Sunday, October 12th, 2008
This is a follow up post to my previous posts about my friend’s Google ranking drop. As you may remember, his Google ranking was restored a few weeks after he blocked the proxy website from copying his entire website and submitted a Google reinclusion request. As you may have guessed, he was quite thrilled to see his SERP ranking shoot up again.
Well, as luck would have it, I received a phone call last night from my friend telling me that his website was bombing again. I Googled his favorite keywords and they seemed to rank fine over at my end, but he explained that he traffic stats from Google was flat. They nosedived a day or two ago. I chalked up the results I was getting to Google adjusting the results.
This new twist got me thinking. What in the world could be making this website’s ranking bounce around like this? Looking back, the proxy website may not have been 100% at fault. There has to be something else.
I began doing a little research and learned about few things about duplicate content. The reason I looked at that particular area is because there is absolutely nothing else I can find wrong with this website. Duplicate content seems to be a rather popular culprit.
I came across a pretty well laid out website called “Google Rankings Diagnostics” that describes a whole heck of a lot of issues you might be having with your website. This website validated what I pretty much already knew…that if you have multiple URLs (on a domain) with the same exact content, Google has trouble figuring out which page is the original and may throw all of them out.
I took a very close look at my friend’s website. Again, I took a unique line of text from his homepage and searched for it in Google (inside quotes). A funny thing happened. I saw the homepage result, but there were a few extra results as well, all on his domain. There were about 5 extra pages in total.
Now, some of these extra results have been there for years, so I don’t attribute the issue to those pages being duplicate content. What struck me was one of the extra pages.
A few months ago, my friend moved one of his pages. He put a 301 redirect in his .htaccess file, which was the correct thing to do. So now, the old directory where the page was held forwarded to a new page. It looked something like this:
Redirect 301 /olddirectory/ http://www.hiswebsite.com/newpage.php
The redirect worked fine, but here is what that extra page in the search results looked like:
http://www.hiswebsite.com/newpage.phpoldpage.php
Guess what page was showing at that URL…yup, the homepage. The dynamic nature of his website sends unknown page results like this to the homepage. This was a fluke. My friend forgot that there were pages inside the old directory he redirected to the new page. Every old page in that old directory was tacked on to the new page, like you see above. To make matters worse, there were a bunch of links from other websites pointing to the old pages in the old directory.
I am not sure if this would cause the ranking drops that he is experiencing, but the timing certainly lines up with when the issue began. It is also certainly considered duplicate content.
So, here is what I did to deal with the issue this time. I deleted the redirects in the .htaccess file and blocked the URLs of all those extra results in the robots.txt file. Hopefully, this will tell Google to not spider or index those pages and it will also tell Google that those links into the site are dead.
Now, we have to wait. I am not going to submit another reinclusion request to Google because I want to see if the ranking returns naturally. If it does, this was the problem for sure.
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Sunday, September 21st, 2008
I have often wondered if there is some grand resource out there for those of us who are interested in internet traffic trends by industry. It would also be helpful if this data were returned to me chronologically. Daily would be ideal.
If you run your own websites as part, or all, of your business, internet traffic trends are of great concern to you. Some days, your websites seem to be over performing. This is great and it’s very easy to get used to. The entrepreneurial spirit in you goes into hyper-drive. Well, what goes up, must come down. The only problem is, on the internet, there are way too many variables that dictate website success to ignore any “downturn” in website performance. If there was just a way to gauge whether it’s the industry as a whole that has taken a downturn or if it’s just your one website.
Personally, I have seen rather predictable ups and downs in traffic. I remember back over the Summer, during the holidays. On July fourth, web traffic was anemic, only to have an upswing shortly thereafter. I suppose you could just let your website be and hope for the best, but any business owner worth his/her salt isn’t going to sit idly by and watch outside forces play such a strong role.
I think the type of information I am talking about is available over at ComScore, but I believe you must pay for that. I suppose I could trot over to Alexa and type in one of my competitor’s URLs to see how their traffic has fared during the past few weeks, but Alexa’s website traffic stats are notoriously unreliable. They are built upon the Alexa toolbar, which is geared much more towards some groups of internet users, rather than others. Let’s just say that computer geeks gravitate towards the Alexa toolbar, but soccer moms don’t. Tech website traffic is going to look a heck of a lot higher than pottery websites. There may some value in the site across industries though, since those Alexa toolbar people would visit various types of similar websites.
I will continue to look for an answer to this little issue I am having, but in the meantime, if you know of any industry based traffic trend sources, please post a comment.
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Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
Do you remember my article from yesterday about the sudden drop in Google search ranking for my friend’s website? Well, I just can’t stop thinking about it.
From what I have been reading, it seems as though my conclusion may be correct. At least I am hoping it is. If I ever conclude anything semi-concrete while thinking about Google, it’s a good day for me.
Ok, I found this very helpful and thorough website that pretty much described the exact problem my friend is having. It’s titled “Google Proxy Hijacking” and tells the whole story.
Here is what struck me as I think about this some more.
- My friend’s website has been live since 2004.
- The site seemed to be in the Google sandbox for the entire 4 years.
- For his most competitive keywords, he was ranking past page 20 on Google.
- About two months ago, he made some changes to the homepage copy as well as an HTML overhaul.
- About a month after that, the site ranked number 3 for his most competitive keywords.
- The site ranked on page 1 of Google for about a month.
- The site now sits at page 25 for its most competitive keywords.
Here is my theory. I think the website has been proxy hijacked for a number of years. This is what caused the poor rankings for such a long time. When the homepage text and HTML changes were made about 2 months ago, Google visited the site and found it unique. Google ranked the site well, due to this new unique content. During the month, Google noticed the proxy website was now a duplicate of my friend’s website once again and dropped the website’s ranking.
Does that make sense? From what I read on the website I linked to, it does.
Here are the similarities with what we are experiencing and what the author wrote on the other website:
- My friend’s website has never been banned.
- We did a quoted Google search for supposedly unique content on my friend’s website and a proxy website showed in the search results.
- The proxy URL looked like this: proxysite.com/cgi-bin/pxy/nph-pxy.pl/000010A/http/www.friendssite.com/
- The proxy site was an exact duplicate of my friend’s website.
Now, I am not sure if this is what caused my friends ranking to drop, but all the factors are there. The keywords we are talking about are very competitive, but the fact that his site showed so well in the search results for a month shows me that the potential is there.
I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
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Sunday, July 20th, 2008
I decided that today would be a good day to start configuring Joomla.
I logged in and began at the “Site” section of the Global Configuration area. I took a quick look and noticed that there wasn’t all that much to configure. Here is what I did:
- Changed the editor from Tiny MCE 2.0 to no editor. I don’t like giving others access to HTML on my sites.
- Changed the Global Site Meta Description to Fiixer. (Just a fill in word to get rid of Joomla)
- Changed the Global Site Meta Keywords to fiixer.
- Switched the Search Engine Friendly URLs and Use Apache mod_rewrite from no to yes. Search engine friendly URLs using Apache mod_rewrite is pretty simple if your server and system support it. Some people say doing this enhances your website’s indexing and ranking in search engines. Basically, it changes “index.php?a=aboutus&b=andaboutyou” to “index/aboutus/aboutyou.” It’s cleaner and gives your visitors a chance to remember your URLs. It’s up to you if it’s worth it.
Joomla 1.5 Global Configuration page.
Next, I visited the “System” section of the Global Configuration area. In this section, I mostly kept everything set as it came, but did change two areas:
- Changed the New User Registration Type to “Author.” (I think this gives the registered members the ability to submit articles and web links, but they must be approved by an administrator)
- Turned Cache on. (speeds up page loads on heavy traffic sites)
In the “Server” section of the Global Configuration, I left everything alone.
Ok, that was fairly painless.
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Friday, July 18th, 2008
Ok, so on to the installation of Joomla 1.5.
Before I did anything, I bought a domain name and pointed it to my server. That is basic stuff. I set the domain up on my server and created a mysql database for this application. That’s more basic stuff.
After that was all good to go and the domain resolved to the server, I went over to Joomla for the latest download, which happens to be version 1.5.4. I clicked the link in the left navigation column and downloaded the “Joomla_1.5.4-Stable-Full_Package.zip” file and saved it to my desktop. I unpacked the zip file and placed the contents of it in my website folder. Since I already had the FTP account set up on my server, I uploaded to contents of my website folder to my server. Here is a word of warning…there are almost 4,000 files. If your host has file limitations, you should find out what they are. Since I have a dedicated server, I am not worried about that. Also, remember that your database is still empty. That will be populated during the install.
After all the files were uploaded, I headed back over to Joomla and clicked on the “New Installation” link about half way down their homepage. Since I am familiar with these types of installations, I skipped past all the upper links and clicked right on “Installation.”
Apparently, there are two different types of installs…one being the web browser method and the other being the manual install. In this case, I did the web browser installation.
In my case, I am did a remote installation to the domain root directory. I did not use a sub-domain, a local install or install the package in a sub-directory. If you would like to, there are instructions on how to go about this on the Joomla website (the same instructions I am using). Basically, you have to visit your domain and, if you have done everything correctly so far, you should see the first Joomla installation screen.
The first screen asks you to choose your language. Simple enough. Since I speak English, I kept the default “English” setting and hit the “Next” button.
The next screen checks the server to see if everything is set correctly and if Joomla is able to utilize it’s resources. In my case, everything checked out fine, but I was told that the “configuration.php” was not writable. After reading the instructions, I found out that this is a regular occurance. I actually didn’t see a “configuration.php” file. I clicked to the “Common Issues & Error Handling” page and read about it. The page gave a few options:
* Do a manual installation
* Create a completely empty file, name it as configuration.php and upload it to your joomla_root/ directory before commencing the installation. Joomla! will then enter the details as the installation proceeds as normal.
* Wait until the end of the installation when at Step 7 the Finished Screen is displayed a list of the variables and settings for the configuration.php file will be displayed. These should then be copied and pasted into a new text document and saved as configuration.php
* As with the last suggestion wait until the end and using the information provided in Step7 manually alter the content of the configuration.php-dist file (this is simply an example file and not a part of the functioning installation) included with all Joomla! installations. There is clearly a greater chance with this method of making mistakes so greater care should be taken. Once the variables have been correctly edited, change the name of this file and save it as configuration.php
I decided to go with creating an empty file named, “configuration.php” and upload it to the root directory. I also chmod the file to 777.
This time, everything checked out, so I clicked the “Next” button.
The next screen is nothing but the license agreement. I read the entire thing and understood it. Then, I clicked the “Next” button.
The next screen is the database configuration. Remember that empty database you have sitting there? Well, you have to fill in the required information.
I entered the information and clicked the “Next” button.
The next screen is the FTP configuration. This is the first time I have come across something like this, but I filled in the FTP information. They suggest to create a local FTP account and not use one that can control the entire server.
Since I am getting slow in my old age, I placed in the FTP username and password and then clicked the autofind path button. That worked and filled in the path automatically.
The next screen is the main configuration. I placed in the main (Super Administrator) email address and password. Then, I clicked the “Install Sample Data” button. I was told that the sample data imported properly.
A word of warning: My first attempt at installing this application gave me an error message that read, “Error: the XML response that was returned from the server is invalid.” on the FTP page and when I tried to install the sample data on the main configuration page. The reason for this had to do with the “configuration.php” file. I needed to upload one and set the permissions correctly. After I did that, I was able to pass those pages. You can read more about the issue here.
The last page looked like this…
Basically, the page gives you the option to view your site or log in to the admin section. I always like to log in to the admin section so I can get the URL. Also, the system says to delete the entire “installation” directory. Lastly, I like to download the now populated config file for backup.
To log in to the admin area, the username is “admin.” Obviously, you should change this.
You can take a look at the site I just set up at http://www.fiixer.com. Next up, configuring and customizing Joomla. Ye haw.
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Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
I run a bunch of servers for my business. One server, in particular, is better and more advanced than the others. Well, the server isn’t more advanced, the software installed on it is. On that server, I am running Plesk, which I have learned is fantastic.
I recently began automating many of my more boring tasks by using cron jobs. A “cron is driven by a crontab, a configuration file that specifies shell commands to run periodically on a given schedule.” Basically, if you have an application that needs to run on a schedule and is capable of being triggered by a cron job, using this feature can be a real time saver.
One of the reasons I didn’t start using this nice little feature sooner is because I had no idea how to set it up through SSH. When I got the new server with Plesk installed on it, setup became very easy. I Just used the “Scheduled Task” feature and it was all done.
Well, that’s all fine and dandy for the capable applications on the server running Plesk, but what about the other servers not running Plesk? I would still have to setup the cronjobs using SSH. Believe it or not, I have been avoiding setting up those jobs to this day. Just a bit of background…these jobs only need to run every few days or so. What I am about to suggest is not really suitable for jobs that need to run every few minutes.
Last night, I started fooling around with “Windows Scheduler.” The link I just gave you is for XP…the information I am going to give you below is for Vista. I am sure you will get the gist. Windows Scheduler is a great feature similar to cron that is installed on your own computer, not the server where your website is being hosted, but does something very similar. It automates those boring tasks that you and I would forget about very easily.
So, how do you run a cronjob with Windows Scheduler? If your cron enabled application has a file that needs to be visited (usually something like cron.php, or something along those lines), it’s quite simple. All you need to do is tell your personal computer to wake up, open a browser and visit that page. Here is how you do it:
The first thing you want to do is to open your control panel and click on “System and Maintenance.”
Then, on the next page, click “Scheduled Tasks.”
After you click that, you will be brought to the Task Scheduler screen. It’s a new window. I am going to go over how I set up a new task this morning. As I said above, all I wanted to do was to have a browser window open and automatically have it visit a particular URL.
The first thing I did was to click on the “Task Scheduler Library” and then on “Create Basic Task.” The Task Scheduler Library is where I am going to store these tasks.
After you click “Create Basic Task,” a window will open with space for you to describe your new task.
Fill in the information so it’s recognizable to you. Then, click next (down at the bottom). The next window is going to ask you when you want your task to run.
I set it to “Daily.” On the next screen, you can adjust it.
On this screen, you can describe more about your daily task, such as start date, time and frequency. I set mine to every other day (a 2 in the recur every: box).
This screen asks you what action you want to perform. As I said above, I wanted to open a browser, so I click the “Start a Program” button.
Here’s is the trickiest part. On the next screen, you have to choose which program and what additional arguments.
In the “Program/script” box, I browsed to open Firefox, which in this case gave me this path, “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe.” In the “Add Arguments” box, I put the URL of my cron file, such as “http://www.mywebsite.com/cron.php.”
In the final screen, you are offered a summary of what you filled in. I like the check off the “Open properties” box for some extra steps I needed to take. Click “Finish.”
The last few items are quite simple, so I won’t offer screen shots for them. When the Properties box opens up, click the “Conditions” tab up top. Since my computer goes into sleep mode after a half hour of non use, I want to wake it up to preform the task, so I click the “Wake computer” check box. Then, I click the “Settings” tab up top. In case the task is missed for some reason, I click the “Run task as soon as possible…” check box and the “If the task fails, restart every:” check box. You can put your own values in there.
When you are finished, hit “OK” and see how it goes. I tried this with a specific time when the computer was in use and it had no problems. I haven’t tried it when the computer was in sleep mode, so we’ll see what happens. Give it a shot and let me know your results.
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