It’s not a joke! As much as I love Google I am going to participate in the first ever Google Free Day on April 1st. How will you find information? Try using one of the alternative search engines - my thoughts in the beginning were “they suck” - but really when I think about it, I can’t complain about Clusty for example, or Ask.

Wendy Boswell at Lifehacker lists a few of her favourites - and I am going to try out at least one or two of them! Copied here for your convenience are a few that I found interesting:

1. Clusty: Clusty is a metasearch engine, meaning it combines results from a variety of different sources. However, Clusty adds extra search suggestions arranged by category (clusters) for example, if you type in “coffee”, Clusty responds with clustered results to the left such as Tea, Espresso, History of Coffee, etc.
2. Indeed: Indeed.com is a job search engine. It is not a list of message boards, or a place where you can actually submit your resume. Indeed is extremely simple to use, and covers all the major job boards, newspaper classified sites, niche industry sites and corporate job sites. I found more jobs in five minutes on here than I did searching on other job boards. You have to go to the individual websites in order to apply (which is kind of a pain) but this is a great way to generate job leads. Indeed also offers a nice toolset for the job searcher, including a JobRoll, “a customized, dynamically-updating list of jobs that may be placed on your blog or website.”
3. FoodieView: FoodieView is a recipe search engine searching over 175,000 recipes from all different kinds of sources, including AllRecipes.com, The Food Network, Martha Stewart Recipes, and many more. FoodieView is a targeted recipe search engine with a lot of really interesting features; it’s also extremely easy to find good recipes on FoodieView that are actually relevant to what your search query is, which, if you’ve ever tried to find a recipe using certain ingredients on one of the bigger search engines, you’ll agree with me when I say that it can be a huge time-waster.
4. Healthline: Healthline.com is a medical information search engine, with lots of interesting features that make it very simple to use (in other words, you don’t have to have an MD degree to find what you’re looking for here). Healthline is solely dedicated to finding medical information online, and it offers medically filtered results developed by trained medical personnel.
5. FirstGov: FirstGov.gov is an absolutely mammoth search engine/portal that gives the searcher direct access to searchable information from the United States government, state governments, and local governments. It can be overwhelming, simply because there is SO much information here. I would suggest that you get your feet wet with FirstGov by using the Information By Topic directory, or you can choose to drill down by viewing the Site Index. In addition, FirstGov offers an above average Advanced Search help page.

We are running a WebTrends training course at a client site Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and I wanted to make arrangements to have breakfast catered for the students.

By using Google Maps (or Google Local) I looked for catering near the client’s postal code. After looking through a few websites (and finding companies that don’t have websites (????), I found what I was looking in Druxy’s. Druxy’s is known for their deli sandwiches and, unlike many other caterers, offers breakfast catering.

One can view the menu and price per person and then in order to place a catering order, must create an account. No problem - this is typical in the world of ecommerce.

I go through my entire order, indicate I would like to pay by visa, enter the delivery address, etc. thinking that the next screen will ask for my Visa # and billing address. Nope! Bang the order is done and the only phone number associated with the order is my clients! I receive a confirmation email that the order has been received. Thankfully there is a phone number at the bottom of this email so I can call and circumvent Druxy’s calling my client for payment. Unfortunately I was too late - they had already left a message for my client, seeking payment.

*ack* How totally embarrassing. I ranted how this is a poor setup on their website and did I miss the obvious? Apparently I did - I should leave special instructions for them to call me rather than the client to request payment information. Wake up Druxy’s - try taking credit cards over your website and like other ecommerce sites, offering a different delivery address from the billing address.

It gets worse unfortunately. As much as my online transaction indicated $42, the final bill turned out to be $52. Delivery charge. Hello people - put the delivery charge online and include it in the total purchase. High delivery charge given that the client is within walking distance of the restaurant but really the dollar value is not the problem - the poor usability is the problem.

The end result of poor usability can be canceled orders, negative publicity and loss of repeat orders. Definitely worth fixing on a website.

Want to keep the search engine bots from indexing certain folders or pages on your website? Robots.txt to the rescue! And now it is even more convenient to create a robots.txt - you can do this right from within Google Webmaster Tools.

To access the tool, log-in to your Google Webmaster Tools account, then click on one of your sites and access the Tools menu on the left side of the screen. You’ll see a “Generate robots.txt” link among the tool options.

For more detailed information visit:

• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/03/speaking-language-of-robots.html
• http://searchengineland.com/080327-173946.php

Search Engine Optimization: It’s quite the mouthful.

No matter how overwhelming SEO can be to first-timers, starting this kind of work on your site is a fairly simple, step-by-step process. The technical bits aren’t too complicated, I promise, and a little thinking beforehand can save you a lot of hassle down the ol’ SEO road.

The first steps are very basic, but integral to the entire process:

First, imagine your customers typing their need (you) into a search engine. Really. Imagine them.

• The key here is to think for a little while. Don’t choose something overly broad or too narrow. If you’re a student web designer, something like “cheap web design Ottawa” might be a good phrase.

Now do some research. See what pages come up when you enter your “Keyword Phrase” into Google, Yahoo!, etc.

• If you sense the results aren’t super strong, then maybe optimizing your site for this phrase (and a few others you come up with) could render some good placements when people search for it.

NOTE: If you want to be absolutely sure you’re picking the best keywords, you’d also have to indulge in some serious keyword research at this point. Check out some free keyword research services to generate some phrases and words you haven’t thought of.

Now, once you’ve come up with a few solid phrases, you’re going to commit to implanting them into your web site’s code so that search engines find what you want them to find. Stay tuned.

How is it that a company that cellssells cellphones (and recently cameras as well) feels justified in not paying for services rendered? This company makes good money selling cellphones online and engaged the services of DriveTraffic in Nov or Dec to setup Google Analytics tracking. Our perdiem was indicated and an expectation of how much time it would take. For the record, our time required to set this up (and therefore your cost) is much lower than many other consultants who offer the service.

CWS said the “cheque was in the mail” in Dec. Then they asked for my PayPal email address so they could send the money. 3 months later there is no sign of the money and their latest gimmick is to tell another Montreal based company to pay me. Yup - “hey Montreal company we are no longer satisfied with your services so since we gave you a downpayment we want you to pay DriveTraffic”. Insane.

I’ve sent them to a California collections company but the collections agency was not successful at collecting the money either.
It’s a sad day when this happens; fortunately in all of our years of business, it has only happened twice and the last time was a mere $450. But it hurts and it’s rude.

Don’t buy from CWS, a California company that sells unlocked GSM phones. I wouldn’t trust them with a sale if they can’t be trusted with their contractors… By the way one thing I don’t understand is why they have paid their India based programmer reliably for 2 years?