Link Domain Tools on Bing

Adventures with Bing's link domain tools

Courtesy of an article from SEOmoz I have been introduced to three new tools on Bing using the linkdomain command.

• linkfromdomain:matchmakermarketing.co.uk (returns pages linked from our website);
• linkfromdomain:matchmakermarketing.co.uk intitle:seo (filters to SEO services offered by us);
• linkfromdomain:matchmakermarketing.co.uk search engines (searches for search engines anywhere on the linked-to page).

The basic linkfromdomain command returns pages linked from our website with the most relevant results displayed first. The second one returns pages linking to our site where SEO is mentioned. Finally, the third option returns results from other pages where 'search engines' is mentioned anywhere within the website itself.

I would recommend using this command on larger websites with extensive content or weblogs to get the best out of this tool.

S.V., 08 December 2009.

An on-line business in the literal sense

Matchmaker Marketing's connection with the internet of the 1860s.

150 years ago, the equivalent of today's SEO consultants would have been gainfully employed by the railways, which had their equivalent of the dot.com boom in 1846.  They would have been the builders and the dreamers of many a rail scheme successful or unsuccessful. For the fate of the Atmospheric Railway in Dawlish, one could also find parallels with the demise of Pets.com, whereas the nascent Great Western would have been the equivalent of Amazon.com till its nationalisation in 1948.

Readers of this article would be wondering where Matchmaker Marketing comes into this, and would be thinking this a railway history piece. Well, you are half right. Matchmaker Marketing has two offices which are both near railway lines and buildings past and present.

Our Manchester office on Peter Street is close to the site of the Great Northern Railway Goods Depot and the neighbouring Central Station. The Edwardian goods depot has in recent years seen extensive refurbishment with a variety of shops, the AMC cinema, a gym and Bar 38. Central Station was opened in 1880 by the Cheshire Lines Committee, closing in May 1969. After lying derelict for years, and serving as a car park, it was tastefully renovated and reopened as the G-Mex in April 1986.

Had Matchmaker Marketing existed before 1969, it would have been possible to get from Manchester to Altrincham without having to walk a great distance to A and from B. A train from Manchester Central to Chester Northgate would have got us to Altrincham in about 30 minutes - likewise with the present day service between the two cities (albeit from Manchester Piccadilly). Today, Deansgate and G-Mex Metrolink station is a short walk from Matchmaker Marketing's Manchester HQ, with a service every 7 minutes (which some would say is 'allegedly' given recent engineering works).

Matchmaker Marketing's Altrincham office is on the side of the railway line to Chester. This is served by an hourly service (every 2 hours on Sunday) linking the two Roman cities taking in the sylvan setting of Delamere Forest, views of rural Cheshire, and a chemical works on Lostock Gralam. A regular working along this line is the Tunstead - Oakleigh goods train which passes our office at about 4.30pm. As a result of this, our cups and PCs rattle due to the passing of this heavy train.

The section closest to our office used to have a branch leading to a depot. This was built to house Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway's electric trains which were in service from 1931 to 1971. These followed the current Metrolink service to Manchester Piccadilly via Oxford Road. The depot closed in 1971 as standard 25kV electric trains took over. A Sainsburys store exists on the site of the former depot.

Further reading:
Wikpedia has a detailed history of the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham railway including maps and a list of recommended books.

S.V., 07 December 2009.

Met Police Clamps Down on Hooky Gear Online

“…No income tax, no VAT, no money-back guarantee (2.0)”

According to the Technology section of the BBC website, a major operation by the Metropolitan Police has seen the closure of 1,219 websites selling knock-off goods online.

The phoney websites claimed to sell designer clothing online at lower prices than High Street retailers. However, it turned out that the goods were counterfeit, and that in some instances, customers received nothing or had their bank accounts emptied. This has led to complaints about fake Ugg Boots rising threefold.

To avoid falling foul of the counterfeiters, I recommend shopping on trusted websites like Amazon.co.uk and Play.com. Always check if the payment section of your favoured online retailer is hosted on a secure domain (often seen with a padlock on the browser’s address bar and with ‘https’ rather than ‘http’). If you are unsure of any other online shopping sites, feel free to ask your friends for recommended sites.

Like the real High Streets, tread carefully. Instead of keeping your purse or wallet with you at all times, be careful with your passwords, update your anti-virus software and most importantly, stick to trusted shopping websites.

You know it makes sense!

S.V., 04 December 2009.

Depreciated Web Techniques

Acceptable in the '90's?

Cast your mind back to 1996. In a galaxy far far away when 56k dial-up was blisteringly fast, the internet was dubbed the World Wide Wait. It was de rigeur for flashing graphics and spinning email icons to be seen on websites of that era. Menus that could be done with CSS today used Java and JavaScript, text was formatted using <FONT> tags, and there was this great revelation in web coding known as the frameset.

How much of the World Wide Wait could have been attributed to (now obsolescent) coding techniques? A lot of code was taken up by font tags, breaking/non-breaking spaces and tables. Heaven knows why it used to take minutes to load the more modest of pages; some budding coder probably used animated GIFs and Java menus!


1. Java menus
Java (not to be confused with JavaScript) was a proprietary technology developed by Sun Microsystems in 1995 which became an open source technology 11 years later. A bastard offspring of this is the Java Applet menu.

The Java Applet menu was quite a common factor of websites designed using Microsoft Frontpage. Though they worked well on Internet Explorer as a form of navigation, this was less so on anything other. With search engines, Java Applet menus were less navigable than standard HTML hyperlinks. It also posed problems for persons who disallowed Java from their web browsers as the site would be unnavigable.

When to use Java: embedded computer games and 360° views would constitute Java's rightful purpose. This usage is being depreciated by Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight technologies.

When not to use Java: as part of a navigation menu. Always use standard HTML to create your links.


2. Non-breaking spaces/breaking spaces and Break
Before CSS was used for formatting and presentational mark-up, the crudest way to add spaces was by adding a non-breaking space (seen as nbsp prefaced by '&' and suffixed by a ';'). The source code would look messy with several of these used to position the text.

Though effective yet obsolete, the <br> is commonly used by web designers to place text on a new line.

When to use Non-breaking spaces/breaking spaces and Break: older websites built up to the HTML 4.01 Transitional Document Type Definition or earlier; CSS support may be patchy.

When not to use Non-breaking spaces/breaking spaces and Break: any site from HTML 4.01 and later. Use CSS coding techniques to define margins and padding.


3. Framesets
Launched in 1996 by Netscape, the frameset was created to allow for a consistent layout throughout each website, by splitting the browser window into a given number of sections.

The downside with frameset created websites are: the use of typically three or more pages to create the framework of the site; being lost on inner pages without navigation; and, reduced opportunities for search engine directories to index your site thoroughly.

When to use framesets: user interface design; control panels for internal use.

When not to use framesets: any newly built website; frameset effects can also be mimicked using CSS positioning techniques and scrolling <div> tags. Framesets (apart from iframes) will cease to be supported by the HTML 5 document type definition.


4. <FONT> tags
Till recent years, <FONT> tags was a common part of presentational mark-up in web design. A typical tag would read in the source code: <FONT FACE="Arial" SIZE="3" COLOR="#FF0000">I'm an obsolescent chunk of HTML coding</FONT>.

This would be used in addition to, or in place of text within <p>, <h1>, or <pre> tags. Result: a long chunk of code for the smallest of words or most modest of sentences.

When to use <FONT> tags: older pre-HTML 4.01 websites.
When not to use <FONT> tags: any modern website post HTML 4.01. CSS coding can do the same in a more truncated form with skillful use of classes, especially so if the CSS code is sourced to your page as an external file.


5. Transparent GIFs for positioning
Along with the non-breaking space and break commands, transparent GIFs were another technique used for positioning website content.

When to use transparent GIFs: older pre-HTML 4.01 websites where CSS positioning isn't supported.
When not to use transparent GIFs: on any website. CSS margin and padding commands are a better less memory hogging replacement.


6. Using tables for formatting
Up until recent times, web designers would create their website using tables to format each page. This process is unwieldy in terms of the amount of code each table creates. A simple table would require this amount of coding seen below:

<table width="346" bgcolor="#666666">
<tr>
<td>
<p>I'm a little table - and quite heavy on the code</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Compare the previous example with this one:

<div id="box">
<p>I'm a little DIV - and quite light on my feet!</p>
</div>

Spot the difference. The latter would use externalised CSS code to govern the positioning.

When to use tables: solely for displaying tabular data. Even in the pre-Internet Explorer age, they were never designed for formatting whole pages (some people never listen) - and never should be used for that purpose.
When not to use tables: for formatting whole pages. This method is eschewed in favour of using CSS to create containers, complete with margin, padding, textual formatting and so forth.


7. 'Best viewed in...' notices
Before 1997, one web browser ruled the roost: Netscape Navigator. Two years later, a Redmond based company hit upon the idea of bundling its web browser [Internet Explorer] with a new operating system [Windows 98]. The result saw Netscape heading toward cyberobscurity and Internet Explorer being seen as the de facto standard among some web developers. For a time, accessibility and cross-browser compatibility took a back seat.

Around that time came "Best viewed in..." notices, which would typically read "Best viewed in Internet Explorer" or "Best viewed in 800x600 pixels". This now archaic approach was based on the assumption the site was only suited to one browser and/or screen resolution. Though cross-browser compatibility has become legion with such notices banished from contemporary websites, there are still websites to this day which stubbornly refuse to work in Firefox, Opera, Chrome or Safari.

When to use the 'Best Viewed in...' notice: never.
When not to use the 'Best Viewed in...' notice: never. All new sites should be coded to allow for cross-browser compatibility and ideally use CSS fluid positioning/elastic design.


S.V., 25 November 2009.

Neine Tracken Sie Google!

Could Google Analytics be outlawed in Germany?

The way we could view our results through Google Analytics could change forever if the German government have their way.

Due to issues regarding personal data usage, Google Analytics could be outlawed on sites hosted with the .de extension to their domain name. According to Zeit Online, companies could be fined over the misuse of personal data gleaned from Google's tracking codes. Companies could be fined up to €50,000.

Some 13% of German web users add Google Analytics tracking code to their website. It is feared that Google could create profiles of millions of Internet surfers with their interests, lifestyles and preferences in political and sexual terms. The ban could also extend to other tracking systems and statistics packages.

We find Google Analytics a useful tool for monitoring web statistics throughout the world, website bounce rates, and how it records which resolution each site was viewed on among other things. Whether Germany's decision on Google Analytics is beneficial to webmasters or its citizens remains to be seen.

S.V., 25 November 2009.

If You Tolerate This, Then Your Downloads Will Be Next

Anger at Lord Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill

Without the World Wide Web, businesses like Matchmaker Marketing would not exist. Our shopping would be much harder, requiring x amount of man hours to trawl each store for the cheapest clothing, stereo systems or the like. Our clients probably wont benefit from being found on Google, Yahoo! or Bing.

Now, it seems that Vox Populi 2.0 are up in arms over the fact it threatens net neutrality. The law will encourage Internet Service Providers to act as Copyright Police - a role which the likes of Virgin have objected to. The ruling could also go against Tim Berners-Lee's original vision for the internet.

The most controversial part of the bill involves the confiscation of internet access to any IP address which has supposedly infringed copyright. With the amount of web traffic, we at Matchmaker Marketing reckon this aspect would be unenforceable with ISPs playing whack-a-mole with copyright infringers.

There are chances that peer to peer networks could be affected. What if the downloader caught for copyright infringement was legally downloading a Linux distro from Bit Torrent?

Unlike Finland where internet access is classed as a human right along with utilities, the bill (which awaits its second reading) has been regarded as 'narrow minded' and a sop to preserving the interests of the music industry (in a Digital Millennium Copyright Act kind of stylie).

Should the bill gain Royal Assent (possibly by around 2010/2011), the Government will also have powers to clamp down on domain names that have been used for spyware, phishing and spamming.

In the main, the bill is less about improving digital access to all, but more about stifling the role internet businesses have to offer. Before long, Britain could see another RIAA/MPAA lawsuit on homeless citizens! However, the clauses on spamming, phishing and spyware are welcome, though a few years too late.

Information on Lord Mandelson's bill is available on www.parliament.uk for your perusal.

S.V., 23 November 2009.

W3C Compliance and YouTube Embedding

A fascinating article indeed --- but seriously, some of us are quite keen to maintain W3C compliance standards in our site coding, then we want to incorporate a nice embedded video from YouTube or Vimeo and everything screws up.

Here is the solution for the YouTube embedding: I will use our holding video as an example.


This is You Tube’s non valid embedding code:-

To make this fully compliant and slightly simplified to boot, we remove the embedding tags and some of the parameter tags then simply ‘install’ the item as if it were a standard flash object (which of course it is)  :-

All you need to do when embedding other videos (from YouTube) is to take note of the video URL i.e.  (http://www.youtube.com/v/pFW2Vkg6OsU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&) above and replace it with the new one shown in the relevant automatically generated YouTube embedding code.


O.W. 19th November 2009