Joseph Tinsley

R.I.P. Yahoo Search Submit Pro

YSSP went offline this morning; it’s going to be interesting to see what Yahoo will focus on next. I actually believed in the YSSP program, it was a great way for some of these mammoth sized websites to get their products indexed. Could there have been more transparency, yea probably so. But to see the true benefit of the program you would have to look at the big picture. A bunch of revenue was generated and butt load of jobs where also created. Plus I like to believe that the program help customers locate products easier. And if I had to guess I would guess that majority of the agencies/resellers that Yahoo partnered with operated in good faith. So think about it for a second there where probably hundreds of agencies/resellers submitting millions and millions of clean, optimized and sometimes fresh URL’s to Yahoo. I like that idea. I like the fact that I can trust a program that employed a bunch of people to police and submitted trusted data. So when I clicked on a link then that’s where I’m directed to. Yea in any program that involves money your going to have people who will try and dupe the system. But in the grand scheme of things I believe there had to be more good then evil here.

Anyway sorry for the rant, back to topic, what will Yahoo focuses on next. I personally hope Yahoo and the other engines will put a little more effort into the Search Monkey, RDFa and Rich Snippet projects. I think there’s a lot of opportunity in enhanced search results, especially if your site is product driven. Right now it doesn’t seem like it’s on anyone’s radar and that perhaps all of the Search Monkey and Rich Snippet hoopla was a just a big PR stunt. Basically one of those “We can do it also” type of things.
Here’s an example. Shortly after the dust settled on the Yahoo killing YSSP program stuff AOL announced that they may offer a paid inclusion program. Now it’s hard to tell if this was a serious statement or just a stunt to attract attention.

AOL To Capitalize On Yahoo Ending Paid Inclusion Program

Google XML Sitemap: Export Title, Description and Keywords to Excel

Google XML Sitemap: Download the Title, Description & Keywords tags from your sites webpage via your Google XML sitemap and then export the data into a excel spreadsheet. I’m not totally sure what to call this tool yet. I started out creating something else and took a totally different direction. That’s not to say this is not a useful tool. Basically if you’ve ever been in a situation and wonder how many URL’s are included in a Google XML sitemap, then this application will help you. Or if you’ve ever been in a pickle and wondered how well my Titles, Descriptions, or Keywords Tags are optimized, then this application will help yuo also. Once you submit your Google XML sitemap the application will download all of the URL’s included in your XML Sitemap and then one URL at a time goes out and fetches the Title and Meta Information. It then runs the character count from this data against what is deemed by Yahoo as being a well formatted Title and Meta Tag by YSSP standards. Title 70 characters in length, Description 170 characters in length, and 12 Keywords. I took a look at the Google Webmaster rule set also and added in some padding.
So for example the application will color the character count number Green if the Title falls in-between 60 and 70 characters. Then Red if the count is over 70 characters and Purple if it’s under 60 characters. This color theme is used also for the Description and the Keywords.

The complete thresholds includes.
Title: >=60 <=70 Good; > 70 Red; < 60 Purple
Description: >=150 <=170 Good; > 170 Red; < 150 Purple
Keywords:   >=10 <=12 Good; > 12 Red; < 10 Purple

Google Sitemap Tool
Creating and submitting Sitemaps

Why Bing

Bing is quickly becoming my new best friend. A couple of weeks I blogged about RDFa tags and Rich Snippets and the visibility I was getting from Bing search engine. Well the day after I modified the tags to see if I could learn how to better control the content that is being displayed in the hover description section. Well I just noticed the address was updated so it seems that Bing is actually responsive to my updates. My next goal is to see if I can get my image displayed within that section. I have an RDFa image tag already in place but I must have something wrong because that has not been displayed yet. So I’m going to do some additional research and modify the code a bit when I fine something out. The new information is a great discovery and I’m pretty stoked right now. It’s all about testing your data and not always relying on what you read. Trust yourself first!

Yahoo Search Monkey, Google Rich Snippets: No Love

Yahoo Search Monkey and Google Rich Snippets is giving me no love. I have been working really hard to get some type of visibility from Yahoo Search Monkey and Google rich Snippets. I’ve tried RDFa tags and the Yahoo’s adjunct tags and nothing. It’s probably going on the 3rd or 4th week now, and nada. With Yahoo Search Monkey I’ve tried thier several options, DataRSS, submitting via Site Explorer but I still come up empty. But today surprisingly I did catch a little luck, not from the search engines that I was expecting and targeting, but from Bing, Yea Bing. It’s nothing to go shouting from the roof tops about but it was kind of interesting. Within the description you get when you mouse over the search results Title Tag, Bing is now including by Street Address. This can only be pulling from the RDF tags that I included. It’s little but it give me hope that things are possible and with some tweaks perhaps I can better control what’s being displayed in that area. Again not really a big deal but I’m really happy to see some movement. Thanks Bing for the love!

Google Favicon API, PHP Code

I ran into something very, very interesting today. Google Favicon API
(A Favorite Icon API). It’s an API that allows you to pull websites Favicons, plus the API dynamically converts the image into a PNG format. This actually comes at a great time because I was just thinking the other day that since I have the option to add offsite URL’s to my site now. Would’nt it would be supa cool if I could also included their Favicon? To beak it down if you look into my site’s right side navigation you will see the “Links” category. Well I thought it would be nice, I mean supa cool if I had a script that could automatically include the corresponding sites Favicons.  And BAM! Thanks Google Favicon API. I wrapped this APIs up with some cURL and a little PHP and now I have a working PHP function. I don’t know much about the Google Favicon API but it looks like it’s been around for about a year. So it’s a good chance that this API could suddenly up and move or disappear all togehter. Basically what I’m saying is I don’t know how long the good times will last. So in my opinion I suggest you consider the use of this script temporary until you can get the time to build a much reliable one yourself.