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florence nightingale’s birthday

May 12th, 2008

Today in 1920 Florence nightingale was born!

Today in 2008 google.co.uk give respest to her on the google.co.uk homepage with a new google logo link to http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=florence+nightingale%27s+birthday&hl=en

With the query “florence nightingale’s birthday”

This isn’t showing on the google.com homepage for me “yet” .. UK thing :)

Here is the logo:

florence nightingale's birthday

 

Here is a bit of info about who she was and what she did.. taken from : http://www.netwrx1.com/CherryAmes/nightingale.html

  • Florence Nightingale studied nursing in Alexandria, Egypt, and at the Institute for Protestant Deaconesses in Kaiserswerth, Germany.
  • She became superintendent of London’s Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen in 1850.
  • She went to Scutari with thirty-eight nurses early in the Crimean War to direct nursing operations; her efforts resulted in greatly reducing mortality rates among the sick and wounded.
  • She founded the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses at St. Thomas Hospital in London in 1860, marking the beginning of professional nursing education.
  • In 1907, she received the British Order of Merit; she was the first woman to be so honored.
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New amazon front end - Time for me to sort my amazon site out.

April 30th, 2008

Amazon has just launched its new front end..

I’m not a mad fan of it but at least it not any worse than before..

I thought i’d check how much the affilates changes have cost me..

WELL i’m not happy lol.. I’m really blogging this so I get off my arse and do some coding for the new xml feed vs the old ones I still use…

One thing of interest is amazon still counts the clicks BUT doesn’t give you any cash for them..

Here is one channel this month:

Clicks
1064
Your Conversion
0.19%
 
Compare with last month:
 
 Total Clicks 750
TOTAL CONVERSION 3.20%
Right.. off to write some php!!!
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google.co.uk push igoogle with artist Jeff Koons theme.

April 30th, 2008

On the uk homepage of google today we have a funky logo from the artist Jeff koons promoting the igoogle theme homepage on the uk public.

Who is jeff Koons?

American artist Jeff Koons burst onto the international art scene in the 1980s. He creates iconic work such as Michael Jackson and Bubbles, Rabbit, and Puppy. He is exhibited throughout the world.

 

here the logo:

jeff koons google logo

Find out more here: http://www.google.co.uk/help/ig/art/

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Google - about to overtake ITV in the UK

April 18th, 2008

Google uk is just about to overtake ITV for the amount of cash made from advertising..

In the first 3 months of this year google has made$803 million( about £407m)a massive 40% up on a year ago.

Hitwise reports some 78% of searches are made on google by UK internet users in 2007 but i’m pretty sure its far higher..

Marc Mendoza - whose media buying agency is putting a lot of its clients’ budgets online - tells me that Google now has about 80% of the UK online advertising market.

Read more from the bbc:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/04/google_how_big_is_too_big.html

 

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Stealing local search to blag top spot.

April 7th, 2008

I used to go to night clubs loads when I was younger and was up for “maybe” going this weekend..

My GF did the ibiza thing and love to dance…

So.. Went  to look a club I went to a few time and really enjoyed called “The Cross” just outside Kings cross in central london..

After search for “the cross” and “the cross nightclub” the offical site wasn’t showing :(

Finally I thought i’d add london.. “the cross nightclub london” which returned google local at the top with the address of the club “BUT” the url was a club the other side of town!

I then looked up the news on “the cross nightclub” to find that its been sold off for flats :(

So along came another super club pacha and took the local results for themselves along with some SEO target the natural results too.. 

Wonder how long it will last ?

So if you know a competitor is closing down and you want the traffic then why not blag top spot via local search..

 

Here is a screen shot:

The cross nightclub london

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BT and Phorm - trials were ‘illegal’

April 3rd, 2008

BT have “tested” the use of Phorm to match adverts to some 30,000 broadband users in the uk without telling them..

Loads of loads of BT customers got in contact with the bbc this morning regarding how unhappy their web surffing was being tracked by BT..

Nicholas Bohm, of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, said tests without the knowledge of users were “an illegal intercept of users’ data”.

A spokesman for BT said the firm had no comment about the legality or illegality of the 2006 test.

Read more about this here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7325451.stm

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Can’t get data from Amazon

April 2nd, 2008

So..

Its happened.. ECS shutdown happened on the 31st.. see more info about that here: http://www.seohome.co.uk/2008/02/26/amazon-associates-ecs-shutdown-announcement/

Both myself and friends who are “webmasters” have been lazy and not updated the code “yet” ..

I was ment to sort it out over the w/e but just could face it and i’m 100% not alone..

Check this out: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Can%27t+get+data+from+Amazon

Almost 40k of pages indexed NOT returning amazon products.. This must be costing amazon silly money let alone us webmaster (the lazy ones)

You should be able to see a massive dip on the alexa rank but as it not showing today’s data then we will need to wait..

Alexa suggests traffic has drop 13% over the last 3 month and the site of dropped 3 places since yesterday..

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/amazon.com

 

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999 UK social networks.

April 2nd, 2008

 This morning on bbc news reports interviewed parents at london science museum regarding pricary setting on socail networks.

Most of parents hadn’t got a clue but most of the kids interviewed did..

The report suggested that over half of UK childen are now listed on social networks with bebo being the largest in the uk for under 18’s …

The report also suggest govermental reccomendations regarding putting a 999 banner so that kids could phone up the police if they felt at risk from someone on the likes of bebo, facebook etc..

Sadly bbc hasn’t put anything online about this report as yet but times has the following:

To counter the problem, the Home Office will announce on Friday a new voluntary code of conduct for social networks. Bebo, MySpace and Facebook are to agree that, when under18s set up profiles, they will be set to a high privacy setting as a default. To counter the problem, the Home Office will announce on Friday a new voluntary code of conduct for social networks. Bebo, MySpace and Facebook are to agree that, when under18s set up profiles, they will be set to a high privacy setting as a default.

 

 Children’s social network pages ‘must have privacy lock’ - http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3663312.ece

 

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Earth Hour on Google.

March 29th, 2008

Google have just switched the lights off in the uk..

 Google full blackout.. Great fun but of course its all about raising awearness of worldwide energy conservation effort..

For more info see http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/earthhour/

Visit uk google here: http://www.google.co.uk/  

Here’s  a screen shot!

Google earth day 2008

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Digg double index.

March 14th, 2008

This week I’ve seen some talk about people linking to IP’s ..

Now it used to be far more common, but now domain is king..

Regarding seo, ip’s are a nightmare..

SER had a post about it here: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/016518.html 

Anyway.. Every day I seem to see a ip index for something or other, normally long tail terms but just now I was search a username of a forum member as you do and came accross no other than digg..

Digg has been double index via digg.com and a ip..

Over 90,000 pages are indexed on that ip have a look:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3A64.191.203.30

The one interesting thing to look at is which pages are index ip vs domain.. 9 million vs 90k… lets say only 10 links point to the ip then those 10 link would index 90k of pages… something to think about.. but finding what and who has linked is a real pain..

I suspect it might be to do with some api or widgets…