You Now Need Adwords Speed

I mentioned last month that the speed of your landing page would become a factor of your quality score. Well, Google have now announced that this change is now live - so if your server is slow or you’re doing redirects to a merchants site, you might want to keep an eye on your quality score and more importantly your PPC bids.

Google Gets New Favicon

Favicons, those little 16×16 pixel icons that appear next to your URL address in your browser. They’re often neglected (guilty M’Lord) but not it would seem by Google as they’ve got a new one:

I’ve spotted it on a few google pages including adsense and google apps so far. I think I’m right in saying that (the ace) google reader acquired a new favicon the other week (or maybe further back than that). I should really start to get and use my own favicons to assist with my sites branding.

Does Google Rate You As Safe

You can now use the google safe browsing diagnostic service to confirm that google rates your domain as safe. Here’s an example for the BBC opening in a new window - all looks fine. You can get the detail on this service by reading the official blog post.

I’ve noticed that you sometimes see this as part of the report:

What happened when Google visited this site?

Google has not visited this site within the past 90 days.

but I don’t think that it means your site hasn’t been spidered in the last 90 days.

As a check, it’s another worthwhile item to add to your domain maintenance checklist. If you’re a wordpress user I’ve previously offered a couple of security tips too.

Post from: upthejunction.com by John Cronin.

The Need For (adwords) Speed

In case it’s escaped your attention, adwords is now telling you if you have issues with speed of your landing page. Furthermore, come mid-June the response speed of your landing page is to be factored in to the quality score.

It’s simple enough to see how adwords is currently rating your landing page speed …just hover over the magnifying glass next to a keyword within an ad group and then select the details and recommendations link for the quality score info.

If you’re doing some direct to merchant PPC then there isn’t much you can personally do to improve the landing page speed of course. But with your own pages you may want to tidy up your code, use CSS, compress large images and the like. If you’re using wordpress then much of this taken care for you already assuming your chosen theme is half decent. Your choice of web host is possibly the weakest link in the chain - you tend to get what you pay for.

Can anyone recommend a good host for wordpress (allowing custom permalinks) by the way? Dreamhost offer a great deal but they’ve had some server issues lately.

We’ve Got Balls… Techno Balls

Many thanks to Hawkins Bazaar for the very well packaged free gift that arrived in the post yesterday - a Techo Balls perpetual motion construction toy.

The compliment slip didn’t state why we’ve been lucky enough to receive the gift but as we’ve generated a few sales for them recently I’m guessing that’ll be why. It reminds me to put more effort into our little toy site too as it’s rather content light just now.

I’ll get Dad’s little helpers to put the toy together with me - it might keep them quiet for half an hour!

Thanks again to Hawkins Bazaar.

mixx.com

I’ve created my account at mixx - feel free to add/follow me as I’m a bit of a Billy No-mates at the moment.

Site Revamp Update

I’ve continued tinkering with the site revamp and it’s coming along fine. We’re now using a new logo and thanks must go to Amy Fairhurst at site revamp and it’s coming along fine. We’re now using a new logo and thanks must go to Amy Fairhurst at Orangutan Creative (also on The Wirral - which is handy for us!) for a great design service. Stumbled upon Orangutan purely by chance - I was reading Fused Nation where the author Scott also recommended them.

I’ve still got more work to do; I want to add more pages, fix thumbnail graphics and move things around a little, but it’s getting somewhere near now. If you spot any funnies please leave a comment or get in touch.

Cache Back

How odd. After reporting yesterday that this site’s homepage didn’t have a cache in google, I check again this morning and it’s back (dated 4th April). Not at all sure why the cache wasn’t available yesterday?

Great opportunity for this post title!

No Cache?

This is a little odd and is something I can’t recall seeing before. Currently (at time of writing) google has no cache for my homepage, though it does for others - like my about page for instance.

I’ve checked my webmaster tools account and that all looks fine. The site is certainly being indexed because my last post of only a couple of hours ago has already been indexed and is searchable - which is fine. Visible pagerank as shown in my toolbar is 4 and not greyed-out or anything.

I’ve just tested for an iffy robots.txt via webmaster tools and that’s fine too.

I upgraded to wordpress 2.5 yesterday but then I’ve upgraded other sites and they have cache.

hmm? Not sure if it’s just a temporary blip or a problem somewhere?

The Masters

Hooray! It’s that time of year again when I spend four evenings glued to the television watching golf on BBC2 - The Masters is back! Notice the social networking aspects of that site; you can upload your own photos, watch live video, read blogs and play online games - some common ways to attract visitors and build site loyalty.

I don’t play golf at all myself - never have done other than to swing a few clubs inaccurately at a driving range - but I really enjoy watching The Masters. The course always looks great, even if it’s chemically enhanced, and you can usually expect to see some great golf from a certain Mr Woods and his comtemporaries.

As I live in Hoylake I got to see quite a few of leading golfers including Tiger when my hometown hosted the 2006 Open at Royal Liverpool (a mile or so up the road from my house). Admittedly the fantastic weather helped enormously but it was a great event that I hope will return in the next 5 years or so. I might have even done something with my Wirral golf site by then!

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