In between working on Car Arena we've been working on the back end of our own systems before we move in to the new office on Chamberlain road. Almost all of the tc software website have been consolidated into one domain tcsoftware.net and the existing website shall be undergoing an overhaul on both content and visual design shortly.
This blog has now been moved to the address blog.tcsoftware.net however the old address custom-software-hull.blogspot.com is still valid and will redirect you to the new domain.
As part of the move not only will our address change but also our phone number. Once we've established ourselves in the new office the phone number on our site and in this blog will be updated.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Update your Flash player and get your free adware!
Ok, so perhaps Adobe hasn't sunk to the level whereby they're installing software that will fill your desktop with popup's of some questionable website but they are essentially distributing adware.
In the latest update to the flash player Adobe are by default installing an optional copy of McAfee Scan Plus and Scan Plus is simply a scaled down version of McAfee's virus scanner which will hunt down anything slightly questionable on your PC, report it to you in the most alerting manner it can and urge you to buy McAfee's products ASAP!
So if you don't want McAfee telling you a cookie found on your computer may cause the Large Hellion Collider to form a super massive black hole and crush the planet to the size of a pea, just uncheck the 'let me send you adware' checkbox on the download form.
Adobe feeling the post credit crisis pinch? Or just plain greedy?
BTW: Scan Plus does uninstall cleanly from your computer so it is only an irritation if you accidentally install it but it doesn't help the feeling of being violated by Adobe!
In the latest update to the flash player Adobe are by default installing an optional copy of McAfee Scan Plus and Scan Plus is simply a scaled down version of McAfee's virus scanner which will hunt down anything slightly questionable on your PC, report it to you in the most alerting manner it can and urge you to buy McAfee's products ASAP!
Adobe feeling the post credit crisis pinch? Or just plain greedy?
BTW: Scan Plus does uninstall cleanly from your computer so it is only an irritation if you accidentally install it but it doesn't help the feeling of being violated by Adobe!
Monday, 18 October 2010
SEOmoz Linkscape update
SEOmoz have finally made a blog post regarding the last Linkscape update and cite hardware failures on Amazon's EC2 causing processing of link data to be restarted multiple times and missing the planned index update date. randfish tells us its not the first time this has happened but this month it happened during a critical part of the update.
Linkscape indexed 41 Billion pages last month, 99 Million domains and inspected 402 Billion links - an impressive haul! The next update is planned for 12th of November.
randfish also includes some more information on the way in which people are using hyperlinks on their site (canonical and nofollow links), you can read his post here
Linkscape indexed 41 Billion pages last month, 99 Million domains and inspected 402 Billion links - an impressive haul! The next update is planned for 12th of November.
randfish also includes some more information on the way in which people are using hyperlinks on their site (canonical and nofollow links), you can read his post here
Competitor to KC?
The Hull Daily Mail is reporting that a company named Mediasat3 plans to provide alternative telecom and internet services to Businesses and Residents in Hull (article here)
Kingston Communications is the only supplier of these services in Hull and the surrounding area. They hold a virtual monopoly on the area and are able to dictate the terms by which their network is used and sold. While technically anyone can buy wholesale services from KC and setup an alternative ISP Kingston have, quite naturally, engineered a situation that would make a competitor non-viable.
OFCOM the watchdog that is supposed to be looking after our interests turns a blind eye to KC and basically lets them get away with murder.
We had a quick look over Mediaset3 and to be honest its not very impressive (sorry if you're reading guys). In fact the article in the Hull Daily Mail appears to be more of an 'Infomercial' to promote Mediaset3's website than anything else. Mediaset3 seem to lean more towards providing Satellite internet access and business services.
Kingston Communications is the only supplier of these services in Hull and the surrounding area. They hold a virtual monopoly on the area and are able to dictate the terms by which their network is used and sold. While technically anyone can buy wholesale services from KC and setup an alternative ISP Kingston have, quite naturally, engineered a situation that would make a competitor non-viable.
OFCOM the watchdog that is supposed to be looking after our interests turns a blind eye to KC and basically lets them get away with murder.
We had a quick look over Mediaset3 and to be honest its not very impressive (sorry if you're reading guys). In fact the article in the Hull Daily Mail appears to be more of an 'Infomercial' to promote Mediaset3's website than anything else. Mediaset3 seem to lean more towards providing Satellite internet access and business services.
Friday, 15 October 2010
Linkscape index update
The Linkscape update is finally here and the results of its crawl are available via the Open Site Explorer!
This time around Linkscape doesn't appear to have captured as much data as it usually does, perhaps as a result of the processing problems SEOmoz encountered earlier this month? But the link data collected is still very valuable for anyone promoting their website.
We're happy to say that linkscape has reflected our own SEO efforts with a general rise slightly below what we expected with the exception of one site which jumped from being not listed at all in the last update to a Domain Authority of 35/100. As linkscape has not detected many important links into the sites we're working on we are attributing the shortfall to the missing links, which we hope to see in the next update.
SEOmoz usually follow up an update with a blog post detailing the overall statistics of the crawl which we're still waiting for at this time.
Thanks to the SEOmoz team for the data and best of luck to you all!
This time around Linkscape doesn't appear to have captured as much data as it usually does, perhaps as a result of the processing problems SEOmoz encountered earlier this month? But the link data collected is still very valuable for anyone promoting their website.
We're happy to say that linkscape has reflected our own SEO efforts with a general rise slightly below what we expected with the exception of one site which jumped from being not listed at all in the last update to a Domain Authority of 35/100. As linkscape has not detected many important links into the sites we're working on we are attributing the shortfall to the missing links, which we hope to see in the next update.
SEOmoz usually follow up an update with a blog post detailing the overall statistics of the crawl which we're still waiting for at this time.
Thanks to the SEOmoz team for the data and best of luck to you all!
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Backlinks in Webmaster tools updated
Google has updated its backlink reports in Webmaster tools today. Most of the changes appear to be nothing more than reorganizing the data in a way that makes it easier to navigate when you have a large number of backlinks.
However there is some differences in the data reported. In this version of the tool some of the reported links have disappeared and, for some domains, links to www.somedomain.com have been migrated to somedomain.com when you have set google to show the shorter domain in your site configuration. Links which are redirected using 301 or 302 are now reported correctly though.
We've also seen that when a site has two domains (e.g. a .co.uk and .com domain) webmaster tools is now reporting links into a page from the other domain and it doesn't appear to matter that the URL after the domain name is different only that their is duplicate content. One of our sites shares its content from another site but has wildly different visual theme. The sites do share links between one another but only to the home pages and now webmaster tools is reporting links between these pages where one does not exist and never has.
Reported Anchor text within links also appears to be filtered in a new way. Some of our sites now have more phrases reported in the Anchor text while others have very few.
As this tool is brand new I expect there will be a lot of chatter about it on the Internet as people analyse the new data. Google have also released some information about the new tool on their blog.
However there is some differences in the data reported. In this version of the tool some of the reported links have disappeared and, for some domains, links to www.somedomain.com have been migrated to somedomain.com when you have set google to show the shorter domain in your site configuration. Links which are redirected using 301 or 302 are now reported correctly though.
We've also seen that when a site has two domains (e.g. a .co.uk and .com domain) webmaster tools is now reporting links into a page from the other domain and it doesn't appear to matter that the URL after the domain name is different only that their is duplicate content. One of our sites shares its content from another site but has wildly different visual theme. The sites do share links between one another but only to the home pages and now webmaster tools is reporting links between these pages where one does not exist and never has.
Reported Anchor text within links also appears to be filtered in a new way. Some of our sites now have more phrases reported in the Anchor text while others have very few.
As this tool is brand new I expect there will be a lot of chatter about it on the Internet as people analyse the new data. Google have also released some information about the new tool on their blog.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Some ideas for getting your very first site indexed
Unless you already have a website which is crawled regularly by the search engines getting a new website you've created indexed can be a bit of a headache. And using the tools supplied by the search engines for submitting a site for indexing can leave you waiting for weeks before anything comes for a peek at your work.
Search engines take longer to crawl sites submitted via the supplied tools in an effort to counter short lived spam sites or sites which contain malicious code. There is no penalty for using the tools but you will have to wait a few weeks, perhaps a month, before anything happens.
Getting your site indexed within a few hours / days however is relatively easy with a little imagination by getting links in from another site which is crawled regularly.
First though, why would a link found by a crawler on the Internet mean your site is indexed faster than by using the tools provided by the search engines?
Basically it boils down to trust by the search engine. A trusted site is unlikely to link to a site which the search engines would normally ban, indeed if the trusted site did it would damage its own standing with the search engines. So if the crawler finds a link on a trusted site back to a new website there is a very good chance the new website is worth indexing.
However if the site is submitted only via the tools provided the search engine then it must assume that the site may be spam or attempting to distribute a virus. As the crawler has not detected any links into the site (ergo no one may want to link to it and damage their own standing because of what the new site contains) then the search engine must treat the site as highly suspect.
These tools are only provided as a final option by the search engines for people who really have no choice but to submit their content via them.
So how would you get your site indexed via a link found on the Internet?
Well forget everything you may have read about SEO so far and just concentrate on getting a link to your site on a page which the search engines crawl regularly. It doesn't matter if it's marked 'nofollow', just that it's a link to your site.
Forum signatures and Blogs are often a good place to start but you could also spend some time writing an article with a link back to your site and submitting it to an article mill.
You should also remember that the link only needs to exist long enough for the search engines to find your site when your aim is only to get it indexed. One such example is Craig's List, where the link will remain visible to the search engines for about a month.
Tools that promise quick indexing or sites that offer 'free backlinks' often do nothing for getting your site indexed or raising its authority with the search engines. Often these sites themselves have little authority with the search engines and/or link to damaging websites.
A good tip when selecting a page to place your link is to check its page rank. A page rank 1 or better should lead the search engines to your site with a day or two at the most.
Search engines take longer to crawl sites submitted via the supplied tools in an effort to counter short lived spam sites or sites which contain malicious code. There is no penalty for using the tools but you will have to wait a few weeks, perhaps a month, before anything happens.
Getting your site indexed within a few hours / days however is relatively easy with a little imagination by getting links in from another site which is crawled regularly.
First though, why would a link found by a crawler on the Internet mean your site is indexed faster than by using the tools provided by the search engines?
Basically it boils down to trust by the search engine. A trusted site is unlikely to link to a site which the search engines would normally ban, indeed if the trusted site did it would damage its own standing with the search engines. So if the crawler finds a link on a trusted site back to a new website there is a very good chance the new website is worth indexing.
However if the site is submitted only via the tools provided the search engine then it must assume that the site may be spam or attempting to distribute a virus. As the crawler has not detected any links into the site (ergo no one may want to link to it and damage their own standing because of what the new site contains) then the search engine must treat the site as highly suspect.
These tools are only provided as a final option by the search engines for people who really have no choice but to submit their content via them.
So how would you get your site indexed via a link found on the Internet?
Well forget everything you may have read about SEO so far and just concentrate on getting a link to your site on a page which the search engines crawl regularly. It doesn't matter if it's marked 'nofollow', just that it's a link to your site.
Forum signatures and Blogs are often a good place to start but you could also spend some time writing an article with a link back to your site and submitting it to an article mill.
You should also remember that the link only needs to exist long enough for the search engines to find your site when your aim is only to get it indexed. One such example is Craig's List, where the link will remain visible to the search engines for about a month.
Tools that promise quick indexing or sites that offer 'free backlinks' often do nothing for getting your site indexed or raising its authority with the search engines. Often these sites themselves have little authority with the search engines and/or link to damaging websites.
A good tip when selecting a page to place your link is to check its page rank. A page rank 1 or better should lead the search engines to your site with a day or two at the most.
Linkscape update (over)due!
SEOmoz have been plagued by errors this month while processing the data collected by Linkscape as it crawled the web. According to Linkscape the root of the problem is the Domain Authority score update from September and has caused them to revise the date the public Linkscape index will be updated twice now.
With Linkscape collecting such a large amount of data its understandable that even the smallest glitch can throw planned release dates off by days, even weeks, but with the scheduled update date being revised twice now and with around 24 hours to go it would seem SEOmoz are on track to release the data tomorrow.
We've been eagerly waiting for this update as some of our new sites have had a heavy amount of SEO work over the last month or so and Linkscape provides the clearest picture as to how effective this work has been. So the best of luck to SEOmoz with this update and hopefully (as they are based in Seattle) we'll see the results on Thursday Evening / Friday Morning!
With Linkscape collecting such a large amount of data its understandable that even the smallest glitch can throw planned release dates off by days, even weeks, but with the scheduled update date being revised twice now and with around 24 hours to go it would seem SEOmoz are on track to release the data tomorrow.
We've been eagerly waiting for this update as some of our new sites have had a heavy amount of SEO work over the last month or so and Linkscape provides the clearest picture as to how effective this work has been. So the best of luck to SEOmoz with this update and hopefully (as they are based in Seattle) we'll see the results on Thursday Evening / Friday Morning!
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Copyright Infringement or just plain greedy?
At what point will the Music and Film industry realize the Internet is a fantastic way for them to deliver their product on demand to their consumer?
Recently in the news an Irish Court ruled, quite rightly, that the Internet connections of people uploading copyrighted content could not be cut. We don't support Piracy at all, however the Music and Film industry chose in the early days of the Internet to fight the changing habits and wishes of their customers and have manufactured the situation.
As many have pointed out and as Apple proved with iTunes it would be easy, inexpensive and hugely popular for a Music Label to offer their entire catalog online paid for by subscription and/or per download.
Film Companies, especially these days, would enjoy an inexpensive way of delivering their content to customers on demand and world wide while cutting out the middle man.
Given the apparent stubborness of these two industries it would seem even when Google / Apple TV's are the norm the Music and Film industries will still be trying to use the Courts to have their way.
Personally though, I find it somewhat ironic that not only do Sony manufacture mp3 players, are about to reveal the first 'Google-powered TV' while at the same time backing legal action against Copyright infringment while doing nothing to offer an alternative!
Recently in the news an Irish Court ruled, quite rightly, that the Internet connections of people uploading copyrighted content could not be cut. We don't support Piracy at all, however the Music and Film industry chose in the early days of the Internet to fight the changing habits and wishes of their customers and have manufactured the situation.
As many have pointed out and as Apple proved with iTunes it would be easy, inexpensive and hugely popular for a Music Label to offer their entire catalog online paid for by subscription and/or per download.
Film Companies, especially these days, would enjoy an inexpensive way of delivering their content to customers on demand and world wide while cutting out the middle man.
Given the apparent stubborness of these two industries it would seem even when Google / Apple TV's are the norm the Music and Film industries will still be trying to use the Courts to have their way.
Personally though, I find it somewhat ironic that not only do Sony manufacture mp3 players, are about to reveal the first 'Google-powered TV' while at the same time backing legal action against Copyright infringment while doing nothing to offer an alternative!
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Sandbox Part 3
We've talked before about the Google sanbox effect (here and here) and it's effect on the traffic you see from google. The older site which had been sandboxed upon being restored last week had started to show the first signs of leaving the sandbox and appearing in the appropriate SERPs. A few days later as Google's Webmaster Tools updated we saw as of the 27th of September (ironically the day we posted about the site exiting the sandbox!) the number of impressions virtually quadruple within two days.
Google's Webmaster tools, as you can see, now tells us that the site gets 9,900 impressions per month (which we expect will be around 22,000 once a full month of data has been collected) and rose to nearly 800 impressions per day within 2 days.
The graph above shows google's stats from 4/9/2010 to 4/10/2010 - a period where we had not made any changes to the site or done any SEO work. Nor had we worked on the site 2 weeks before the data shown!
Google's Webmaster tools, as you can see, now tells us that the site gets 9,900 impressions per month (which we expect will be around 22,000 once a full month of data has been collected) and rose to nearly 800 impressions per day within 2 days.
The graph above shows google's stats from 4/9/2010 to 4/10/2010 - a period where we had not made any changes to the site or done any SEO work. Nor had we worked on the site 2 weeks before the data shown!
Car Arena Updated and Launched
Car Arena, a website we've been building that allows you to get an offer for your car from dealers around the country and near by, has just been overhauled, uploaded and launched.
Craig, the designer, has gone for a much cleaner look to the website this time and included a few flash animations to greet new visitors to the site.
Code wise, the site was modified to allow people to start a valuation using only their registration and some of the forms that used to be presented to the user have been merged in with other sections of the valuation process to make things move faster.
Most of the changes made to the site have been in the 'members' area for the dealers to view cars but we've also included a referral program for other sites to use to earn money when directing valuations to the car arena website.
This is only the first part of the update a second part is expected to be complete by the end of next week which includes automatic valuations, information about past valuations made by a dealer and some refinements to existing features.
Craig, the designer, has gone for a much cleaner look to the website this time and included a few flash animations to greet new visitors to the site.
Code wise, the site was modified to allow people to start a valuation using only their registration and some of the forms that used to be presented to the user have been merged in with other sections of the valuation process to make things move faster.
Most of the changes made to the site have been in the 'members' area for the dealers to view cars but we've also included a referral program for other sites to use to earn money when directing valuations to the car arena website.
This is only the first part of the update a second part is expected to be complete by the end of next week which includes automatic valuations, information about past valuations made by a dealer and some refinements to existing features.
Friday, 1 October 2010
Trouble at Google AdWords?
One of our clients is in the enviable position to afford to spend enough with Google to not just be ignored like almost everyone else when they have a problem! Recently this client was about to launch their new website and refocus their online advertising budget on the site with Google AdWords.
However having setup the campaign and selected the keywords they found that every keyword was ranked with a quality score of 1/10 and Adverts where not being approved. We couldn't find any reason for AdWords to set a quality score so low nor a reason for the advert to be stuck in limbo so the client got in touch with their Account Manager at google who, like us, couldn't find any problem with the site or the campaign. So the problem was refered to Google's technical team and we waited, and waited, and ...
Eventually after a few calls and emails the client got an answer from their Account Manager - it seems that the giant is flooded with support requests for AdWords. A quick look on Googles forums and we found that a lot of people are having similar problems.
Google told us that they expect to have resolved the problems in a couple of weeks and be back up to speed.
On a side note we've also noticed some of Google's sites / tools do some rather unusual things of late, perhaps the update in May and the recent changes are proving to be a bit of a headache?
However having setup the campaign and selected the keywords they found that every keyword was ranked with a quality score of 1/10 and Adverts where not being approved. We couldn't find any reason for AdWords to set a quality score so low nor a reason for the advert to be stuck in limbo so the client got in touch with their Account Manager at google who, like us, couldn't find any problem with the site or the campaign. So the problem was refered to Google's technical team and we waited, and waited, and ...
Eventually after a few calls and emails the client got an answer from their Account Manager - it seems that the giant is flooded with support requests for AdWords. A quick look on Googles forums and we found that a lot of people are having similar problems.
Google told us that they expect to have resolved the problems in a couple of weeks and be back up to speed.
On a side note we've also noticed some of Google's sites / tools do some rather unusual things of late, perhaps the update in May and the recent changes are proving to be a bit of a headache?
Review: Piwik
Piwik
Piwik is an Open Source web analytics project aiming to be an alternative to Google Analytics and provides some of the best information about who and what is happening on your website that we've seen. The recently added Live! Add in can tell you about visitors connecting to your website in real time and updates itself via AJAX. An SEO Rankings add-in gives you key stats about the site & easy access to a summary of Yahoo site explorer's stats on the dashboard.
There are lots of nice graphs to give you summary's of the data its gathering which can be viewed as tables if you need and more information on your visitors that you would normally get from a stats system analysing your sites logs. It monitors users using javascript and so it can much more accurately tell when users have left your site, what they did on a page, etc..
Piwik needs to be on a server with PHP and MySQL to collect information about your visitors but doesn't have to be on the same server as your website. It's very easy to download and install, compared to other systems and, much of the time, is able to update itself.
We've been running Piwik for a few months on some servers and have seen it handle traffic up to 600 hits an hour easily, However the Live! add-in did seem to get a little stressed out and was slightly difficult to use when the Visitor Log is spewing data out so fast we found the fine tuned reaction skills from years of online gaming where put to the test!
Piwik's project homepage can be found at http://piwik.org/
Review: Open Site Explorer
The Open Site Explorer is one of the finest Backlink Analysis Tools I've come across to date. Unlike other Back Link analysis tools this tool is based upon data collected a crawler dedicated to finding links and evaluating their authority. Linkscape spends the better part of a month indexing over 90 Million root domains and evaluating 9.2 Trillion links.
You can view and compare 3 URL reports per day using the tool without registering, unlimited if you register, with limited data or pay a subscription fee to view all the data. The free information on its own makes tool extremely useful for promoting a website and I imagine it is well worth subscribing to if you specialize in SEO.
Because this tool is collecting its own data from the Internet instead of using Yahoo like many other Backlink tools on the Internet it is able to provide unique information about the links to any site it has come across. Netcraft report that they have detected over 213.4 Million websites which would mean that Linkscape only crawls 42% of the websites at the moment, but then that is 213,399,999 more websites than your run of the mill backlink tool!
You can query the Linkscape database using the Open Site Explorer by going to
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