Between Stations » robots.txt http://www.betweenstations.com perpetual motion Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:31:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Political Search http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/07/03/political-search/ http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/07/03/political-search/#comments Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:40:26 +0000 Julie http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/07/03/political-search/ Rolling into the three-decade long primary race, we have studies evaluating the search effectiveness of various US presidential candidates already.

One limiter of the study is that it seems to focus purely on PPC spend. I find some of what various candidates are doing from an organic perspective to be far more interesting. They’re all on [...]]]> Rolling into the three-decade long primary race, we have studies evaluating the search effectiveness of various US presidential candidates already.

One limiter of the study is that it seems to focus purely on PPC spend. I find some of what various candidates are doing from an organic perspective to be far more interesting. They’re all on all the social networks, YouTube, and Flickr, for instance, and then each candidate seems to have their own spins:

  • Mitt Romney has a blog, ostensibly by his brothers, on a subdomain. He’s also been using his domain since 2002, and hasn’t done anything limiting like add office or year to the domain — smart.
  • John Edwards has a freaking SPLASH PAGE. Ugh! But he uses wacky code to avoid having it indexed. Again, he’s using his ‘name’ domain, no wacky offices or years. Again, a blog. And nice rollover menu code.
  • Barack Obama is more of the same, only he’s added a UGC section over at my.barackobama.com. Nice.
  • Hillary Clinton, like John Edwards, has a dumb splash page with wacky code. Once in, it looks like she has a UGC section… but wait! DEAD LINK!!!! I’m also underwhelmed by her meta-description on a SERP.
  • Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is on a dumb domain (JoinRudy2008.com, registered 2006, and not reusable if he doesn’t get it this round, or if he DOES and needs to be re-elected later). He’s got some nice ‘add these widgets to your blog!’ for quick link-building.
  • Sam Brownback officially makes me ask: WHAT IS WITH SPLASH PAGES THIS SEASON. Especially for a guy without a metric ton of name recognition. Interestingly, once you make it in, he’s got one of the cleaner designs and a text-driven home page — which most of the others just don’t.

Looking at bad political sites makes my head ache. I may go research nice places to go during the Republican Convention in 2008, happening right here in my home town of Minneapolis-St. Paul. I am SO going to be out of town, after having lived through the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago. I’ve had a full lifetime worth of Secret Service Agents preventing me from getting a coffee, thankyouverymuch.

]]> http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/07/03/political-search/feed/ 0 Out at SMX http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/06/04/out-at-smx/ http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/06/04/out-at-smx/#comments Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:09:41 +0000 Julie http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/06/04/out-at-smx-2/ I’m at SMX in Seattle this week, experiencing the magic of the Seattle weather and the oddities of my laptop’s battery. A few things I will expound on during my free time later:

why this conference’s food is currently winning the ‘conference prize’ for the recent past, excepting that of the MIMA Summit Supplemental index Duplicate content Kneeling down [...]]]> I’m at SMX in Seattle this week, experiencing the magic of the Seattle weather and the oddities of my laptop’s battery. A few things I will expound on during my free time later:

  • why this conference’s food is currently winning the ‘conference prize’ for the recent past, excepting that of the MIMA Summit
  • Supplemental index
  • Duplicate content
  • Kneeling down to speak to Vanessa Fox
  • The complete weirdness of spending my weekend in a rustic northwoods cabin in Minnesota, followed by a stay in a faux-rustic Seattle hotel with ‘modern cabin’ themed furniture.

I am told that, at home, my little kitten is sad and lonely and is sleeping on my robe, as I now haven’t spent a night at home since Thursday.

]]> http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/06/04/out-at-smx/feed/ 0 Webmaster Tools: Too Much Information? http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/04/03/webmaster-tools-too-much-information/ http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/04/03/webmaster-tools-too-much-information/#comments Wed, 04 Apr 2007 03:49:38 +0000 Julie http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/04/webmaster-tools-too-much-information/ I am endlessly fascinated by some of the reports in Google’s Webmaster Tools, but wonder if they don’t provide too much information for the average user.

For instance, apparently this site ranks for the search phrase ‘adjectives for hate’ right now. Checking in Keyword Discovery, I find they have a record for the query “adjective for [...]]]> I am endlessly fascinated by some of the reports in Google’s Webmaster Tools, but wonder if they don’t provide too much information for the average user.

For instance, apparently this site ranks for the search phrase ‘adjectives for hate’ right now. Checking in Keyword Discovery, I find they have a record for the query “adjective for the word hate.” Uh, woo?

Of course, I play with my blogs for fun. When I think of clients I know, or clients I have had who know enough to think, “I will verify my site! This is going to be great!”… my head hurts. These aren’t people who have stablished real KPIs or who will evaluate if the terms they show for, either in Webmaster Tools or their own analytics package, are worth showing for. They won’t evaluate conversion rates. No, they’re just going to look and go hysterical. Crawl error? Never mind that the crawl error takes place on their print-friendly pages, whcih they really should imp a robots.txt on anyway, it’s hysterics time!

Even if they rank for something fun, like ‘flaming pop tarts,’ as one client of mine once did. (Note: In that instance, since the client didn’t like being found for that phrase, I suggested we remove it. We did. Problem solved.)

I only value hysterics from clients when they pay me by the hour.

]]> http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/04/03/webmaster-tools-too-much-information/feed/ 1 Death to ‘Search Results’ in Search Results http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/03/12/death-to-search-results-in-search-results/ http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/03/12/death-to-search-results-in-search-results/#comments Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:52:08 +0000 Julie http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/03/death-to-search-results-in-search-results/ Oh, at last:

Google has added a line to Webmaster Guidelines to ask that Webmasters use a robots.txt file to disallow the indexation of search results pages:

Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.

I really hope they programmatically find a [...]]]> Oh, at last:

Google has added a line to Webmaster Guidelines to ask that Webmasters use a robots.txt file to disallow the indexation of search results pages:

Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.

I really hope they programmatically find a way to beat these down.

Doing a search where the top results include anything from about.com is like getting up in the morning to discover that one of my cats horked in the laundry.

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