WordPress School: Google Maps

We’ve experimented with image and video embeds in your test site in Lorelle’s WordPress School. We’ve also worked a with WordPress shortcodes in the contact form on the Contact Page, and you’ve gotten a little HTML awareness within your site’s content. Today’s assignment is another form of embed. Today, we are going to embed a […]

Power Blogging Tips: Comment on Blogs From Within Google Feed Reader

One of the most frustrating aspects of reading blogs through feed readers is the process of commenting on blogs. The typical step-by-step process is: Scan through the blog post titles. Find an interesting title and click on the title to open it and read. Want to respond or read more? Open the post title in […]

Want to Help Google Clean Up Splogs?

In response to Matt Cutts’ request on how Google should work on web spam, a friend of mine gives him a very good summary of how Google can put an end to one the biggest blights on the web: splogs. In A big free clue for Google, he points out: Like many bloggers I can […]

WordPress Blogs and More Hacked by Google Redirects

Hackers are just determined. There are no new security flaws reported recently in WordPress, but that hasn’t stopped imaginative and determined hackers. The recent security issues concern hackers who work with Google and other search engine results and redirects traffic from your blog or website. The searchers clicks on the link and is redirected to […]

Google Gives Tips to Eastern European Bloggers

While most of us living in a higher tech world should know these things, in honor of the expansion of Google into Eastern Europe, the Google Webmaster Central blog offers advice and tips for Eastern European webmasters and bloggers. In 2006 we ramped up on international webmaster issues and particularly tried to support Eastern Europe. […]

Get Your WordPress.com Blog Now Verified by Google’s Webmaster Tools

Since Google came out with the Google Sitemap, WordPress.com bloggers have had no luck verifying their WordPress.com blogs until now. Jalaj P. Jha has come up with “Get your WordPress.com Blog Google Verified”. It’s a simple method of creating a Page with the Page title as the HTML file name Google provides. Create the page […]

How To Remove Your Blog Content From Google

This should probably be more correctly titled “How to Remove Your Blog Content From Google and Prevent It From Getting There in the First Place”, but that’s a bit long. Google Webmaster Central offers a variety of techniques to remove your blog content from the Google database and index. It covers how to use the […]

Blog Challenge: What Keywords Make You Number One in Google

In a recent Blog Challenge on testing your blog’s development, mandarine answered: I have learned one thing: when I google “The happiest person in the world”, I come out #1! That’s pretty cool, huh? (And I am still #2 without the quotes). Your blog challenge this week is to research what word or phrase makes […]

Google Feedfetcher Takes Control. Where is Bloglines?

Well, the developers behind WordPress.com have adjusted things and Google Reader and Google’s Personalized Homepages are now included in the WordPress.com blog feed stats, listed as Google Feedfetcher. This certainly changes things. A lot. As I discussed yesterday, feed statistics spiked all over the web as Google changed how their feeds were reported and discovered […]

Feed Stats Spike: Feedburner and Google Reader Strikes

Before you get too excited when you check your feed stats, whether you are on a WordPress or a non-WordPress blog, including WordPress.com blogs, don’t get too excited. Reports are flooding the blogosphere as people check their feed stats and think “Wow! I’m suddenly popular.” Calm down. It’s not true. Feedburner’s has started reporting how […]

Help Stop Trackback Comment Spam Via Google

Akismet is working overtime on this blog to fight off comment spam in all forms. Combined with the community effort of all WordPress.com bloggers, comment spam is caught and rarely released on our blogs. However, I’ve lately spotted some very annoying and frustrating comment spam. It appears to be caught by Akismet, but it shows […]

Please Don’t Use Google To Research References

I’m a huge fan of Information Wants To Be Free, a wonderful blog for librarians by Meridith Wolfwater. I’ll be writing more about her blog later, but I wanted to point out a great article called Whatever you do, don’t use Google. After we teach our students how to distinguish between authoritative and unauthoritative resources, […]

Google Sitemaps Goes Standard With Acceptance By Microsoft and Yahoo!

The Google Blog announces the sitemap protocol has now been accepted by Yahoo! and Microsoft as a standard for webmasters to assist with website crawling and “submissions”. Last year we published the Sitemap 0.84 XML protocol as a free and easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about URLs on their web sites so […]

Searching for Blogs and Blogging Resources on DMOZ-Google Open Directory

While I wasn’t looking, it appears DMOZ, the “largest human-edited directory on the web” is now in the hands of Google. Still, it’s a fascinating place to explore and search for all kinds of information and resources in a directory catalog form rather than just searching. Like a phone book, your search begins by categorized […]

Google’s Custom Search Engine Helps Sites Search by Theme

Google Blog announces a new Google Custom Search Engine, a customized search engine for your own blog. This isn’t your normal site search engine. In fact, I wish they’d called it something else more distinctive to clarify what this is. The Custom Search Engine can be used on your site to do themed and targeted […]