Shailesh Ghimire on June 11th, 2010

As a passionate fan of world cup soccer I’m pretty excited that the World Cup is finally here. The fact that it is being hosted in South Africa makes it an extra special event in my mind. While winning the cup is the main goal, there are many ways in which you can measure the success of your team in the World Cup.  Facebook recently launched a Goal Leaderboard to track the top teams in the competition.

The Goal Leaderboard doesn’t rank teams based on their performance in a game, that would be pretty boring. Instead it ranks teams by the most passionate fans. So, here is your chance to put your team over the top. Check it out and get y our team up there.

Here is a snapshot as of the writing of this post (Chile is on top):

facebook-leaderboard

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BP, Just Drop a Rock on the Leak

This blog is not focused on the issue of the massive oil leak. However, this blog does pride itself on coming up with simple and innovative solutions to problems. I have demontrated my solution in a  simple diagram above. Please tell me why this is not possible.

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Shailesh Ghimire on May 13th, 2010

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Shailesh Ghimire on May 11th, 2010

RA RA AH AH AH, ROMA ROMA MA, GAGA OOH LA LA!

Facebook is becoming a scary place. It used to be fun place to share photos, links, ideas etc. and connect with long lost friends. Now, as the social networking giant seeks to monetize their platform they’re using your data to do it. And while I can understand the business side, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a choice. I could choose to just shut down my profile on Facebook and move on.

If you’re not familiar with the changes on Facebook and how it impacts your privacy, take a look at this article on Wired magazine.  Below is an excerpt:

This spring Facebook took that even further. All the items you list as things you like must become public and linked to public profile pages. If you don’t want them linked and made public, then you don’t get them — though Facebook nicely hangs onto them in its database in order to let advertisers target you.

This includes your music preferences, employment information, reading preferences, schools, etc. All the things that make up your profile. They all must be public — and linked to public pages for each of those bits of info — or you don’t get them at all. That’s hardly a choice, and the whole system is maddeningly complex.

Simultaneously, the company began shipping your profile information off pre-emptively to Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft — so that if you show up there while already logged into Facebook, the sites can “personalize” your experience when you show up. You can try to opt out after the fact, but you’ll need a master’s in Facebook bureaucracy to stop it permanently.

Care to write a status update to your friends? Facebook sets the default for those messages to be published to the entire internet through direct funnels to the net’s top search engines. You can use a dropdown field to restrict your publishing, but it’s seemingly too hard for Facebook to actually remember that’s what you do. (Google Buzz, for all the criticism it has taken, remembers your setting from your last post and uses that as the new default.)

Now, say you you write a public update, saying, “My boss had a crazy great idea for a new product!” Now, you might not know it, but there is a Facebook page for “My Crazy Boss” and because your post had all the right words, your post now shows up on that page. Include the words “FBI” or “CIA,” and you show up on the FBI or CIA page.

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Now if this doesn’t get your attention, here is a visual chart that helps you understand how much of your private information is being shared across the Internet. Things you thought were just between friends is now in the open. Photos and networks you thought only your college buddies could see are now in plain sight of your employer, your associates and your business partners.

What do you think? Take the poll below:





I am personally mulling shutting down my profile on Facebook.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Zawezome

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Shailesh Ghimire on May 10th, 2010

It had been a few months since I looked in my Google webmaster tools account. All the sites I  own and operate are in this account and it’s rare for me to not be checking this account, but for some reason I just haven’t done it the past few months. When I log-in I can literally spend hours just going through all the information. It is amazing what you can learn and how you can improve your website through the data in the webmasters account. The information can help you optimize your website, improve traffic and conversions (if you’re e-commerce website).

Here are some of the  golden nuggets that can have an instant positive impact on your website:

1. View the top search queries driving traffic to your website. This gives you a picture of how relevant the traffic is that is coming to your website. It can help you answer  why visitors may not be signing up for your e-newsletter or, not purchasing your product. At the end of the day if you’re getting lots of visitors but they’re arriving based on completely irrelevant search queries, then you have a problem. You can see this in the search queries section. As a side note there is now an enhanced graphical presentation that makes guys like me drool! Here is what I’m talking about:

Google Webmaster Tools

2. View the sites that link to your website. Which can give you a great idea of where you need to focus your link building efforts. Perhaps your SEO is not where it is because you don’t have the right set of domains linking to you.

3. Status of the sitemap you’ve uploaded to Google. You need your sitemap current everyday. If you don’t have a sitemap uploaded one up NOW!

4. The significance of your website in relation to your top sought keywords. You might think your website needs to be found for “XYZ” keyword, but what is your content saying to drive traffic on “XYZ” keyword searches? The significance scale can help you make the necessary changes to your content.

5. A bunch of diagnostic tools so you know where the Google spider is going, where it’s not going and where it’s failing.

If you have a website and don’t’ have a Google webmaster tools account, then you need to get one set up. I suggest you regularly log in to your webmasters tool account so you can stay ahead of the curve!

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Shailesh Ghimire on May 6th, 2010

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Shailesh Ghimire on May 4th, 2010

Tip O’Neil said “all politics is local”. Well, all search is going local as well. Being visible on Google local map searches is very important. The first step is of course to submit your local business listing to Google’s Local Business Center (LBC) . But what if you have multiple locations? It can be very time consuming having to submit each location one by one and also having to individually verify ownership.

Don’t despair, Google local allows you to upload multiple business locations to LBC via a feed. The instructions are fairly straight forward. All you need to do is create a csv file with all your location information (according to Google specs) and upload that file. Full instructions are here. Be advised you need to have at least 10 locations to utilize this feature. Otherwise you’re going to have to submit the locations one by one.

Submitting the location is only the first step. Once the locations have been submitted you will need to verify ownership via phone or mail. Again, this can be very time consuming if you have many locations. So, you’ll need to white list your feed.  The instructions are fairly straight forward and can be found here.

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/getting-bulk-local-listings-verified-on-googles-local-business-center
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