Being Number One in Google Search Makes a Big Difference

 

 

 

Being Number One in Google Search Makes a Big Difference

via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog by Amit on 4/28/11

A study from Optify [PDF] has revealed 37% of Google users are likely to click on your website link if it ranks at number one in Google search results pages while the CTR dips to 12.5% for sites that rank at position two in Google. The report also says that the average click-through rate for being on page one of Google is 8.9% while it drops to 1.5% for sites that appear on Google’s second page of search results.

Average Click-Through Rate on Google

Search Engine Watch has converted this CTR data into a caterpillar-shaped infographic [PDF] to help you visualize it even better. If you are an SEO company, you can probably use this data / graphic to convince your clients to further increase their search marketing budgets.

How To Erase Data So It Can Never Be Recovered.

Did you know that 74% of discarded PC hard drives contain private data that can be easily read and recovered. Deleting files does not work and data can still be recovered even if the drive has been reformatted.

Click here to find out how to erase data so it can never be recovered from your hard drive.

How Software Download Sites Are Confusing Users

 

 

How Software Download Sites Are Confusing Users

via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog by Amit on 4/29/11

Columnist and radio host Dwight Silverman recently did a detailed analysis on how the various software download links, available on CNET’s popular download.com website, could be confusing their not so tech savvy users.

The reason is quite simple. Some of the banner ads running on Download.com have big red buttons that scream “Start Download” – such ads are confusing and the user may therefore end up installing a completely unrelated software. To CNET’s defense, they have little control over such ads as these are directly served by Google.

This story reminds me of another popular software downloads site - Softonic.com – that offers a very tricky download process (you’ll soon know why).

What you see above is the download page for the trial version of a popular video game.

Like most users, you are likely to click that big blue link that says “Download” but it will actually download a Softonic software on your machine and not the game installer that you landed here for. The real download link is hidden somewhere below in a relatively small font.

Once you have downloaded Softonic’s own downloader, the first screen of the installer will contain the usual EULA that you need to accept to proceed with the game installation.

On Screen #2, shown below, Softonic recommends installing the Babylon Toolbar on your computer. This option is selected by default so if you pass this screen in a hurry, chances are that you’ll find another new toolbar in your browser.

 

And that brings us to Screen #3. This is the place where the software installer, you were looking for, will start downloading on your computer directly from the game vendor’s server.  

Since Softonic had an interest in putting that toolbar on your computer, they wrapped the installer in their own downloader thus forcing users to take extra steps for a process that could have been completed in one click.

There’s another interesting thing about this last screen that I should point out – it has a big Google AdSense ad that shows up while the software installer is downloading in the background. Maybe Softonic has a special deal with Google but as far as I know, Google forbids all publishers from showing ads in desktop apps (one exception is Google Earth).

 

 

Clean your WordPress URLs for Better SEO

 

 

 

 

Clean your WordPress URLs for Better SEO

via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog by Amit on 5/3/11

WordPress is pretty smart at resolving URLs even if you add any number of extra parameters to the permalinks.

To give you an example, if a WordPress site is located at example.com, all the following URLs will work fine as the various parameters found in the Query String (like the utm_source parameter added by Google Analytics) will simply get ignored by WordPress.

1. http://example.com/?partner=nyt 2. http://example.com/?src=dlvr.it 3. http://example.com/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed

These parameters are often added to WordPress URLs by external services that aren’t in your control – for instance, URL shorteners or services that feed your blog to social sites.

Why Clean your WordPress URLs?

Why should you even consider cleaning up your WordPress URLs when these parameter do no harm? Well, here are a a few reasons:

#1. Technically, the URL example.com/?src=blog is not the same as example.com/?src=feed which is not the same as example.com – the real canonical version. Thus if someone were to bookmark or share these URLs on social sites, it would be really hard for you to consolidate the social metrics (see this report for an example).

#2. The second reason is Google. If you open the HTML Suggestions section of your Google Webmaster Tools dashboard, you may come across pages that are found to duplicate title tags (and thus duplicate content). The underlying URLs are same but since they have different parameters, Google may sometimes confuse them as separate pages. You definitely want to avoid this situation.

How to Remove Extra Parameters from WordPress URLs

You cannot prevent other services from adding new parameters to your URLs but you can always redirect these URLs to the ‘clean’ versions so that there exists only one version of your URLs on the Internet.

There are two ways do that:

1. The JavaScript version: Open the header.php file of your WordPress template and copy-paste the following code somewhere inside the <head> tag.

<?php if(!is_search()) { ?> <script type="text/javascript">       var url = window.location.href;       if ( url.split('?').length >= 2 ) {           window.location = url.split("?")[0];       } </script> <?php } ?>

The code checks the incoming URL request for any parameters and if found, it will simply strip all the parameters from the URL and reloads the WordPress page with the clean URL.

The above approach uses JavaScript and will therefore be mostly invisible to Google. It also won’t solve any of the previously mentioned problems so let’s try something else.

2. The .htaccess version: Open the .htaccess file of your domain and copy-paste the following code above the mod_rewrite rules that were added by WordPress. You don’t have to change any code in your PHP templates.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} . RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^(s|p)=.* RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*wp-admin.* RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /$1? [R=301,L] </IfModule>

If you have never used mod_rewrite before, the above might look a bit confusing but it’s actually quite simple.

It first ignores URLs that have ‘s’ or ‘p’ parameters since we don’t want to remove any of the Post IDs (like labnol.org/?p=19028) or the search parameters (like labnol.org/?s=pdf) from the WordPress URLs. It also ignores request coming from the WordPress admin (wp-admin)dashboard. Finally, we do a 301 redirect thus also passing all the Google Juice to the clean and canonical URL.

The .htaccess version is live on labnol.org, try www.labnol.org/tag/guide/?foo=bar

There’s one important thing to note here. Any functionality that depends on URL parameters will obviously not work if you remove those parameters. That should not be a problem for most WordPress sites, but do keep that in mind before making the change.

How People Share Content Online and With Whom?

 

 

 

How People Share Content Online and With Whom?

via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog by Amit on 5/7/11

A recent study done by AOL and Neilsen offers interesting insights into how people share content on the web and what kind of content do they prefer sharing.

Email is still the most preferred mode for sharing content with friends and family but message boards are popular for discussing content with the public. News, product information and how-to articles are more likely to be shared than say deals or just-for-fun items.

 

 

Top 20 Android Photography Apps

Top 20 Android Photography Apps

via hongkiat.com by hongkiat on 12/6/10

Android is an amazing mobile platform from Google which has recently created a great amount of buzz in the mobile market. Being completely open, this mobile platform allows application developers to unleash their creativity and in the same time giving end users the privilege to experience freedom of experimenting new possibilities. There has been a plethora of android powered devices in the mobile market lately and that effectively increase the amount of great apps in the marketplace!

Today, we’ll be giving you a complete round up of Best Android Apps for all your photography needs. It doesn’t matter if you’re a pro or just a beginner at photography. These apps combined with creativity will make that tiny-winy camera of your mobile phone, a power-house of amazing photography. So without further ado, here’s then entire list.

Photoshop.com Mobile

Straight from Adobe, with Photoshop mobile app, you can edit and share photos virtually anywhere. Other functions include Touch to crop, rotate, adjust color, and add artistic effects. You can also access all your photos and videos directly from your free Photoshop.com account. and quickly share with family and friends.

Vignette

Vignette app allows you to add extra light flairs to your photographs and make them even more amazing than they already are.

Photoid

An all round photo app with frames, effects, rich hi-res clip-art,high resolution save, stickers, rotation, brushes and mask modes.

PhotoWonder

PhotoWonder is a fun app to edit pics on mobile. With amazing effects like LOMO, BlueTone and Ageing, lovely stickers and frames, this app is a great fun!

PRO Paint Camera

Want to take better pictures? PRO Paint Camera app is what you’ll need. With cliparts, contrast correction, text-fonts, toy-camera and x-ray mode, you can’t ask for more!

Love Photo Frames

This app allows you to make a very special personalized framed picture, save in your album or send to your loved one by email.

Camera 360

Turn your phone into professional camera by aplying filters like LOMO, HDR, axis shift, draft, ghost, etc.

PicSay

Powerful and award winning photo editor. Color-correct your pictures and add word balloons, titles, graphics, and effects like distortion. All in a fun, intuitive, and easy-to-use interface.

Camera Fun Pro

The only Android app to apply LIVE Photoshop lens to your Android camera.

Camera Zoom FX

Camera ZOOM FX gives you the ability to apply 40 effects (vignette, lomo, retro, polaroid, etc.) to your photo.

Fast Camera

The quickest camera ever. Just press the camera button and take pictures instantly, the preview doesn’t even stop.

FX Camera

FxCamera enables you to take a picture with various effects like ToyCam, Polandroid, Fisheye, SymmetriCam, Warhol, Normal etc.

Multi Camera

Take multiple shots with your camera and get a single image.

onSite Photo

OnSite Photo lets you take photos and instantly upload them to a specific project within ConstructionOnline.

Photo Album Organizer

Photo Album Organizer will copy selected pictures on your phone into a new photo album that you create. It also organizes your photos for better viewing.

Photo Mail

With PhotoMail app, you can edit and send photos quickly, copy photos from the gallery, edit photos with text and graphics and also E-mail selected photos.

Pic Bubbler

Pic Bubbler is a simple and fun way to make pics more exciting. Turn pics of your favorite guy or girl into titillating memories. Edit pics of your favorite models. Sometimes it’s what you don’t see that makes all the difference.

Retro Camera

With Retro Camera you’ll take delicious old-school pics your friends will drool over. 5 cameras, 5 sets of vintage vignetting, film scratch, black and white & cross processing effects for that off-the-hip analog look. Inspired by the Lomo, Holga, Polaroid, Diana, the toy cameras and Hipstamatic.

Photo Scrapbook

Create a scrapbook of photos on your homescreen. Tap the widget to display full screen version of pictures of your children, friends, kids, pets, babies, holidays, etc.

Photo Effects

Turn your photos into art with amazing effects, similar to instagram.

Image credits: Appbrain, Androidzoom, Androidpit, Androlib.

How to Verify an Email Address?

How to Verify an Email Address?

via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog by Amit on 11/22/10

How do you verify if a given email address is real or fake? Well an obvious solution is that you send a test mail to that email address and if your message doesn’t bounce, it is safe to assume* that the address is real.

[*] Some web domains may have configured a catch-all email address meaning that messages addressed to a non-existent mailbox will not be returned to the sender but in most cases, such email messages will bounce.

Ping an Email Address to Validate it!

When you send an email to someone, the message goes to an SMTP server which then looks for the MX (Mail Exchange) records of the email recipient’s domain.

For instance, when you send an email to hello@gmail.com, the mail server will try to find the MX records for the gmail.com domain. If the records exist, the next step would be to determine whether that email username (hello in our example) is present or not.

Using a similar logic, we can verify an email address from the computer without actually sending a test message. Here’s how:

Let say that we want to verify if the address billgates@gmail.com exists or not?

Step 1. Enable telnet in Windows.  Or if you already have the PuTTY utility, skip this step.

Step 2. Open the command prompt and type the following command:

nslookup –type=mx gmail.com

This command will extract and list the MX records of a domain as shown below. Replace gmail.com with the domain of the email address that you are trying to verify.

gmail.com MX preference=30, exchanger = alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com gmail.com MX preference=20, exchanger = alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com gmail.com MX preference=5, exchanger = gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com gmail.com MX preference=10, exchanger = alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com gmail.com MX preference=40, exchanger = alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com

Step 3. As you may have noticed, it is not uncommon to have multiple MX records for a domain. Pick any one of the servers mentioned in the MX records, may be the one with the lowest preference level number (in our example, gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com), and “pretend” to send a test message to that server from you computer.

For that, go to command prompt window and type the following commands in the listed sequence:

3a: Connect to the mail server:

telnet gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25

3b: Say hello to the other server

HELO

3c: Identify yourself with some fictitious email address

mail from:<labnol@labnol.org>

3d: Type the recipient’s email address that you are trying to verify:

rcpt to:<billgates@gmail.com>

The server response for ‘rcpt to’ command will give you an idea whether an email address is valid or not. You’ll get an “OK” if the address exists else a 550 error like:

• abc@gmail.com -- The email account that you tried to reach does not exist.
• support@gmail.com -- The email account that you tried to reach is disabled.

That’s it! If the address is valid, you may perform reverse email search to find the person behind the address. And if you get stuck somewhere, this step-by-step video should help: