Ravi’s Rants

Last updated on December 4, 2007

Click here to read Part I of How “Blog-and-Ping” Can Boost Your PageRank.

How “Blog-and-Ping” Can Boost Your PageRank - Part II
The Ping List - Making Google Your Little “Bee-yaach”

Here’s a list of URL’s that I have in this very WordPress-driven blog (log in as admin and go to Options > Writing > (Scroll down to) Update Services). Every time I “Publish” a post, WordPress automatically saves the entry first, and then pings each of these URL’s in succession, until it has gotten back a (successful, or a ‘time-out’) response from each one, and then redirects to your “Manage” page.

Pinging all these URL’s can be very slow and take about 5 minutes, so don’t freak out and hit ‘cancel’ or close the browser window, as that will stop the pinging from completing.

Store this ping list online (I use both Yahoo Notepad (primary) and Google Notebook for storing such notes) and save it in the “Update Services” section of your blog setup only when you “publish” a new post. Once you’re done publishing, remember to remove the list from your blog setup and save the change.

Here’s why: Once you have “published” a post, if you still let the ping list remain in your blog setup, then every time you make a change to any published post, WordPress will once again ping all of the URL’s listed.

So, if you make multiple posts a day, or go back to an older post and make some edits, make sure you are pinging only once or twice a day by selectively adding and removing the ping-list from your blog setup. Ping any more than that, and you may get banned by the service for abusing the privilege.

Pinging Google
You cannot ping Google using this ping list.

If you want to ping Google about changes to your blog, then use the Google Sitemap Plugin for WordPress using which you can create an xml file with your blog posts, and ping Google. Of course, you need to have signed up for Google Sitemap first and added your blog to your account.

However, if you are just making changes to your web site (if not the same as your Wordpress or Typepad “blog”), then use the Google Sitemap tool for regular web sites to create your sitemap xml file and also ping Google.

So here’s the ping list:

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping.php
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
http://ping.blogg.de/
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.britblog.com/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.wpkeys.com/
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://www.imblogs.net/ping/
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://www.zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php
http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/
http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php
http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2

Remember, all it takes is one ping a day to get Google to come crawling your web site, and in fact pinging these other services alone can make Google follow links to your post from these third-party sites, and come to your site. So, use Blog-and-Ping with caution, and the Googlebot will become your little “bee-yaach”

- Ravi Jayagopal / LinkOverLoad.com

“Blog and Ping” is a term that refers to a technique where you make a post on your blog, and using your blog software’s in-built feature, you then send out a “ping” to various blog directories, notifying them that you have added a new post to your blog.

A “ping” is a way of notifying various blog directories and blog search engines, in an industry standard way, that you have just made a post on your blog. This is nothing but a signal sent from your blog (pinger) to the target directory (or aggregator service) that you are actually pinging (the pingee), and this signal contains the URL of your post. Following this, the pingee picks up the URL and content from your post, and when someone on that site searches for keywords contained in your post, then your post shows up in their search results.

Search engines (especially Google) love blogs, because blogs are full of “useful” content (at least they are supposed to be). The more active your site is - in terms of frequent, new content - the better your ranking will be.

In November 2006, I personally noticed one of my main sites suddenly drop a few places from position #2 to #8 in Google’s SERP (search engine results pages). Now Google sends me about 80% of my total traffic to this site, and as soon as my site dropped to #8, it went “below the fold” (meaning, out of the view of the first part of the results page that appears when you do a search, and the only way to see it is to scroll down a little). And I immediately saw my Adsense earnings drop about 80%!

Sidebar: That just goes to show you that even having a “top 10″ listing on Google (or any search engine for that matter) is no good, because not many would search beyond the first 2-3 web sites, especially if the top 2-3 sites give the user what they are looking for, or lead them on to other things from there so the user never comes back to Google to look further down

I wasn’t sure what caused this to happen, but I quickly made some modifications to the site, moved some stuff around, published some new content on my blog, pinged all directories I am aware of, removed some external links that I suspected might have triggered some Google-spam-filter, and also used Google’s SiteMap tool to ping Google of my changes, and within 48 hours, my site was back to position #2. God bless Google!

So, the concept of pinging is a pro-active way of letting other sites know that you have made some changes on your site or blog.

Especially with Google, when you ping Google using the sitemap tool, you can see how quickly Googlebot (Google’s spider) comes knocking. This is especially useful in situations like my scare-scenario above, where I hurriedly made some changes, wanted Google to know right away that I had indeed made some changes, and wanted my changes to be considered when calculating my ranking the next time around.

That is exactly what Google did - it liked my changes, and/or just the fact that I had made some changes, so got brownie points for being a “good publisher”, and gave me my Adsense earnings back.

Moral of the story: Never fudge with Google - not if you are making any money at all from Adsense.

Be a “Good publisher”, publish often, publish white-hat, build good, quality content, and The Google will reward you with gold and adsense dollars.

- Ravi Jayagopal / WebmasterInABox.net

Something’s going on with Google Video.

Every visit to my various WordPress blogs was freezing up my browser (both Firefox and IE), and the last visible message on the frozen browser window’s status bar on all blogs was “loading from video.google.com…”.

I removed all Google video embeds in my various blogs, and all of them work fine now. I did leave all YouTube videos as is, as those seem to be loading up just fine. So, it’s just Google Videos.

Is Google trying to migrate all its videos to YouTube?

- Ravi Jayagopal / LinkOverLoad.com

FTP stands for “File Transfer Protocol”.

It is what you use to “transfer” (or upload) files from your computer to your web site - and vice-versa.

To make it easy for you to learn how to use FTP software, I have created a video tutorial, available at this link. It is about 2+ MB in size.
So, too bad if you are on dial-up (sidebar: if you are still on dial up, then I can’t help you - in fact, no one can!)

The video will redirect to my site WebmasterInABox.net at the end. I’ve also used a cool, royalty free sound-clip from the web. Let me know what you think of the video, so that I can make more (and better) videos.

Click here to launch the video.

- Ravi Jayagopal

If you know what a “blog” is, you probably already know what a “RSS Feed” is.

One of the best (not to forget, cheapest and fastest) ways to get free content for your web site, is to display a third-party RSS Feed. Every time the feed’s content changes, content on your web site automatically changes, thus keeping the content fresh and ever-changing on your site.

This trick can be used for both legit and illegitimate purposes. Sploggers (those who create Splogs - “SPam-filled bLOGS”) often use it to generate thousands of “made for adsense” pages, whose primary intention is to increase PageRank, get ranked higher for highly competitive and high paying keywords, get people to visit their splogs, and manipulating the navigation that they end up leaving by clicking on AdSense (or other PPC) ads.

But if you use it for legitimate purposes, you will find that publishing RSS feeds on your site can be a great way to provide targeted, complementary content for your visitors.

Magpie RSS is a great open-source PHP script that will allow you to easily publish any third-party RSS feed on your site. I have personally tried many RSS scripts, and highly recommend Magpie. I have even used Magpie to create a pretty cool web-based feed-aggregator service, a la Google Reader and Google Personalized home page.

If you want a quick and customizable free script that is based on Magpie, and gives you sample scripts that show you how to publish one, two or more feeds on a page on your web site, go get my Free RSS Feed Publishing script, “FeedMonster”.

- Ravi Jayagopal

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!”.

That’s what a running-mate told Dean Karnazes, who once entered a 199-mile relay race all by himself; he went against eight teams of 12 members each, and finished eighth. 1 against 12. Now there’s a real winner!

Read the article, get off your butt, and go lose that 20/50/100 pounds that you’ve been waiting to lose all your life. I’m ready to lose my 50.

… if you are relying on the (potential) swarm of Digg visitors to click on your Adsense ads.

Personally, I think the spike in traffic you will get by getting a home-page link on Digg won’t be worth anything at all, unless you are selling something that Digg users want. Now, I don’t know what that something is, but whatever it is, it is going to be a hard sell.

Most of the traffic from Digg will be geeks and nerds, just like me. I’m an avid blogger, digger, googler, you know - the self-proclaimed “uber-web savvy” type. And I won’t be too far off the mark when I say that the tech profile of the average digg user will be quite similar to mine. And I can’t remember the last time I clicked on an Adsense ad.

I have family (my wife, BIL) and friends who are in IT, and almost none of them ever clicks on Google Adsense ads, not even on Google’s own search pages, let alone on 3rd-party web sites. When they do a google search, they are completely and utterly focused on the organic search results, and completely block out the ad-block on the right-side of the page.

This is not a Digg-specific phenomenon. I think this is more of a natural, human phenomenon.

I’m one of Google’s biggest proponents. I sign up for most Google services the day they are beta-launched. But my Google-fanboi status notwithstanding, I am predicting that Adsense’s effectiveness is only going to decline, the way CTR’s for banners decreased.

Here’s why: Google’s text ads were novel for a while, and everyone clicked on them, similar to the novelty of banners and popups when they were first introduced. They’re now common place, and I have increasingly noticed through my various web sites that the average non-techie visitors are among the few left clicking on them, and the tech-savvy folks are clicking on them at an alarmingly decreasing rate.

I say that with substantial (undisclosed) proof, because on my web sites built for the average mom and pop, the Adsense CTR’s are very high - and my earnings substantial. But on my sites targeted towards a tech-savvy audience, the CTR’s are pathetic, and revenue is nothing to write home about.

This is why you see popular tech blogs and sites going with pay-for-placement or pay-per-impression ads.

I believe that PPC will gradually make way for PPP (pay-per-performance - like affiliate programs) ads - and I know that Google is developing a CPA (Cost Per Action) service for this. And then they will compete with the ValueClicks and CommissionJunctions of the world.

As long as they keep evolving Adsense, Google will be fine, but the quality of clicks on PPC is only going to deteriorate, as more people find out that every click = someone makes money + someone loses money.

If you just spent a large amount of time, money and effort trying to figure out ways and sneaky ways to get on Digg’s home page, here’s the bottomline:

Digg traffic is mostly good for increasing your impressions and increasing awareness of your product/service’s existence (a.k.a “branding”). These guys/gals are very web-savvy, won’t easily buy anything without a lot of research and social proof, will always try to find a cheaper or free alternative, won’t easily give up their email addresses as they are very spam-aware, and probably won’t click on your Adsense ads.

Maybe you will get tons of impressions, but your pay-per-impression advertisers may not be particularly happy, because the kind of traffic you will get from digg will be largely untargeted, and any click-thrus to the advertisers site will face the same situation - won’t click, won’t buy, won’t sign up (easily).

So, stop building pages and sites targeted for Digg; stop joining Digg-fraud communities, because if you build it just for them, and they do come, you probably won’t be making very many pennies. But if you build something remarkable, and do build it for everyone, then the Diggeeks just might put some moolah in your pocket.

- Ravi Jayagopal
Founder, LinkOverLoad.com

What is a viral web site?

I believe it is a site where everyone who visits it, wants every one else they know to visit it too - and they want to be the first to tell the people they know.

Way back in 1999, the ‘net was ablaze with a mania called “Mahir”. An unassuming guy from Turkey who spoke broken english, something about his site and his ‘tude tickled the funny bone of every one who visited the site - and went on to become one of the most visited sites during that time.

Maybe you think this was the guy who inspired Borat?
I Kiss You - Mahir from Turkey