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as can be seen in this thread on webmasterworld:

I have two sites, one is the main site which we'll call www.widgets.com and one is a site with a catchy name that automatically diverts to www.widget.com, we'll call this site www.widgetscatchy.com.

Kind of confused that www.widgetscatchy.com site had a PR5 so checked the incoming links and for some reason when I check the links to this site is shows www.widgets.com's links instead of it's own. Even when listing the site Google states 'Searched for pages linking to AYdabadfa:www.widgets.com/' instead of 'Searched for pages linking to AY4cSZStU-0J:www.widgetscatchy.com/'

The sites are using the same hosting company but they're both two completely seperate accounts and have completely different content.

Why has Google amalgamated these two sites links? I'm just slightly worried that Googlebot will drop the pair of the sites from the index if it decides that the two sites are the same.

The main thread about this on WebMasterWorld is over 500 posts now.. lots of good info there.

I stay active in Adsense related forums. Specifically http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/

The source is a Google employee with corporate permission to occasionally speak outside the plex on issues.

See his comments at Webmaster World.

These terms could be put in place due to Google's recent algorithm changes that are penalizing sites that receive too many inbound links. It sucks that a site can be penalized based on who links to it, but this is now the case with Google.

I'm considering Google as a broken search engine.

SandBox, overating links - link farm impact, hilltop oligarchy, big sites oligarchy, 2x32 double index as not able to go on 64Bit therefore sites dumped in secondary index, 301 redirects not working, 302 page hijacking...

There are a lot of faults they have to be blamed for doing nothing to solve it out.

But the sandbox massacre is a real crime they are responsible for to the Web community:

They dump about a year now 90 % of the new opened domains into a secondary index (mainly its assumed tha G$$gle is be not able to go over the 32 Bit barrier for siteids as all money is pumped in opening new shops and not in the core bussines SE) and thus never pop up in top SERPs. But as well a lot of this sites would in Googles normal algo if not Google would filter them out.

They block 1 year of 10 Internet year - what a crime!

Try this to see unfiltered results:

keyword keyword -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf

Or see all the great new domains filtered out for your keywords here.

Well, Google help talks about stemming. Can't find parentheses, but this page and a previous post talks about it. I found that | doesn't seem to work for OR though.

Quote from eWhisper: The API is currently in beta release, and is being tested by a handful of companies.

Google is choosing who to use as beta testers as much by what they can learn (Google does need to check on security issues, wanted features, etc), as by company spend.

The fact that the API is suppose to be released this year is no secret, and has been talked about for quite some months.

Google realized they needed to reach out to the agencies a while ago, and have taken steps to do so. The professional program was just one aspect in a larger goal.

this was apparently seen a week ago, and nobody took much notice. Guess he/she should have posted a screenshot.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/27458.htm

>> I wonder how much of getting away with this is done by using open proxies laid down on zombies by $WORM_OF_THE_MONTH.

I was just reading a link on webmasters world about this kind of fraud. The best guesses there seemed to agree the fraudulent click campaigns were launched through bot-nets.

It's fradulent. You can (and will) be caught and booted eventually.

I get the numbers from http://www.webmasterworld.com/ Regular reading will show lots of information about all search engines.
If you own or run a web site then you should check it out.

* Changing the temporary cache path?

I'm not sure I see a need, but fair enough.

* No option to clear cache when done?

Download the prefbar extension. One of the best things about the mozilla variants is the extensions.

* Inability to prompt me if I want scripts to run?
* Prompted cookie setting control?

I'd be surprised if there isn't an option to set this. I'm not a serious firefox/mozilla geek so I wouldn't know.

* Inline images are either on or off. Eg, no ability to prevent animations (gif or otherwise) from running.
(This is frustrating. I want to see the original images, but I absolutely hate animations of any sort.)

YOu can configure this

* No Zones feature so that I can configure certain security options for certain sites.

I've never liked the zones model, but each to his own.

* Installed security is to save passwords, allow web sites to install software, save form information, and Java is enabled?

If you don't like it switch it off. Remebber this is a discussion comparing Firefox to IE. Features/problems they both share are irrelevant.

* Many other configuration options are missing that would allow me to be prompted if I want to execute or do something.

Name them.

I notice that tabbed browsing ends up using even more desktop real estate. I've never needed tabbed browsing before, all my windows appear on my Explorer task bar...just like tabs. I suppose tabs would be useful for people whos operating systems don't have a taskbar enabled shell.

I switch that 'feature' of XP off as soon as I install. Tabs offer some organisation. For example you can have a work window open and a play window, both with multiple tabs. Don't like it, don't use it.

I find that I don't think I'll be switching just yet because of the inability to actively control scripting and the in-line image problem. If those issues are taken care of in the future, I don't know why I would stay with IE. Until then.

Each to his or her own. I switched to mozilla a little while back and have found it a very pleasant experience. As I said earlier the extensions are one of the best things about the browser, but even without them the firefox is a better browser.

unless the author of this sensational article reviewed their httpd logs for the user agent 'msnbot' clear back to 2003, they have not ruled out the possibility that microsoft's spider simply crawled the site in question, before msn search was a tech news feature. brett tabke's webmasterworld forums mention sitings of msrbot from microsoft in april 2003, and widespread msnbot activity starting december 2003. its also possible that microsoft seeded their search index by licensing it from a comparable index source, e.g. the alexa crawl.

Its funny how some people seem to think flooding a pipe causes meaningful damage.

It's probably not so funny when a flooded pipe does cause meaningful damage to your business -- as shown by the recent dDOS on Worlpay (and the knock-on effect to businesses using their systems).

I suppose it all depends on your definition of meaningful..

Silicon.com is carrying the news that Mozilla/Firefox usage is up to 5.2% of visitors to ecommerce and corporate sites, up from 3.5% in June. Internet Explorer usage over the same timeframe fell from 95.5% to 93.7%. This makes sense as many web developers have been adopting Firefox very quickly (w3schools Gecko usage is at 17.7%) as well as techies and alpha-geeks (Engadget Gecko usage is at 23% and News.com Gecko usage is up to 18%). Usage among non-geeks is expected to grow as more positive mainstream press reports recommend ditching IE for Firefox.

Silicon.com is carrying the news that Mozilla/Firefox usage is up to 5.2% of visitors to ecommerce and corporate sites, up from 3.5% in June. Internet Explorer usage over the same timeframe fell from 95.5% to 93.7%. This makes sense as many web developers have been adopting Firefox very quickly (w3schools Gecko usage is at 17.7%) as well as techies and alpha-geeks (Engadget Gecko usage is at 23% and News.com Gecko usage is up to 18%). Usage among non-geeks is expected to grow as more positive mainstream press reports recommend ditching IE for Firefox.

Silicon.com is carrying the news that Mozilla/Firefox usage is up to 5.2% of visitors to ecommerce and corporate sites, up from 3.5% in June. Internet Explorer usage over the same timeframe fell from 95.5% to 93.7%. This makes sense as many web developers have been adopting Firefox very quickly (w3schools Gecko usage is at 17.7%) as well as techies and alpha-geeks (Engadget Gecko usage is at 23% and News.com Gecko usage is up to 18%). Usage among non-geeks is expected to grow as more positive mainstream press reports recommend ditching IE for Firefox.

Silicon.com is carrying the news that Mozilla/Firefox usage is up to 5.2% of visitors to ecommerce and corporate sites, up from 3.5% in June. Internet Explorer usage over the same timeframe fell from 95.5% to 93.7%. This makes sense as many web developers have been adopting Firefox very quickly (w3schools Gecko usage is at 17.7%) as well as techies and alpha-geeks (Engadget Gecko usage is at 23% and News.com Gecko usage is up to 18%). Usage among non-geeks is expected to grow as more positive mainstream press reports recommend ditching IE for Firefox.

Silicon.com is carrying the news that Mozilla/Firefox usage is up to 5.2% of visitors to ecommerce and corporate sites, up from 3.5% in June. Internet Explorer usage over the same timeframe fell from 95.5% to 93.7%. This makes sense as many web developers have been adopting Firefox very quickly (w3schools Gecko usage is at 17.7%) as well as techies and alpha-geeks (Engadget Gecko usage is at 23% and News.com Gecko usage is up to 18%). Usage among non-geeks is expected to grow as more positive mainstream press reports recommend ditching IE for Firefox.

Silicon.com is carrying the news that Mozilla/Firefox usage is up to 5.2% of visitors to ecommerce and corporate sites, up from 3.5% in June. Internet Explorer usage over the same timeframe fell from 95.5% to 93.7%. This makes sense as many web developers have been adopting Firefox very quickly (w3schools Gecko usage is at 17.7%) as well as techies and alpha-geeks (Engadget Gecko usage is at 23% and News.com Gecko usage is up to 18%). Usage among non-geeks is expected to grow as more positive mainstream press reports recommend ditching IE for Firefox.

Wired 12.03: The Complete Guide to Googlemania!
... The Complete Guide to Googlemania! (continued). 4 Scenarios for the Future of Google Sometimes a liquidity event changes everything. By Tom McNichol. ...

GooOS, the Google Operating System (kottke.org)
GooOS, the Google Operating System. He argues that Google is building a huge computer with a custom operating system that everyone on earth can have an account on. His last few paragraphs are so much more perceptive than anything that's been written about Google

Personalized Results: Exploring The Future Of Google ... Personalized Results: Exploring The Future Of Google.
msgraph Moderator view user profile joined-Nov 29, 2000 posts:1330 msg #:1, 7:29 pm on Feb 12, 2002 (utc 0). ...

MacMinute: The future of Google and Web searching?
* WWDC 2004: Discover how to put Mac OS X to work for you at WWDC! *. The future of Google and Web searching? March 31, 2004 - 07 ... www.macminute.com/2004/03/31/google - 29k -

Fake DNS registration for google.com by gandi.net.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115798&cid=980 3037

Email worm Mydoom.o breaks out infecting Windows boxes across the planet. Part of the payload are searches against Google, Lycos, Yahoo, and Altavista (but not Microsoft) for email addresses from an infected domain.
http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_127033.htm

Internet users report google.com hit hard by virus activity. Google starts blocking searches from infected domains/regions. Users also report that other search engines like Yahoo have significantly degraded performance.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/25010.htm

Mainstream press picks up the news of Google's issues.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/26/technology/google_ site/index.htm?cnn=yes

You can't buy this kind of competitor slamming and market cornering on Internet searching in one day... or can you?

Webmasterworld has an interesting thread which details the problems are user agent and locality specific (for me in SoCal IE and Firefox are borked, Konqueror is working, but others report no problem with Mozilla or no problems in certain locals).

I've been getting this for quite a while now. There is a thread on webmasterworld about it. They are pointing to this report about a new MyDoom virus.

Actually firefox is the faster one. It just doesn't start rendering the page when it gets it's first byte. IE does (ever seen IE activity when pictures come loooong after text? You see text place changing then). You can modify your Firefox to behave that way if you want to, but on older computers it will just take more time than to "wait and then render".
Some tweaks here

• This seems to find "sl/.shdot" and "sl-shdot".
• So I assume @ / . and - are treated as "any other characters".

• Appears to match slshdot and sl-shdot
• So it seems hyphens are just ignored in search criteria and results.

• Seems to be the same as a search for sl shdot
• I'd conclude these characters are converted to whitespace in results and search criteria. It would match "sl something shdot"

;why no documentation? though i am personally not opposed to searching for or reading tips on modifying the browser, i wonder why "tweaks" like this aren't documented in the help.

;are actions such as modifying the chrome or about:config considered "unsupported" by the developers at mozilla? curious...

;i would never have found out about how cool firefox keywords are without this article, for instance.

;ok, i guess mod me down... i didn't have much to say :)

;treehead

about the performance and quality of the results of the search preview over at Webmaster World, including some feedback from MS employees.

I tried these changes, and Firefox is noticeably faster:

There is an interesting post on WebMasterWorld, on how to decrease the loading/rendering time of Firefox. I have tried the settings, and have noticed a mild improvement. Just wanted to share the information.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/8007.htm

Edit: Updated Instructions:

open about_:config (without the underscore).

1.) network.http.pipelining = true
2.) network.http.pipelining.firstrequest = true
3.) network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = (the poster says 32, but suggest 8 is the limit)
4.) network.http.proxy.pipelining = true

Don't do number #5.


http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1 73568&highlight=pipelining

I'm sorry to say it, but Yahoo castrated Alltheweb.com's search results and replaced them with the same Overture/Inktomi results that you get from MSN and Yahoo searches. By the way they also did the same thing to Altavista :(.

I'm still hoping that some of the technology from Alltheweb will get integrated with Inktomi but for the most part I haven't read anything about major changes to the Inktomi algorithm yet so I'm assuming that they let Alltheweb die a quiet death. Maybe someday we'll alltheweb style improvements to the yahoo/inktomi engine, but until then:

RIP ALLTHEWEB.

• alt.os.development
• devhardware.com
• Linux Kernel Mailing List (asking who owns Linux)
• WebMaster World

Interesting...! I think I'll email PJ with this little lot!

J.

Nope, Puffin is the codename for the DeskBar.

Turns out there is a very unfortunate bug in Google's page removal system that pretty much lets anyone remove anyones website from the search results if they don't have an index.htm or index.html!

microsoft.com and adobe.com bit the dust already due to this bug (as examples of how the bug works), check out more here at WebmasterWorld

Hey, pages get added to the supplemental index using automatic algorithms. You can imagine a lot of useful criteria, including that we saw a url during the main crawl but didn't have a have a chance to crawl it when we first saw it.

Think of this as icing on the cake. If there's an obscure search, we're willing to do extra work with this new experimental feature to turn up more results. The net outcome is more search results for people doing power searches.

Hey, pages get added to the supplemental index using automatic algorithms. You can imagine a lot of useful criteria, including that we saw a url during the main crawl but didn't have a have a chance to crawl it when we first saw it.

Think of this as icing on the cake. If there's an obscure search, we're willing to do extra work with this new experimental feature to turn up more results. The net outcome is more search results for people doing power searches.

According to this Google already outsources their DNS load balancing to Akamai.

Look harder:

-The index is full of spam, worse than it has been in ages. Seriously. Not as bad as the new Yahoo, but still bad.

-The new 'redesign' has made the sponsored links on the right look more like search results to drive more money into their pockets.

-They are now one of the Internet's largest advertising agencies.

-The toolbar they use sends information back to google, and as harmless as you may think that is, they're lying about the uses already - personal experience statement

One thing I like about Google is, while they put their searchers first, they also maintain very good relations with advertisers and site owners in general.

See this thread at WebMasterWorld - the Google rep is called GoogleGuy.

I think I'd personally be more interested in a stylesheet that . . . crashes them.

on WebmasterWorld's Content, Writing and Copyright as it seems to happen at the time.

There have been two updates in the last couple months, named Update Florida and Update Austin by the SEO community. As typical, various webmasters have been devoting a lot of thought and emotion to them. But as a normal user, all I can see is that Google is definitely trying, and not succeeding yet.

No need to be so warm & fuzzy with Google. That toolbar they distribute, that 'sends information back to google' -- well, SEOs have realized that you can view a web-page that google does not have indexed, with their toolbar installed, and a few minutes later the googlebot will come along.

Google claims they do not do this, and that sites are only indexed via incoming links. Privacy issues worthy of note. webmasterworld thread on the topic

Somebody isn't telling the truth, and I doubt it's the log files. Point is, left hand and right hand are not familiar with eachother, even in the land of making order from chaos, ye ole googleplex.

The google mediapartners bot which will look at pages for the purposes of advertising such as in Opera is different and seperate from the bot that adds pages to Google's search database. The mediapartners bot does not feed the Google search engine.

However, this case did help to solve something many a web developer has struggled with - how to have multiple versions of IE, not just installed, but running at the same time. See also this thread or just use google. Browser versions can be gotten at the archive on evolt.org.

However, this case did help to solve something many a web developer has struggled with - how to have multiple versions of IE, not just installed, but running at the same time. See also this thread or just use google. Browser versions can be gotten at the archive on evolt.org.

What on EARTH is up with IE's css support? is it intentionally designed to be completely broken?

<rant>Yes, but they really do not care, because they are illegally putting it as the default on their crap (despite its quantities of pirated code) OS which they have an illegal monopoly on.</rant>

Seriously, I've pretty much given up designing webpages for MSIE -- design them as the W3C says and if anyone complains tell them to get one of the loads of WWW browsers (i.e.: not MSIE) -- sometimes standards-compliant pages do work in MSIE, by coincidence, anyway.

If users of your WWW site must use MSIE I strongly suggest you read <plug type="shameless"> my suggestion at WebMaterWorld [WARNING: DO NOT CLICK ON THIS IN MSIE AS IT IS A LINK & MSIE DOES NOT SUPPORT HYPERTEXT IN HTML]for getting round problems in MSIE, telling users of MSIE's problems and making your WWW site standards-complaint.</plug>

Interestingly, M$ have not added any features to MSIE since about version 2.0 -- in fact I think Bill Gates does not trust anyone else with the source so the only copy was on his personal HDD which he fried therefore to add feautres they would have to try to edit the binaries.

A related tidbit: apparently the top bid at overture.com is $50 for the search "mesothelioma lawyer". At that rate they had better have some way to filter out bots otherwise a competitor could do some serious damage.

B. CRLs don't scale. Period. There's a reason why PKIs hardly ever get past 100K users.

They scale enough though- the number of email domains is presumably much less than 100K.

Back in 2000-2001 there were already 15 million domains (estimated)

Another post from 2002 says that there are at least 36 million.

google broken? (www.google-watch.org)

"... unique ID for each page stored as ansi c, 4 bytes on Linux system (~4yo) gives theoretical limit of 4.2 billion pages. ..."

discusses the move to 5 bytes and suggests how this move may be the cause of weird search results on google searchs this year - of course the other reason my be google foiling search cue jumpers.