When they say: “You will never find anyone better than me!”
I tend to respond with, “Give me ten minutes and I will show you at least a dozen people whose work is much better than yours. The only reason we are talking now is because their work is so good, they are not for hire.” (more…)

Hat tip to my mother-in-law!

When you see LinkSys advertisements delivered by Google on posts such as the one I wrote about NASCAR, it makes you think something has to be off with their contextual analysis of my pages.

I thought Google contextually delivers advertisements based on the copy of the page. It appears (hat tip to Jen) Google may have decided my entire domain’s theme is about LinkSys Routers, thus serving ads on every shandyking.com page about linksys.

Why?

A theory: Back in February one of my posts was dugg and it made it to diggs home page. (Thanks Chris). This post was about linksys routers and the digg effect was so strong I’ve been ranking in the top 15 on Google for the term “linksys”.

But!

My blog really has nothing to do with LinkSys. Yes, that one post was about the topic of routers and perhaps this post could qualify as well since I am using the terms Linksys, but ask any of my 3 loyal readers and they will tell you my blog’s theme is certainly not about linksys routers. It’s a blog about nothing…

Now What…

Google, fix it or tell me what to do. Contextually serve ads based on the content of my pages. And if you are, then I would like to know how to fix it because at the end of the day these advertisements are not targeting the right audience.

The MySpace portal bores me and I really never use it. Not to mention it’s just riddled with spam. Currently I am on Facebook along with many of my friends.

I am really enjoying the social networking aspect of Facebook and I see a lot of potential for small businesses to jump in. I really love the cliques that are forming such as Web 2.0 (Entrepreneurs)

Currently I have it set where we need to actually know each other for you to access my profile. I do this for two reasons,

1. Not to be an ass but if I have no idea who you are then reading updates about you is a real waste of my time.

2. I was not selective with whom I befriended on Myspace. Perhaps this, along with reason #1 was why I got so bored with it. I figure if I keep my social network tight with Facebook I maybe more likely to engage myself.

I do not think Myspace is dead. I know a few people who are in the music industry and they do quite well with it. In fact, some labels will ask to see an artists Myspace page before seriously talking with the managers.

I am in need of a web programmer who has solid PHP programming experience to help maintain and grow two existing websites. It is preferred candidate lives in or around the Los Angeles, CA area but it is not mandatory.

• 4 + years experience in development/programming
• Understanding of coding and design as it relates to the Web in terms of the required technical specifications and limitations
• 3+ Years PHP programming experience
• Demonstrated ability using Unix/Linux
• Experience with Wordpress
• Experience with front-end technologies such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
• Stable work history and an ability to collaborate effectively
• 3+ years of web related development and support using Apache,
  PHP 4/5, MySQL 4/5
• Strong understanding of CSS/HTML standards and cross browser compatibility
• Database scheme design experience
• Ability to communicate with both staff and designers
• Self-motivator and good attitude
• Willingness to learn and apply new technologies as needed
• Must be able to handle a multiple assignments simultaneously.

If you feel that you are qualified and wish to apply, please send your resume along with links to three working websites that you contributed to. Please provide details on the work you performed and the type of programming used on each site.

Email: jobs at shandyking.com

Anyone who is in business should read this post.

The other day I wrote Google: Please Fix Local Business Center, a personal message from me to Google to do just that.

Later in the day I was talking with a buddy on the phone and he mentioned he read that post and he half jokingly ask, “Dude, do you actually think Google reads your blog?”

My response to him was a resounding “Yes!”

I then went on to explain

It is not per say that I think someone at Google has me on their RSS reader or that they are actively reading ShandyKing on a daily basis. Although I think it would be nice if they did.

What I do expect is for the folks who work on Local Business Center to keep an eye out on the internet for anyone who mentions their product. The easiest way for them to do that is to go to visit Google Blog Search and do a query for their own product, in this case Local Business Center.

If you did that you would see my latest post shows up at the very top of the results. As time passes it will be pushed down further and further.

When logging into my Blog today I saw an Incoming Link from Search Engine Land on their SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 2, 2007. If you scrolled down you would see a link to this post under Local, Maps and Mobile.

This Incoming Link validates my point. I suspect the writers of Search Engine Land are on the lookout for content related to Google and they found my post.

My point relates to any business. Everyday businesses should be looking for any content people might have written about them. This is the fastest way to receive feedback from a live marketplace and provide an immediate response showing the world the business is an active part of the community and that they care.

I quickly made my point to my buddy

When I wrote that post I did not care if someone at Google subscribed to my Blog. I just know with enough time that post will make its way to the right people. Assuming of course they care, which I know they do.

Update: 8/6/2007

Google responds to this post via a comment by Matt Cutts. Looks like they are paying attention!

If anyone who works on the Google Local Business Center is reading this, there are issues. For some reason your maps are saying they can not locate the address that is being entered, even though I can see it with maps.google.com.

Then when trying again the LBC map displays the business location on the map but the same error appears saying it can not find the business.

With Wordpress we can extend roles and capabilities to selected users. This feature of WP is highly useful when you have multiple people managing your Blog for you.

Summary of Roles

• Administrator - Somebody who has access to all the administration features
• Editor - Somebody who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.
• Author - Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor - Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts
• Subscriber - Somebody who can read comments/comment/receive news letters, etc.

Unfortunately I have come across a situation where there is one of two features of one role that are needed but I really want to limit any extended privileges.

Such is the case where I want a user to have the ability to add / post and edit as well as be a moderator for all comments. The role of an Author fills almost all my needs but lacks the moderation ability. You have to have higher permissions to Moderate.

Now I could easily set the user to the role of an Editor but when doing so we found out this enables access to few custom plugin’s that are critical to the site. Although we could train the user to not touch that area it is highly preferred we limit access to it all together.

After doing a quick search I have found Role Manager which allows me to customize each role using a graphical interface. In just a few seconds after installing the Plug-in I was able to enable the Moderate Comments Permission in the Authors Role.

If you are running a Blog where multiple users log in, I would recommend installing this plug-in. It really gives you the ability to administrate what your users can and can not do.

I wrote a couple weeks ago Are PHP Session ID’s A Cause for Duplicate Content with Google?

Following that post I got hit with a few friendly IM’s from some Search Engine Gurus telling me that Google handles Session ID’s well and tends to ignore them.

I just launched a new site the other week and I decided to keep session ID’s on just to see what would happen and today when doing a site:domain.com I see Google has indexed my site with session IDs appended to the URL.

I do not yet see multiple pages of the same URL indexed which makes me think no duplicate content but heck, my nice look SEO URLs look so nasty in the SERPs with PHPSESSID=88a2d1d6db61c1d5532423430b7e3e52 appended to end of each URL.

Update: July 22, 2006

I am seeing one of my homepage URL indexed by Google for multiple Session IDs.

With a cup of coffee in hand at six this morning I jump on Google and pecked away at a few of my ranking Keywords for one of my websites.

Doh! I find that the site is no longer ranking.

The site was originally built by another company and barely ranked at all. Upon taking it over I created a new site but had it built in development mode. For shits and giggles I had <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”> set just to insure nothing was crawling the development site and that any new blog posts created in test mode would not get picked up.

Once the site was completed we dumped it into production and we created hundreds of 301 redirects pointing all the old pages to the new pages.

I’ve been using Google’s Webmaster Tools to see how Google views my sites and see that I have been alerted to the fact I have quite a few URLs restricted.

Doh! Doh! Doh!

I took a quick break to figure out what’s going on and I see Vanessa Fox blogging “The first rule of indexing: make sure you’re letting the site be indexed”. As an x-Googler and one of the developers of Google’s Webmaster Tools, I tend to listen to what she has to say.

After reading her post, I slap myself on the forehead and correct the issue.

Thanks Vanessa!