I recently went on a buying spree on previously owned domains and found some with decent pageranks and backlinks. I’m *not* about to divulge these domains just yet! What’s funny is that one of the domains I bought used to be owned by someone pretty well-known on the Internet. I only found about it *after* the purchase. Now I feel kinda silly. Well, technically it’s mine now. I’m thinking of converting it to a political blog but with a more global scope. We’ll see.
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Here’s a cool way to figure out just how “big” a fish you are in the ocean that is the World Wide Web. Uses backlink information from Yahoo!

Find out if you’re a Big Fish. Sad, I’m just a small smelt.

Related Link: Debt Consolidation free quote

Google won over MySpace with a hefty $900 million revenue-sharing deal that will allow the search engine to provide its search and advertising services to the latter’s 70 million-plus users. That also means MySpace dumping its current ad provider Yahoo! who also made a bid but fell short to that of Google. With the social network being the most accessed website in the US, Google is given wider exposure to a younger audience and more revenue opportunities through its AdWords clients.

The winner? Google. Although Myspace’s dreams of making good money had just come true, its long-term prospects are still put into question. Remember. It’s Google using MySpace to make money, NOT the other way around. The numbers tell the story. Ratings have it that MySpace’s traffic grows an astounding 300% annually, easily overtaking Google. So if you think I’m insinuating that Google’s merely using MySpace and stopping it from making its own search engine, you’re right.

Certain terms of the deal stipulate that the $900 million sum be paid in three years as long as MySpace does its part in keeping traffic up and enticing new users, among others.

There’s something new brewing at the Google Labs.

It’s called Accessible Search, a search engine tool by Google that sorts results based on the readability and simplicity of the page layout. This proves to be useful for those who are reading or sight impaired, as it gives them faster but not necessarily better access to information with minimal graphical distractions.
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Google Australia opened its doors to the media in Sydney, Australia, May 16, 2006. Yeah, it’s two months ago, but better late than never.

Some pics:

More after the jump.

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I was sniffing around for some nifty loading gif’s for one of my projects when I found Ajaxload, a drive-thru Ajax-powered site that spits out loading gif animations to your liking on-the-fly. Yeah … for you graphically-challenged Web 2.0 geeks out there, this is the place to go if you want your apps to look cool while they’re pretending to load something. Hehehe.

Some samples from their site:
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There are hints of a major PageRank and backlinks update.

My sites are holding steady, but one site I handle dropped a point — which is fine.

One big surprise is that some Isulong Seoph sites are hitting PR’s of 6’s and 5’s. The competition is getting red-hot!

As far as backlinks are concerned, Google’s been ignoring some major sites linking to me, it’s frustrating!! This has been going on too long already it’s not even funny. Should I write Google about it? It’s pathetic I know, but I just want to get a clear answer on this matter.

How are your sites doing?

Google now gives webmasters the option to add a simple meta tag to their webpages to tell the search engine not to display their ODP (Open Directory Project) information:

Insert the following anywhere between the header tags:

<meta NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOODP"></meta>

This news came fresh straight from the bakery, so not every search engine who uses the ODP will immediately follow suit. But here’s the code that applies to all search engines:

<meta NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP"></meta>

Being an ODP editor myself, about 90% of the site descriptions contained in the ODP is outdated. So displaying them within search results subtracts relevance for the end-user off the bat.

From the Inside Google Sitemaps blog.

Alleba goes Beta!

The homepage looks a lot cleaner and whiter than our previous one, but what really packs a wallop is our new search engine. There are several cool new features you should check out:

1. Fully integrated 3-way search: searches the web, directory and images simultaneously, giving you better, more relevant search results.
2. Support for phrase searches (e.g. “Justin Timberlake Rocks” - with quotes) (web only)
3. Ability to search for site information: who links to you, similar sites, and pages from your site. Simply type in “yourdomain.com” in the search field, without the quotes. You’ll also be able to see if you’re listed in Alleba Directory.
4. Support for site searches. Type “site:domain.com keywords” without quotes.

I hope you’ll like the new Alleba. More improvements coming soon!

I transferred my Wordpress plugin to my Isulong Seoph website at http://www.isulongseoph.ws/

All updates to the plugin shalll be posted there. Thanks.

I thought it would be cool to create a plugin just for the Isulong Seoph contest.

So I did. Look at the lower right side and you’ll see the fruits of my work or my Isulong Seoph entry for a more updated demo.

That list is pretty much in real time, which makes it a cool widget to add to your own Isulong blog that’s on Wordpress.

Update: Plugin now works in Wordpress 1.5 and 2.0.

Plugin Name: Isulong Seoph
Description: Displays top 10 Google results and site rank for the keywords ‘isulong seoph’ in connection to the first ever Philippine SEO contest. Configurable to display results for a different set of keywords for other SEO competitions.
Version: 0.1d
Author: Andrew dela Serna

Click here to download the plugin.

Installation:
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Isulongseophil.com takes the lead from Isulongseoph.net apparently because of the latter’s inability to put his site back in order. I don’t think the phrase “Quit While You’re Ahead” applies in this case.

I dunno. I got bored last night. Picked up my trusty notebook and pen, sat on my bed and scribbled anagrams of “Isulong Seoph”.

Here’s what I came up with:

Sloping Houses
Glue His Spoon
Ghouls Opines

But here’s the clincher:

Us Losing Hope

Not so encouraging is it? Is it a sign of things to come? An omen?

I checked out the latest search results standings for our SEO contest. Isulongseoph.net is still sitting neatly on top, but when I clicked on the link, this is what I got:

Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.

error id: “bad_httpd_conf”

I checked Dreamhost’s wiki for a description of the error:

bad_httpd_conf errors in general mean that something interfered with the generation of your site’s entry in our Apache web server configuration file. You can sometimes work around this yourself by editing your domain from the web panel, ’submitting’ it (even with no changes), and waiting a bit. This forces it to be re-generated, which may work. Obviously the error shouldn’t happen in the first place, but if you want to get the site up ASAP this can sometimes help.”

It appears that Isulongseoph.net is hosted on Dreamhost.com. I’ve had my fair share of Dreamhost nightmares and still having them!! Hopefully the owner of this domain gets his act together before all his efforts go to waste. Curious to see how all this pans out.

The word ‘isulong’ literally means to ‘push forward’. That is the exact philosophy that my group, SEO Philippines, is adopting — to make the Philippines one of the foremost SEO hubs in Asia.

I’m very proud of the effort my fellow SEO’s are putting into this competition. As of last check, there are now 32,000 search results related to ‘isulong seoph’. To think that this only began 5 days ago! Whoooot!

If you’re one of those addicted to this contest, well, you’re not alone. Count me in! I have registered a related domain myself. I am joining but won’t be an official competitor. I just want to see if I’m any good at this game.

My experience with SEO is still quite elementary. But I have had a lot of success with sites that I’ve made by sticking to these basic SEO principles:
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