Rooturaj's Blog

This is a small post for those who have been banging their heads on various forums about “Google Kills PR” and “Pagerank addons not working” kind of stuff.

Actually I did that too. ( )

Be assured that google did not kill PR. Page Rank continues to be a big deal for determining the quality of incoming links. Hence we can understand your ordeal when you are suddenly left with no way to check the google PR for various domains.

Its just a simple change in the Google API url.

Trace this following line in your pagerank script.

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&ch=%s&features=Rank&q=info:%s

Replace it with this line

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&ch=%s&features=Rank&q=info:%s

for some of you the last line might have to look like this one.

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&ch=”.CheckHash(HashURL($url)). “&features=Rank&q=info:”.$url.”&num=100&filter=0

Notice the change in URL. “search” part now replaced with “tbr” which would ofcourse be a short form for toolbar. Their engineers have done some upgrades there. But why change the url. No Idea.

Now this is some thing unique I discovered today.

I have a squidoo lens 10 KILLER ways to promote your Squidoo lens which was not being indexed. So I was doing a search for its title and I came across the following results. Now there was some thing which came as a surprise.  Look at the snapshot below.

Links in google site Description ?? Hows that possible?

Notice the third result and its description. There is a link within the description that has been picked from the sites navigation content. Squidoo has an auto generated Navigation feature that links to different sections of your lens. Now this seems to be a bug at Google’s end. Unless they have decided to add this new feature to the description content. But if the latter be true they are not linking to proper places on the page in question.

I will definitely be raising this issue with Google but I thought I would share this with my fellow Programmer, Bloggers and SEOs to find out some more about this. Have you ever come across something like this before?

Update : Looks like a bug. Isha, SEO form Mumbai did some further digging and reports it to be a Firefox error. I did some cross checking but found the error IE6 too. So I am almost convinced its a google problem.

Now News Wire dropped a bomb yesterday declaring that “Google is planning to enter SEO Business”. But they just forgot to pack some explosives into that bomb. The result of that crazy post by Serena Shaper0 c was that half the SEO world got perturbed real bad. Questions flew everywhere and Facebook and Twitter went crazy with Serena too? How can you dare make such bid claims without valid proofs? The SEOs may be mystics but they are not dumb.

Funny thing is that some people will believe anything they read. They dont even bother to cross check the validity of the claims made by the other person. So I took some time to dig out the fact behind this all. First I arrived at this Google Forum post where a concerned SEO wanted an answers from professional whether Google is really planning to kill our profession? Similarly our dear old Matt Cutts clarified this on his twitter account.

Apparently google did post something like this on 1st April and we know how to deal with such big announcements. Remember BBC once claimed with an online show on April fools day about the improving harvest of Spaghetti noodles where europeans were plucking noodles from trees?  Ha ha… So our funny reporter found the article some 27 days latter and lost her brains over it.

Hey You...its a April Fools Joke

The final product is that we have the hoax circulating the whole web and spreading like hell fire.

Hey Friends,

You would have noticed the new feature on your Gmail page. Yeah the Buzz. Mostly when if you are signing in for the first time after buzz was rolled out then you would see a welcome screen prompting you to activate and use Buzz.

Now that you are there you might ask what exactly is this Buzz about. Wasn’t Wave enough? Well wave was a whole new world where you could share and work in a collaborative environment. You could share and work on documents, applications updates and much more. This one is a simpler thing much like our Twitter and Facebook status updates.

Buzzing on your Gmail

You have followers and you can follow people like you do in Twitter. To find more people to follow you may use the follow more people option. Feel free to use the search profiles option to find people or use the contacts options to follow people who are already in your Gmail contacts. Very simple and lightning fast.

find and connect to more people

Once you have followed some people you can see the updates like the following. It is in a similar fashion as we see in Facebook. Checkout the red box for some really kool options. Comment and like as we normally have on Facebook. Google tops it up with their email this feature. Plus you may chat with the original poster right from the update regarding the update. Nice eh?

Interacting with the updates

Now notice the green box. These are cascaded updated from the same person. To see more of what a person has been doing lately click the cascaded area. E.g doing clicking the same area on my updates will give you an expanded update list exclusively by me.

Expanding collapsed Buzzes

I will put in some more stuff once I fill myself up (lunch time). Damn those cooks in downstairs restaurants. The smell is invading our workplace and aggravating our hunger.

I don’t know if it affects you or if my Anti-Virus is just acting up but every time I force refresh a page with Google Adsense with it Kaspersky (ver: 8.0.0.454) Internet Security detects a Trojan on the google javascript file. This even comes up on leading sites like lonelyplanet.com.

Here are the details.
To force refresh I mean using CTRL + F5. Then my antivirus gives this message.

Kaspersky detects Trojan on Site with Adsense

On further checking of this report Kaspersky gives me the following actions and errors.
This is the actual error report on Kaspersky. 1/25/2010 8:01:18 PM- http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js Firefox Processing error: Trojan.JS.Redirector.ar

Report points to Adsense file

I get the same issue on IE6 with Kaspersky. On Internet Explorer I with Kaspersky installed I get an Additional Error. See Below.

Issue duplicates on separate machine with IE6 and Kaspersky

I have no idea whats going on. After a basic search on Google I found this related post. But this is an old case and the ads are not being hijacked. From the report it seems it is the original Google Adsense Javascript file that is being detected as malicious.

If some of you have kaspersky could you please test this issue at your end and let me know. I will mean while report this to Google.

Just out of curiosity I searched the term “Search Engine” on Google. I was actually testing if Google returned google.com for the term “search engine”. This is what I got. (see snapshot below)

Wow, according to Google, Bing is the No One Search Engine on the planet. Interesting, eh?

Bing Is King - Google

This was the result on google India. There were different results on Google.com.

So to what extent are these listings valid? Shall we take that as the real results? I do a wee bit of SEO so I ask from the SEO angle. Is it possible that Bing could have mustered more backlinks than yahoo and Google for the keyword “search engine”. I wonder.

What does Google want here? May be they feel shy suggesting their own name when someone asks them ‘which is the best search engine around’.

Well there is always the obvious fact that we must consider here. Since the search is being made on Google the user is aware of Google. So the result google.com looses relevance. But that does not answer the question? Is this factor included in the algorithm? If no, then these are filtered results with the previously mentioned factors included.

But if you want to filter yourself then go off completely. What does it mean when google.co.in and google.com feature on the next page of results after www.123khoj.com and www.mamma.com . I say these results are strange. What do you say?

With the much talked about Bhuvan – Earth Observation visualization tool by Indian Space Research Organization I finally thought I would give a try. I would share with my readers my experience with the tool. My overall opinion is that Bhuvan is the best deep technology public software ever made by an Indian organization.

As with most of the things that belongs to the Govt. of India the website lacks a high degree of professionalism. There is no dedicated site as yet. I had to Google up and finally arrived at http://bhuvan2.nrsc.gov.in . I use Firefox 3.5.2 and after downloading direct X and the plugin that are required for using Bhuvan I registered myself. It was impressive that already 0.23 million users have registered. But non of the ASP links of online Bhuvan software would open on Firefox. It is, I believe, a Firefox issue as I could follow the links on IExplorer. The features as described on the homepage are quite inviting and promise things much better than wikimapia or google earth. So the question arises – Can it out perform these popular Earth Visualization tools?

It does not seem likely that any thing like this could happen soon with the low level errors that are browser related. If you cannot open the application how do can you even comment if its good? Even on IE 7 the application did not load properly the first time. When I searched for a location on the search box on the right it threw back JavaScript errors. I had to reload it a couple of times to load it successfully.

Taluks and Twons Layer - Images from Bhuvan

Once the application starts and you get a hang of the features it is definitely a lot advanced and options packed than its competitors. It does have the material to beat Google and Wikimapia. Only that a higher professional handling is solicited. Once I zoomed in on Mumbai the loading speed decreased gradually.I could not get the details I was expecting. Just before the house level the image tiles did not load. I would like to highlight some features that can beat Google and Wikimapia. You have options to add layers. There are layers for towns, villages, districts, taluks, watersheds and lot more. You can fly around a city of landscape – a feature I liked pretty much. Then there are features like Navigation Map, Time Series, Photos which are very useful and very attractive. I would recommend you take a look for yourself and comment back here.

Here are some snapshots from the software. (Source : bhuvan2.nrsc.gov.in)

Zooming on Nariman Point Mumbai on Bhuvan

Indian Earth Observation Visualization - Image form Bhuvan

Zooming on Mumbai on Bhuvan

Navigation Map Feature - If you are stuck on the real world map

Here are the requirements running Bhuvan software on you browser.
Get directX 9 then download the plugin.
You need to register here before using it.

Through official Adsense updates, the publishers were today introduced to a new opportunity of generating ad revenue and maximizing ad space utilization. Google is teaming up with internet advertising companies to show display ads through its own network. These ads will compete with Adwords advertisers over the same bidding methodology and content targeting algorithm.

What does the Publisher gain form this?

Well since there are more ads there will be more competition and ultimately the bid price will go up to keep the advertiser in display all the time. That directly converts into higher CPC rates. But we are more concerned about the CPM rates. Since these are display ads, those who have high traffic volume but lesser CTR could benefit form this. CPM or cost per 1000 impressions is the amount you get when your page loads 1000 times with the add appearing on it. Even though there are no clicks you still get the revenue. Big brands who are particularly concerned about a brand image use these ads. But it is not limited to brand promotion only. Image ads are known to deliver higher CTR (click through rates)

When will this be effective?

Google says this won’t be effective immediately. It will be implemented slowly over a period of time. As more third party publishers get verified and added to the ad stream revenue differences will start to show in our accounts.
Currently publishers in Europe and North America will be able to enjoy the benefits while the rest will have to wait for this opportunity.

You might be interested in the following links.(Reference)
requirements for third-party ad serving
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2008/05/introducing-third-party-ads-on-google.html

I was just checking out a news piece on the level of software piracy in India. But I was not surprised to know that software piracy in India is as high as 73% when compared to 23% in US. You would not be surprised either. [Source: Hindu Business line] The Indian subcontinent is the new piracy hub in Internet world. We read at colleges and technical institutes that run on pirated software. Even though a single user copy is bought it is used in over 50 PCs.

The most used piece of software in India is probably the windows. (all versions included) But only those people who get branded PCs or laptops have a genuine windows copy. Other who assemble their systems are on pirated ones mostly. Hardware dealers and computer sales people install windows on assembled PCs for 250 rs. Some of the 10 standard kids in the alley will call me crazy for quoting 250 INR, they would do it for 100. Or coax your techie friend and get it free with technical support from the ‘techie’ group.

With this situation in mind I was thinking if Google new chrome operating system came free with added speed, more Internet applications and less system crashes then will it kill Microsoft Windows in India? It is a tough thing to answer at this point of time.

Chrome Vs Windows

Here are some points to Chrome’s favor.

OS Cost : I have a feeling that software cost being the first priority in India rather than security, this could be a winner for Chrome.
Legal Pressure : Now Indian authorities are pressing it hard with NASCOM against software piracy. So if they are left with a choice of choosing between Microsoft of 1500 Rs and Google for free I guess many wood go for Google.
Brand Power : Google is a hugely popular brand in India as well so if brand loyalty is considered then they are almost even.
Performance : Now if we weigh performance then those who have used Google and its products have got hardly any thing to complain. On the other hand you will get more complaints than compliments for Windows and other MS products.

Points in Favor of Windows

User Friendliness : Windows has one big advantage in shape of User Friendliness. Not many people would prefer to learn a new OS. The same thing that happened to Linux. Operating system is more or less synonymous to Windows in India. It would take a while to wrench this reputation out of MS grasp.
Supporting Software: We have grown up on MS Office, Media Player etc. Will Chrome provide support for this or will it be the rise of Internet office applications?
Hardware and Driver Support : Manufacturers of hardware are today MS centric. Will this hamper Google’s Chances?
There are more questions. So it remains to be seen. Will Google Chrome Kill Microsoft Windows in India?