What’s Huffington Doing To Journalism?

Since Huffington added virtually nothing to this story their original headline/link should have gone directly to the Sun-Times. Instead they “linkjacked.”

I visit Huffington Post on a regular basis, but I am more-and-more convinced the site is bad for journalism. The bigger it gets the worse it is. Though some of HuffPo’s content is their own much is not. In essence Huffington acts like a neighbor running his house off your electric meter. Whatever they get is at the expense of their host!

First an Internet fact of life. Because of the power of Google and other search engines a site’s importance (measured by page rank and other factors) is like money in the bank. Google drives traffic (even on this little blog). If Huffington and I post the same content word-for-word search engines are much more likely to point to Huffington because it is a more linked to and cited source.

In some cases that’s good, but Huffington’s online reputation is often built on using/taking content from those they compete with.

A case in point is a headline from Huffington yesterday, “After Meeting With Execs, Union Leaders Still Opposed to Wal-Mart.” I have strong opinions on Wal-Mart. I am a union member. I clicked the link.

Huffington’s content consisted of one sentence (a quote I think) and a link to the company that paid employees to actually report the story, the Chicago Sun-Times. Huffington’s entry is loaded with keywords to enhance this story in the eyes of search engines. They’re listed following “Read More:.”

Since Huffington added virtually nothing to this story their original headline/link should have gone directly to the Sun-Times. Instead they “linkjacked.” Huffington gets one more page view and, in some cases, probably satisfies the reader’s curiosity with their single sentence therefore cutting the Sun-Times out entirely.

Is this illegal? Probably not. Is this unethical? I don’t know, but it is very troubling because it’s possible Huffington and others like it will suck the Sun-Times of this world dry without replacing their reporting.

Other sites are similar, but I think Huffington’s model is a step beyond… a step worse than Google News or even Drudge.

Rupert Murdoch From Both Sides Of His Mouth

Murdoch blames the search engines, but the truth is the entire business model for advertiser supported information is broken.

My friend Farrell forwarded an article from Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News:

Rupert Murdoch has warned internet search engines the time has come for them to pay for news content.

The News Corp chief executive said sites such as Google and Yahoo, which take content from a range of sources, would soon be charged for the service.

This is totally within Murdoch’s right and if he wants to put his content behind a paywall he should. The New York Times used to do this with much of their exclusive content, like columnists, but later relented.

If taken at his word, Murdoch could implement a change to cut off search engines now.

To stop search engines from indexing your site you simply add a tiny text file to the root directory. It’s beyond simple and can be totally accomplished with one line of code. The Journal, or any news site, could do that in a few minutes.

Not only is that not what Murdoch’s doing–he is doing the opposite!

If you go to the Wall Street Journal site you’ll find many (not all) stories run for a few paragraphs and then stop with “…” Here’s an example I found in a link from the Journal’s home page:

As of July, nearly 90% of U.S. households paid for television either from cable, satellite or phone companies rather …

It’s obvious the story continues, but it only continues for subscribers.

However, if you enter that same sentence fragment into Google you get a link to the full Journal story!

As of July, nearly 90% of U.S. households paid for television either from cable, satellite or phone companies rather than getting it free from broadcast stations, according to Nielsen.

The Google link and the direct link from WSJ’s home page produce the same URL link. I believe WSJ’s website is configured to deliver the full content when the referrer is Google or Yahoo!, etc.&#185

The URL for the Sky News story I quoted at the beginning of this post is optimized to make it more visible to search engines. Many of the story’s key words are embedded in it: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/News-Corp-Chief-Executive-Rupert-Murdoch-Tells-World-Media-Summit-Search-Engines-Must-Pay-For-News/Article/200910215402865?lpos=Business_First_Buisness_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15402865_News_Corp_Chief_Executive_Rupert_Murdoch_Tells_World_Media_Summit_Search_Engines_Must_Pay_For_News_.

The Journal and Sky probably do this because search engines drive traffic to their sites. Without the search engines wsj.com and sky.com would see a lot fewer hits. They are making money from those hits–though certainly not as much as they want nor probably not enough to survive in their current business model.

Murdoch blames the search engines, but the truth is the entire business model for advertiser supported information is broken. The type of journalism the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other ‘classic’ news sources provide is dependent on selling high cost advertising.

Unfortunately, the same eyeball on the net is worth a lot less than in the paper or on TV. It’s a matter of supply and demand. The Internet has opened up the supply so there’s nearly an infinite number of places to run your ad.

Murdoch will grouse and yell and flail like the bully he’s always been–but he’s screwed and he knows it. He’s not in that boat alone. Mass media as we know it is terribly ill.

&#185 – My research on this is less than voluminous. How they do it isn’t as important as the fact they do it.

My Traffic Report

My ad revenue took a huge hit in December 2007. It fell to nearly zero. Now I’m back in the high two figures every day. Soon I could hit a dollar!

I always keep an eye on the traffic to this site. My most watched gauge is my Google AdSense traffic–those little ads you see. Google keeps a tally of visitors&#185 and an hourly reading is always on the bottom of my browser screen.

Humans and robots (and I’m visited by plenty of automated computers searching for Google, Yahoo, MSN and lot of other more niche oriented spiders doing who knows what) act differently on the net. More than likely you’re accepting my javascript and a robot is not. It’s useful to you but slows a robot down.

If you don’t execute javascript (and you probably do) I don’t count you. If you use AdBlock Plus, which I do, I don’t count you. If you’re reading this on a feed, I don’t count you.

Before last December’s hacking I was averaging 1,100-1,200 page views per day. Quickly my traffic fell first by 2/3 then rebounded to 1/2 where it’s remained. A few weeks ago the averages started rising to around 1,000 on weekdays. I assume Google has changed the weight it gives me. As in real life this weight is tough to control.

My ad revenue took a huge hit in December too. It fell to nearly zero. Now I’m back in the high two figures every day. Soon I could hit a dollar!

To me that says more readers are being brought in by search engines to my older pages. Every entry since July 4, 2003 is still online. I’m sure each page averages a handful of reads a a year, with a small few that get hundreds or thousands of reads a year.

When you run a website you realize the remarkable power wielded by Google. I respect that. This site is more search engine friendly than ever.

This whole traffic thing is a game to me and I enjoy playing.

&#185 – Please do not click on ads as a favor to me.

Google Says, “Please Flash Me”

Don’t pull your hair out. Before you re-write your entire site, here’s good news from Google.

Adobe Flash continues to become more and more of a factor on the Internet. Surf the web without it and you’ll land on page-after-page with big rectangular “black holes.” Though Microsoft, Apple and Real will wince when I type this, Flash has become the “universal donor” for web video. That’s part of the reason Adobe can claim a 97% penetration for Flash V9!

For webmasters there’s a secondary problem. Because of the way Flash files are compiled, search engines haven’t been able to consistently index them properly. If you’re running a website, looking pretty but not being Google friendly is worthless.

Don’t pull your hair out. Before you re-write your entire site, here’s good news from Google:

“Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.”

The text contained within Flash elements is finally being read. This is huge! Until now, the only way to guarantee Flash content meant something was to replicate it in-the-clear. The same goes for links. List a URL in a flash element and Google will now understand what it is and crawl it.

There are still shortcomings and they’re very important to note. Images and FLV (video) files are still invisible at the Googleplex. The same goes for any content that is enabled with javascript. There are some Internet Explorer/Flash hacks that use javascript as a workaround, so take note (on this website for instance).

No doubt, this change will accelerate the explosion of Flash content. Some ‘old school’ webmasters will be sad. Most users will stay happy.

The Google Cycle

My new pages have been optimized to make them friendlier to search engines, but that’s still under 1% of this site. I’ve added more detailed sitemaps, which help focus the search engine resources to look at pages I want seen. The templates for my blog have been rewritten to move more important content higher in the page.

As some of you might remember, I was hit hard in December by a hacker who made it look like my site was hosting close to 100,000 bogus pages&#185!

These phantom webpages were linked to other pages, often on other (probably compromised) sites. Google took note and, at first, began to index them. Then, they removed me entirely, trying to preserve their integrity.

The dust has cleared. Those pages are disappearing from Google’s database. It’s interesting to watch how this happens. With the tools I have, I can see that in nearly real time.

Webpages and links are crawled by Google, Yahoo! and others on a regular basis. Even with hundreds of pages seen daily, individual pages go weeks or more between crawls.

I’ve uploaded a file to my server setting a roadmap, so the bad pages will no longer be included. I thought Google would pull them immediately, since it looks at this file every 24 hours. Instead, the process has taken weeks.

Google shows the number of pages they have in their files which no longer exist is down to around 10,000. That number is reduced every day as they continue to ‘crawl’ my site.

I think of computers as being fast, often instantaneous, machines. However, when you deal with as much info as Google does, even fast takes a lot of time and instantaneous doesn’t exist.

As of yesterday, around 75% of my website traffic was being drawn by people searching for the crap the bad pages held. People are still finding me when they search fror: “bs haker free download ” or “free mobile mouse key generator virtuallab professional 5.” Soon, that should stop.

By far, the most visited piece on my site today is my “Oops” page, where I send all traffic looking for pages that don’t exist!

I’m not sure where my traffic will be when all this ends. My new pages have been optimized to make them friendlier to search engines, but that’s still under 1% of this site. I’ve added more detailed sitemaps, which help focus the search engine resources to look at pages I want seen. The templates for my blog have been rewritten to move more important content higher in the page.

Yahoo! has begun to look at my pages in a more aggressive manner. So far this month, they’ve looked at more stuff on geofffox.com than Google. That’s a huge change. Google is still sending more traffic (excluding the traffic looking for hacker inserted pages), but only on a 3:2 ratio over Yahoo!

Microsoft’s search engines are still mostly MIA. Even with sitemaps and robots files, this month they have seen 1/8 the pages Yahoo! has. Google sends around 100 times more traffic my way than MSN.

It almost looks as if Microsoft isn’t trying. Maybe they’re not.

Why do I care? This site isn’t here to make money.

Having ads on the site and watching how they are placed and work with my content is an education in how the Internet works as a business model. I still have a lot more to learn.

&#185 – I originally posted lower number and never saw the need to update them as they changed on a daily basis.

A Brief Status Report

In other related news,, it now looks like the attack on my site produced over 69,000 spam pages! Mind boggling, isn’t it? That’s how many pages Google indexed before I cleaned things up

I guess I’m sort of pleased with how quickly the site has come back together. Movable Type 4.1 is very different, but I’m getting the hang of it. Not being a programmer or web professional, there are a lot of head scratching moments for me. So far, I’ve been able to do just about everything I’ve attempted (except getting the archives to display in proper chronological order).

My friend Peter has a weird text problem, where entries are truncated in such a way as to be unreadable. I haven’t been able to replicate the problem, though I’m sure it’s real.

My friend Wendie isn’t thrilled with the narrower columns, though the prevailing wisdom is, they make a site easier to read.

It looks like I will be staying with this reddish look. Once I built my new masthead with the grunge font, the color scheme was locked in.

I have made some minor tweaks to become more search engine friendly. My quote: Back when I was in school, teachers would always scare me with stories of how my exploits would end up in my permanent record. I believe this is it! – Geoff Fox,” was at the top of every page. It was the except you’d see in search engines.

Now the words are integrated in a graphic, not spelled out in text. The actual page content will now show up in the except. That’s as it should be.

If you have any problems with the site’s operation, suggestions or questions, I’d like to hear from you. You can leave a blog comment or send me an email.

In other related news,, it now looks like the attack on my site produced over 69,000 spam pages! Mind boggling, isn’t it? That’s how many pages Google indexed before I cleaned things up

After a few weeks off their site, Google has resumed indexing me. My traffic is way up – nearly twice normal numbers. Much of that is due to people looking for the pages posted by whoever broke into my system. I guess there’s a market for that stuff.

I’ve posted a robots.txt file, which tells search engines what they should and should not index. Hopefully that will clear away the bogus pages they’re still pointing to.

Blogger’s addendum: Tonight I created a new page, explaining to those who get here by accident, why they’re here. It shows up automatically to anyone who enters a bogus page on this site.

Making Your Website Popular

I got a call from a relative tonight. We were talking about his business and its web presence (something more and more critical by the day). He was disappointed because search engines weren’t bringing a lot of traffic to the site. In fact, they brought almost none!

He’d looked into the idea of ‘search engine optimization’ or SEO and realized he had a problem. I opened my browser, looked at his site and realized the more he knew, the less happy he’d be with his site’s usefulness in the real world.

Search engines don’t see the Internet the way we do. They can’t understand pictures. There are also various methods of page markup that are, at best, difficult for them to understand.

My relative’s site was nearly 100% written in Adobe Flash. That’s one of those tough to read methods.

The site looks good to a human and horrendous to the machines that really decide what we’ll see. There are some small improvements he can make, but his problems are deep seeded.

I was having this discussion about SEO at work a while ago. I offered an opinion on story headlines and how they should be written. In TV, headlines are teasy. They promise to deliver something in the future, but give you almost nothing now.

On the Internet they can’t be done that way. People are searching online for what they scecifically want . They’re not looking for a play-on-words pun or ironic little twist. Headlines that tease and don’t convey the gist of the story are counterproductive on the net!

The intelligence built into Google or Yahoo isn’t as clever or adaptable as you are. Some very good content is lost, because it’s ‘too fast for the house.”

I will help fix my relative’s site, if asked. Sadly, I won’t be improving it for the end user. My goal is to make it more attractive to machines!

The Nofollow Tag

Because you’re a human and not a computer, you’ve probably never seen a nofollow tag… and you probably wouldn’t care if you did see one. Nofollow tags are terrible for me as a blogger.

A little background. Search engines, like Google, are clever in how they decide which sites are important. You are judged by those who associate with you.

If popular sites link to you, you get some of their karma. More popular site links going your way means a higher Google page rank for you (and Google is the only search site that really counts).

It’s doubtful The New York Times or Drudge will link to me any time soon (and I probably couldn’t handle the traffic anyway). However, from time-to-time I make comments on other websites. Normally, these comments relate to my areas of expertise – like weather and media.

I don’t spam. I don’t comment for the sake of commenting.

It used to be, my comments (and my web address) were seen by the search engines. That helped elevate the importance of this blog, especially in my areas of expertise. I think that’s how Google and the others intended it.

Now, nearly all the comments I leave have a hidden tag appended to my website’s URL. I just left a comment on Jeff Jarvis’ Buzz Machine. He had posted an entry about TV news helicopters following car chases. That’s a subject I’ve commented on more than once.

Along with my name, I entered my website’s address. Unfortunately, just before www.geofffox.com, hidden within his website’s code, are the words “external nofollow.”

He’s telling Google not to follow the link to my site!

His site, along with many others, do this to every comment they receive. Maybe he’s right? Maybe self published links, like my URL, shouldn’t hold any weight at all.

On the other hand, the diminution of links through the “external nofollow” tag has moved my Google page rank from a 5 to 4, reducing my traffic by between 30% and 40% and cutting my AdSense income by at least 60%.

I’ll be the first to admit I want links for selfish reasons. I like the traffic. I like my thoughts being seen.

Just because it benefits me doesn’t make it wrong, does it?

I wrote Jeff Jarvis to tell him I was disappointed. He responded:

It is wordpress that sets that and it is purely spam. My host requires it.

That is how bad the spam problem is. Sorry.

Quite honestly, that’s the Internet equivalent of, “your call is important to us.”

After this was posted, Jeff Jarvis responded. Rather than leaving his comment a click away, I am moving it here within the entry:

Well, that’s rude. I sent you email immediately from a picnic on my Treo because I wanted to respond. I just got home and sent you another, lengthier response. And this is how you treat me? As I said in the email, I’m not the bad guy, spammers are. Blame them. To quote my second email, in full:

No disagreement. But the bad guys here are the spammers. Slime. Scum. Evildoers. I don’t blame my host; they have brought down my host more than once. Akismet, WordPress’ very good spam catcher, still misses many; I still have to kill them every hour or two. That’s how bad it is. Spam killed trackbacks. So far, it hasn’t killed comments, but it could. Spam blogs have also threatened the other means of tying together a conversation — Technorati and blog search revealing links to others’ blogs in a conversation — but so far, they’ve been able to keep only one step behind.

And by the way, it’s Jarvis, not Jervis.

-jeff

I had mistyped Jeff’s last name. I have corrected and apologized for that error.

The Polls Are Open

I’ll wait another day or so before tabulating yesterday’s responses.

A quick observation – I am surprised by the percentage from Connecticut. Breakouts I’ve seen in the past show more geographic diversity.

I’m now speculating, in-state readers go to the front page. Out-of-state readers are brought via search engines and go directly to inside pages. It’s just a guess.

TV 2.0

I seldom do this, but it’s my blog! This entry is an explanation and expansion of a comment left in the previous entry by Mike Sechrist.

Geoff:

If anyone had any questions about the revolution going on in our business you just answered them. An interesting piece shot on a $30 camcorder and edited with software that can be found on most PC’s. It may say Meteorologist on the resume but you should add VJ underneath. I wish we could have seen the deli.

A little background on Mike. He hired me in New Haven 23 years ago. He was news director then, but later became a TV general manager, running WKRN in Nashville.

Mike is one of the biggest proponents of VJs, or video journalists. The whole VJ concept is based on the assumption technology allows greater productivity in TV without injuring the product. If a crew is one, rather than two, people, you can cover twice as many stories with the same number of people.

Of course, the fear within the universe of TV employees is, you can cover just as many stories with half the number of people… and what business wouldn’t cut their costs like that if they could?

I remember counting heads in the ABC control room, back when I used to fill-in on Good Morning America. There were better than a dozen folks on the payroll in the control room. I walked into our control room in New Haven on Friday night. Three! Technology at work.

I produced my little travelogue with a minimal amount of equipment. It was not broadcast quality, but it wasn’t terrible. And, for a motivated audience, where content is much more important than production values, my $30 camcorder is all that’s needed.

Mike worked hard to unlock the value of technology for his station. Going forward, I think the real value lies elsewhere. VJ type equipment can allow one or two people to produce narrowly focused, very salable content. Think of the show being the end product, not the station.

The example I often use is a fellow employee at the TV station who’s a prolific knitter. She’s got the skills necessary to produce a daily, weekly or even unscheduled video knitting show.

Unlike the conventional TV model, older content stays online forever (How many changes are there in knitting from year-to-year?), using search engines and word of mouth to attract new viewers along the way and providing a library of revenue producing programming. In computing parlance, this evergreen content is called ‘long tail.’

Because the programming would be narrowly focused, each viewer would likely be worth more to an advertiser (knitting needles, yarn, patterns, etc). The whole concept of comparing CPM for an ad buy is turned on its ear because there are so few wasted viewers.

To a certain extent PhotoshopTV is doing this now. So is or-live, which presents surgical procedures live and recorded on demand, on their website.

Programs like Diggnation or Rocketboom, which are more broadly aimed, do not fit my revenue model, even though they are using the technology as I picture it being used.

There is money to be made for specialists who can produce their own material. It could be a show on ham radio or child rearing or golf or any number of topics. Content rules! If there’s an connective interest and someone selling a product your audience might buy, the rest is academic!

Even better, distribution is much easier than TV or cable, since anyone can set up a website instantly&#185 and bandwidth costs continue to drop rapidly.

Startup costs for a TV station are in the millions… often tens of millions of dollars. Start up costs for these web narrowcasts can be in the thousands, though often, hundreds of dollars!

I’ve been toying around with an idea for a web show myself. All I need is a little motivation. I figure a half dozen episodes in the can should get me started. I already have everything I need to produce it at home!

That’s crazy, isn’t it? I already have everything I need at home.

&#185 – How instantly can you set up a site? My boss bought an iPhone and set up a website to go with it! If he’s spent $25 on the website, he’s gone overboard.

A Little Sneaky Housekeeping

My friend Peter needed a web page. He has changed his address and phone number. Friends and old customers might be looking for him. No sweat.

The page is simple and was simple for me to put together. Really, all it is is a statement saying, “Here I am.”

Unfortunately, search engines don’t get excited about web pages that have no incoming links… which is why Spectrum Research is linked here.

That’s it. This is nothing more than a sneaky ploy to help a friend get noticed by otherwise dumb robots. Welcome to the 21st Century!

Concerning Google – What An Idiot I’ve Been

What’s the biggest Internet success story? Google, right? And everyone, until recently myself included, thinks it’s because Google is so good at performing searches.

Tonight, I’ve changed my mind.

Before Google, there were some very good search engines. There were AltaVista and Metacrawler and others whose names are now lost to me. Yahoo!&#185 was more a directory than a search engine.

As a power Internet user in the late 90s, I was not unhappy. I was able to search and get the results I wanted with little trouble.

So why is Google such a big deal? It’s not the search as much as it’s, their search seems benevolent.

Google was very smart. They cleaned up the home page.

All the other site where you could find stuff were gravitating toward being portals. Their home pages were full of news and tips and links and they included display ads. It was obvious to their users, they were sales machines. Please click. Please buy.

Google was basically a box where you entered text and not much more. No ads.

But searching is not a one web page affair. The search page leads to the results page. No search ends on the home page. Google was satisfied making their money on that landing page.

After the home page, every subsequent page on Google does contain ads. And, they are contextually tied to what’s on that page. If it’s possible to say, they are good ads.

It’s genius. But I don’t think it would have worked had Google not been willing to treat their home page as a loss leader. No ads!

As time went on Google has been able to extend their brand. They have contextual ads on webpages, like this one (look to the right). The have a mail service, also with contextual ads. They have other services too, but the payoff (to them) is always the same, and you never see any sign of commerce when you begin to do what you want to do.

Even better, since each ‘lead’ is prequalified, they can charge a higher CPM.

It’s not like a movie on TBS, where the first block is 45 minutes long and by the end you’re stopping for spots every 120 seconds. Google works so well because they run commercials and no one minds!

In this TiVo world, where the publisher of the New York Times worries he won’t have a paper based paper in five years and where CBS has just announced they’re selling a handful of TV stations for a few million more than they paid for just one of them, Google has succeeded in making us forget they are running commercials.

It is the genius of what they do, and any other elegance in the performance of search is no more than an interesting footnote.

I doubt, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were testing Google at Stanford, they had a clue what their success could be. They were lucky wise to give away the product they had worked so hard to develop.

Business is always better when you don’t worry if people will buy what you’re selling, but instead try to sell what they are dying to buy.

&#185 – I have been on the Internet long enough to have sent a comment to Yahoo! and gotten a personally written response that referred to “Jerry’s reaction” to what I’d suggested. “Jerry” was Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang. That ain’t happening today.

Thanks For A Great Year

Thank you so much for visiting my website in 2006. I would have forgotten to write this had Helaine not reminded me.

I enjoy writing. The blog helped me discover that. It has also made me a better writer and re-writer. Rewriting has been my biggest surprise, because that’s when the entries really come together.

Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying quantifying your presence.

Here are some ‘back of the envelope’ calculations (really – I used an envelope). It looks like my daily traffic is up approximately 30% over last year. I must have posted a lot more multimedia files, because at the same time I’m using 40% more bandwidth.

In 2006 this site served over 118 gigabytes of stuff. That’s ridiculous. It’s more than you could fit on a couple dozen DVDs!

For a simple blog, this site does well. That people have found it is somewhat organic. As far as I know, it’s only been mentioned once on TV, and that by an fill-in anchor who didn’t realize she really shouldn’t.

Some of my traffic comes from new readers of my home page. People come and go all the time.

Some traffic also comes simply because there is so much more indexed by the search engines. There are at least 500 pages on this site that weren’t here a year ago and each has been seen by Google, Yahoo!, MSN and their brethern.

My home page has a Google page rank of 5. WTNH.com has a 6. The New Haven Register has a 4. Sorry Register.

I keep saying I’m going to move the blog from its current host, but the process seems so daunting, I just leave it where it is. It’s also running out-of-date software.

Maybe this year? Probably not. I am very good at procrastination.

Thanks also to those of you who left comments. Often they are thought provoking. I never know whether to respond or not. If I’ve left you hanging, I apologize.

Geez – look at the time. Even I need to get to bed at some point.

This Webmaster’s Frustration

This blog sits on a computer somewhere in the Chicago area. I don’t own that computer. I’m sure I share it with dozens, maybe hundreds of other websites.

That’s fine… until it’s not.

Over the past few months I have become more and more frustrated as geofffox.com has become slower and slower to respond. I assume it’s hurting traffic to the site, as people get frustrated (probably after 1-2 seconds) and move on.

I’m not sure how much I can expect. It costs about $100 per year to run this thing. Do you get dependability for that price?

A few days ago an offer came in the email from another web hosting company. They’re larger and are offering more. I think I’m going to be moving.

Imagine moving from one house to another and everything ends up exactly where it was. That’s what I’m going to try and accomplish. I don’t know if it’s that easy. I sense it is not.

If I don’t move the website exactly as it was, I lose out on all the traffic sent to me from Google and other search engines. I need to be very careful.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be planning my strategy. It will have to be methodical – something I’m not known for.

Before the move happens, I’ll post a warning. It’s possible there will be a day or two of intermittent service or other hiccups. I just don’t want to enter the “crying lane”!

Zeitgeist – It’s Really What We Want

It is a staple of the search engines – Zeitgeist.