Google Labs - Site Performance

You probably have tracking measures set-up for your website to let you know if it ever goes down. How accurate are these and do they give you information about when your website is running slowly - probably not.

In Google Webmaster there's a little tool that's been in operation for a short while now, it's under 'labs' and it's called 'site performance'. It's basically a nifty bit of kit which lets you see visually (see above) how your site has been performing. It also tells you how your site is performing compared to other sites on the web - that is, is it faster or slower.

I've been complaining for quite some time about the speed of websites, basically I find too many sites too slow, this is usually down to adding too many apis, or poor consolidating of JavaScript and CSS script.

Google bringing in their 'page speed' is a blessing and hopefully it'll shake up the developers who persist in trying to bring web users machines to a staggering halts.

By using the site performance gadget in Webmaster Tools you'll have more ammunition to throw at your web developers when they tell you, you are wrong and that your website runs just fine - be that on their system!

West Penwith

The glorious solitude to be found throughout Cornwall's moorland.

Ping Goat is Not Down

It seemed at first that Ping Goat, the blog pinging service, was down, which would be a real shame.

But it isn't really.

I think they basically got a little fed up with users simply copying and pasting the 'very long' URL, saving this as a bookmark and then once a week giving it a click, without paying any attention to their site - they do have tools!

Therefore you can fortunately still use Ping Goat to ping all your familiar sites: Technorati, Icerocket, weblogs &c. All you need to do is go to:

http://pingoat.net/

Notice it's a .net and not .com site now.

Simply fill in your blog details like you did first time you used this excellent pinging service and hey-presto your blogs just been pinged.

Fetch as Googlebot - Not Just a Gimmick

When I first seen the 'labs' button and 'Fetch as Googlebot' in Webmaster tools, I thought to myself what good is this? I can render pages in SERPs if I need to see if they're working or not - or can I?

By entering the page you want to check and clicking 'Fetch', if your page is available on the net Google will return a green tick and 'success'.











But that's not all - there may be something hidden.

By clicking on the 'success', you get a full blown view of exactly what the Googlebot sees when he visits your page.













Not very interesting if there's nothing to hide, but if something somehow got into your code, which you didn't intentionally put there, well, it could just save you, not only a headache, but also a little time in Google jail.

Val Martello - Number 5

Driving made fun again through the Val Martello.

Yahoo Site Explorer - 'Domain' Changes

Yahoo has always been great for counting the real amount of back-links that point to your website or blog.

It was easy, you simply went to Yahoo search and typed in:

domain:www.YOURWEBSITE.com

But, this has all changed in the last few weeks. No longer is it as easy to ascertain the amount of these useful links. Yes Google has a facility for counting back-links in their Webmaster Tools, but I feel this is a Google selection.

When you are link-building, you need a benchmark to give you a true appraisal of your success and this is where Yahoo stepped in.

But help is at hand, I have a found an URL which does just this job. If you type the following into your address bar:

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=YOURWEBSITE.COM&bwm=i&bwmo=&bwmf=s

Of course replacing the YOURWEBSITE.COM with your own URL.

This link gives you exactly the same results that the previous 'domain' prefix gave.

So get stuck into your link-building and monitor the real results again.

Verisfied & Not Verified in Google Webmaster Tools

Since Google changed its Webmaster Tools interface and all its internal workings I haven't been able to change my preferred domain settings.

That's till today, when I eventually got around to solving the conundrum.

You see previously in Webmaster Tools, once you'd verified your site, that was it, you could go into your settings and chose the domain you prefer: i.e. with the 'www' or without - it's all to do with canonicalisation; meaning you only want Google to index one of your domains and the usual choice is with the 'www'.

Not so of late, because once you chose a different domain preference Webmaster Tools informs you that you first need to verify your site...

Fortunately I've found a solution. To change to your preferred domain within the settings interface, all you need to do is add both of your domains to Webmaster Tools, i.e.:

mywebsite.com
&
www.mywebsite.com

That's it problem solved, go back to settings and make your choice.