No point

Well there isnt is there

IE6 is rubbish but that's no reason to be rude

I choose to utilize my right to refuse you access to my site.

As an internet 6 user you are abiding by no rules and complying with no internet standards. This may mean nothing to you but to us developers we are deeply annoyed by both the existence and use of Internet Explorer 6.

You personally are responsible for wasting hours and hours of useful and expensive time. Because of people like you we will be forced to accept a lower quality of internet... bla bla bla

What a load of pompous, self righteous twaddle.

Yeah I hate Internet Explorer 6; yeah sure it wastes a lot of time.

But since when are there internet rules? since when have css standards become compulsory for the whole population? Since when have they become an excuse for rudeness to ordinary people who quite understandably know and care nothing about us developers or how deeply annoyed we may be.

Ironic that I encountered this message on http://damienhowley.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/ie6-hack-replacing-clearboth/ when browsing for a solution that might work to get divs to clear properly in IE6. This was for a client website for whom 20% of the visitors use Internet Explorer 6, a statistic that varies little across all my clients' sites.

So much though I would like dump IE6, it's not really an option if I want to do a decent job for clients.

Or maybe it is. Maybe by even trying to make a site work in IE6 I too am personally responsible for wasting hours and hours... and forcing the world... and generally lots of very evil things - regardless of my clients' wants.

Maybe my axxx (uk spelling).

Can you think of another industry where the practitioners are so up their own axxxs that they insult users in such self-righteous terms simply because they are using an old fashioned product?

Postscript: The solution offered in the article for clearing elements in IE6 didn't work either. Not that I am blaming the author for that. IE6 is a nightmare with floated layouts and sorting them out is a horrible long process of trial and error and a complete time-hog.

For the record, what worked for me to clear floated h2s in IE6 was to set css float to none and css display to block.

Is Google just pretending?

Interesting.

In the most competitive of the small UK niches I compete in for Google success, the top keyword is ruled by a website with an almost exclusively paid-for backlink profile.

There are a few directory links. And some puff on article sites. But not, as far as I can see, a single organically generated backlink. Not surprising really. The site is merely one of several too expensive directories that serve the niche and it isn't even the best.

Now Google hates link buying. I know because it keeps telling us so. No matter. Despite the exclusively grey hat tactics, this website sits on top of Google and has done for months.

I've known about this for ages. But I assumed buying links worked here only because this is a tiny niche in the UK, not worthy of proper scrutiny from the big G.

But if you think about it, that doesn't make sense.

An algorithm is an algorithm. It doesn't work harder when a keyword is popular. It detects. Or it doesn't. And I'm beginning to think the Google algorithm isn't all Google cracks it up to be when it comes to bought links, irrelavent links and generally spammy linkbuilding tactics.

And today, I came across two blog posts today that seemed to back up my view.

The first was from the We Build Pages blog. Links for Sale – PR9 Links only $300 / Month! pokes fun at link sellers, but admits along the way that a customer was complaining how all of his competitors are buying links and kicking his ass for some key phrases.

Tell me about it.

The other post - Proof Anchor Text Links From Unrelated Sites Are GOLD Too - is from the Hobo blog.

The title says it all. Shaun Anderson looks at the seo vertical and concludes that unrelated links, for all the Google seo bollocks about relevance, work just fine for a Google push.

I couldn't agree more with both posts.

And I got to thinking - maybe Google has been quite knowingly putting the frighteners on us white hats for the last few years.

Making us work hard to build good content in pursuit of supposedly extra-valuable natural links. Making us police ourselves because really, it's too hard to algorithmically detect many kinds of bought links; and too complicated to differentiate between good backlinks from irrelevent sites and bad ones.

Whatever, I think I'm going to get a little greyer. Because it really is beginning to look like it is the quickest and - given the time it takes to generate and promote good content - the cheapest way to get results.

Authority and Trust on the Internet

OK so a client introduced some new products. I put them on its website. So I found a relevant blog with a suggestion form and suggested that the new products were of interest.

Wonder of wonders, the blog posted about one of the products.

And then to give his post a bit of a boost, the blogger favourited it on the mindless useful comparison shopping site Stylehive. Three other people favourited it, one of them being me.

So which of the three write ups of the item does Google choose to list on the first page of its results for the brand name of the manufacturer?

The website with details of the product? The blog with an opinion about it? Or the flotsam on Stylehive?

Yeah you guessed it - it was the flotsam. Because Stylehive has got the authority and the trust.

Now I'm not that bothered for the client. It's got some good rankings for the brand name plus product type and is getting fair traffic.

But really, why would anyone care what the morons eager comparison shoppers on Stylehive are clicking on. Most of them are only promoting themselves anyway. Or saving the products of their friends who are also promoting themselves.

I know there is no point in moaning. Best to just do what you need to get the results.

But I just can't help... I mean... Stylehive? C'mon Google find a better way to measure user sentiment please.

The BBC is better than Twitter

Is mainstream media even relevant anymore? Twas funny watching the BBC fall over themselves looking for credible sources - Twitter knew..."

What? I mean really what?

Twitter didn't fucking know that Michael Jackson had died. Twitter just guessed, like everybody else.

And the BBC wasn't falling over themselves. They were doing what they have to do, which is not go on hearsay, but make sure they have got it right.

And as for mainstream media no longer being relevant...

Say I want to find out about something. Not breaking news. Not what people are wittering talking about in the last hour/day/week. I mean really know about something. And it doesn't involve seo or making money on the internet.

Obviously, I wouldn't consider Twitter. Or Digg. Or even blogs. How do I know which blog is any good?

I would go the the BBC website. Or read a newspaper. Obviously.

Actually, I didn't even trust Twitter to tell me Michael Jackson was dead. It wasn't until I saw the news confirmed by the LA Times that I was sure it was true.

I just hope the mainstream media can find a way to monetize their content because the idea of having to depend for information on the sort of half-baked nonsense quoted above is too horrible to contemplate.

More reasons to quit playing around with Twitter

More grist to my social-media-marketing is useless mill. Two small but significant social media success stories that generated nothing useful at all.

First example:

This is from a client account on twitter. I tweet occasionally for them, nothing special going on.

A week ago, out of the blue came a really nice recommendation from a tweep in the same industry sector who I had followed without knowing that the client had worked occassionally with them.

She has nearly 2,000 follewers so I could have hoped for a little bit of action, right?

Wrong. Analytics showed 2 visitors to the client's site from Twitter. And no spike in direct hits at all.

So nobody came. Yeah maybe somebody searching some day for what the client does just might come across the recommendation and act on it. Maybe. But then again, maybe not. There was no useful keywords in the tweet. Just the recommendation and the clients twitter account name.

Second example:

Another client got a sudden insurge from Stumbleupon. An old page must have been restumbled and oooh wow did get lots of traffic. Maybe 1,000 from Stumbleupon over 3 days.

But did they stick around? No.

Did they look at more than 1.1 pages? No.

Did a single one of them convert? Of course not.

Nothing new in this I know.

It just confirms me in my stick-in-the-mud belief that the industry obsession with social media and Twitter is just so misplaced. And that time spent elsewhere (linkbuilding) is just so much more likely to generate financial rewards.

Twitter is boooooooooooooooring

Just finding it hard to even browse Twitter nowadays.

So much self-promotion...

I used to find the characters engaging - you know, the ones who swear a lot or the ones who get baity a lot. But once you get to know what they do, well, they just keep on doing it so that gets a bit tedious.

And so much naval-gazing. When I checked in this morning, there was lots of this:

RT: @kevgibbo: RT @gcharlton: Five of my favourite Twitter fails http://bit.ly/106lV8 from @kevgibbo

The linked to page was clearly doing what it was supposed to which is generate buzz (aka get your friends to write RT a lot).

I knew I shouldn't have because I really don't give a xxxx about Twitter fails.

But the RTs got to me in the end so I clicked and...

Five rehashed non-stories about ... truthfully, I'm not even sure. I just couldn't bring myself to read in detail what these people had done wrong or right on Twitter. I know from the past that Jennifer Anniston's ex-boyfriend tweeted too much; and that that guy who went to Memphis said he hated the town and got into trouble.

The others? Who cares?

Maybe I should follow 100 more people. Yes, I think I will. An experiment to test out my jaundiced hypothesis that following more tweeps will just lead to more noise for the same pathetic amount of signal.

I'll report back in a week or two

Oh no. Not how to succeed in social media. AGAIN

Why do I keep clicking on them?

I mean those tweets, email suggestions, blog recommendations on Great article - 10 absolutely mind-boggling tips to really make the most out of social media. Or Twitter obviously. In fact Twitter first of all.

Haven't I learned by now?

Doesn't matter how A-list an author they are written by. Doesn't matter how A-list a blogger they are recommended by.

All these articles say the same xxxxing thing, over and over and over again.

But would like to recommend one post though. Its - ummm - well - ok, so it is about - no, forget it, oh ok its this one:
How to use Twitter to grow your online business.

Did happen to think this was an unusually good and practical example of the breed.

Seth Godin's Broad Brush

I don't know why, I just got this thing about Seth Godin.

Maybe it's because of the way, in the silly sheeplike hero-worshipping world of the internet, you can just feel the unthinking breathless admiration when people type his name.

Maybe it's because his short posts often seem to me to sacrifice meaningful detail in order to create an appearance of punchy innovative thinking.

Probably it's a combination of the two.

Case in point: this post

The central idea here is simple:

• You can go about seo in two ways


• Try and rule the search engine results for your keyword - Godin uses plumber as an example


• Or make something so special out of your own company that you don't need search engine rankings for the generic term because everybody is searching for you


• The first is impossible so try number two

Now, while I applaud Godin's encouragement to people to create something special, his argument here is so simplistic as to be laughable.

I mean, who even searches for plumber nowadays?

Google has recognized that unqualified generic terms like plumber are pretty useless for many searches by including the one box of 10 local results in the middle of unlocalised searches for thousands of generic terms.

Web savvy plumbers nowadays wouldn't be targeting terms like plumber but more useful and more ruleable Google results like plumber London or plumber West London or even plumber Housnslow. And that's not to mention plumber combined with whatever other qualified searches punters tend to use (reliable? 24 hour? emergency?)

And while, as I said, I do like the way Godin wants people to create something remarkable (and I do, I really do, I think being remarkable is a fantastic thing to aim for), I just can't help feeling that in the real time-pressed world with mortgages to pay and children to care for, I just can't help feeling that for many plumbers as for many middle aged female web designers, being remarkable is just not a realistic aim.

Doing a decent job for clients is about all I aim for. Really decent. Something they will be pleased and maybe pleasantly surprised by. But remarkable? I just havn't got the time. Not if I'm going to earn enough money to pay for the mortgage, the education, the...

And under those real world circumstances, well, thank goodness for the the myriad of qualified search terms that are worth ranking for. Thank goodness for the nitty gritty details that don't seem to exist in the wonderful purple world of Seth Godin.

Google thinks its God like Microsoft used to

You know the feeling you get when you are doing something in Office and that silly helper thing pops up and asks you if you want to do something you dont't? I mean that Microsoft just stoppit feeling, stop thinking you know what I want because you just don't.

Well, that's the feeling I just got from Google.

I was searching for the Biblio Chair.

First I searched without quotes. Got Digg and some blogs, plus loads of links to bibliography pages.

Which is when I got that deja vue sort of feeling. Hey Google, if I wanted to search for bibliography, I'ld search for bibligraphy. Stop thinking you know what I want because you just don't.

I always used to think that Office Helper was a symptom of Microsoft having too much power and thinking they understood everything. Now its Google that thinks like that.

Which is part of the reason why I hate the idea of personalised search so much. I want to look for myself. I dont want Google censoring my results in the mistaken belief that it really can know what I am looking for.

That's the end of the Googlesoft experience.

But as a postscript, then it was just Google being annoying in its own particular way.

I put quotes around Biblio Chair. Got Digg and the blogs and lots of Digg derived pages without bibliography this time. Annoying. Wanted to find out how much it cost. Not read somebody elses tedious take/promotional efforts on it.

Anyway, clicked on the Digg link. Oh great. The Digg page was linking to Treehugger. More second hand commentary.

So off I trot and at last found my way to the company that makes the Biblio Chair (have a look at it. It is mighty cool).

Can't totally blame Google for absence of the source page. The product is actually called the bibliochaise. And the company who make it have a Flash website where you can only link to the home page and the website is not optimised at all.

But Digg? Treehugger? tumblr? blabla.blogspot and blablabla.typepad? Who in the real world wants them?

We are all leaping enthusiastically into this brave new world of transparency and consumer power.

Sometimes it just seems like all it adds up to is loads more verbiage to wade through.

And incidentally, none of it is any more trustworthy than old style company promotion. Sometimes, I long for a bit of simple promotional company fluff. At least then you know where you are.

Search rankings dead? I don't think so

Yes I know this blog is supposed to be about the middle age and families and stuff.

But my irritation at the sheep-like search engine optimisation community is just too powerful to resist this opportunity to give my fingers free reign at the keyboard.

It's just this rankings are dead thing. People have been saying it for a while. But Bruce Clay made a splash about it recently (splash link is to a video if there is anybody else in the world like me who hates to wait for a video to load that will then take up 10 times more of your time than the equivalent text content). And I guess he got what he wanted because he got a lot of coverage and links from saying it.

But now everyone and his dog is saying it.

Now I'm not saying all this talk is groundless. Follow any of the links in the above paragraph to find out about how more localised results, video, images and oh dear yes Google's personalised search will or may effect the way Google orders search results.

And I have no beef with the other point the seo sheep bleat: the one about how high rankings are useless if the people who come to your site don't convert (buy/contact you/sign up) when they get there.

But I would argue the converse is also true. In other words, the old seo chestnut about great content that converts well being useless if nobody comes.

And how are people going to get there? Digg? Stumbleupon? Twitter? Friendfeed?

I don't think so, not if they aren't looking for the latest article on How Best To Tweet to your Tweeps or similarily naval gazing tactics that is.

No. The majority will be searching on Google. If I actually wanted something, that is where I would go.

And what would I click on? Why the results on the first page of course, maybe some from the second page, even the third if I really needed something. Would I be clicking on videos? No way. Why waste time? Images? Local? Maybe, if they looked like they might lead to something genuinely useful.

I had a sudden panic here. Am I just reflecting my age in the way I search? So I went and conducted a not entirely scientific survey and asked daughter 2 what she would do if she had to search for something. We picked buy New Rave clothes because that was something she recently had to do for a themed party.

So what would this tech-savvy screen-addicted YouTube-watching teen do? Well, she would go to Google and then:

• I definitely wouldn't look at the video" (yesssss!)


• I might look at the images but I would check they wern't something silly like Jennifer is wearing... (she was watching Friends at the time)

So basically, she would do the same as me. Click on the text results in the first page or two of the Google results.

So for both of us Google and the websites that rank are what count - however they got there.

Really, what I am saying is that I still believe the best way to get business for my customers is to get them on the first page of as many relavent popular Google search results as possible - ie to get them to rank.

That would certainly include optimising images for search; video too if it was affordable. Local optimisation for local businesses is obviously a must.

And I would absolutely ensure that what people who click on my customer's websites get when they come is content as good as can make it. I also would try and make it very easy for them to convert. All these things I would test with website analytics software (another of the shiboleths of the rankings are dead crowd.

And good content seems the best way to get promoted in personalised search too - except by competitors of course who, in the smallish local search results I am interested in for my customers, are as far as I can see the only ones using Google's personalised search so far. (Note to self: save anti-personalised search rant for another post)

There are others of similar mind.

As I see it, rankings, far from being dead, are still the number one consideration for SEOs. How we do it may change. But without them, it's us not the rankings but us who will be dead.

Time the Healer

Been a long time...

And reading my last post, I just cant believe how much my feelings have swung.

I'm not talking hormonal fluctuations, just the normal passing of time and what it does with the things that happen to us.

Last post - just a few months ago - I couldn't think about daughter 1 and her impending departure to uni without flashbacks to her childhood and tears welling in my eyes. Maternal guilt was running rampant.

This post - well she's gone. And am I crying? No. Do I think about her all the time? No? Am I waiting with baited breath for her calls and her Blackberry messages? No.

We talk and Blackberry message quite a lot which is great. I don't feel cut off from her. I still know what is going on. I still feel like her mother.

But I'm quite happy without her. The other three children provide enough entertainment and work to more than fill the time that I'm not working.

Next week, she is coming to stay for a few days with her boyfriend. And I am looking forward to it. But I'm also mindful that it will mean extra work for me (lazy lazy person that I am).

How far have I come from the distraught mother of 5 months ago?

So what do I draw from this?

Not much really.

Yes time heals. But everybody knows that. And it never helps at the time.

And I don't believe that the fact that I am thinking and feeling so differently now invalidates what I was thinking and feeling then.

That my children will leave me is a tragedy - a completely right and reasonable tragedy - that I will sometimes experience again. That the bossy five year old with a squeaky voice has gone is another tragedy that I know about but am not experiencing now.

So maybe what I have learnt is that time doesn't exactly heal. But it does change things. Until, of course, it changes them again.

Terrific?

Ok so tomorrow is now today and it's time for something terrific.

Only there isn't anything.

Instead, there is only sadness.

I just read a fantastic post by a mother of four looking back at the hope and love she felt 32 years ago when her first child was born and at how things turned out differently but also the same.

That post really struck a chord with me.

Daughter 1 is due to leave for university in a few months and she will be living in Scotland, a four and a half hour train ride or 30 minutes by plane away.

The family is breaking up. It hasn't always been the happiest family. In fact, sometimes things have been downright terrible. Even so, it was a family, my family, and I have lived inside it for nearly 19 years.

And soon, it is to change, shrink a little, lose a member. It feels like an amputation is beginning and I can already feel some of the raw pain. Images of daughter 1 as a 5 year old flash into my head all the time, a bossy little girl with a squeaky voice telling everyone what to do and all I can do is cry.

And daughter 1 is only the first. The others will follow. In 7 years, they will all be gone.

Pretty obvious stuff? Well yes, only... I hadn't really realised it before.

What makes all this really bite is something similar to what Ms. Moon, the authour of the post above, is experiencing:

I wish, oh babies, I wish - I could have done better by you sometimes. I do.

I wish that too. I wish it so hard I could gouge my eyes out with the strength of that wish.

Mothers feel guilt all the time. It comes with the job. But this is something more. I know I could have done better by them. I know I should have done.

Cracking content

I read the other day that if you don't write on your blog for a while, you should'nt apologise, you shouldn't even mention it. You should just set to writing some really cracking content so that your readers (who?) will just be grateful that you're back.

Hmmm cracking content. OK I'm lighting a cigarette (horrified intake of breath) and thinking.

More news from the kids' exam front? Not cracking. Walks with the dog? Not cracking. Lack of progress of builder at recreating our shower room? Definitely not cracking.

Think I'll go away and hide my head in the sand and come back tomorrow with something really terrific.

Worried about daughter one

Today, I suddenly got worried that daughter 1 was taking drugs.

I know she has taken drugs, both weed (which is what you have to call it now) and cocaine. But not much, I have always believed. It's the boys in her group who mainly take the drugs and most of her girlfriends don't. They drink instead, but that's another story.

Today though, I wondered if drugs were behind her recent inability to do any work.

Her A levels are in a week. And yet every opportunity she has to do some revision, she uses to watch one of the endless stream of US soap operas she follows. And if she isn't watching TV, she is on the phone. The sound of her walking up and down the stairs with a portable plugged to her ear is one of the top irritations of my life at the moment.

She says she knows what she is doing. She's done well up to now without working overly hard (which is true) and I should trust her to do it again.

She may be right. Then again, she may be pushing the limits too far this time.

And of course, she may be taking drugs.

Time will tell.

Wasted day

Today:

• Took daughter 1 to school (late) because she has an A level. She rung me as I was half way home to tell me she had left her glasses in the car and I had to take them all the way back to school and deliver them in the office because it was too much of a trek for her to walk to meet me.
• Talked to plumber about new shower and shower door.
• Did tiny bit of work
• Picked up son 1 from his A/S level and sat in hot waiting room at orthodontic hospital for long time and then had brief appointment with nice orthodontist and 7 silent students.

Now home but its 5.00pm and gotta walk the dog in half an hour.

Older children don't monopolise your time like younger ones do. But they do eat it up.

I want to be alone

They think its them who want to get away from us. Kids that is. Actually, it's the other way around.

I long for peace, that light airy feel of NOBODY AT ALL being in the house with me. Instead, I got both sons. Son 1 on study leave; son 2 ill. That's ill as in the strange mysterious illnesses that overwhelm at 8.00am and magically clear up by 10.00am ready for a long hard day on the Playstation.

They aren't making any noise but somehow their presence bears down on me.

Just being selfish I suppose.

But maybe (little interesting appercu coming now) it's natures way of preparing for the separations ahead.

Study leave begins

Older son now on study leave. He got up at 11.00am despite numerous wake up calls. Now downstairs probably engaged in his project of reading Wikipedia from beginning to end. Or playing Championship Manager.

Yesterday, he took an old computer apart. What for? No reason. Just painstakingly took it to bits. Each time he extricated a bit, he brought it up to me proudly:

"This is a motherboard".

"Here's the hard drive".

Oh he was so proud of himself. He piled all the bits up into a tower and looked at them with awe.

But he says maybe I can use the hard drive for backing up my stuff. He has ordered an adaptor for the connection with my credit card details which are saved on their computer for vital itunes and pizza purchases.

If it works, his study leave will have produced something good.

Also, this tinkering around makes me feel more comfortable about his recent choice of engineering as a degree subject.

Study leave isn't meant to be a holiday

1045am. Older daughter not in school but in bed. She isn't on study leave yet but will be from next week as her A levels begin in a few weeks. But the holiday spirit in which my children take study leave seeems to have set in early.

Yesterday, older son came in from school cheering and hitting high fives and saying "yessssssssssss". Why? Because he is now on study leave (his A/Ss start today) so reckons the fun begins now.

Do other children take study leave in the same spirit? My two eldest are both pretty clever, so they know they don't have to work too hard. But this endless BBC sports-wikipedia-Championship Manager-US-soap-operas fest just seems crazy.

Is it my fault they are so lazy? Probably.

Productivity

Started late but did A LOT.

You know how it is - sometimes you're all prepared, got hours stretching ahead of you. Yet somehow the hours pass and nothing gets accomplished.

Other times, not many hours but oh so productive.

Today was one of the latter days. Did the whole blog design and quite like it. What's more, my super-critical oldest daughter liked it too.

Yaay!