doesn't support document.write() method the standard clicktale code doesn't work. Is there a workaround for this? ClickTale employee has sent me these instructions:               Replace the document.write JS line above with the following:      document.body.appendChild(externalScript);          Example:     <!-- ClickTale Bottom part -->      <script type='text/javascript'>      var externalScript = document.createElement('script');     var scrSrc = document.location.protocol=='https:'?     'https://clicktalecdn.sslcs.cdngc.net/':     'http://cdn.clicktale.net/';          scrSrc += 'www11/ptc/xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.js';          externalScript.src = scrSrc;     externalScript.type = 'text/javascript';     document.body.appendChild(externalScript);     </script>      <!-- ClickTale end of Bottom part -->      I am not sure what to do with this. Has someone tried something like this?


No data in Google Webmaster Tools traffic, content keywords etc

My site has been live and added to Google Webmaster Tools for over a year now. It doesn't have a pile of incoming links, but there are a few I know of. The site receives an average of 200 visits/month, so not massive, but not nothing either. The site is in Webmaster Tools, has a sitemap (which is new, admittedly), but I can see nothing in any of the traffic views, nor in the internal links view. The only 'unusual' thing I can see about the site is that everything except the home page is served over HTTPS. Is this normal? I have a friend who runs a website with similar traffic volumes etc, and he can see data in all of these views just fine. Just as additional background:   * The domain has been verified with WMT.   * The site map has been submitted, and I can see google crawled it ok.   * The index stats show 11 pages indexed.   * I have an associated Analytics account.


Rich snippets for all schema.org data types?

The list of data types displayed on the Structured Data Markup Helper is limited in comparison to what is available on Schema.org I am wondering if Google supports rich snippets for all schema.org data types as is possibly suggested by https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/146645


Easy way to determine if a client's web host supports/allows creating SQL databases?

This is a very particular question, but I'm working on establishing a criteria at my company for when we bring new web clients aboard. Our sales team is looking for an effective way to determine whether or not we can install certain software on a client's web server before we sell the client on that service. We help optimize a lot of our client's sites by installing blogs and CMSes to their existing site, but in order to install these blogs we need to be able to create MySQL databases through the client's hosting backend. Of course many big name hosts like GoDaddy and Dreamhost give the user complete access to tools like phpMyAdmin that allow me to create a Wordpress database, for example, so that I can get Wordpress working on their site. Many of our clients however are Ecommerce sites and get their hosting through more locked-down companies that don't offer the ability to utilize SQL databases or other features necessary to complete some of these tasks for clients. It's an odd question, but is there a simple way to determine if a certain web server or hosting company has the ability to use SQL databases with their customers? Finding out the name of the hosting company and then checking if the company offers SQL databases would be one way to do it, but I want to know if there is another solution or web tool or chart on the internet that could help us determine this information.


How many Google Analytics custom variables & advanced segments for each account, property & profile?

Google changes this often and I'm having a hard time finding it in the GA documentation. What are the limits for custom variables and advanced segments? Are they specified at the account, property, or profile levels in Google Analytics?


Appropriate robots meta for "printer friendly" pages

We have many printer-friendly pages that have a link that adds `?pf=1` to the URL. On the `?pf=1` page would it be better to have `noindex,nofollow` or `noindex,follow`. I think that it would be better to have `noindex,follow` as it allows for more links to corresponding pages if the `?pf=1` link happens to be found. However, my colleague suggests using `noindex,nofollow` because the non-`?pf=1` page already has the same links and this would lead to duplicate content. Should I be worried about a duplicate penalty or is it okay to expose the links on the `?pf=1` page for crawling?


How do I make a web site on my own PC, without DNS, available to others?

I thought if I removed the host name from the site's binding, like the Default Web Site, just my machine name in the URL would work, but I replaced the binding, and thought my machine name/IP address, plus the host name bound to the site, would work, but it doesn't. I would just like a colleague to have access for testing. I am running IIS 8 on Windows 8. I have a hosts file entry with the URL host name pointing to localhost, like I always do for web sites on remote servers.


Do search engines rank internal redirects negatively?

A client is in the late stages (code complete) of a website redesign and unfortunately hasn't implemented 301 redirects to point high traffic pages to the new URL's. As I understand it our only option at this point is to create redirects within the CMS. Our CMS allows us to do this:   1. www.mysite.com/category/current-page.html will redirect to www.mysite.com/new-category-name/new-page.html   2. The site now uses custom logic on our 404 page to check this list of redirects and if one exists forwards the user to the new-page.html I understand that using 301 redirects would be the correct way to maintain our page rank but I think that would require a code change which isn't possible. **Question** How will search engines respond to this? Will they wait until the redirect happens and allow us to keep our page rank (authority, trust, etc) or will they see the 404 page and down-rank us? Worst case...will they make our new- page.html start from a rank of "0"? Thanks for your help.


For Paypal website payments standard, Do I need to create add to cart buttons using my client's account?

I wish to use Paypal web site payments standard on one of my clients webpages. It's a simple static site, so I do not wish to use a e-commerce package. I'm creating test code using my own paypal account. But when it comes to creating the real buttons, will I need to login using my clients login details? I'm guessing that it would be easier to do this using website payments pro - as I could use the API and then towards the end of development switch it to the client's account / token (i'm not sure of the terminology, but understand the concept). In an ideal world, I'm hoping for something similar to Google adwords management accounts, where I can manage my clients' sub-accounts. I'd rather not have to login as my client and instead be able to the work from my own account. Is there a way of achieving this? Or a development workflow anyone reccomends? Feel free to talk geeky to me, I'm a developer - but just don't have much experiance with paypal. -thanks for the help


What is the typical example of old school website design?

I want to build a website for a retro thing that **was** popular in the mid 90s (beginning of the commercial internet). So I want use _old designs_ that was very popular at that time. The first thing that comes to my mind was those "`under construction`" animated gifs. People often put animated gifs everywhere. ![alt text](http://i.stack.imgur.com/tM18j.gif) But also those awful repeating backgrounds. So yes, I want my website to look exactly like in the mid nineties ;) (please suggest practical and usable features, I guess an Java Applet menu would not work today, or saying on the bottom that this website is optimized for Netscape 3) **EDIT** : for those that wants to see the result: Retrology


Is there webservice to sell layout?

I have some old layouts, and I would like to sell them, are there any popular online auctions service?


Image rankings on Google Image Search (images hosted on external sites)

I saw that when I stopped uploading images to my own server my content on Google Images disappeared. I stopped uploading images to my server for two main reasons: traffic and storage space on the VPS. I've a big enough site I got +15k unique visitors per day and my site is mainly images based, there's at least 15 pictures per post, 3-4 posts per day every day. My VPS has a 200GB (can be expanded) HDD of space and 3TB traffic per month. Because of all these numbers I've started to upload the images to sites like imgur & Tumblr, mainly... but now all my stuff is gone from Google Images, there isn't a single image of my site when trying different queries associated with the posts, only exceptions are some old pictures that are hosted on my server. So it is obvious that Google doesn't like the fact that I upload the images to external sites, is there a way to tell Google to link those pictures to me in some way? What you think it is better if I start again to upload the images to my own server instead of Tumblr & imgur?!


same blog post link appearing in different tag pages

I have each blog post tagged with different terms. Each term page lists the tagged post link, so that the link may appear more than once. How does that affect my SEO?


Changing main domain, redirect backlinks too?

I have a website and would like to rebrand. I have owned the new domain for about 2 years now and I do have about 40 inbound links from my clients that currently link to the old site. When going live with the new website I will of course 301 the old domain to new domain but (how) should I change those inbound links? My options are:   1. keep old links and text and let the 301 do the magic    2. change all the links on my clients pages (I do have access and am allowed to do so) to the new domain   3. change all the links and also set new texts What is the best option SEO wise? Is there a difference at all? When setting new texts should I vary or always use the same (I heard the first option is better?).