Tag: Webmaster Tools

Outbrain – Excellent Related Posts Alternative For LinkWithin and YARPP

Outbrain LogoI have been a big fan or Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) which also can be used to display images in related posts and also has a in-built template to do it now. However, I had to drop YARPP from the site due to it being database intensive. After YARPP, I started using LinkWithin, which provided a good solution to integrate related posts through a third-party service.

LinkWithin Related Posts Problem

After using LinkWithin for a while I wasn’t that happy with the performance and also got complaints from out team about it using advertising images as post images if none existed in the post itself. (Check screenshot above)

Now, I was trying to find a related posts plugin which did not use internal database resources and was really good. That was when I stumbled across Outbrain. Outbrain is an excellent third-party related posts widget, which works pretty well and also provides users with an option to view post click statistics and also make money by placing links to external sites in the related sites widget.

The click-through rate on Outbrain is pretty impressive too and users usually see a click through rate of anywhere between 3-12%. Another good thing about Outbrain widget is that it blends into your website without having to do any CSS manipulations.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Techie Buzz Recommended Software

Outbrain Related posts widget can be used on WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, TypePad and almost any type of website you have using a JavaScript code. The plus point of this widget is that it does not use your database and is perfect for a high traffic site and that is also provides you with easy stats. Oh and yes it also has a recommendation widget using which people can rate your post.

Google Webmaster Tools Rolls Out Better Statistics For Search Queries

If you have visited your Google Webmasters account today, you might notice some significant changes in the way you will see statistics about your website. The new significant change in Google Webmasters is for the search queries, where you will see a new field called impressions and the number of clicks it got.

google_webmasters_impressions

Another significant change in Google Webmasters is the introduction of a Google Analytics style dashboard where you can see the stats and clicks for different search queries that were related to your site.

google_webmasters_search_queries_dashboard

The good thing about the new statistics system is that you can narrow down the queries for different periods or even view statistics for certain days only and then also determine your search and keyword rankings easily. I don’t see any other significant changes with the dashboard other than this, but rest aside, this is something that will definitely be very useful to webmasters. What do you think?

Update: This information is not new and has been available for past two months, apologies for that. You can view more about it at the Official Google Webmasters blog.

New Site Hacked Notifications From Google Webmaster Tools

In a announcement that sounded sweet to my ears, Google Webmaster team has decided to send out messages about hacked or spammy websites to webmasters through Google Webmaster Tools.

Starting this month, Google Webmaster Tools will notify webmasters of potential issues that have detected on websites, including:

  • Spammy or abused user-generated content
  • Abused forum pages or egregious amounts of comment spam
  • Suspected hacking

These notifications can come as a blessing in disguise as not many users are usually aware of infections until Google decides to temporarily remove all the items of a website from the search results.

However, now once a user receives a notification they can address the issues and get rid of the infections immediately, rather than having to send out a consideration request to the Google webmaster team. A sample notification message for compromised websites will look like the image below.

Suspected Hacking Message from Google Webmaster

Bonus Tip

Users can get their Google Webmaster Tools messages delivered to their email address, so that you will get instant updates, rather than having to visit the webmaster console to check your messages.

To receive your webmaster message center notification to your email address, follow the steps given below.

Step 1: Login to Google Webmaster Tools and go to your dashboard.

Forward Google Webmaster Messages

Step 2: In the message section, select Forward to email address, from the dropdown list in the right hand side, and select the language you want to receive your messages in.

That’s it, the next time you receive a new message in your webmaster message center, it will also be forwarded to your email address so that you can check it out without having to visit the webmaster console.

Google, Bing and Yahoo Site Search Bookmarklet

Quite sometime back I wrote and compiled a list of webmaster bookmarklets which would come in pretty handy to webmasters and anyone else who want to get more information about a site. Over a period of time I have created several more bookmarklets which have come in very handy.

Over a discussion at today, I came across a question about searching a site, and based on that I shared a bookmarklet which will allow users to search any website using the site operator in Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Site Search Bookmarklet

Searching with these bookmarklets is pretty easy. When you are on a site and want to search it for something, just click on the bookmarklet for the search engine you want to search content in. Once you do that, you will be prompted to enter the search term. Enter it and click on the Ok button to initiate the site search.

If you are interested, drag any of the links below to your bookmarks bar and click on it whenever you want to search content within a website.

I have tested the bookmarklets on on , Firefox, , Safari and Internet Explorer. Let me know if you run into any trouble while using it.

Note: Site search will always open in a new window or tab, also, clicking on the cancel button does not work properly right now.

Check Feedburner Feed Statistics From Your Desktop

Feedburner is one of the most popular services for publishing RSS feeds and email updates. If you login to your Feedburner account you would be able to view statistics such as clicks, subscribers and so on.

Now, what if you can view all this information from the comfort of your desktop? RSS Feed counter is a desktop application which will display the statistics for any Feedburner feed on your desktop, allowing you to analyze the data without having to visit the Feedburner website.

desktop_feedburner_stats

RSS Feed counter will allow you to fetch the data for any feed, including one’s not owned by you (please see note below). The application works by pulling data from the Awareness API and displaying it to you in a neat format. You can also poll data for a date range, which will then allow you to compare data between different days.

Note: To use this tool, the feed in question will have to have the "Awareness API" enabled. If you want to enable it for your feed, visit Publicize -> Awareness API in your feed dashboard and activate the service.

Techie Buzz Verdict

This tool could be used to quickly analyze data on the desktop and know your feed count, reach and hits. Also the app is a bit rough around the edges, you might need to use the "Clear All" button quite often when you are trying to check on different feeds.

However, the bad thing is that you need to activate the Awareness API, which would then make the data available to your feed to everyone. If you decide to not turn on the Awareness API, this app will do no good to you.

Coming to think of it, it would be great if Feedburner could fine tune the Awareness API, by adding an API key for accessing the data. It would then make more sense, rather than having to make the data public to everyone. Are you reading Feedburner?

Download RSS Feed Counter [via Shout Me Loud]

Google Site Clinic: Get Your Site Checked by Google Search Quality Team

The Google India blog has announced a site clinic for websites, where your site will be checked for the search quality by employees of Google Webmaster team.

google_site_clinic

Selected sites will be personally evaluated by the Google employees and suggestions will be given to users. However, not every submitted site will be selected for the clinic and there will be a selection process where few websites will be chosen to take part in it.

Our team will analyze websites submitted to the clinic. The plan is to offer constructive advice on accessibility and improvements that can lead to better visibility for your website in Google’s search results.

To participate in the Site Clinic organized by Google, visit this form and enter the details of your website. There are some catches too, your site has to be a part of Google Webmasters and should meet Google’s quality guidelines. If your site is not part of Google Webmasters, you can sign up for it here before registering for the shortlist.

The site clinic by the Google search quality team is only restricted to Indian webmasters for now, hopefully they will make it available to worldwide audience soon. 

Photo credit: CNET UK

Pingdom Releases Desktop Website Monitor

Pingdom, one of the best services to monitor website uptime and get instant alerts when it is down, has has released a desktop notifier to complement their web monitoring service and monitor your website uptime from the comfort of your desktop.

pingtom_desktop_uptime

After you install the software, you will be promoted to register a website and create an account with Pingdom. You will shortly receive an email with your password, using which you can access the reports for the website monitoring online.

pingdom_website_uptime_report pingdom_response_times

The Pingdom reports are pretty comprehensive and there are lot of details to browse through. They also provide you with 20 free SMS credits to receive SMS alerts on your cellphone. In addition to that, you can set up reports to be sent to you on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Techie Buzz Verdict

The Pingdom desktop tool is only a extension for the web interface, all the checks actually happens through the web. In addition to that, you can only monitor one website at a time.

The desktop monitor is actually connected to your web account and only monitors whether or not your website is working ok, you will have to visit the website to view the reports for your website.

If you are looking for more options, check out some of our earlier website monitoring tools:

Techie Buzz Ratings: 3.5/5 (Very Good)

Download Pingdom Desktop Notifier

Google Introduces Browser Size to Understand and Improve Content Placement

Google has been introducing several tools to help webmasters out like the speed test for checking your website load time. They have now released a new Google Labs project called Browser Size which will allow you to view your site in different screen resolutions.

To help you understand how everyone sees your website, we created a tool called Browser Size in our 20% time. Browser Size is based on a sample of data from visitors to google.com. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it. For example, if an important button is in the 80% region it means that 20% of users have to scroll in order to see it. If you’re a web designer, you can use Browser Size to redesign your page to minimize scrolling and make sure that the important parts of the page are always prominent to your audience. We hope people will use this tool to make their websites better, in turn making the web better for everyone.

Browser Size allows users to view their websites behind a ruler which shows different percentage areas. According to the data collected by Google, the content appearing with the 80% area is more visible to the users and may lead to more actions from the users.

techie_buzz_google_browser_size

The tool definitely looks interesting and come in handy to webmasters to decide on placement of important content and links on their websites.

For more info on the Browser Size project visit the Official Google post and the Google Code post on Browser Size.

Discuss on Techmeme

Google Webmasters Launches Site Performance to Measure Website Load Time

Have you ever wondered how fast your website loads? We have already told you about few tools including Page Speed, a tool created by Google. Now, Google Webmaster Tools has released a new tool in their Labs called “Site performance”, which will show you the website load time for your blog or website.

website-performance

Google Site Performance displays the performance for your site, which includes the page load times along with suggestions to improve the performance of your site. This can come in very handy when you want to find ways to speed up your website and make it load faster.

Some of the suggestions provided by webmaster tools are very easy to implement, however some may require major changes. Nevertheless, this is a very good and important introduction, since webmasters can now focus on improving the experience for their users.

What do you think of this new introduction? Do let us know through your comments.

Related Webmaster Tools worth Looking at:

How fast is your site? [Google Webmaster Blog]

Check If Your Site is Indexed by Google

Many new bloggers are usually very concerned about being indexed by Google and try various means to check if a site has been indexed by Google or not.

site_indexed_by_google

There are few ways in which you can do it, one is using the site operator to search Google, for example site:techie-buzz.com. Indexed by Google is a dedicated site which tells you whether or not a certain site is indexed by Google. Just enter your URL and it will display a simple Yes or No Answer for your query.

Indexed By Google? [via Tech Spikes]