Does SEO ranking based on domain apply to domains with forwarding?

Lets say I have a site at "myrandomdomain.com". I want to target a keyword "my keyword" and so I buy "mykeyword.com". Can I still have the keyword benefits of having mykeyword.com when it just forwards to myrandomdomain.com? The domain would not be masked. My guess would have been no but SEO Moz seems a bit unclear about it: > A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link > juice (ranking power) to the redirected page. I'd just like to make sure before I switch my site over. If it would have the same effect to forward it I'll just do that.


Will having multiple domains with redirects to my main domain have an impact on search rankings?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Could I buy a domain name to increase traffic to my site like this? If I register 10 or so related domain names and 301-redirect them all to appropriate pages within my website will this hurt or help google ratings? Or will it be a neutral event? For example if I operated a daycare center would it be wise to purchase bostonchildcare.com, bostondaycare.com and bostonpreschool.com and then 301 redirect them to all to appropriate pages on my site? Thanks for your help with this!


Is it bad for SEO to forward multiple top level domains to just one domain?

For example, I registered `myName.com` and I also registered the `.net`, `.info`, and `.org` extensions for `myName`. I'm wondering if it will hurt my SEO to forward these other TLDs to `myName.com`?


Is it okay to redirect all mobile users to a mobile coming soon page?

I recently read this article on google webmasters blog which said that we should avoid redirection of users on mobile to one single page as it interrupts their flow. Now I have a site on which I have a mobile coming soon page to which a user is redirected the first time he/she visits the site. Once a user clicks "view web version" on this page a cookie is set and he/she is taken to the homepage. Now if the user comes again on my site he/she would be taken to that respective page and wouldn't be redirected. Can this have SEO penalties? I am not interrupting the user-flow every-time and hence should I bother much? Should I scrap this all together or alternatively I could redirect the user to the page they came to when they click "view web version" instead of the homepage?


URLs: Should I use hyphens, underscores or plus symbols?

**Which is better for search engines?**   1. `example.com/my_cool_page.html`   2. `example.com/my-cool-page.html`   3. `example.com/my+cool+page.html`


URL encoding - what difference to SEO? + or _ or -

I have a URL e.g.:               http://mysite.com/tracks/backing-track/101153/ABBA/Super+Trouper      **QUESTION** does it make a difference to SEO when using `+` or `-` or `_` in the URL between words? Is one more readable and indexable than the others?


SEO - File naming

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should I use hyphens or underscores? Hi   For the file name "mission-and-vision.htm" or "mission_and_vision.htm", which one is good for SEO(separator "-" or "_")? Thanks


How To Track Down and Stop Rogue Bots?

**Most of the bandwidth of one site is being consumed by an unidentified bot**. According to AWSTATS it says: Unknown robot (identified by 'bot*') consumed 164 GB this month. By comparison, Googlebot consumed 10 GB and visitors (viewed traffic) consumed 25 GB. This means rogue bots are consumming over 6X the bandwidth of visitors. For other sites which I run (about a dozen) the **normal ratio is 25%** , so for 25GB of viewed traffic, bots take about 6GB in TOTAL. The question therefore is: **How to identify which bot(s) are causing this huge amount of request and how to stop them or slow them down if they are useful?** Obviously, most bots that visit the site are important including the Googlebot, Yahoo Slurp, MSNBot, etc, including the AdSense/DoubleClick bots, so I cannot simply block all bots. _The reason I am investigating this is that I am reaching the limit of bandwidth and exceeded CPU usage for my host, so I was sent a notice._


Moving a Domain Away from Google Sites but Not Apps

First, I looked for a question like this but couldn't find one. There's a lot of people who want to move a domain to point at google sites - I actually want to move it away from google sites and point it at a hosted server. I was able to figure out how to do this but then it broke my client's calendar and email. I created matching email accounts on the new server but it doesn't fix his contact list and calendar stuff which use to be synced with google. So my question is: can I move a domain away from google sites and point it at a hosted website without breaking the email and calendar? If the answer is no then we could always use two separate domains: one for email/calendar and one for website, but that doesn't seem like the perfect solution since really his email should be at the same domain as his website. Will he just need to use a different address to sync his calendar and contacts? I appreciate any help. Thanks!


One page website - Effect on SEO

I'm considering re-designing my personal website to promote my web services in my local area. My issue is whether to do a one page website with a scroll-to navigation system. What effect does this have on SEO. As i understand it, you set stuff like h1's and meta description on specific page content. How does this work when all of your different content is on one page?


What about SEO in one page website with ajax loaded content?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  One page portfolio - Effect on SEO As my title I'd like to build a website with just one input text for searching restaurants and I would like to load via ajax in the same page the resultst in a list. After the list is loaded if you click on one row for Restaurant details it load via ajax all the Restaurant details. what about SEO in a website structure like this? There is a way to index every single restaurant? I'm pretty new in SEO and every comment will be for sure important to me in order to understand and learn more about it. Cheers


SEO best practices for one page websites?

I build many one page websites that dynamically load content through AJAX/jQuery. I keep reading how bad one pagers are for SEO. Regardless, how can you get the most SEO results out of a one page website, without splitting it up into multiple pages?


How to Remove URLs from Google Search Engine

I have used so many things like url removal request and deleted the pages etc., but still the errors are shown in my webmaster tools. How can I remove the urls completely from Google?


Remove internal sub domain duplicate content on Google

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to Remove URLs from Google Search Engine _Our hosting provider has a internal sub domain like so:_ `n265-269-265-265.cnet.hosting.iiii`. The internal sub domain is redirected to our registered domain and is publicly available. Google indexed the internal domain content and now it is appearing on search pages. We'd like it if Google removed the internal sub domain content and we would like to setup a redirect to the main domain. Our hosting provider is actually a sub-provider and as far as we know it does not fully control the main hosting domain and I am stuck in a discussion with them about what can be done. I would like a solution to this issue.


how to remove the old urls from google search and replace new urls?

I know this question has been asked here, and here before , But I have problem with answers, so here is mine : I have changed my urls structure ( not my domain ), and I want google to **remove** the old urls and replace the new ones, and I can't make redirection because I dont know what is it exactly ( its very dynamic ), How can I do this ?


How many visitors block adverts?

On average, what percentage of visitors block adverts, for example by running AdBlock? (The average obviously depends on the population, which is worth specifying, but any answer's better than none...)


How to handle multiple pages of the same site with the same outlinks

I am developing a back link tool for Chinese SEO (our web site URL is: > `http://link.aizhan.com` just like ahrefs.com. I encountered a problem which is how to handle multiple pages of the same site with the same out links. For example: Most pages of `bbs.chinaz.com` have the same out links such as:                bbs.chinaz.com/Tea/thread-6293993-1-1.html      bbs.chinaz.com/Tea/list-1.html      bbs.chinaz.com/alimama/thread-6265032-1-1.html      bbs.chinaz.com/alimama/thread-6265032-2-1.html?userid=-1&extParms=      bbs.chinaz.com/Shuiba/list-1.html      bbs.chinaz.com/FeedBack/thread-4456753-1-1.html      etc.. All of the pages have the same out links in the top of the page:               www.cnzz.com(anchor text:免费统计)      www.313.com(建站大师)      www.idc123.com（主机之家）       Suppose I store these outlinks into database. The SEO will find there are six backlinks from `bbs.chinaz.com` of `www.cnzz.com`. This is obviously no sense for the SEO. Can you tell me how do you deal with this problem?


SEO and URL Shorteners

When you have a link from lets say twitter that is `t.co/foo` that links back to your website how does that effect SEO and how do the major search engines handle Shortened URLs?


Do URL sortneres make an impact on search engine rankings?

Can anyone explain me what does the following mean (from thesearchenginepros):               The best URL shorteners will use a 301 redirect to pass along their Google page rank     to the destination web address. This helps the redirected web address advance in      search rankings.       I was going through the advantages of shortened url, when I came across this.


Do short URLs like goo.gl, bitly etc. affect your website ranking?

I need to know whether using short URLs to back-link to pages affects your website ranking in the Google search results.


Adding a new site to a Google Custom Search Engine gives fewer hits

I have a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) with one "site". Adding a second site gives me fewer hits. Removing the second site gives me back the hits I had with only one site. What is going on there? I add the sites with XML to be sure of what I am doing, like below:               <Annotations>       <Annotation about="site1url" score="1">         <Label name="_cse_MYID" />       </Annotation>       <Annotation about="site2url" score="1">         <Label name="_cse_MYID" />       </Annotation>     </Annotations>      **UPDATE: Here are instructions for anyone who wants to test:**   1. Add these two sites to a new custom search engine (https://www.google.com/cse/): www.zotero.org/groups/from_some_psychologists/items/itemKey/* www.zotero.org/groups/minding_my_mitochondria_terry_wahls/items/itemKey/*   2. Search for `food` (you will get 2 hits)   3. Now delete the first site from the custom search engine.   4. Search for `food` again (you will now get 19 hits) **UPDATE 2:** I posted the question also to Google Product Forums > Google Custom Search: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/customsearch/indexing- and-results/8Qs60jdiFZQ **UPDATE 3:** I previously thought that the hits when having both sites were always only from the second site. That was wrong (so I removed the part saying so).


What type of websites shouldn't use a cache?

Is there ever a time when you should use caching? Like for frequently updated pages? Or, should you always cache? Please give examples and reason?


Transferring site from one server to another - good tools?

I'm not a webmaster - I'm a generalist with a strong bias towards development of applications and databases, but currently I'm helping a client I've consulted with before, and they want to move some files from one hosting provider to another. They are moving more and more stuff to cloud hosting to be able to handle scalability - they get a lot of hits when big events happen and people want their data. Their regular web guy has kind of flaked out on them. All static content (data files, reports, etc), might need to translate some links, add some Google analytics, etc. But what is a good tool for performing the transfer initially - to sync up the new site to the old site. before fixing up the broken links etc? I'm pretty sure they'll get me FTP access to the old and new sites. Either Mac or PC, whatever's best.


What could be preventing Google Chrome developer tools' audit from completing?

I'm trying to run Chrome developer tools' audit on http://www.zmxmusic.com, and it never completes... just gets up to about "Loading (61 of 61)" with the spinner but never shows the results. If I check the Network tab, there are no requests pending; all requests are complete and without errors. Audit works fine on other sites. **EDIT** Added actual site URL.


Server won't respond to customer - Wordpress site / Hostgator - high volume

I've got a customer using WordPress. They have been using it for years. It's a school where the kids get on each day and hit the site A LOT. Suddenly, in the last 3 days they get NOTHING back from the server (this ONLY occurs from within the school). If we do a `tracert`, we get out and seemingly get to the server. But if I look at network traffic on Chrome -- I never receive a response. This same thing happens on IE and FF. A look at CPanel shows that no IPs are being blocked. I've never done IP blocking so am not sure if this is what one who is blocked would even expect to see. We are a reseller for Hostgator... I wonder if something higher up the chain (maybe on their end) is causing this. I've got a ticket in with them. THIS JUST IN: I found out that the customer can reach the site when they skip their firewall... this leads me to believe that it HAS to be their firewall (even if their firewall provider says it's not).


Multiple webpages with the same page titles/meta-tags

I have created several duplicate pages because my website is in 3 languages (yes I know this is bad way to achieve this). Will Google flag my site as spam if I use duplicate page titles/meta keywords? Or would other problems develop?


Set secondary receiver in PayPal Chained Payment after the initial transaction

I'm running a service whereby customers seek the services of 'freelancers' through our web platform. The customer will make a 'bid' which is immediately taken from their accounts as security. Once the job is completed, the customer marks it as accepted and the bid gets distributed to the freelancer(s) as a reward. After initially storing these rewards in the accounts of the freelancers and relying on MassPay to sort out paying them later, I realised that your business needs to be turning over at least £5000/month before MassPay is switched on. Instead, I was referred to Delayed Chained Payments in PayPal's Adaptive Payments API. This allows the customer to pay the primary receiver (my business) before the payment is later triggered to be sent to the secondary receivers (the freelancers). However, at the time that the customer initiates this transaction, you must understand that nobody yet knows who will receive the reward. So, before I program this whole Adaptive Payments system, is it even _possible_ to change or add the secondary receivers after the customer has paid? If not, what can I do?


How to make google index press releases or new items as they are released

I have noticed that several website news items are indexed immediately by Google. Even questions posted on stackexchange.com are indexed by Google within minutes. Can someone tell me how i can do that with the website which has frequent news items on website. How can i achieve this with otherwise with has frequent news or press releases posted.


Google Analytics site search

I am trying to enable the internal site seach tracking with Google Analytics. So at analytics page, account `mysite.com`: Profile Settings => Site Search Settings, do track enabled. At my site when someone make a search for test, URL looks like: `mysite.com/search?keyword=test`. At the query parameter I added `search?keyword=` but I haven't seen any results so far, any idea how to fix this?


Chrome fails to view a html file

I have set up a website which is visible from FF but not from Safari nor Chrome. I thought it is because of faulty WordPress install but obviously it is not because I have added a test.html in the root, FF views it but Chrome gives an error. Never happened before, tried Google but found generally app or html problems causing the issue.


Pull Google Analytics source info into email

I am trying to find out whether it is possible to pull Google Analytics source info (direct/organic/referrer etc) and include that in the email that is sent to us when someone enquires on our website. We have a large account management team for an incredibly high average order value product, currently when someone makes an enquiry on our website, an email is sent to all our account managers with the contact details of that person for them to follow up accordingly - there is no automatic integration into our CRM system. To minimize the margin for human error (and having to ask each prospective client where they heard of us) I'd like to include as much of the source information as possible in the email that is sent to our account managers. Is this possible? If you have experience and are willing to take this on as a project please send me a private message.


Does image mime-type affect SEO?

I have uploaded images as mime-type application/octet-stream, they are served well if sourced from an image tag but Chrome for example cannot open them directly, always asks for download. The question is, does the wrong mime-type affect findability and SEO?


Async Adsense Ads works with Ajax, But is it against TOS

Google's Async adsense code loads fine even the page is loaded via ajax. I made no changes to load the ads differently. Just added https://github.com/browserstate/ajaxify on my site to make the content loading ajaxified. My adsense loads fine also. Does it violate any TOS.


Is there anything I can do if I found someone copying my content and spreading on FB/Twitter?

I made a website and it somehow became very popular last year. Then later today I found someone just stole my content and spread it in Twitter and Facebook. And many users are sharing that fake website. I am very upset but I don't know what to do. I reported to Google but even if Google removes it, it's still spreading on Facebook & Twitter. Is it possible to contact Twitter & Facebook to stop this? Thanks!


Hiding duplicate content - should I use meta tags or robots.txt?

Last week my site was utterly pummeled in Google's rankings - losing 95% of impressions overnight according to Google Webmaster Tools. It now only shows up if you search for the URL/site name itself. I've not engaged in any shady link-building (or indeed any link-building at all!) and the site is technically fine (fast pages, no malware, fully responsive). So my first guess is that I'm being penalized for duplicate content. Although there's a huge amount of rich content on the site, there's also a lot of algorithmically-generated pages - for example, one for each town in the UK. (This isn't done for SEO, but I guess maybe Google thinks it is.) So I need to stop Googlebot finding, and objecting to, this content. I would rather do it via a meta tag (`<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex" />`) on the relevant pages than with using _robots.txt_. So my question are:   * Is a meta tag a workable alternative to using _robots.txt_ for hiding "problematic" content?   * Is there anything else I should be doing?


How to change a URL using .htaccess

I don't know anything about coding, but I really want to change the URL of my pages:   * `site/data/9/Symbian-3rd-Apps.html` to `site/symbian_applications.html`   * `site/data/file/352/Core-Video-Player-Symbian-3rd--sisx.html` to `site/Core-Video-Player-Symbian-3rd--sisx.html`


Using style.less from lesscss.org doesn't properly show changes I make to the style.less file?

I inherited a wordpress project that was initially developed by another developer and for the CSS they utilize the script from: http://lesscss.org (which so far seems to not only be overkill but horrible if the user doesn't have javascript enabled on their browser) My guess is that it is caching but even in safari if I disable Cache, it doesn't update with my changes. Safari loaded with some changes, but when I made more changes it only shows the same time from the first page view. Same thing in firefox except firefox doesn't show any of the new changes. This only applies to css changes made in the style.less file. If I make any changing to the html code then every loads correctly. I even tried appending #!watch’ to the url like the web page said, but still no luck. Any idea on what I can do to make the changes load correctly?


Customer Report Google Analytics

Is it possible to have a custom report per minute for Google Analytics? So far I have found that it is possible to have a report per hour.


Infinite redirect loop in cPanel-purchased script

I am installing a script (that I bought on cPanel) in the root directory of my web site. When I try to install it, it gives me an error. I found that it starts an infinite URL redirect loop containing the name of my web site. Something like: `install//mywebsite.com/install=mywebsite.com/install=mywebsite.com/install=mywebsite.com` etc. until the browser refuses to continue when URL gets too long. The vendor told me I need to have *mod_rewrite* installed on my cPanel and something about _.htaccess_. How do I do fix this?


Whois status "pending delete" with expiration date in November 2011?

A friend of mine is in the process of being scammed by a domain registrar and I am trying to sort out the mess. However I could use a hand understanding some of the details. He paid for 2 years of domain name registration on 6 november 2009. The whois record reads:               Domain ID:XXXXXXXXXX     Domain Name:XXXXXXXXX.ORG     Created On:06-Nov-2009 09:23:12 UTC     Last Updated On:17-Dec-2010 00:15:10 UTC     Expiration Date:06-Nov-2011 09:23:12 UTC     Sponsoring Registrar:OnlineNIC Inc. (R64-LROR)     Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED     Status:HOLD     Status:PENDING DELETE SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE     Registrant ID:ONLC-XXXXXXX-X     Registrant Name:My friend's name     ...     Registrant Email:Old email      The registrar charged a renewal fee a week ago and is now asking an extra $150 to "reclaim" the domain name, even though the domain name is apparently still in my friend's name and it looks like there is still another 10 months before the expiry date. The expiration date on the WhoIs record looks right (Nov 2011), so I don't understand why the domain status says "PENDING DELETE SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE". Can someone explain me better what the deal is and explain what I need to do get the domain name transfered to a more honest registrar? I already have a registrar for my own domain names, been using them for 10 years without problems, so I know where to transfer the domain names to, I just don't know how to proceed.


web designers icon avatars?

Anybody know how these are made. I see them a lot, mostly web designers have them. Are they hand made in psd or illustrator or is there a web service that converts real photos? ![alt text](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Gu5nv.png)


Why Google not ranking my websites..?

Please observe http://www.panbeli.in and http://www.softwaregenius.net Why is this site does not get ranked by Google Spider? It has been grayed in Google Tool Bar for a while. Google has the knowledge of it. You can search for http://www.panbeli.in and http://www.softwaregenius.net and you will see the both websites in google search,yahoo search,bing search, you found that we have lots of backlinks also ,http://www.panbeli.in alexa rank is 695,295 and http://www.softwaregenius.net alexa rank is 994,219. we have also created Blogs/News/Classified/google ADsence/press relese etc to increase the rang for http://www.panbeli.in and http://www.softwaregenius.net websites. When i check my SEO statistics using different SEO tools, it shows Google backlink is zero. however, Google just does not want to rank it. Can you tell me why? Why is it penalized? I have tried to do my best to clean it. Your kind reply is appreciated. Thanks and Regards Irfan


E-commerce + CMS: 2 sites or one?

Ok, let's say that a customer already has a CMS managed web site but now wants to sell goods online using an E-commerce platform (Magento in this case). My question is, does it make any difference between choosing to have just one site running both CMS and E-commerce (`www.mycompany.com`), or to have one site for the CMS (`www.mycompany.com`) and another (`www.mycompany-shop.com`) for E-commerce? I'd like to know the pros and cons of these approaches, so that I can advise the customer for the best. --EDIT   I forgot to say that I'd prefer to have 2 separate web sites. This way I wouldn't have to learn how to integrate them together (one in Python, the other in PHP).


Payment Gateway options other than Paypal, for sending out mass payments

We were using Paypal Payment pro earlier for the same thing, but for some reason Paypal has been given some new guideline which kinda hinder with the way we need to send out payments at the moment. We receive payments from clients and then send out payments back to vendors on a weekly basis ( deducting our cut ). Can you let me know what options are available to for such transactions other than paypal ? which is the best in terms cost of setup etc. Thanks


Service and/or tool to monitor performance?

I am seeing wildly different performance from a clients web site, and would like to set up some sort of monitoring. What I'm looking for is a service that will issue requests to a couple of URLs, and report on the time it took to process the page - TTFB and time to download the entire page - that means I need something that will process javascript & css. Are there services like this? I've seen a few that monitor uptime, but they don't seem to report on the overall page performance.


How do I point my domain to my website/ip adress

I havve recently set up a website, I've forwarded it to my Ip and I'm able to access it. However I have also bought a domain which I would like to use for my website which I host through my own pc using xampp. From what I understand I would need to create a dns server, but do still not understand how to do it. So my question is, How do I point my newly bought domain to my website which is being hosted using xampp? Thanks


Don't $_GET value on link rewrite with .htaccess

I config enable htaccess on my server (i enable mod_rewrite and do like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11064005/enable-htacess-error-on- ubuntu-12-04-with-apache2) But on localhost is run echo $_GET value php : http://oseeyou.com/test/on- localhost.png and on server don't run: http://oseeyou.com/test/on-server.png I don't understand this, may help me. Thank.


Domains with similar names and issues

I recently purchased one of those domain names like del.icio.us. While registering I found that delicious.com was being used. **Argument:** I found that delicious.com belonged to the same category as my to-be website. It served premium delicious dishes. **Counter Argument:** My to-be domain though belonging to the same category, specialized in serving free but delicious dishes or in giving out links(affiliate) to other sites serving premium delicious dishes. **Additional Counter Arguments:** 1.delicious.com was not in English. 2.the del.icio.us in my domain name though having the same spelling, is not going to be used in the same fashion. For eg.(this may not make sense, because the names have been changed)the d in delicious on my website actually stands for the greek letter Delta(Δ/δ) and since internationalized domains are still not easily typable, I am going for the english equivalent.The prefix holds importance for the theme of the service which my website intends to offer. **My Question:** Can I use the domain name del.icio.us for my website? How are these kinds of matters dealt? (The domain names used are fictitious. And I have already registered the domain but have not started using it.I chanced upon this domain name because it was short, easy to remember and suited the theme of my website) Update: Can I use the domain name for an unrelated service. I have no wish to trample their rights. Update: Are there any real life examples of similar name use in different fields without the companies fighting it out? The domain name is pretty generic.


How to recover a website from google cache?

My host provider told me last night their server crashed and they had restored the website from from an image they had from months ago, They told me this is the only backup they have. I also have no backup, as my backup server crashed few days ago. Through google cache I can see all the website as it was few days ago. Is it possible to recover my website using google cache or is there any tool which help me to recover? Thanks,


Retrieving website

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to recover a website from google cache? Does anyone know of reliable websites (Warrick is currently closed for new requests) or programs (Mac-compatible) where I can retrieve a website that was deleted? I wasn't informed by my blog's host that my website was deleted because hosting services was terminated by the company. Since I have 2 years worth of posts at the website, I was wondering if it would be possible to retrieve them. I was using Wordpress.org for my website.


Use - or misuse - of ETags

I'm using an application that sets ETags by md5()ing the URL. As I understand it, that's quite insane. In effect, it means that content for a specific URL won't be fetched anew ... ever. Unless a hard-refresh is sent or, maybe, the browser is restarted (yet to test the latter). Is this abuse of the ETag header?


CA For A Large Intranet

I'm managing what has become a very large intranet (over 100 different hosts / services) and will be stepping down from my role in the near future. I want to make things easy for the next ~~victim~~ person who takes my place. All hosts are secured via SSL. This includes various portals, wikis, data entry systems, HR systems and other sensitive things. We're using self signed certificates which worked o.k. in the past, but are now problematic because:   * Browsers make it harder for users to understand exactly what is going on when a self signed certificate is encountered, much less accept them.   * Putting up a new host means 100 phone calls asking what "Add an exception" means What we were doing is just importing the self signed certs when we set up a new workstation. This was fine when we only had a dozen to deal with, but now its just overwhelming. Our I.T. Department has classified this as `ya all's problem`, all we get from them is support for switch and router configurations. Beyond the user having connectivity, everything else is up to the intranet administrators. We have a mix of Ubuntu and Windows workstations. We'd like to set up our own self signed CA root, which can sign certificates for each host that we deploy on the intranet. Client browsers would of course be told to trust our CA. My question is, would this be dangerous and would we be better off going with intermediate certificates from someone like Verisign? Either way, I still have to import the root for the intermediate CA, so I really don't see what the difference is? Other than charging us money, what would Verisign be doing that we could not, beyond protecting the root CA cert so it can't be used to make forgeries?


How bad is it to use display: none in CSS?

I've heard many times that it's bad to use `display: none` for SEO reasons, as it could be an attempt to push in irrelevant popular keywords. A few questions:   1. Is that still received wisdom?   2. Does it make a difference if you're only hiding a single word, or perhaps a single character?   3. If you should avoid any use of it, what are the preferred techniques for hiding (in situations where you need it to become visible again on certain conditions)? Some references I've found so far: Matt Cutts from 2005 in a comment > If you're straight-out using CSS to hide text, don't be surprised if that is > called spam. I'm not saying that mouseovers or DHTML text or have-a-logo- > but-also-have-text is spam; I answered that last one at a conference when I > said "imagine how it would look to a visitor, a competitor, or someone > checking out a spam report. If you show your company's name and it's Expo > Markers instead of an Expo Markers logo, you should be fine. If the text you > decide to show is 'Expo Markers cheap online discount buy online Expo > Markers sale ...' then I would be more cautious, because that can look bad." And in another comment on the same article > We can flag text that appears to be hidden using CSS at Google. **To date** > we have not algorithmically removed sites for doing that. We try hard to > avoid throwing babies out with bathwater. (My emphasis) Eric Enge said in 2008 > The legitimate use of this technique is so prevalent that I would rarely > expect search engines to penalize a site for using the `display: none` > attribute. It’s just very difficult to implement an algorithm that could > truly ferret out whether the particular use of `display: none` is meant to > deceive the search engines or not.


Does Visibility:Hiden and Display:None Affect SEO

If I had some text that initially had the CSS property               visiblity:hidden      or               display:none      Would that effect how much the content is weighted by search engines? Could using one of those properties on key content on my website have an adverse effect on SEO?


Will Google Crawl Display:None Dropdown?

I have a navigation set up like so:

Home

Page_1

Page_2

Dropdown Link

Dropdown Link

      All the dropdowns are initially hidden and then they are shown based on `data- dropdown` when hovering on the navigation. It works perfect, but I'm really concerned about whether google will crawl the links if it's hidden on page load. What's the best way to approuch this?


Will I get penalised by google for overflow hidden?

I have 2 divs next to each other, div A and div B. Div A displays a whole wordpress post and div B displays about 15 excerpts of posts with the same tag. To get this looking nice I set the hight of div B to be the same as the hight of div A with javaScript. This means alot of post excerpts will be hidden due to overflow hidden on div B. Will Google penalise me for this, and if so, how can I make this work and still please Google? Ps. I would gladly prevent the excerpts from being indexed but the main post must be indexed Ds.


using Accordion, Jquery ,will it affect SEO?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How bad is it to use display: none in CSS? I am planning to use Accrodion and Jquery in My website. previously to animate the contents in the website i used Flash but content (text ) in the flash are not indexable in the search engine and since major contents of my site comes with in animated Tab using Accordion and J query and most of the text are hidden in DIV so i want to know whether this will effect the SEO. Because most of the contents are hidden initially by default and by definition of Black hat Seo,this sounds similar to black hat SEO ... will google treat my site same as Black hat SEO or Is using Accordion in website is acceptable in SEO ?


Preloading web fonts with visibility: hidden; bad for SEO?

I've started using a method to preload the webfonts via hiding them; whilst it works great, I'm not sure if "hiding text" will be viewed as bad for SEO? All I do is something like this: CSS;               .preload {         position: absolute;         visibility: hidden;         font-family: Roboto, Arial;         font-weight: 300;     }      HTML:               <div class="preload">         Preload Light Font     </div>      Thoughts!?


Bootstrap hidden text and page rank

I am using Twitter bootstap to show different text when on mobile mode, tablet mode and desktop mode. I was worried that since the (some) text is hidden on certain modes, would it effect my website page rank.


DIsplay none and SEO

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How bad is it to use display: none in CSS? So i have a nav with tons of stuff and we want to scale back a few of the a tags in the nav but still have them on the page. So for example I was thinking of using jQuery or css display none to hide the text...but we still want the text on the page for the google crawler. Does this technique hurt our current SEO rankings or is it frowned on by google. Here is my site and the nav is on the left....If this will hurt the SEO status is there anything else we can do to keep the text on the page without effecting SEO


Official Google 10 minutes SEO video and page related terms

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How bad is it to use display: none in CSS? According to this link, one should add some terms related to the page content. I am adding the text like: `<div style="display:none">term1 term2 term3 term4 term5</div>` **My questions:** Does it affect the SEO for my website if I am not displaying the terms on page? (I am using `display:none`). In other words, the page related terms are in source code but not being displayed.


Make Offscreen Sliding Content Without Hurting SEO

On my website I have content which is positioned off the screen, and then slides in when you click a button. For example, when you click the news button, content slides in with news. It didn't occur to me that this might be labeled as a black hat SEO technique, because I have content positioned off the screen with CSS that links elsewhere on my site, and a search engine could very easily interpret that as me hiding content for SEO purposes by positioning it off screen. Obviously, my intention was not to hide content, but was to make a sort of UI/UX content slider where content slides into view when a button is clicked. How can I make something to this effect (where content slides in and out), that would not comprise SEO?


One Page Website, with jump links, but hide, display:none all other content except jump link clicked

I'm wondering how this website design/structure will work for SEO. I have example.com that I'm building. The only actual URL for the website is example.com. However, it will appear to the user that their is 8 different pages. For example. There will be example.com, example.com/#about, example.com/#contact, example.com/#services, etc. I'm using jquery to hide all the other 7 "pages" and only show the link that is clicked. So if a user goes to example.com, it will hide all the 7 other "pages" and only show the example.com. If the user then clicks on the link example.com/#about, it will hide example.com content, and keep all the other pages content hidden, but then only show example.com/#about content. So everything on the website stays the same, the only thing that changes is the "content" div when they click on a menu link. I notice that this is VERY good for user experience in that it loads the whole website code when they first come to the website, so when they click between "pages" it is instant. I'm interested in getting answers to why this is a bad idea for like SEO? or any other reasons? Anyone else ever use this kind of setup? Thanks.


Does CSS Positioning Affect SEO

If I positioned the very first content that appears in my code below the fold, would that content be given less weight and therefore be less effective with SEO? In addition, if I had a large image that took up most of the top of the screen and resulting in my content being below the fold or toward the bottom of the screen, would that content be given less weight? **Note** This is content that occurs early on in my code. I'm not talking about having a ton of content and if the content that occurs later would be given less weight, but if content that occurs early on put ends up below the fold would be given less weight.


Can search engines see HTML elements hidden by CSS?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How bad is it to use display: none in CSS? I was wondering if search engines can read `<a>` elements with `display:none`. Is it true? Can search engines see elements hidden by CSS rules?


Showing other name than website name after searching on google

When I search the same URL on Google, its showing, 'Total Visits' as a header. It not showing my website name. Please check the image. What should I do ? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UbiiU.jpg)


Why is my website's title not showing in search results?

When I search for my website, the title of my website appears as "New York web design". ![Screenshot of Google search result](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yieAu.jpg) But my website's actual title is different: "Web Development New York | New York web design | SEO New York" How can I rectify this issue?


Google search mismatch title

The title of my website is "OTN | Ontario Telemedicine Network" but Goggling for "OTN" displays it as "Ontario Telemedicine Network: OTN" in the search results, other search engines display it properly. How can I direct google to display the title as it is? PS. the title was updated many months ago and I have checked Google webmaster tools for this option but couldn't find anything.


Google Adds Unwanted Name to Site Title!

I've set a different "Site title" that its not in site Domain, for example: Site domain: "setcars.com" Site title: "Hello world - new cars!" Internal links name to index page (by menus, footer, etc): "SetCars" "SetCars" is not used as TITLE tag anywhere, but google adds it to titles on SERPS: "Hello world - new cars! - SetCars" WHY? and how to remove it?


Google shows wrong title

Few weeks ago I redirected my site using 301 redirect. I went to G Webmaster and set it up. I was using fetch as google, but it still shows wrong title. I really don't know why. Everything is fine on my website. Last cache was 2 days ago. My previous site had similar title to current one. But google indexed my new website few times already and still shows old title


how google ads refer to dynamic content?

I have mobile app / site and I want to use google ads with method PPM (pay per impression) I am changing the page content programmatically with java script . so if the user navigate to new page I actually just change the content in the same page. 1.Is there any problem with this by google? 2. do i get paid for this content change like if page really navigate? Thanks.


Is it feasible to run a public-facing website from my home network?

I have to a get a very simple data entry website up and running. This website will be accessed by only a few people at a time (at most), but usually only one person, and not very frequently - maybe a coupel hours at a time, not every day. I really don't want to pay for hosting if I don't have to. I have AT&T U-Verse Internet Service. How feasible is it for me to setup a simple Windows/IIS website on my home network that can be accessed publicly? What's the minimum Internet speed I would need? How can make sure that the IP Address for the public website is static, so I can setup my DNS and forget about it? Any additional thoughts or suggestions on this type of setup would be greatly appreciated. If this is not feasible, or easy, I will likely just go with a hosting service, and I already have one picked out, so I don't need any suggestions for this.


How to specify importance of html elements?

Is it possible to specify what elements of the page are important, or, more specifically, what elements of the page **are not important**? I'm using HTML5 new elements (nav, header, footer, section, article, aside...), but there is sometimes my login form (in the header of my page though) in the Google description of my website pages... Is there a solution to resolve this problem?


Is it better in terms of SEO if I develop my Website meant for marketing my service on a regular .com domain compared to a wordpress site?

Basically I am asking is whether Google et al are going to _treat_ my webpages developed through wordpress in the same way as they would treat other websites with a *.com? Also, as far as SEO goes do I have to jump through some additional hoops if I am working with a wordpress site ? Would I have any advantages instead ?


Is it better to have an ErrorDocument 404 redirect back to the homepage or a standard 404 error page?

We run an ecommerce site that was setup by a third party ecommerce software provider, basic shop with product pages, basket and checkout. The third party vendor set up the htaccess file so that if a non-existent URL is enetered it redirects to the homepage instead of a 404 error being generated. This results in google webmaster reporting duplicate titles and descriptions for pages that no longer exist. I think that it would be better for a dedicated 404 error page to be displayed rather than redirecting back to the homepage So is it better to have a website redirect a 404 to the homepage than have a dedicated 404 page instead?


What to use for rapid PageSpeed analysis — Google Insights or Chrome extension?

Which score is most reliable (and complete) to use when comparing different sites and pages to get a quick idea (e.g. between competitor websites without detailed analysis)?    I am asking because for the same page on the same site, the score is over 30 marks higher via Google Insights online, which leads me to believe that the official Chrome extension is more accurate (e.g. worse score). Some of this has been addressed in detail before, but for the purposes of doing quick analysis — what accounts for the different PageSpeed scores?


Does including Google Analytics on a page makes you run the risk of failing a PCI audit?

My webshop is currently in the process of becoming PCI compliant. For business intelligence reasons we would like to include Google analytics code (or a code from a similar package) on the checkout page of our payment funnel. As this involves including 3rd party JavaScript code on a page which handles customers credit card details I am wondering if this type of integration runs the risk of not passing a PCI audit.


Google Adwords - how to specify AND and OR in Keyword

There are many ways to define keywords for a campaign. However is there a way to make ORs? While searching in google it would like '"keyword (ketwordOr1|keywordOr2)"'. That would return results such as "keyword keywordOr1" OR "keyword keywordOr2" but not keyword alone.


Can we trademark the name of our group of which the founder and president is no longer associated?

I am looking for advice. We have a social group. Our president chose to leave our group, (do not wish to name the name). This president founded the group and choose the name. The group pays dues and has annual parties of which the proceeds go back to the group for other functions. The president stole the money. When we confronted the president, they quit the group. I have checked and the name is not trademarked. We want to trademark the name to prevent the former president from having a claim to the money under the group name. Can we do this legally?


Tell Google the list of URLs to crawl

Consider the case of Quora, which is really SEO-friendly. The problem is that there are **no** links to questions from Quora homepage. Essentially nothing (even via an indirect URL). So I could never find any link to Quora questions from its homepage; I could only do so via Google (or other search engines), or have a Quora account. So my question is how to tell Google the list of pages to crawl without listing them all in the homepage (or via an indirect links)?


Will SEO work on semi-one-page website?

I am setting up a cafe. I read a lot about SEO not working well with one page websites. As such I am thinking of creating an in between with the content structure listed below. Will this be effective for SEO?   * Home Page (one page) - keywords : Cat Café Singapore, Singapore Cat Café, Cat Café,    * About Us (one page)    * Meet the Cats (one page)    * Price(one page)    * Contact Us (one page)    * Menu (stand alone) – keywords : Coffee Singapore, Tea Singapore, Café Singapore   * Research (stand alone) , keywords : Cats Singapore, Cats   * Blog (stand alone) – keywords : Cat Café Singapore, Singapore Cat Café, Cat Café,    * Shop (Stand alone ) – keywords : Cat Toys, Cat Food   * Adopt a cat (stand alone) – keywords : Cat Adpotion, Singapore Cats,


Variable IPs: How variable are they? Best practices for tracking

There are a lot of questions on StackOverflow relating to session security / session hijacking, but there doesn't seem to be a really good solution to the problem. The three most common suggestions are as follows:   1. Track the users IP address as part of their $_SESSION data, and possibly invalidate a session if it changes. The downside is that lots of users have dynamic IP addresses, so you risk invalidating a user seemingly at random (their perspective).   2. Same as 1., but using a User Agent. Two issues here: there may not be a UA to track, and they can change during browser upgrades, etc.   3. Second cookie, with a unique token. The problem here is that if an attacker gets a hold on the normal session cookie, they're very likely to be able to get a hold on your secondary token as well. So, with these three options it seems that IP address is the best option, since you're guaranteed to be passed one and its independent of physical security (and if the user is physically compromised, you lose regardless). With that in mind, I have a couple questions relating to IP address changes:   1. How often would a users IP address really change under normal conditions. I have DSL at home, with the usual dynamic IP concerns, and according to gmail my IP hasn't changed in days. AFAIK, this only really happens when the modem cycles anyway, right? That seems like a rare enough event that it _might_ be ok to invalidate the session.   2. I think I remember Jeff saying in one of the SO podcasts that they did something similar, though it was possibly for something else. The idea was that using the first two (I believe) octets of an IP address could be considered "close enough" in some circumstances. This allows a user to move around on the same ISP, but the system would notice if the user was suddenly in another ISPs range. Is this a viable tactic?


Google not recognizing microdata?

I put in microdata to one page of a site I help manage using schema.org. Using the Google webmaster tool test, the page checks out and displays what it sees as the microdata properly. But when I go to the Structured Data page in webmaster tools, it keeps saying the site does not have any. I put it in 2 weeks ago. Us it just something that take a while for it to recognize? Or does microdata have to be on every page for it to be recognized or something?


What forum software should I use?

_This is a general, community wikicatch-all question to address "I need a forum script that does x, y, and z..." questions._ _If your question was closed as a duplicate of this question and you feel that the information provided here does not provide a sufficient answer, please open a discussion on thePro Webmasters Meta._ * * * I have a list of features that I want for my website's forum script: where can I find a (free or paid) script that includes all of them?


Forums/CMS/BBS that actually has a bulletin board look

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? Hi I'm wanting to build a bulletin board system for my community which can create a view that actually looks like a "real-world" bulletin board or cork- board. So in addition to the traditional forum view which has a hierarchy of topics in a full-width screen, a page custom to the user could be presented where selected posts could be laid out. The posts might look like sticky notes or boxes, laid out around the page potentially with images and text, rather than being full-screen width text entries. I'd also like the system to be able to mail a version or screenshot of the custom user page to the user on a weekly basis. Does anybody know of any, highly preferably open-source, solutions that come with a feature like this?


Good message board for a website (e.g. phpBB)

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? What are the best (and most widely used) Linux-based **message board** softwares, and the **_pros_** and **_cons_** of each. e.g. Security Vulnerabilities, Performance on a cheap server, comes pre-packaged [RPM or DEB]. I am looking for _the best_ message board software for my website. A VPS can run almost any software, so the sky is the limit!   1. _Free, doesn't require unreasonable number of hyperlinks to their website_   2. Security focused / Widely Used, vulnerabilities are found and fixed quick   3. Easy to keep up-to-date, i.e. prepackaged / auto-update in some way   4. Moderator features [like pinning / message preamble], account management   5. Themeable, customize appearance a bit * * * The contenders appear to be   * **phpBB** - Undeniably popular, modular.   * **MyBB** - Used to be commercial, great features. LGPL


Online forum software or services

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? What forum software is out there? I've used PhpBB in the past, but that was a long time ago and I'm guessing there might be better stuff out there. My requirements are:   * registration required to post (name, email, password)   * public viewing   * some ability to customize   * needs to look reasonably good (it's not for geeks)   * hosted or self hosted   * if self hosted it needs to be PHP & MySQL   * free or paid (I can't add tags, but I wanted to tag this "forums".)


What's the best free forum software out there right now?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? Either php/mysql or aspx/sql I checked out a similar thread but there weren't any real answers... Thanks


Bulletin Board System with tagging, email notification

I am looking for nice BBS system, Bulletin Board System, Discussion Board, or nice in-company communication platform. There are lots of people, about 30 people, joining in our project. We would like to share idea among us on that platform. We can post questions and concerns related with the project, and we would like to respond each other. Here is my list of functionality I want:   * Tagging Thread e.g) Announcement, Finance, Legal, Idea. One thread can have multiple Tags.   * members can set on/off to receive email when new comments are posted. They can set on/off on each Tag. e.g) one member on to receive email related with "Announcement", but off to receive "Finance".   * Thread owner can change threads' tag any time.   * Thread can have several type of post.      * Thread can be "vote" thread. Everyone can vote their opinion.     * Thread can be "action plan" thread. In this thread, "who" will "what" remains in the thread. By viewing all "action plan" thread, all action plans needed in the company is visualized.


Looking for a simple forum script

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I have a working website and I need to integrate a forum into it. The problem is, I need the forum script to use usernames and passwords from a mysql table that is already created. This is why I need a forum that supports translations and has a simple code I can adjust to my databse. Any ideas on such forum scripts?


Suggestions of internet forum software

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I'm going to be setting up a few internet forums to test out the software. I was going to be doing this with vBulletin, but they don't let you download a trial version. Could anyone make any suggestions of any good forum packages and their advantages and disadvantages? (And maybe forum software in general pros and cons.) The forums will be hosted on a Ubuntu Linux virtual machine using Apache. **EDIT:** I should also point out that one with better security would be desirable - although if I'm honest my expectations on that front are low :P


Forum software with good threaded-view support?

I'm looking for good forum software that allow a threaded view (similar to reddit or Disqus), at least up to two or three "levels" of replies. The phpBB people seem to be vehemently against threading at all, I believe MyBB supports only _one_ level or replies, is there any other good forum that supports threading? Phorum is mentioned as having support for threaded views, but there were vague hints in some discussion I came across that you had to go through the replies one by one like in the ancient days rather than having a single expanded look. Is this true of Phorum? Other candidates I came across were FUDForum, mwForum and Drupal's forum, your views on these and other possible options would be greatly appreciated.


What is a CMS with good user forums support?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? If I'm starting from scratch with any CMS I want, which one has good support (or a plugin) for discussion forums?


Which forum applications can integrate with Facebook?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? What is the best/most compatible forum software which features almost complete integration with Facebook? The main feature I ask is the Facebook Connect feature (user could use Facebook account to register). **But** it would be more perfect if other Facebook features could be integrated to. Something like, subscribe thread which appears to Facebook notifications, easy sharing to Facebook, etc. I have vBulletin, Invision Power Board, and SMF in my mind, but I'm open to more suggestions..


Bulletin board software with voting capability for each post

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I run my system on a linux machine. Let's say I use apache or cherokee webserver, for simplicity. I want to run a bulletin board software for discussion purposes. However I do not want traditional systems like vBulletin or vanilla, as systems based on these tend towards too much bickering and clique-formation. I was inspired by the system in meta.stackoverflow in which each post can be voted up or down. This would instantly be a medicine for all the jerks, since their posts will get downvoted quickly. Moreover honest criticisms will get upvoted. So I feel this will be a great improvement. However the meta.stackoverflow system is not suitable for a discussion environment. I would want a traditional bulletin board system itself; but with the added capability that votes can be given up/down for each post, and for each post the number of votes is displayed. For example let me mention that in some wordpress blogs, comments can be voted up/down. That capability is exactly what I want; it is just that I need it in a bulletin board software rather than in a wordpress blog. Question: > Does there exist a bulletin board software with voting capability for each > post? Here I must stress that I do not care about the total reputation of a user. That is something I do not want to encourage. I have asked this question both here and at serverfault, since it was not clear where should this be asked. Feel free to close it at the appropriate site and I need answers only from one place.


Best lightweight PHP/MySQL forum with spam-protection

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I have already searched and checked out posts like this and this but it isn't what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a lightweight PHP/MySQL forum with decent (good) anti spam functionalities. I have been using punBB which is light and fast but doesn't stop billions of spammers to post boring links, I have tested PHPBB which I found really heavy (and it doesn't stop spammers either). I'd like the possibility to receive a mail to 'accept' new inscriptions, auto- shut down inscriptions that have never posted (after some time) and so on and a captcha at inscription time (if it is easily modifyable that would be a plus), (public) blacklists and/or adaptive filters to stop spam would be nice too. Does this exist in any free/cheap forum?


Group "Discussion" software?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? My client wants a "lite" forum... not unlike these stack exchange sites, but even a little lighter. There's a screenshot of the discussion group she likes most, below. You can also go here to see it for yourself it you like. I don't think traditional forum apps will display, functionally, in this manner. **Is there any software I can use to get a similar result? A web service would be acceptable as well.** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/NtaIS.png)


Free forum engine with good anti-attack mechanisms

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I am looking for forum engine (for discussions) with good attack countermeasures built in. Windows (preferrably) or Linux. Free (as beer). I think about registration flooding and blocking user accounts attacks. For registration, such engine should have at least:   * captcha   * blocking mulitple registrations from the same IP   * providing login (for logging in) and user name (for displaying the author of the posts) For logging in:   * no blocking on multiple tries -- instead after X try sending via mail a token, the third piece needed for next login -- without it logging in will be impossible (it would be similar to activation process) The engine should be designed with two ideas in mind:   * protecting engine against attacks   * 0 penalty for decent users  Thank you in advance for your help and recommendations.


Forum that integrates into CMS and has curated category pages with tagged threads

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I'm looking for a forum that meets these requirements:   * Login using Facebook/Twitter/OpenID etc.   * User profiles with reward system   * Voting/thumbs up function   * Categories and tags for sorting threads   * Custom category pages with moderated static header   * Embeddable threads and categories (For example, a whole category or single thread can be integrated into wordpress)   * API to users, discussions etc. I've looked at forums like Vanilla, Disqus, OSQA etc, but none seem to match the above "hybrid criteria". Hosted or self-hosted doesn't matter but I'm really looking for something that can be integrated into an existing CMS to replace comments while at the same time have curated category pages and user profiles. Thanks.


Forum software advice needed

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? we want to migrate our sites current forum (proprietary built) to a newer, more modern (feature rich) platform. I've been looking around at the available options and have narrowed it down to vBulletin, Vanilla or Phorum (unless you have another suggestion ?). I hope someone here can give me some feedback on their experiences either migrating to a new forum or working deeply with one. The current forum we have has approx 2.2 million threads in it and is contained in a MySQL database. Data Migration is obviously the first issue, is one of the major Forum vendors better or worse in this regard ? The software needs to be able to be clustered and cached to ensure availability and performance. We want it to be PHP based and store it's data in MySQL. The code needs to be open to allow us to highly customise the software both to strip out a lot of stuff and be able to integrate our sites features. A lot of the forums I've looked at have a lot of duplicate features to our main site, in particular member management, profiles etc. I realise we'll have to do a good bit of development in removing these and tieing it all back to the main site so we want to find a platform that makes this kind of integration as easy as possible. Finally I guess if 'future proofing' the forum (as best as possible) given the above. Which platform will allow us to customise it but also allow us to keep instep with upgrades. Which forum software has the best track record for bringing online new features in a timely manner ? etc. etc. I know it's a big question but if anyone here has any experience in some or all of the above I'd be very grateful.


Which forum software has a "like/don't like button" in the post (and other features)?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I want to build a new blog (on Wordpress) and I want to insert a forum in the website. I don't want to use PhpBB for the forum section (too complex to configure and manage) and I'm searching a simple solution. The feature I absolutly need:   * like/don't like button in every post   * polls   * attachment and image upload   * tag system for the post Other appreciate features:   * import post from another PhpBB forum   * FB connect (for the user login)   * integration with wordpress   * reserved section (for only a group of user) At the moment I have found these solutions:   * bbpress: all feature above but it doesn't have the "like/don't like" button   * OSQA: I don't know if have the pools and attachment function Anyone can help me and suggest other solution?


Alternative to vBulletin

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I'm currently using vBulletin along with a bunch of plugins like vBSEO, shoutbox and others for a sports discussion site. I just don't have the time to keep up with the upgrading of the vBulletin software (and then all the plugins). And I'm not crazy about vBulletin in general. Last I checked there was no good single sign on mechanism to integrate it with other systems and the social aspects of the site, of which discussions are really all about, seem lacking. Are there good alternatives which are easier to manage (ideally hosted systems), easier to integrate and more social? I'm more than happy to pay, but this community is only about 4,000 strong... so anything above a couple hundred $$ per month will have to be pretty spectacular.


Whats the best CMS for Sports Club?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I have to renew a website for a sport club. There is some self programmed CMS in use at this time. But I need a new solution. A popular CMS that could be up to date over the next 3 or 4 years. I took a look at Drupal 7. Not sure about whether it's easy possible to create member profiles (they should be able to edit them self), a board and team overviews. Would be cool you'll share the link of a tutorial for this needs if you have one. _Or..._ **Any suggestions for a good CMS with my needs?**


Which forum software has the most advanced community/GetSatisfaction type features?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I need to assemble a **GetSatisfaction/Lithium/Jive type support forum/community**. The first is not available in the desired language and the last two are priced for the enterprise market. I did research some other options (open source or SaaS) but they all seem to be either:   * kind of dead (open source options)   * too focused in gathering ideas/feedback (uservoice)   * strictly support without the community/voting features (zendesk)  **I need an open forum (people powered support/UGC with community/voting features) & Facebook/Google/Yahoo/MSN account sign-in.** Therefore I will have to do some of the work on my own. I want to **piece things (plugins/mods/etc) on top of a standard forum platform to give it the features I need**. For this purpose, I want to use a **mature** product with widespread userbase, active community and lots of plugin options. I believe most will agree that my options therefore are:   * vBulletin   * phpBB   * SMF Here are the questions:   1. **Which one of the three above offers the easier path towards the desired goal**?   2. **Which one of the three above has the most advanced features related to the desired goal?** Of course I dont expect anyone to **know** these answers _cut and dry_. I am hoping to hear some experiences and see some examples. Also, it would be great if both those questions had the same answer, but I am not going to get my hopes up... PS: I wish I could add the tags "phpbb" and "smf" ;)


Which free PHP based forum is the easiest to extend or customize?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I am looking to start a new forum, with a traditional forum layout (like webhostingtalk, for example). In this space, I know phpBB and SMF are strong contenders. I do not know for sure the names of other great forum software that might exist... My most important need is that it should be easy to modify the display area, at the least, without having to dig too much into the core. Drupal excels in this area with its templating system, but the forum module doesn't look like the forum interface most people are used to... It would be a great plus if the software has alternative Captchas like question based or invisible Captcha. If it doesn't, I would like to be able to code it in without much trouble (that is, the software exposes a good API)


PHP-based forum software for maximizing SEO?

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I ask because I am skeptical of phpBB. I know that vBulletin frequently comes up in web searches.


What integrated blog comments/forums solutions exist beyond Vanilla Forums?

For the past year and a half, I've been running Vanilla Forums on my WordPress-based site My favourite feature of Vanilla is that it integrates comments from the blog's front page into the forums, giving users the continuity of a single sign-on. The downsides are that Vanilla loads slowly, performs rather poorly on iPads (a source of irony given my site's subject matter), randomly logs users out with some frequency, and generally annoys the forum regulars. I would like to replace Vanilla with different forums software. Ideally, this new solution would:   * Integrate with blog comments and   * Import our 1.5 years' worth of data from Vanilla. Is there anything out there that would fit my needs?


Forum software alternative to phpBB3

> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What Forum Software should I use? I've been using phpBB3 for quite some time now. It seems to me this forum software hasn't evolved at all in all these years. Installing mods is a hassle, updating it to a newer version a real pain in the arse and moderating is not intuitive at all. Besides, I find there's just no way to stop spam on it. Lots of web software have made a great job controlling spam, but phpBB3 still doesn't, at least not without too much complex and tedious work. Since my last attempt to update to the latest version broke it, I'm finally fed up with it, and decide I'm not wasting a minute more in mantaining such a beast. I'm looking for a free software (free as in free beer and free as in free speech) alternative. So SMF is not an alternative at the moment. The most important feature I'm looking for is there must be a script to migrate all of the current phpBB users and posts into the new system. Out of all the alternatives out there, does any of them support these features? Which one do you recommend?


Wrong sign-up tracking when people use Facebook connect

I have an issue tracking sign-ups for people signing-up using Facebook, Google and Twitter connect. For example, each time a user signs-up using Facebook connect, the referral to this sign-up will be Facebook and not the real source of traffic. We can see that via the referral path /dialogu/oauth that is specific to Facebook connect. In addition, the landing page is directly the signup thank you page, like if the user would arrive directly from FB connect and sign-up. (see screenshot below) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bnirv.png) We were thinking about excluding the referral path of the social media connect (like dialogu/oauth for Facebook) but I wanted to have a confirmation that it will solve the issue and not create a new one.


How to let Google know that content on the page has just changed?

I'd never thought of such a problem in the whole SEO spectrum before I considered launching my own website. Imagine that I have a website which is updated once per month and Google spider knows about that. So what happens if I've updated one of my pages with new content just after it was crawled? Do I need to wait for a month before Google spider will come back? And is it possible that someone can find my website by queries which are not already relevant to it? Has anybody encountered such problem or has a solution?


How to find out when a "example.NAME" domain was registered on?

I am attempting to obtain the registry records of a `.name` domain - I have tried using who.is to obtain details of whom has registered this practical domain and when was it created and when will it expire however when using this whois checker I do not get any results. How can you get the whois information from `.name` domains.


What is the best pratice to pagination to avoid duplicated content?

The SEO department for the company I work for requested that the user comments on all pages should be paginated, and by this, generate a new URL, for example: **Original page:** foo.com/bar.html (load first 10 comments) **Paginated page:** foo.com/bar.html?page=1 (offset the 10 previous comments, and show more 10 comments - and so on) And when the user be in a paged URL, the canonical tag must point to the child URL, and not to the main URL. I honestly think this is not good, because of these reasons:   1. Comments made by users in most of times are useless content. And although I can't prove it, I'm pretty sure Google can detect what is your article and what is the comments on the page. So I think comments needs to be loaded via JS, and not printed on the HTML. (It would also reduce the page weight);   2. I think the canonical should be pointed to the main URL - and not the child URL. Since it's the very same content on every child page, and the only difference is that it will load new comments, but the main content is the same.   3. I would also add a NOINDEX, FOLLOW tag to every child page in order to make sure Google do not index any of my child pages and always prioritize the main URL. What are you thoughts about it?


When does Google show images in search results

When making a search on Google for something rather generic, Google might show image results above the list of organic search results websites, or in a top position. There would also be a link like "More images for [search terms]. Are there any generally accepted rules regarding when Google shows images? What kind of searches does Google consider relevant for image results?


baffling comment spam

I've been seeing some odd comment spam on one of my sites. Odd because there are no links posted. Just, "Wow, that's a really celevr way of thinking about it!" or similar. Note the typo. The messages change but they almost always seem to have a typo. I'm wondering if that may be on purpose, perhaps as a way of tracking successful comments or some such (like subtly and uniquely altering several copies of a classified document to pinpoint who a leaker was). I've noticed that often one of the fields will be left empty, inluding the comment body. This suggests to me that this is a bot that's testing for honeypot fields. Anyway, the baffling thing about these is that there are never any links posted. I can't figure out what the point of this would be. Any ideas?


Wordpress Category/Tag Pages As Indexed Actually Help In Traffic?

I several days ago somewhere read that category and tag pages should be noindexed. But later on somewhere else, I read that, they only increase rank for search term, but overall traffic decreases- said one from his experience. So, if I just concern about traffic, not about individual search term that much, should I make those category and tag pages as indexed to google? I am confused which is the best to do. Thanks in advance. Regards Rana


Dynamic news showcase on homepage and impact on SEO and indexing

I want to highlight the latest news of the week or month on the homepage of my website. On another page of my site, I have a complete and comprehensive list of the news that would duplicate what is on the homepage. So the news on homepage would be variable. In fact, I would have to remove each item after one month. Even if I have the same news URL links in another page, removing the URL links from homepage would affect heavily for Google indexing? Is there a possibility that I could lose position in the SERPs? This would practically make my site into a daily newspaper site!


How can I get stats for what 3rd-party sites have embedded our iframe widget?

Say we've produced a widget for other sites to use, like so:               <iframe src="http://example.com/whatever.php" frameBorder="0" width="200px" height="300px"  scrolling="no"></iframe>      The client would like to be able to see within GA who has embedded the thing. Is there some referer information automatically passed that I can look for, or do I need to add something? `whatever.php` is already loading the analytics Javascript(we're also tracking clicks on an outbound link). **[EDIT]**   Looking around a bit more, I found what seems to be a similar question on SO with an answer saying this can be found, automatically, but I still can't seem to find the information. The question's also old enough the respondent is probably referring to the old interface, though. Maybe someone could explain getting to it in the new look. (I won't likely be able to train this client to switch, deal with the old look, etc.)


Confirm that someone has Google +1 'd a link

I'm considering a campaign for my existing customers that would offer them a discount on products when they +1 our site. Is there a way to prove that someone has +1'd our site?


Sitemap.xml / Update Frequency + Priority 0

I'm working on building sitemaps and am not sure what should and should not be added. For example: `https://www.website.com ` `https://www.website.com/en/ ` `http://www.website.com/index.php ` `http://www.website.com/en/index.php` All of these URLs lead to the same page. _https://www.website.com/ is the preferred address._ **Should I write all of these variations in the sitemap and assign the nonpreferred ones an update frequency of never, priority 0. Or simply not include them in the sitemap at all?** Nearly every link on the site could be reached with a similar combination. Similarly, I have many links that contain parameters https://www.website.com/en/catalog?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=CTA&utm_campaign=Test **Should these be in the sitemap with the same update frequency never, priority 0 or simply not included?** The documentation I've read, says that the sitemap is used to teach the search engine about your site and give priority to pages, so it makes sense to me that I would want to add all of these links so I can explicitly educate the search engine NOT to bother checking these links. ## Additionally The site contains a catalog of products which can be filtered through in multiple ways (by color, and size for example). Each filter changes the url like such: `The main catalog: ` https://www.website.com/catalog/ `filtered for blue: ` https://www.website.com/catalog/color-blue/ `filtered for large: ` https://www.website.com/catalog/large/ `filtered for blue & large:` https://www.website.com/catalog/large/color-blue/ With three types of filters and 5 to 15 options for each filter, this potentially creates 75 different links which essentially display the same content. Should all of these potential links be listed in the sitemap, only the main catalog link, or only the first level of filter links, or every potential URL?


Service for accepting short video clips as part of official documents?

I am looking for a service that can accept short video clips flexibly and convert to an archival format. So the process would be:   * Person in the field uploads a video by:      1. Smartphone upload     2. Upload from camera via laptop     3. Upload from browser via Flash   * Service normalizes the video to some standard format (AVI? with standard quality)   * Service generates a thumbnail and embeds in a larger report   * Thumbnail is clickable to get the larger video These are private, assessment videos, so they need to be confidential. Most of the online services out there (YouTube, Vimeo, etc) do parts of these, but don't have a commercial or archival component. Ideally the service would have an API, but if it satisfies the bullet points above a "self-serve" YouTube quality would be great. I did searching and mostly I've found components limited by browser (ActiveX controls and such) or not allowed to be private. I'd prefer to buy a service rather than reinvent this wheel. Thanks in advance!


Transfer domain fails due to Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)

So I'm trying to transfer the hosting for a domain from Biz.nf to Bluehost. The domain was originally registered with Biz.nf. The domain is unlocked, and so is ready to transfer. However, I need the EPP, and that is where the problem comes in. For whatever reason, the current domain registrar is Wild West Domains (GoDaddy), despite the fact that I have never dealt with them. How exactly did this happen, and what can I do to get the EPP.


Menu icons in Drupal?

How do I get menu icons in drupal? I have the menu icons module....but are there menu icon themes or packs or something? I am using the deco theme, and want menu icons like thus: ![alt text](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YprMH.png) What is the easiest way to do this?


Thousands of backlinks from Meetup.com

I have been wondering something for a while now. We have a manual penalty from Google on unnatural linking. When I check out "Links to your site" in Webmaster Tools we have 11,387 links from Meetup.com. Is this harming us? After clicking through some of the links randomly I have discovered it is from one of our dealers that sells our products. He is sponsoring different groups and so the ad appears, the problem is he is linking back to our site and not his own. The anchor text is all the same it never changes.


Attaching an Google AdWords conversion to a campaign

In Google AdWords, I've created a conversion and put the script onto my webpage but now I don't know how to connect this conversion to a campaign, so that it shows up on the table for the campaign data. How do I do that?


Rel = translation

I can't find much online about rel="translation" We have tutorials and manual entries which we are going to get users to translate. If the original page in English is: http://www.scirra.com/tutorial/start And there are two translations: http://www.scirra.com/tutorial/es/start (spanish) http://www.scirra.com/tutorial/de/start (german) How would I correctly link all these up? I'm aware at the top of the page I would need to specify the correct IS639-1 code:               <html lang="de">      But I'm more interested in letting Google know they are not duplicates but are translated.


Strange issue with Wordpress sites, is it PHP Memory?

This has happened to me twice with the same host and I want to know the real cause. I have multiple wordpress sites hosted on a shared server. One day when I attempt to visit any of the sites, the webpage simply downloads the index.php file. It happens on all wordpress sites but not on static sites hosted there. I understand this is a php issue on the server, but what could be happening specifically? the only thing I could find when searching is something to do with memory limits. Is this common? Should I be worried about this host?


Abnormal Alexa score: the more popular site has a worse rank

I have 2 websites of ecommerce in France and for these websites I have a strange behaviour of the alexa results. Here are some statistics about the websites : **Unique Visits January 2012**   * Website A : 158,828   * Website B : 58,867 **Number of Search Results google**   * Website A : 5,100   * Website B : 56,000  **Links to my site**   * Website A : 3,120   * Website B : 2,180 **ALEXA Score**   * Website A : 405,804   * Website B : 278,944 How does it come that website B with 1/3 of the visitors of website A have a much better Alexa Score ( x2 ) then website A?


Google Authorship not displaying

A few months back I set to the task of verifying my blog content for Google Authorship. I'm fairly confident I've ticked all the boxes and when I test my posts with the Google Structured Data tool it informs me that Authorship is working for this webpage. It has been like this for around 2 months but I am still not seeing my authorship profile in the search results. Do a search for " **jQuery Parallax Scrolling Tutorial** " and you will see my blog post near the top of the results but no authorship data. _**Can anyone suggest why this is not appearing when Google itself tells me that everything is in order?_** Thanks


Why has my authorship image been removed from Google SERPs

I recently added the relevant tags to my site and validated my email for Google Authorship. After around a week my image started showing up with results. Today the image is no longer present and I haven't changed anything. The Structured Data Testing Tool results show that it should all be working. Have I missed something or does anyone know why it would stop displaying? Other questions ask about situations where the image has never appeared. My image has appeared but has since stopped appearing so is a different situation.


Google Authorship - mugshot not showing

I've set up Google+ authorship for my photography blog, and used the Google Structured Data Testing Tool to verify the following:   * Authorship is working   * Authorship email verification is working   * rel=author markup has successfully established authorship for this webpage.   * Publisher markup is verified for this page Unfortunately my authorship information is not showing in Google search results. Could it be that the latter on my list above (Publisher markup verification, which is set to use my _business_ page as opposed to my personal page) could be causing some form of interference? It's my understanding that blog posts may only be linked to a Google+ personal profile, not a business page, but that you can set up Publisher markup for a business page.


Microformatting accepted, then ignored

I have implemented microformatting in one of our websites for our address, breadcrumbs and reviews that we collect from our customers. After we launched the new website using the microformatting Google accepted all and produced perfect formatted rich snippets. After about a month all got ignored and queries returned 'normal' snippets again. The Rich Snippet Testing tools indicates all is marked up correctly. Is there anything else I can do? What is the best practice in this matter?


What is "?sfgdataq" that I see appended to some requests to my application?

I have noticed that a small number of requests come through my application with ?sfgdataq appended to them, I probably wouldn't have ever noticed it if it didn't cause an error on some requests. I have seen requests come through with a mix of user agents, (Firefox, IE 7, IE 8) so I don't think it is a bot. I looked around and I can't find any information on what is doing this, I found a couple people with similar questions on message boards (so I don't think it is isolated to my application) but no good answers. edit: I also noticed that the User Agents have some sort of large random value appended: +sfgRmluamFuX1R5cGU9amF2YV9zY3JpcHQmRmluamFuX0xhbmc9dGV4dC9qY is a sample - searching for that on google turns it up in other logs as well.


Putting duplicate phrases in the headings of pages

If I have a local business that repairs only HP computers for example, and I write lots of good informative pages about all the different things that can be repaired on HP computers such as motherboards, screens and keyboards, should I make the `h1` headings of my pages:   * Motherboard repair for HP computers   * Screen repair for HP computers   * Keyboard repair for HP computers or   * Motherboard repair   * Screen repair   * Keyboard repair ? What different does it make to search engines? If the first option is a bad idea, how should I make sure to communicate to search engines that my business specializes in HP computers?


What to set for AllowOverride & Options

What is normally used as settings for both production or development servers for settings `AllowOverride` & `Options`? I will be needing to use .htaccess for WordPress so things like mod_rewrite etc


How can I change the location of my ip address to specific citiies/places when browsing?

I am based in Europe and I would like to test my website as if I am located in New York. I have some specific features that will be visible based on cities.


which favicon gets loaded in the browser?

currently i am experimenting with 2 favicons and including them in 3 different ways in my markup, however i am not sure which one gets loaded in the browser. firebug's network tab doesn't tell me which one it downloaded.                 <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="favicon.png">       <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico">       <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="favicon.png">      where favicon.png is 144x144px and favicon.ico is 16x16px. idealy i want all browsers to use the png instead of ico whenever they support it, and just fallback to ico for ie. i am not sure how to verify if the code is already doing this or not.


What tools to use for efficient link building?

As most SEO experts keep saying, it is not just the content that you have - but also a hefty amount of _quality_ incoming links to your content that is important - these are the two ways to get to the top of the search results. The question is where do I find the incoming links? One way I know is Google blog search, it can be used to find blogs with related information to your content and some allow to leave comments. The comments usually consist of your name, e-mail and website. If you put your keyword instead of your name, then the keyword turns into a link to your website. Unfortunately most blogs put the `rel=nofollow` attribute on such links, but some blogs don't do that. What other ways are there to **find quality pages to put keywords links** back to your website? Quality link usually means:   * located on a page with relevant content   * does not have a `rel=nofollow` attribute in the `<a>` tag   * has a relevant keyword as in `<a href="website">keyword<</a>`   * the page with the link has high PageRank (3+) and TrustRank


Suitable ad service / Ad-revenue model for my one-time use high traffic website?

I'm about to launch a website to which I expect a high number of visitors and lots of traffic. However, this traffic will only last for a few days once the joke has been passed around enough (in the past, my sites like this have gotten up to five million hits). I've never advertised on them (they've been purely for fun or for some subliminal political message) but I was thinking perhaps there was money to be made. I checked out AdSense, but they have a long approval process, which the timing for my website release doesn't allow. Does anyone have any recommendations of an advertising service I can employ to make a few bucks on my site's surge of traffic, and that can be set up quickly?


Alternative to Google Adsense

I have a web dev blog which averages ~100 uniques per day, on which I have a few ads here and there via Google Adsense. These ads generate around £5 per month for me. While I'm not out to make money, it would be nice to be able to cover my hosting and domain costs. Can someone recommend a good alternative to Google Ads which could bring in a little more? If so, could you also detail your experience with as much info as possible, please? Again, I'm not looking to make money off my blog but if I have ads on there, I may as well get the most out of them and if I can turn that £5 a month into £10 a month, it's a good start. I'm very naive to the world of online ads and any search on the topic returns clearly promoted posts with impossibly high numbers.


Why don't my Google Analytics custom segmentation visit numbers match up?

I have three main areas of my site and want to track total usage as well as breakdowns of the three parts. I am trying to segment the "type" of use on each page using a custom variable as such:               ['_setCustomVar',1,'Visitor Type','Unknown',1]      Visitor type can be one of three values: "Unknown", "Reader" or "publisher". Every page has this value set. Now when I look at my analytics chart and chose all three segments, the individual values do not match the sum. I've double checked the pages to make sure the custom var is there. ![Google Analytics Screenshot](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vTUXK.png)


What does "Other" mean for Traffic Source on Google Analytics?

I logged into Google Analytics today and under 'Traffic Sources' saw: "Referring sites", "Direct Traffic", "Search Engines" and "Other". I've never seen 'other' before, and it was small (only 0.5%), but what does "Other" mean?


What is your favourite javascript lightbox implementation?

There are so many implementations of the lightbox, which is your favourite to use for your custom site? (javascript based) I generally use Lightbox2


Which method is the best to specify the language of a page?

There seems to be two ways to specify the language of a page:               <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">      and               <html lang="en-us">      Which one is the preferred way? I know I could just add both tags but I'd rather not have duplicate content. Also do both methods use the same locale format (i.e. "en-us" and not "en_US")?


Google Traffic Does Not Add Up

I have just done a search for two different keyword phrases. When I look at both of the results, they have the same number of "Local Monthly Searches" according to the Keyword Tool in Google Adwords which is 90,500. This is an "exact" match for the keyword phrases. I currently and have ranked in the #3 spot for both of these keyword phrases for almost a year now. TRAFFIC RESULTS - One site gets 2500 visitors a day and the other gets 100 visitors a day. WTF? Why such a disparity in the number of visitors per day when both sites are ranking #3? It doesn't make me trust the numbers from the Keyword Tool in Google Adwords when they are so ridiculously off like this.


How to create an overlay div using CSS only (no Javascript)?

I'm trying to figure out how to create a div that overlays the page, staying in one place when the page scrolls, such as used in this article: Top 5 Botched PC Game Launches. (You will see a bar at the top that doesn't move, with the logo, _where gamers call home_ ). I'm not even sure what the correct terminology is - it's probably not overlay :) But whatever it is, it appears to be done with CSS only, as it shows up when Javascript is disabled.


Do I set a DNS A Record for the new GitHub Pages to use their CDN?

GitHub updated their Pages service for custom domains yesterday and I'm not clear on one small detail. They recommend a CNAME record for `www.example.com` but do not recommend using A records for the apex domain. I want to make sure both `example.com` and `www.example.com` resolve correctly to `www.example.com`, and **also get the benefit of GitHub's new CDN**. Do I use a CNAME for www only then, with no A record at all? This feels like a dumb question as I type but I'm just not getting it.


How do I get a page on my site to appear in the "video results" section

Direct Lyrics appears at the top of these search results as a "video result" (next to an inviting thumbnail). But the page in question is just a page of lyrics with an embedded YouTube video. My lyrics site has embedded YouTube videos on its lyrics pages as well; how can I get my site into the video results section? ![](http://i.stack.imgur.com/mcuJT.png)


The Sitemap Paradox

We use a sitemap on Stack Overflow, but I have mixed feelings about it. > Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from > other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support > Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using > the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that > web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web > crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site. Based on our two years' experience with sitemaps, there's something **fundamentally paradoxical about the sitemap** :   1. Sitemaps are intended for sites that are hard to crawl properly.   2. If Google can't successfully crawl your site to find a link, but is able to find it in the sitemap _it gives the sitemap link no weight and will not index it!_ That's the sitemap paradox -- **if your site isn't being properly crawled (for whatever reason), using a sitemap will not help you!** Google goes out of their way to make no sitemap guarantees: > "We cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if your URLs > will be crawled or added to our index" citation > > "We don't guarantee that we'll crawl or index all of your URLs. For example, > we won't crawl or index image URLs contained in your Sitemap." citation > > "submitting a Sitemap doesn't guarantee that all pages of your site will be > crawled or included in our search results" citation Given that links found in sitemaps are merely _recommendations_ , whereas links found on your own website proper are considered canonical ... it seems the only logical thing to do is _avoid_ having a sitemap and make damn sure that Google and any other search engine can properly spider your site using the plain old standard web pages everyone else sees. By the time you have done _that_ , and are getting spidered nice and thoroughly so Google can see that your _own site_ links to these pages, and would be willing to crawl the links -- uh, why do we need a sitemap, again? The sitemap can be actively harmful, because it distracts you from ensuring that search engine spiders are able to successfully crawl your whole site. "Oh, it doesn't matter if the crawler can see it, we'll just slap those links in the sitemap!" Reality is quite the opposite in our experience. That seems more than a little ironic considering sitemaps were _intended_ for sites that have a very deep collection of links or complex UI that may be hard to spider. In our experience, the sitemap does not help, because **if Google can't find the link on your site proper, it won't index it from the sitemap anyway.** We've seen this proven time and time again with Stack Overflow questions. Am I wrong? Do sitemaps make sense, and we're somehow just using them incorrectly?