Blogging India

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Hello dear reader!

I wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year 2008!

Mohan

[tags]new year[/tags]

Hi all,
    Alexa (www.alexa.com) is a search engine, website directory and rankings website powered by Amazon Inc. It was started in 1996 and it received favourable response, and held its state as one of the most used search engines, globally.

    But, in the last few years, Google grew to be the behemoth it is now. Google’s technology, power, speed and accuracy overshadowed all others. It put prominent search engines like MSN and Yahoo into developing mode. But Alexa, had neither the resources or the brains or the patience. So they simply shifted their focus, and tried to cash in on the next best thing. Ranking websites and providing stats, while being notoriously profit based.

    Controversy after controversy follows Alexa. But today, their rankings are used by advertisers and many others to define the quality of the website, fully knowing that Alexa is incorrect, and baseless.

    There aren’t many articles on the internet which provide you information on Alexa, and how to influence Alexa rankings. A few existing articles are notoriously incorrect, and is based on profit making, rather than service providing.

    Thus, I decided to feature a 3 post series on Alexa. Christened “The Alexa Code”, this 3 part series will help you to understand what is Alexa, why Alexa is incorrect and baseless, and methods to improve your Alexa rank in legal as well as twisted( ) methods.

    The articles will deal with the following topics(links will be added when the articles are published) -

1) What is Alexa? What are Alexa rankings? What are the rankings based on?
2) Why is Alexa biased, incorrect and baseless? But then why is it used? How will it help me?
3) How can I improve Alexa rankings? Alexa plays dirty, so can I play dirty with Alexa? What are the “twisted” means to improve Alexa rankings?

    You can expect these articles in the days to follow. By the time you’ve read all three articles, I expect you to be competent in Alexa technology, their rankings system, why they’re baseless, and how to efficiently “tweak” and manipulate the Alexa rankings.

    So watch out for PART I of the 3 part series… Coming soon…

[tags]alexa, rankings, the alexa code, improving alexa ranking[/tags]

Hi all,
    I was looking through my site stats yet again today(after a period of 2 days)… As usual, the Blogging India stats were between 650-750 visitors daily (a bit low since I hadnt posted for a couple of days). But the BlogForPeace stats which were usually at 900-1000 daily had spiked up to 3200!!! AND I hadnt posted for a while too!

    What was going on? It took me just a second to visit my “Referrers” page, and found a Czech blog was linking to Blog For Peace. I’m not fretting. It was a PR7 blog with an Alexa of 465… Why was such a high profile blog linking to me? I decided to check it out…

    I had to work hard to drown a groan! They had done an article about a leaked Harry Potter book(weeks after I’d said that the leak was false, and that it was a fan fiction), and they had read the article on Blogging India about the “leaked” version.

    If you remember, I had posted the file on the hosting account for BlogForPeace, and so the Czechies thought that it was actually posted on BlogForPeace, ignorant of the fact that I was the author of both the blogs, and that I had posted it on my other account since it was fatter with lots more bandwidth available.

    Thus, about 2500 visitors thronged BlogForPeace to see what it was all about, and spent hours searching for “leaked Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows” on the site search… Poor dudes…

    Apparently, the Czech blog also linked to Dr. Mike’s Steak Dinner blog who also felt a slight pinch -  a rise in visitor count by about 1200. He posted a post about how “Harry Potter was controlling” his blog. Thankfully, his blog was hosted by WordPress, and thus he didn’t have to feel the bandwidth pinch…

    Such incidents make you wonder why a renown blog does such articles without proper research. Dear reader, if you are a blogger, this is a lesson to be learnt. Never do an article without proper research, or else people might start cursing you for nothing…

[tags]better blogging, harry potter, leaked, wasted bandwidth, stat hike[/tags]

[tags][/tags]

Hi all,
    I found this EXCELLENT post on one of a fellow PPP Postie blogs named Everybody Go To (which is incidentially, a very good blog, and worth a check out). Titled “How to get more traffic on low traffic days” the post is on various sure-shot methods on getting more traffic to your blog.

    Most points, I agree with. Some points, I agree not with! I’ll post those “better” parts here

Technorati - No doubt the number 1 blog search engine out there. Technorati can send you quite a few hits to your blog if you happen to write about something that is in the news. It’s kind of tricky to know when is the best time to post  – while the news is developing or after it gets hot? That’s just a trial and error method, so give it a try and let me know what worked for you.

    Indeed, Technorati is very good. I find that I receive a lot of traffic from Technorati. They seem to stay to read a couple of posts too

    My tip(actually what I do on dull days) : Head over to Digg or del.icio.us and check out the *hot* posts. Immediately blog it. And lean back and watch the numbers plummel

    Well, Ali took it to his heart about proving his point, and immediately after his post, he posted the trailer to the movie Spider Man III. And he put in the Technorati tags “youtube” and “spider man”. I see that the post has “527″ views, opposed to the 8 or 7 his other posts have, but only 1 comment. Which implies, that he got most of his traffic from Technorati, and the people were those who searched for Spider Man II!

    Next, Ali talks about traffic exchanges – a point which I strongly do not agree with. Traffic exchanges are extremely useless and pointless! You might get a thousand hits per day, but none of those visitors linger to read, or even LOOK at your site. Its a waste of good bandwidth and time!

Socialize it - Write a really good post, short or long, and bookmark it across various sites like digg, del.icio.us, plugim etc…Browse the pligg forums to see what kind of digg type sites are set up and submit your site articles there. Sign up most probably required though. Remember I said really good post.

    Yes indeed, how very nice Ali, the point is, if one could come up with “really good posts”, then he/she wouldnt be reading this – he will have no lack of traffic or readers or commentors. OK, good advice for beginners, but the first thing I thought of when I read it was “duh!”.

    Digg is not bad for traffic I get a lot from Digg. Something like 100-200 per day. But then Blogging India is just a start up blog, with as little as 1 month of blogging, and that too, extremely irregular, owing to my extremely busy time schedule till April 21st… Once I’m in the mainstream (i.e. a bit of experience and a bunch or regular readers) then I expect to receive atleast 750+ visitors from digg every 2 days(thats when I do a really good post. I do a good post, and the next day, its all real boring dull stuff ).

PPC Campaigns - If you honestly expect to make all your traffic only via linkbacks and search engine results then chances are your traffic will never increase. This is only meant for those who are looking at monetizing their sites. You have to spend something {anything} to make something – universal law of economics.

    Well, kind of true. But I wouldnt count too much on it… It might turn out to be absolutely rubbish…

    I’ll add more of my own suggestions to PART II of this post, which I’ll post today, tomorrow, or the day after. Ali, if you’re reading this, great post dude! Thanks!
[tags]increase traffic, blogging tips, more traffic, less traffic days, blog traffic, traffic[/tags]

Hey all,
    I checked my mail today after a period of around 3 days. While sorting through the 116 various mails(yes, fortunately the mail torrents have been low for a while now), I came across one which said -

I was wondering if you could possibly explain how and what and how to
use: blogrolls, RSS feed, pagerank and dmoz to me. This is in reply to
your post about how to get more visitors to a weblog.

    Thus, I checked out my post at Blogging India, and saw that to a beginner, it would be absolutely useless. So I thought about explaining these terms to Eric, who sent me this mail…

BLOGROLLS
There are 4 basic points about a blogroll -

• You indicate what kind of blogs you like to read, and thus, people get to evaluate your interests with theirs
• You will get incoming readers from other blogs which have you in their blogroll
• Your Google Page Rank increases, thus giving you higher placing in Google Search and Google Blog Search
• Your Alexa ranking increases, which MIGHT bring you SOME traffic, but basically useless

    To maintain a blogroll is quite easy. There are many websites which offer you scripts to maintain a blogroll. For eg : Blog Rolling. In Blogger, you could add the links yourself, by editing the code. In Wordpress, theres the “Links” feature in built, just visit the Admin panel. In Typepad too, the Links feature is in built.

    So its quite easy to maintain a blogroll. Now how to get links, and how to link… Google for blogs with similar topics as your blog. Use Technorati, Wikipedia, Google Blog Search and other search services to find similar blogs. Send a mail to the author, or comment on the blog, get to know the author better, and then, ask him for a link exchange. Similarly, you can add links on YOUR website on sites which YOU read regularly.

    You could also review a good blog on your blog, and if the blogger you reviewed is somewhat sensible, he’ll see the back link, and link to your blog.

    Thats it about Blogrolls… In the coming days I’ll post more on RSS, PageRank and DMOZ.

    But in a nutshell, RSS is for people who like use software to check out updated content, or to read many articles using a single feed aggregator. Thus, RSS brings in more readers. So does blogrolls. PageRank is the Google technology for site priority during searches. The higher your PR, the better placed you are. Thus, Google PR gives you more traffic, as well as increase ratings for advertisers. DMOZ is a open directory project, which indexes all submitted sites. A listing in DMOZ will increase your overall site rankings, indirectly bringing in more traffic and money.

    More to come on these topics in the coming days… Until then, Aloha!
[tags]blogrolls, RSS, Pagerank, PR, DMOZ, significance, traffic, blogs[/tags]

Hey all,
    Guess who the world’s oldest blogger is? Its a 107 year old grandma by the name Olive Riley! Living in Queensland, Australia, Olive Riley maintains her blog, which she calls a “blob”, named The Life of Riley.

    Olive Riley says that she has seen a lot in her 107 years of life. She’s feeding her blog with notable and memorable events which she remembers from her century+7 year old life. Among the stories she’s shared are memories of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (she was there), and stories of her time on a station near Muttaburra in the 1930s.

    Its so nice and sweet to see these good grandmas blogging It keeps us young folk inspired and eager to see more to it! Cheerios Olive! And please do keep blogging

    Oh, and I got the word from 2 sites simultaneously – ABC and BloggersBlog.

[tags]olive riley, all about riley, the life of riley, granda, blogging, worlds oldest blogger, 107 years[/tags]

Hi all,
    The first ever Consumer Generated Marketing enterprise, PayPerPost, tried to pull off its best ever joke on April Fools Day, yesterday. In an unprecedented move, Ted Murphy, CEO of PayPerPost typed in an article to the PayPerPost Blog with the title ” PayPerPost to Acquire TechCrunch”.

    TechCrunch, as you all know, is one among the top 5 blogs in the world. Its author, Michael Arrington, is a VERY well known figure in the blogosphere, and yes, Arrington was PayPerPost’s No.2 critic right from the start (The No.1 being Scoble ).

    I dare say that many “posties” must have believed this story on the blog, and must have rushed in their congratulations to Ted on having acquired one of the world’s most populous blogs, and for beating their critic to boot, only to have received a cheery “April Fool!” in return

    The post went on like this -

Sunday, April 01, 2007

PayPerPost to Acquire TechCrunch

I am pleased to announce that late last night Mike Arrington and I came to an agreement whereby PayPerPost will acquire TechCrunch
and all related “Crunch” properties. I am well aware of the irony of
this situation given Mikes comments about PayPerPost in the past. This
comes on the heels of TechCrunch’s acquisition of FuckedCompany, which
was already in progress and will be part of the deal. Through it all we
have been able to come to an agreement whereby Mike will continue to
run the Crunch sites but PayPerPost will be able to leverage the site
for its advertisers. As a result of this merger, we will soon be
launching a new “PayPerCrunch”
feature, whereby Advertisers will be able, at our customarily low
prices, to leverage the journalistic talents of Mr Arrington and his
staff to fully promote our customers products and services.

Mike and I are now BFFs, don’t be surprised if you start seeing pictures of us partying together in Vegas.

    This came as quite a shock, since Ted and Arrington were daggers drawn ever since the dawn of PayPerPost. But its like a “kick in the ass” for Arrington, who must have been shocked out of his wits when he say his worst enemy proclaiming that they had procured his beloved!

    I guess that the shock is yet to sink in, since the particular blog post has only around 5 comments! I’m waiting to see what happens when the message sinks in But anyway, GREAT JOB TED!

[tags]techcrunch, payperpost, acquired, april, fools, consumer, generated, marketing[/tags]

Hi all,
    Got this cool new tool from Weblog Tools Colletion. China, the most populous country in the world, with over 1.5 billion in population, is also the country in the world where the most number of websites are banned!

    The Chinese might ban you if your site has porn, or promotes hate against China, or any other damned reason they might feel like. And you might be stuck up with absolutely no clue whether your site is available in China, or not.

    Yeah, I know… So maybe thats why The Great Firewall Of China was formed! This online tool lets you decipher whether your site is available in China, or if you are banned. If you’re not banned, cheers, join the club. If you ARE banned, well, sorry dude, better contact your nearest Chinese embassy!

    I know what you’re wondering… No, Blogging India is NOT banned in China Atleast, not yet…

[tags]china, blog, blogging, banned, websites, great, firewall, test[/tags]

Hey all,
    In a *HOT* event today, it has been reported than John McCain, the presidential hopeful, had a MySpace page, which used a template designed by Newsvine CEO, Mike Davidson. Davidson, mad that the presidential hopeful had hot linked the images from his site, played a prank, by changing an image to pronounce -

Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full
support of gay marriage…particularly marriage between two passionate
females.

    The full news was reported by Arrington TechCrunch which, I must say, produced quite a few giggles as it spread across the Digg net The post posted at TechCrunch(http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-page-hacked/) went on like this -

Someone on Presidential hopeful John McCain’s staff is going to be
in trouble today. They used a well known template to create his Myspace page. The template was designed by Newsvine Founder and CEO Mike Davidson (original template is here).
Davidson gave the template code away to anyone who wanted to use it,
but asked that he be given credit when it was used, and told users to
host their own image files.

McCain’s staff used his template, but didn’t give Davidson credit.
Worse, he says, they use images that are on his server, meaning he has
to pay for the bandwidth used from page views on McCain’s site.

Davidson decided to play a small prank on the campaign this morning
as retribution. Since he’s in control of some of the images on the
site, he replaced one that shows contact information with a statement:

Today I announce that I have reversed my position and
come out in full support of gay marriage…particularly marriage between
two passionate females.

The story is also up at Newsvine here. This reminds me of a similar situation when Microsoft used an image hosted on Flickr on one of its blogs without the permission
of the owner, Niall Kennedy. Niall replaced the picture with a
pornographic image, which was then published on the blog. His idea was
to send a message to Microsoft on the importance of respecting
licensing of IP, although some people thought it was childish.

McCain’s MySpace page is significantly higher profile than the
Microsoft blog, and Davidson isn’t posting pornography to the site.
He’s making a political statement while also sending a message about
respecting the property rights of others. I expect the changes to be
reversed quickly, unless the wrong person is sick or out to lunch
today. Either way, we’ve captured it above.

    Interesting isnt it? I would like to see McCain’s reaction to this
[tags]John, McCain, MySpace, hacked, newsvine, davidson, prank, hotlinking, template, enhanced[/tags]

Heyya, I am the Tech guy on Blogging India . Be sure to stay in touch for my posts !