Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

Code Description Where "" Allows searching for a specific phrase - exact match search. Individual word prevents synonyms Basic,Mail OR / AND Boolean search function for OR searches as Google defaults to AND between words - must be all caps Basic,Mail \ Implements OR Basic () Allows grouping of operators and helps dictate order Basic,Mail - Excludes a word from results Basic,Mail * Acts as a wildcard and will match any word or phrase Basic #..# # represents a number in this instance. Use to find numbers in a series. Basic $ Allows for search of USD Basic € Allows for search of Euro Basic in Allows searches for unit conve...

Google (and most other search engines) have special operators and search url suffixes that many internet users are unaware of. Here is a fresh list for your searching pleasure. intitle: Restricts the search to the titles of the web pages, for example if you want to search for the web pages having WordPress or Blogging in the title, use the syntax intitle:WordPress or intitle: “digital photography” (multiple words can be grouped into a phrase by putting them inside quotes). inurl: If you include this keyword in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the URL (address of the website). The query inurl:teaching will return documents that mention the words teaching in their URL. intext: The query using intext:term results in documents containing the term in the text/content. For instance: intext:Globalization will return documents mentioning the term globalization. Additionally, you can use allintext:term with phrases or combination of word...

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends. - Woody Allen After a lot of pain, contacts and fixing, I'm not sure that they do. I am not going to name names or point fingers, but really, Yahoo seems to have completely lost it in the search engine wars. You put up a new website, create a sitemap, submit it to Google, Yahoo, and MSN ("live.com"), and you do everything right, including adding the new accepted "sitemap" directive to your robots file. Google jumps right on it. Within a day or so, virtually every entry in your sitemap is going to get indexed. If you ping them via the various RPC Ping server addresses and you have engineered the ability to update and use their Webmaster tools, the googlebot doesn't seem to have any trouble at all indexing your "stuff". That's coolio with me, because over a range of websites, I've found that the Googly Bear is responsible for 90% of my search engine traffic to the site. And -...

Google now "sees" underscores in URLS as word-separators(delimiters). Previously, in a URL like http://www.mysite.com/iphone_review.html Googlebot couldn't "see" the words iphone or review. Instead it read iphone_review as one word. Now, it will see iphone and review. Google treats URLs with a query string the same as static URLs. Caveat: as long as there are no more than two or three parameters in the URL, that is! To explain in another way, you won't take a hit in your Google rankings if you have a question mark in your URL; just don't have more than two or three equals signs in the URL. So, if you've been tormented about whether you should implement URLrewriting in your site or blog, don't fret. The number of slashes in your URL (i.e. the number of directories deep your page is) isn't a factor in your Google rankings. Although it doesn't matter for Google, it is rumored to matter for Yahoo and MSN (Live Search). The file extension in ...

Over the last couple of years I've learned a few "tricks" that help to promote blogs and WebSites. Most of the time, the techniques work for both a blog and a WebSite, especially if the site has at least one RSS feed. Blog and site promotion is an ongoing process, it takes time. There is no "Magic Bullet". Use the following steps to start promoting your blog or website: Submit your blog's URL to each major search engine Google, MSN (live.com), AOL, and Yahoo. Also go to http://www.1stopsubmit.com/ http://www.submitexpress.com/ http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and submit your URL. The first one will automatically submit your blog URL to over 50 search engines for free. They ask for a reciprocal link, but it is not required. Open http://www.blogmetafinder.com/ (our site) and submit your blog to as many of these blog and RSS feed directories as possible. Use your key phrase in the title and at least once in the description if you are able to enter one. Th...