Yahoo Site Explorer - 'Domain' Changes

Yahoo has always been great for counting the real amount of back-links that point to your website or blog.

It was easy, you simply went to Yahoo search and typed in:

domain:www.YOURWEBSITE.com

But, this has all changed in the last few weeks. No longer is it as easy to ascertain the amount of these useful links. Yes Google has a facility for counting back-links in their Webmaster Tools, but I feel this is a Google selection.

When you are link-building, you need a benchmark to give you a true appraisal of your success and this is where Yahoo stepped in.

But help is at hand, I have a found an URL which does just this job. If you type the following into your address bar:

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=YOURWEBSITE.COM&bwm=i&bwmo=&bwmf=s

Of course replacing the YOURWEBSITE.COM with your own URL.

This link gives you exactly the same results that the previous 'domain' prefix gave.

So get stuck into your link-building and monitor the real results again.

Verisfied & Not Verified in Google Webmaster Tools

Since Google changed its Webmaster Tools interface and all its internal workings I haven't been able to change my preferred domain settings.

That's till today, when I eventually got around to solving the conundrum.

You see previously in Webmaster Tools, once you'd verified your site, that was it, you could go into your settings and chose the domain you prefer: i.e. with the 'www' or without - it's all to do with canonicalisation; meaning you only want Google to index one of your domains and the usual choice is with the 'www'.

Not so of late, because once you chose a different domain preference Webmaster Tools informs you that you first need to verify your site...

Fortunately I've found a solution. To change to your preferred domain within the settings interface, all you need to do is add both of your domains to Webmaster Tools, i.e.:

mywebsite.com
&
www.mywebsite.com

That's it problem solved, go back to settings and make your choice.

Cornwall, Czech & New York Photography Show

Roaming far from the beaten track in the Czech Republic, for instance, provided him with the inspiration for Beneath Pravcicka Brana, one of a number of black and white compositions with eerie overtones taken, as he says, "when the early morning mist conjured up a glorious sombreness you could normally only wish for... Frank Ruhrmund's full article

Penzance Motif

This is a secret little motif that's found in Penzance.

Umbelliferae or Apiaceae

From the Umbelliferae or Apiaceae family, this is one of 300 genera and more than 3,000 species; found just above the Men-an-Tol in West Penwith, Cornwall.

Redirect Using Friendly 301

The .htaccess file can seem daunting, especially when it comes to implementing 301 search engine friendly permanent redirects.

Not any longer.

Why implement them in the first place, well it's better to have your website indexed under one canonical name than two or even three.

How does this come about? In your root folder the homepage is normally labelled 'index.html, index.php &c, so what happens is this, when you click on the homepage link of your website instead of reading: www.mywebsite.com, you get: www.mywebsite.com/index.html; Google also sees this and actually indexes the two differently, even though they are exactly the same pages. This isn't so bad until your back-links start to get affected - there's nothing worse than having the /index.html page hogging more of the links than the .com only page.

But that's not all, it never would be with the web; what about sites having two TLDs (top level domain), for example: .co.uk & .com, you want the search engines to index both of these the same don't you? Likewise when someone links back to your site without the 'www', I presume you want these also to count under your one chosen TLD

Now I'm no programmer, but I have managed to implement the said 301 redirects using a really simple bit of code that you pop into your .htaccess file. I say simple, all three use 'regular expressions', but you don't really have to do the tutorial, just copy and paste.

But as with all changes to your root folder, do ensure you've saved the lot before you carry out any changes;-)

301 redirect .co.uk to .com

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^mywebsite\.co.uk$
RewriteRule (.*) http://mywebsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

You only have to type in the 'RewriteEngine On' once.

301 redirect non www to www

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

301 redirect index.html to just the domain: www.mywebsite.com

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*\/index\.html?
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.html?$ http://www.mywebsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Remember to replace the 'mywebsite' with the name of your website.

End product, after implementing all three 301 permanent redirects, you've a website rendering under one roof that has nothing to confuse the search engine spiders or your potential customers with.

Bing 'o' with a Difference

The new face of Bing 'o' (couldn't resist the pun) in the South West.