Looks like the PageRank update is going to be great news for webmasters, since there is an overall increase in PageRank across sites, unlike the previous 3 PageRank updates that have done the opposite. This update has been carried out over several days, so you may want to check out inner pages of your site if you went PageRank hunting on the day of the update.

This update saw more increases than decreases, partly because the main penalty round occurred a week before the update began (probably the first signal that an update was iminent). The penalties involved mainly new sites selling paid links, so it does seem that Google is tightening its stance against paid links. This is not expected since after all, Google gave their official message that nofollow paid links are not allowed and subjected to penalties. The paid link business have gone a lot more quiet (but it doesn’t mean that webmasters are not giving up on paid links though).

Google may have also changed the weightage of links, now giving internal links slightly more power …

Looks like Microsoft decided to withdraw it’s second bid (given the results of the first proposal, not many paid much attention to the second proposal) to acquire Yahoo. It’s not that surprising that the bid failed since after all, the second bid was only slightly higher than the first bid (but much less than what Yahoo wanted). This so-called ”hostile takeover” appeared to end with nothing more than a whimper. Well, at least now we know Yahoo is certainly not going to big Microsoft (or perhaps, Macrosoft?).

Sadly, Yahoo will eventually be taken over by someone, or some company. Microsoft will probably come back a third time, or probably much more, hoping Yahoo will eventually say “yes”. Despite Google “helping” Yahoo against Microsoft’s tyrany, it’ll take only time before Microsoft would probably finally get its hands on Yahoo, given Yahoo’s current deteriorating situation (stock market, etc. etc.). Certainly not-so-good news for the Yahoo community.

So what do Microsoft want to do with Yahoo?

There’s one thing for certain - Microsoft will NOT do anything related to search. The primary reason why Microsoft wanted Yahoo …

Looks like Google decided to update the visible PageRank on the Google toolbar between the 30th of April and the 1st of May. Well, at least it came after much speculation (on Digitalpoint anyway) of PageRank updates following a string of PageRank penalties across sites that were caught selling paid links.

Overall, most sites received an increase in PageRank, while others had the same PageRank, which is good news for most sites on the whole. Of course, it is bad news for guilty site owners who have sold paid links, since Google is being extremely vigilant (and smarter) on what links are considered paid. Penalties are also carried out during the update, but most of it a few days before the PageRank update. This is done so presumably so that you can address the issue, and request for reconsideration, and have the right PageRank in time for the incoming update.

You hate spam. Everyone hates spam. Spammers would hope that you mistakenly approve their spam, but that never really happens, if at all. As spam volumes continue to rise, people can easily brush it off as a regular thing. Nonetheless, let’s turn that nasty piece of garbage to a piece of “bragging right”. The idea is this: The more popular your site is, the more spam you’ll get.

Why this theory is true

Generally, comment spammers tend to target certain sites more than others. So, well-linked sites (and sites easily found by others through god-knows-what) tend to receive more attention by spammers. As far as anyone can tell, it does seem that spam bots are really efficient - being able to find well-concealed sites, and hitting them where you least expect them.

The good news - because spam is so common, you need not worry about getting rid of them, because that’s taken care of by Akismet. (So dear spammers, your advertisements will never see the light, ever.) What’s next? Show off your Akismet counter. Once thought of as a spam deterrent that has …

Mozilla recently released an update for Firefox to fix a potential security threat. This update is available through auto-update.

The update only fixes one flaw in Firefox related to the Javascript “garbage collector” which may cause crashes in Firefox. While this problem has not been exploited for any purposes, Firefox isn’t going to wait till it is. This is not a feature release, so no new features are added.

An interesting note is that this update fixes only one issue, unlike other updates that normally patches several issues at once. In addition, the security flaw was fixed as soon as it was announced (i.e. on the same day). A pretty impressing feat, considering most other browser makers (notably Microsoft) prefer the all-in-one approach, compared to the bit-by-bit approach used by Mozilla.

Update: According to the auction site, it looks like John Cow’s site is sold. 

John Cow, a parody of the famous John Chow blog, is selling his blog (via SitePoint) at an (large) price of $25000, with an immediate purchase price of $50000. John Cow, while a parody, is still pretty popular, so much so that it has become a rival to John Chow. Both are Search Engine Optimisation experts, but gives a different viewpoint on the subject.

What if… you had the money?

Great, if you have about $50000 to spare, you can pop it in and an extremely popular blog is your’s. Of course, that is IF you even had $50000 to spare in the first place. John Cow’s blog has an earning potential of thousands a month (roughly the same amount a normal job can give), which can easily make up your “investment” after a few years. With such a popular blog, you can easily promote other stuff as well with ease.

Sales of such popular sites are extremely …

For long, Entrecard’s been plague by a whole lot of problems relating to over-inflated ad prices. It’s good to know they responded, but revising the ad system to go by the number of ads in the queue? That has to be one of the most absurd, or greatest moves made by Entrecard.

What’s good about the ad pricing changes

As the cost of an ad is now 2^(how many ads you have), ads on Entrecard can have the following ad prices: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024. The good news - you can buy an ad out of a popular spot, provided if you are quick enough.

In addition, this change now rightly tells whose ad is more valuable, since popular sites tend to have ads that are highly-priced.

What’s horridly wrong

Entrecard’s move is going to mess with the entire Entrecredits economy. First off, people don’t feel the need to keep dropping cards, since they could easily snag off hundreds of ads in a day’s work. So, lesser drops means less activity on Entrecard. Sure, …

Google has recently updated the backlink count over the past week, so you may see new backlinks registered in the Webmasters Tools page. While a Google update usually comes weeks after this happens, don’t be too happy yet, since Google is growing more and more unpredictable.

Google has also updated Google Analytics. You can now view the traffic charts by week or month rather than by day. This is useful if you want to compare traffic over a long period of time (or calculate how much traffic you have received in a particular month).

Another feature of note is benchmarking. If you are tired of Alexa’s inaccuracies when you compare rival sites, you could give a shot at Google Analytics. Benchmarking pits you against sites that have similar “size” (determined by traffic, with 3 classifications: small, medium, large) to your site. Generally, this statistics help determine if your site’s traffic is above average, or below average. It can also serve as a… benchmark, when setting new goals. Nonetheless, there are some glitches associated with this feature …