Check for 404s and 500s, before they ruin your SEO

Posted by multippt

Most new browsers have a habit - they will not announce error pages. That’s all as a side-effect of people wanting to have a custom “file not found” error message. While this is not a big problem, it’s always a good idea to check for such “page” errors that may affect your search engine optimization.

How search engines treat 404s

Search engines like Google have to deal with missing pages, and they identify such pages via that famous 404 error code (i.e. file not found). So, how does Google treat missing pages? It will remove missing pages from its index. Not a good thing if your “error page” turns out to be a working page that was wrongly producing the error.

This usually affects PHP scripts, and poorly made .htaccess files. So, if you are a person who uses plain HTML and don’t use anything server-related (which almost 80% of everyone is using), then you need not ever worry about this problem. Though, I’m not implying that everyone should downgrade from PHP to HTML, it’s just that PHP has that lovely ability to spoof error codes, hence the error messages.

Similarly, web-pages may spurt out a similar error - 403. This error means that the page is forbidden from being viewed, pretty common for files given the wrong permissions. Like 404, Google will not index such pages. Of course, think using error codes for stopping search engines (you got the robots.txt file for that) - they are meant to be used for… errors.

How search engines treat 50xs

Google is pretty lenient when it comes to error 50x. Error 50x messages indicate that there is something wrong with your hosting. If something goes wrong on the server-side, you get 50x. Google will still check on your site, but it will slow down on indexing your site (after all, a site with a malfunctioning server ain’t going to update much right?).

Why aren’t browsers showing the errors?

It’s a sad thing, but yes, web browsers will not indicate error codes to you (they are not meant to be “seen” anyway). So, if you have a main page that gives error 501, you will not know that it got that problem. In a bid to satisfy everyone’s desire for a customized error page, all browsers will display the page as “normal” regardless of the error given out (except for 30x errors which means redirection).

Detecting errors

Google webmaster has a nice way of telling you it can’t crawl/index something. Though, it has a crude way of telling you that. Fortunately, it’s just sufficient enough if you want to do a little check up on the page if it is really a missing page. Unfortunately, if it is a genuine missing page, you’ll have to go link-hunting for that broken link (not the scope of this article, but you can always use a sitemap generator to do that).

Why do errors ruin SEO

Errors are errors. People shouldn’t be seeing them at all. Similarly, you will not want search engines to face errors like that as well. An error is treated differently by all search engines, but the ultimate result is that the page producing an error will be given a “penalty”, well sort of. Most problematic pages are rarely indexed, let alone appearing in search results. Remember that nice Google bomb that featured a “page not found” page appearing for “Weapons of mass destruction”? Google has fixed that problem by simply removing error pages from the index.

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Ideally, your site should not have a single error response (unless the visitor deliberately stumbles into the unknown). If it does, fix it, otherwise you may have a few missing pages that will not appear in search engines.

Technorati is flawed

Posted by multippt

Technorati has one of the most accurate blog rankings on the Internet. The idea that links between blogs are a sign of popularity is great, but there is a problem of so called “unintended” links appearing on Technorati. Unintended links are links not expected to be appearing as reactions on Technorati.

What links do Technorati count

Technorati count links appearing in posts. After all, that’s probably the most relevant part of the site for Technorati to find links to other blogs (exclusive of those in comments). However, it also counts links that appear near the post. Having widgets with some nice link near a post will leak out some technorati juice. Hence comes the “nofollow” sub-standard that is now popularized by Google.

Nofollow you say?

Like Google, Technorati doesn’t credit nofollow links. However, it credits “external nofollow” links. Weird? It’s an unfortunate side-effect that stems from some crawlers being unable to identify that the nofollowed link is both “external” (i.e. linking to somewhere else not on the site) and a “nofollow” link. External nofollow is used on comments, but because Technorati doesn’t count comments, this problem doesn’t matter. However, if you do use external nofollow on links in and near the post, Technorati mistakenly counts them.

Unintended/invalid links being counted

So, Techorati may count invalid links or links you never expected Technorati to count. You may be thinking it’s great to have that added Technorati responses, but Technorati has a habit of manually banning sites from the top 100. Take photomatt for example - creator of Wordpress. Because his link appears in the default blogroll of Wordpress, he gets thousands of links from numerous blogs - as soon as they are set up. In addition, site-wide links are also known to added to Technorati ranks (counted as only 1 vote of course). Plugins are another source of such links. Nofollowing the links may help, well, if Technorati actually recognises it.

Technorati also had a habit of counting links to the non-blog part of the site as a response. Hence, if your blog resides in the root directory of your site, and someone else links to you to another place (e.g. forum), you may get a Technorati response for your blog. This problem may be due to the way how Technorati handles “pretty” permalinks, and the existance of not-so-standard permalinks.

What Technorati should do

There are other indicators to a site’s popularity - most directly is traffic. What Technorati has done is to count links, which is pretty good considering Yahoo and Google are doing the same. However, if Technorati were to factor in the “traffic” factor (currently done so by BlogFlux), it’s rankings will probably be much accurate. Alternatively, discrediting the invalid links might be another option, which however involves plenty of moderating to do.

Having fun with MSN: Talk to a person using multiple windows at once

Posted by multippt

Well, Microsoft certainly left some micro loop-holes in its relatively popular Windows Live Messenger. Exclusive to MSN 7 and above, this “glitch” allows you to chat to one user using multiple windows. Simply for fun, and has little practical use.

MSN-Multiple conversations for one (sorry, no thumbnail… yet)

Note: The image isn’t photoshopped. I’m a web developer. What else can I use photoshop for? ;)

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Digg has a glitch

Posted by multippt

Digg apparently had a small problem that resulted in Diggs being redirected. This may cause posts showing the “Digg This” button in other sites to show the wrong Digg count, and redirects Diggers to a very old Digg article (it is a Chinese article, now removed pending solving this problem). This problem is probably a glitch, and not a hack.

The problem only affects those using the bigger “Digg This” buttons. It is probably patched up by now.

Via ReadWriteWeb

Possible flaw in Microsoft office 2007?

Posted by multippt

As with any big product there are bound to be glitches within it. Microsoft is no exception. This time, it came in the form of headers and footers. While headers and footers are touted as one of the nicest ways of labelling your pages, especially when you can customize it with relative ease in office 2007, users have always been plagued by the problem of printing individual pages when specifying a rather unique header/footer - one that is automatically generated, such as page numbers. Lets say you want to devide your document into 2 parts, both parts have pages 1, 2, and so on. If you want to print page 1 of the second section [which happens to be the 8th page in your document], what would you have to specify? Page 8, or 1? Actually, none. You cannot simply print that particular page… instead, you could just print the entire document if you want that page.

Another iPhone feature — it crashes!

Posted by signup

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January, I wrote,

The other problem is that computers are inherently buggy. Macs crash, and it’s frustrating when they do. It’s even more frustrating, however, when your music player crashes, and if your phone or your TV crashes, you’ll probably want to tear your hair out. The iPhone is so complex — it’s got an accelerometer in it to detect when you flip it sideways, it’s got a proximity sensor to tell when it’s near your face, it’s got to understand myriad finger gestures — that crashing, or at least slowing down, the way an overworked computer sometimes does, might be a real possibility.

A bunch of MacHeads jumped on me for that, claiming that Macs never crash and that Apple’s phone would be similarly solid. This was absurd; the Mac OS is very forgiving, and you’ve got to do a lot of crazy things to it to bring it down, but it certainly can crash. (For examples, see here and here.) And iPods — if you’ve never crashed your iPod, you’ve never used your iPod; who of us isn’t familiar with the Menu + Select button method of reseting an unresponsive Pod?

Well, the iPhone crashes too. My first brush with iPhone death occurred Friday night, shortly after activation. I called the phone from another number to see if its activation had taken — and when the iPhone began to ring, I hung up on the calling phone. But the iPhone didn’t stop ringing. For 10, 15, 20 seconds it continued, ignoring my tapping on the on-screen and physical buttons. Remembering the way to force a PC to turn off, I held down the iPhone’s Sleep button — and after about about 10 seconds, it gave me the shut-down screen.

On Saturday afternoon, I managed an even wilder crash while I was trying to get the phone to connect with a Wi-Fi router that has always been a bit picky. After connecting and disconnecting from the network a few times, I loaded up a Wikipedia page. Halfway through the loading, the phone froze. And now even holding down the Sleep button did nothing.

The third screen of Apple’s iPhone Troubleshooting Assistant came to my rescue. It turns out that you restart a frozen iPhone in much the same way you revive a chilled iPod — “press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time until you see the Apple logo.”

The MacHeads are going to tell me that all smart phones crash. Well, sure they do. My Windows phone goes down about once a month, and sometimes the only way to get it back up is to pop out the battery for a bit. Not a pretty thing. And Apple, of course, has never promised a crash-free phone — that it set up a page to help people combat “frozen iPhone and common issues” suggests as much. Indeed, the iPhone even reports its crashes to Apple — when you sync back up after a crash (even if just a single app, and not the whole phone, has gone down), iTunes asks if you’re OK with sending a log to Apple. (Daring Fireball has posted a crash log; scroll to the bottom here.)

Are two crashes in a weekend a bad sign? I should say that neither freeze bothered me too much; each occurred during non-critical tasks — I wasn’t talking on the phone or listening to music — so I found them more curious than frustrating. Plus the iPhone starts up again in about 20 seconds, much quicker than a Mac or PC. Still, I can’t fathom why a missed call caused my phone to fall apart. Is occasional crashing just the cost of being amazing? I hope not. But in case, just remember: Sleep + Home.

Source

33 Percent of Xbox 360s Failing?

Posted by signup

According to anecdotal evidence provided by retailers. But is anecdotal evidence enough? Daily Tech conducted a non-scientific “poll” by calling several North American retail outlets and inquiring about Xbox 360 failure rates. The response? A resounding “least reliable gaming console in recent history.” Ouch, and scary-bold words, but what do they mean?

Maybe nothing, but probably something. Did you read about the guy who returned his Xbox 360 twelve times? How about an alleged Australian failure rate “as high as 30%”? Maybe you caught this gem about Microsoft deleting over 900 replies from the Forza 2 forums claiming the game was crashing Xbox 360s?

I’ve mentioned it before, but I had a 360 meltdown a while back myself. It happened to correspond with a rampant Internet rumor that the game Dead Rising was killing systems (one of my favorite games on the platform). I sent my system into Microsoft, got it (or a refurbished unit) back, no harm no foul, and it’s been chomping data and spitting heat in an enclosed cabinet for the last six months problem-free. My personal experience = excellent.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say again that I’d really like to see Microsoft release internal tracking numbers. Give us date ranges with reasons for failure, or just debate Daily Tech’s numbers, though in the end, I certainly can’t argue with Microsoft VP Peter Moore when he tells 1UP “What [the] consumer should worry about is the way that we’ve treated him…Y’know, things break, and if we’ve treated him well and fixed his problem, that’s something that we’re focused on right now.”

Source