Amit Agarwal an Indian Pro Blogger On CNN IBN
March 26, 2007 by Gaman · 6 Comments
Armit Argawal is the man behind Digital Inspiration at http://labnol.blogspot.com/, one of the most successful blogs in India. He has been blogging professionally since 2004 and he’s perhaps the first professional blogger in India.
Considering that India’s population is exceeding 1 billion out of which, 26 million are Internet users – about the same as the population of Malaysian population – it would be interesting to get to know this first Indian pro blogger a little closer.
Amit was recently featured on CNN IBN, an English language Indian TV news channel which is a partnership between an India media corporation with CNN.
The video shows how Amit begins his day by commuting to work – which is at the same place where he sleeps.
Google Pay Per Action Screen Shots
March 24, 2007 by Gaman · 4 Comments
Here’s some screenshots of Google Pay Per Action in action for those like myself who are wondering how it works from the Adwords advertise side.
The stat offerings look more basic compare to those available via some established affiliate networks like CJ.com and Linkshare.
Google offering is promising but lacks value added services as one would expect from an affiliate marketing company.
It does not allow the flexibility for affiliates to offer various creatives such as banner ads, email campaigns, besides the normal text link ads and put them in any context a publisher may wish.
Obviously there’ll be some rigid rules affiliates must follow in order for them to serve these campaigns and because of this limitation, I don’t think Google will dominate the affiliate marketing sector, at least not yet.
The Longest Domain Name In The World
March 24, 2007 by Gaman · 17 Comments
Internet domain name allows sixty three characters maximum and six people last year registered the longest Internet addresses allowed for the European .eu domain.
The domains names range from the tongue-twisting name of a Welsh village to the first 63 numbers that make up the mathematical constant pi.
The domains include
thisisthelongesteuropeandomainnameallovertheworldandnowitismine.eu
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.eu
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.eu
Another French company has registered a French language phrase promising that its services would help Internet business grow
lerelaisinternet-com-favorise-la-croissance-de-votre-entreprise.eu.
Another tongue-twisting name is
llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochuchaf.eu
which is a village on the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales.
A German technology company has registered the first 63 decimal places that make the number pi.
141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.eu
It was claimed that the longest domain name for the com extension belongs to
http://www.thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensomeandthensomemoreandmore.com/
The owner tried to have it recognized by Guinness as the longest domain in the world and got this response instead
How Google Rank Your Blog
March 23, 2007 by Gaman · 3 Comments
Most search engine optimisation articles focus on issues that are applicable to general site when discussing about optimizing a blog for Google search engine. You may have read from my previous post that these issues include using the correct use of title tags, URL structures, post headings and so on.
However, it’s good to be aware that Google might use a slightly different criteria when it comes to ranking a blog at Google’s Blog Search.
Phillip Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped has written about a patent application from Google for ‘ranking blog documents’, filed in late 2005.
Google presents a couple of positive and negative quality indicators to help rank a blog and at the same time weed out spammers and splogs (aka spam blogs).
Google considers the following as the positive factors for blogs.
- The popularity of the blog
- The existence of the blog document in blogrolls
Make Your WordPress Blog Search Engine Friendly
March 23, 2007 by Gaman · 7 Comments
Jim Westergren has written a collection of useful tips to help you improve your blog ranking in Google.
While I’ve discussed some of tips here at Sabahan.com, Jim’s post covers most of the topics and more in one location.
There are many variables that you can tinker with to improve your ranking in Google, and reading the article will ensure you are heading in the right direction.
However, contrary to what Jim said, I think RSS feeds link are not ‘totally useless’ and therefore using the nofollow attribute would not be advisable.
Place the attribute rel=”nofollow” on links that are totally useless for search engines such as to RSS feeds for the blog and comment links. In case you want to remove the nofollow on the comment links make sure you check the author links before approval as it is important that you don’t link to bad sites from your blog.
Google Introduced Personalized Homepage Themes
Google’s personalized homepage has been my start page for a while. I use it because I want keep track of new emails, feed updates and other info right after I launch my web browser.
The page design was rather plain and uninspiring to my liking; until a new feature was introduced recently.
To see this new feature, just head to google.com/ig and login to your Google account. On the right side you’ll see a ‘Select a Theme’ box where you can select from 7 nice looking designs.
One interesting characteristic of these themes is that they are dynamic in that they change with your local time & weather conditions
While I doubt that it’s tracking my local weather here, it’s adjusted to my local time. In the morning, the theme changes to a morning scene, in the evening we see the sun sets and so on.
March 24 World Shutdown Day – A No Computer Day
March 22, 2007 by Gaman · 2 Comments
We already have the CSS naked day where webmasters turn off their style sheets from their website for one day on April 05 every year.
Then someone came up with another idea of a day without something – this time it’s a day without a computer.
The day is supposed to be on March 24 which falls on this coming Saturday. People running mission critical operations should stay away from participating as I think this move is for those using computers personally. You wouldn’t want to shut down your company’s servers now would you?
At first thought, this seems like a fun idea to be part of. It’s apparently one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the Internet; or so claims the organizer on their website.
What will happen if we all participate? Can you survive for 24 hours without my computer?
Google Pay-Per-Action Program Now In Beta
March 21, 2007 by Gaman · 3 Comments
The idea of Google introducing pay per action ads has been talked about for sometime.
Today, Google has announced a new service called the Google Pay-Per-Action advertising.
Pay-per action works like many other pay per lead affiliate programs where you get paid when users completed certain action such as a lead, a sale or a page view after they clicked on the pay-per-action ad that appear on your site.
The referrals beta allows some flexibility where you can select matching products with your site’s content and you can customize your referral units to match the look and feel of your site.
This is a great addition to existing Google’s referral programs as it signals another opportunity for everyone who is trying to make money from their blog or website. This also means that Google has just become another affiliate marketing network like CJ.com and Linkshare.com.
4 Mbps Broadband Will Be Available To TM Customers Soon
March 20, 2007 by Gaman · 14 Comments
Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) is partnering with US-based Verizon Business to offer cheaper, faster and more reliable broadband package soon.
Verizon’s network will offer additional redundancy link in case of nature disasters or other mishaps like what had happened during the quake off the coast of Taiwan in December last year.
Unfortunately no figures were disclosed as to how these translate into the exact package their will offer. However, TM CEO, Datuk Abdul Wahid Omar revealed that TM will offer a 4 Mbps broadband package soon.
I hope this package will be made available to consumers at a reasonable price. If it’s not, a free upgrade to 2 Mbps for the existing 1 Mbps (and 512Kbps to 1 Mbps) subscribers would be good for us.
The new infrastructure is expected to be ready in June.
The Correct Anchor Text Will Get You On The First Page of Google Search Results
March 20, 2007 by Gaman · 5 Comments
I can help but feel a little jealous about JohnChow.com 
. In his latest blog post he described how he managed to be on the first page on Google search result for the term “make money online”, barely four days after he changed the rules for reviewing his blog.
You can view the top anchor text people used to link to your blog through Google Webmaster Central.
Since the ranking is dynamic; I believe John Chow will go up the rank as more and more people use the “make money online” anchor text to link to him.
I used to be ranked number one for the phrase “free money” for one of my sites and this brought in quite a good number of targeted traffic for a while to the site. But the competition gets stiffer and the site was beaten by the new kids on the block.
