As i mentioned in my previous post , that I have been reading extensively about search engine marketing , and also watching various videos – one of the best videos i saw was a seminar by Avinash Kaushik – the from Google Analytics team . The full session was full of various insights on quite a few topics such data analysis , creating a data driven culture in a organization, checking ones web site’s bounce rate, and internal site search analysis and visitor intent . I spent the whole of sunday afternoon watching the videos , which were as i said before fascinating and insightful.
I have decided to using Web Analytics to the most , as possible .
And to start with that , I have have been toying with the idea of using either Google Site Search , which has the free and paid versions or creating our own custom internal search.

The pro’s of using Google’s Site Search is that
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After the recent catastrophe, things are settling down and i have decided to start reading more seo blogs. Not just seo blogs, i have also been using as much free time i am getting to read seo books, watch seo videos and catch up on the numerous webmaster and seo blogs , by subscribing to their feeds. Every day you learn something new – and it is necessary to keep one’s self updated with the industry. I am currently subscribed to Matt Cutts, Jill Whalen, Danny Sullivan , SeoMoz, Bill Slawski , Aaron Wall to name a few. I was truly not this organized in my reading before , even though i definitely checked those before too.
When i started thinking that i will do this, i wondered if I could do it with Outlook 2007 as thats something i use regularly to check for emails , so i might be able to check on these from time to time as well and not really have to open “any” site whatsoever for reading up.
MS @#!%^^# is hardly ever so rosy , that it will allow you to do what you want when you want it … ( and I am usually not a MS hater) . The first time added the feeds for seobook and mattcutts google only feed, i got
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CaRP is a free program which helps you get automated content for your website from RSS feeds on external websites. I have been using it for the past 2 years now – mostly to get blogs feeds or even directory rss on my website’s homepages.

RSS feeds are data feeds that usually contain headlines and excerpts from news stories, blog posts, etc., and a link to the full content.

It is , as the owner Antonne Roundy says, a script which converts RSS headlines and brief description / content into nice looking HTML to fit on your website, which could be made of HTML , PHP etc. I have also used it on the web design website, recently , but there i came across an odd situation.
Initially when i had used CaRP – the free version, which i downloaded when i had much less php knowledge, I could install it myself and configure it as well, without any hitch. Before CaRP , I had also used Magpie RSS feed parser for converting blog feeds at DiscussTV. Carp has provided somewhat much more functionality, includes good documentation along with a Video for help . Yet , even then if you can’t get it to work for your site, let me know – I can help out for a fee. Anyway, after enjoying a free software, I recently went back to the website , after receiving several of it’s subscribed email newsletter. The site , which nicely showcases all the various other scripts and services made me eager to try out their paid Jawfish service – which provides RSS to Javascript conversion.

Why I wanted that ? because even though I want to display external blog feed, i did not want to use any framed page – as i felt , it could be unhelpful for my seo attempts. So the only option was to get the feed via javascript . CaRP website said, the only way i could get this was by subscribing to Jawfish – and here is something I DONT recommend from GeckoTribe.
Why : Because they will provide you with a snippet of code , including their javascript source , and more often than not , there is a lack connection between your server and geckotribe’s server . Quoting the owner , Antonne :

I can only guess that the problem you’re seeing with Jawfish is caused by some recurring temporary internet problem somewhere between your server and mine.

The problem with Jawfish i faced : I had paid them for 1 year of the service and it specifically mentioned that there won’t be any refund .
The solution : As i did not receive any sayable service – I emailed the owner ( as their support ticket section was not manned , and only after waiting for 10 days i understood ), and I received his reply . He promised to refund the money ,

Current Status : I have not yet received the refund yet , but I am hopeful i will.

Current Status with my requirement : I am using free and friendly Carp which i have got working with iframe with the customizations i wanted . Google does successfully crawl iframes / frames , as I found by doing a site:www.websys.co.in.

The headline says it all

Sun Microsystems Announces Agreement to Acquire MySQL. Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, developer of one of the world’s fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration.

After reading about the news actually first on SitePoint’s Tech Times, i visited MySQL.com, which was happily displaying its latest press release . So the news is surely confirmed , what remains to be seen , what are SUN’s plans to do with their new acquisition . MySQL being one of the key components of the LAMP platform , will surely continue remaining as open source but it would be surely interesting to track how SUN help towards the betterment of the 10 million strong community of users.

Yesterday was suddenly an important day for my DMOZ editor life. I received feedback from a Meta editor, who started by saying “This is a unsolicited feedback…” . The exact contents of the full email is not something i should divulge here , but nevertheless i was critically questioned for my wrong grammar , however minimal it might have been.
Interestingly, I was also “promoted” , so to say and given wider privileges on the ODP and allowed to manage a full locality. I had actually applied for this category after being an editor for its sub-cat for some weeks. Considering the localities i edit in have considerably less webmaster submissions, and also relatively low number of sites to mine, this particular category is nothing large within the ODP … but truly what my meta scolded me for makes more meaning. An editor within such lesser number of sites should be even more meticulous in his editing style.
My additional category requests (mentioned above) were sitting for sometime, so I had opted to do some greenbusting (apply to help out in larger branches of the ODP without being a named editor ), and surprisingly I got that approved yesterday too.
For a visitor to this blog or a webmaster thinking about DMOZ : may take note about the ODP and its quality. People often ask why DMOZ says it has low resources , why the editors are not bothered with site submissions and things such as receiving reply for rejection and such. Surely it is evident that because the resources are used for maintaining the high quality of editing , wherever possible.

osCommerce is a versatile shopping cart script used by hundreds of websites. As a shopping cart script with numerous pre-built functions, plugins ( or user generated contributions) it is undoubtedly comprehensive. However , just to exemplify, some of the key features include :

• web based install
• supports unlimited products and categories
• includes options for physical goods and e-products
• includes taxation as an option
• accounting and invoicing
• customers and transaction reports
• newsletter subscription module
• product reviews
• banner management and statistics
• payment processing using several credit card and web payment options

and many many more .
In my opinion, it has too many options to be able to be listed , even though some of those functions or options might not be necessary for a website owner who requires a shopping cart system for his website. Now, not all of these are advantageous to a basic website operator / owner , and he may even be bit overwhelmed seeing so many options , and requiring to ensure that the ones which are not required are turned off / disabled. As the service provider / web developer / programmer , we often have to ensure that most of these options are turned off or in cases which can not be turned off from the Admin panel, are removed from the php files .
One of our recent osCommerce projects involved several customizations on the base script – one part of which was ensuring around 40-45% of the default osCommerce features be removed from being available in the admin panel , based on instructions given by our client. One of the major customizations we also did was , by default osCommerce allows one cart / shop inside it , but in this case the requirement was to setup 2 separate carts and ensuring that they be administered from one single admin panel. Now this is not a default feature , nor is any proper contribution could be found for this. So it had to be programmed totally from new. The end result was undoubtedly quite nice , as we gained quite a bit of experience in doing this. The end users / visitors to the site would login to the website and find a wine shop as well as a news and magazines shop and wherever they went or registered, they had to login only once and also on check out or buying, the admin would be able to track the customers or the orders from inside the same panel only.
below are screenshots .
Cart 1 and Cart 2.

Google has updated the toolbar / pagerank again on 11th January 2008 . Interestingly i came to know in about it in the least expected place . Normally i get to know it either from the Digitalpoint forums or at Sitepoint , or even by looking at the toolbar while surfing my own websites – but this time i was notified of the fact by some co-editors at the ODP IRC . Nevertheless, hearing about it i had to go to DP once to confirm about the rest of the various webmasters, and also checked my sites.
Happy to say I have had some increase – on this blog : PR3 , at my web design website : PR4 , and also on our web hosting site – back to PR5. Backlinks have also improved , but mostly for Websys. This is quite a quicker update considering the last time during October was almost after a 7 months or 9 months gap. Hope this update also brings some better search engine positioning at the same time …. considering the backlinks have increased substantially.

Yes , my life has changed quite a bit ever since i became a editor at the ODP . previously i have made a post on this blog , where i did already mention that I have this new identity , but i was rather little unsure if I should be mentioning that I am an editor , whether that would be breaking any protocol , whether I would be marked by others or will become a target for unfair advances . Well, no longer I have those confusions .
The protocol I was afraid of does not prohibit me from disclosing that I am editor, rather it is upto me whether I feel safe in disclosing that I am an editor at DMOZ, because there exists uncountable hostile elements , who blame DMOZ because they have nothing better to do .
Yes, there is always the undesirable feeling that I may be target of various kinds of underhanded and illegal advances – bribery or otherwise – but after being an editor over 2 months, i have come across incidents where largely guarded DMOZ editor’s identities have been unearthed and contacts made via – Email, roadside, over phone and what not . So it does not make any difference if your identity is guarded or not . Rather , it is of importance that one remains as indifferent as before and sensible and objective in their work .
What we surely are not allowed to disclose is the internal discussions, and reasons for discussions in open forums , there definitely remains a protocol for external communication.
While being an editor at the ODP , i have come across many discussions where there is an open conflict between various webmasters and individuals who volunteer at the ODP … and it has been stated that DMOZ does not like webmasters .
I am a webmaster myself , and I have come to understand what the above statement means …. which simply means DMOZ likes the regular layman web visitors more .
Google , MSN , Yahoo also seriously does not like webmasters ( to the same effect ) , and they try to make their search capabilities and index more cleaner for the regular web searcher and not the educated webmaster .

Disclaimer : All the statements above are comments made by me as an individual , and not endorsed by the DMOZ or AOL.

PHP is a impressive coding language, and is widely used in major part of our projects. Using the php language with mysql databases hugely successful websites around the world have been created. Every day newer developments are made to make PHP a more robust and secure solution for coders and website owners.
However , recently we have embarked upon converting / adding certain parts of older projects / websites into using AJAX – sometimes on request by the website owner , and sometimes we have offered to convert where we felt using AJAX would give better usability to the project.
One such project involves a Voting / Rating application which was made almost an year ago . The site featured a rating where the current AJAX enabled system would make the voting much more user friendly, instead of the form submit . This would allow the end user to participate in the voting / rating many more times than before – which is the theme of the website , thus keeping him more interested and loyal .
Another project involves enhancing a backend admin panel, which involves various options such as creation of categories, sub categories, and users . The admin backend page usually loads with little bit of time , and for an admin who needs to create around 65 categories , making 65 page loads / refresh was little painful. But the way it is being developed now , creating a new category would be somewhat like , as you find inside the Wordpress admin area . This would provide better usability – this time to an admin , not just an end user .

2 days back , i received a call from a girl , who introduced herself as from Yahoo India. Almost before i slapped down the phone, as I was almost fed up with tele-callers from various credit card companies and financial institutions, i heard the name Yahoo luckily . I have never worked in the tele-calling department / industry, but most of the tele callers i have faced never do any level of necessary homework . I understand that most times that is not a possibility, for all i know, these people may get paid by the number of persons called up and not by the numbers of accounts bagged . But in my opinion it would go a long way making the sale …. at least to know the business of the person they call up.
In this case, the girl did not even know that I am into web development , even though she knew the name of my company’s website , which is “websys.co.in” . Nevertheless , she was quite bent on explaining me all about PPC , Yahoo and similar topics, which i did not have any interest of hearing. I was already ready to take the account, as I was also reading about the same topic on Sitepoint’s Search Engine Marketing Kit . Anyway , finally she gave the phone to her senior .
Her senior was little more to the point , and was able to help me sign up quite quickly and activate my account , setup a first campaign , add keyword to it etc. I now have 2 ads running . but here comes the not-so-happy part .
Yahoo Search Marketing India , probably because it is newer than its parent , left much to be desired. It does not even have half the options I was reading about , which is obvious from just by looking at the FAQ , which I should have earlier – feature wise, the “Senior” person who was helping me was not even fully knowledgeable about his own product . I had asked him ” Ok, thanks so I now have my Ad running on your network but what is my reach … is it on Yahoo or Yahoo India ” and the guy went like ” Don’t worry , your ad is now running on Yahoo.com, MSN.com , and various of our other partners because you used “Content Match , Advance Match” etc . But i was little uncertain , so I asked him to run a search for web hosting , on both Search.Yahoo.co.in and Search.Yahoo.com, which demonstrated totally different ads on the sponsored listings box. So the guy then requested to call me back with more info , which he did within 15 minutes and confirmed my fear . Well , I wont say fear as I didn’t really expect to pay a 0.50 p CPC and get my ad on top at Yahoo.com or MSN.com lol . But , just so you know , Yahoo Search Marketing does have partners like MSN , but it is Msn.co.in and similar .
When the person was also demonstrating me the Keyword Selector Tool i had queried whether i can save my current searches – online or download for analysis / future – i also had a extremely difficult time explaining what i was trying to do , and “WHY – i would need to do that ”
Nevertheless, i am currently receiving daily reports of my first paid campaign , at a very low cost and I was able to learn / gather / answer some of my own queries, so overall i would say i am somewhat satisfied . What remains to be seen is what this experimental project goes , and then i will venture to bigger pond of international Search Engine Marketing .