Using Google Analytics to optimize your website statistics

June 18th, 2010 | Posted under Internet Trends, The Internet, Web Hosting Tips | No Comments »

Using Google Analytics to optimize your website statistics

Ethics of Online Advertising in a Website

June 16th, 2010 | Posted under The Internet | 1 Comment »

Ethics of Online Advertising in a Website

Web developers often display advertisements to the visitors to earn money. It is a popular approach to use services like Google AdWords that display customised advertisements based on the customer data. But advertisers should follow certain ethics when giving out customer data to advertising services -

1. Privacy Statement

A website dealing with client data should always display a privacy statement that is easily noticeable to the user. It must state in clear words what rights it reserves with the data supplied. In case the data is used, a statement should be made available to the client proclaiming that the website reserves all rights to use the supplied data in a way as and how they wish to.

2. Safety of Personal Information

Personal information such as telephone numbers, addresses and passwords should not be revealed to the advertising service, since this grossly breaches privacy of a client. Such data must be stored with proper security. Clients should be made aware that their personal information is not used, this increases customer trust.

3. Content should be more important

Advertisements must not be obtrusive and imposing on the user, and web designers must make it a priority to serve the contents demanded by the client in a way that it assumes prime importance in a web page and is easily available.

BounceWeb provides great deals for Web hosting.

How to make money using Google Adsense?

May 26th, 2010 | Posted under The Internet, Web Hosting, Web Hosting Tips | 1 Comment »

How to make money using Google Adsense?

Potential of Location Based Services under Web 2.0

May 13th, 2010 | Posted under Internet Trends, Software, The Internet | No Comments »

Potential of Location Based Services under Web 2.0

With the introduction of Web 2.0, there have been quite a few path-breaking changes in the World Wide Web. Websites are no more the static HTML pages, but are more interactive and collaborative. The latest trend on the Web 2.0 paradigm seems to be Location Based Services.

So what is Location based Services (LBS)?

LBS utilize the geographical location of a user to provide location-optimized services. Although it is mostly accessed on a mobile device, there are a lot of applications that run on the web, the most famous being Google Maps!

How does LBS work?

The first step is to collect your geographical information, map it with the database, built with the help of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and then provide host of services available for the particular location.

What are the possible services offered by LBS?

Questions like, “Where is the nearest medical store?” or “How do I get to XYZ from the place I am” can be solved instantly and from the point you accessed the service. Apart from that, more entertainment services can also be included!

Web 2.0 optimizing LBS?

The software tools formed on the concept of Web 2.0, such as RSS and XML are used to store information in an efficient way. Although it is more suited for mobile devices, the importance of Web 2.0 cannot be denied!

Top five Google products

May 13th, 2010 | Posted under Internet Trends, Software, The Internet | No Comments »

Top five Google products

It is impossible to avoid Google while working on the Internet. This organization has literally replaced the word “search” by its name and has found an entry in the Oxford dictionary as well! There are several Google products catering to the desktop, mobile and online users. Here, we discuss the top 5 Google products that are most popular among users:

1. Google Search

The simple interface, combined with the efficient listing of results has helped millions in finding the best resources on the World Wide Web.

2. Gmail

Before Gmail came into existence, the highest mailbox space offered was 6 MB, and Gmail took the competition away by offering 1GB of space. It was efficiently backed up by the implementation of Ajax, labels and other innovative features.

3. Google Docs

True to the spirit of Web 2.0, it took online collaboration to a new level as people could work simultaneously on the same document.

4. Google Earth

A desktop application that accessed the Internet to retrieve 3-D geographical information, aerial imagery.

5. Google Chrome

Another desktop application in the form of a web browser, which was specially optimized for all Google products, thus creating a wholesome experience.

Google has its products all over the mobile, desktop and online domains. With its plan to introduce an OS, it could create bigger impact in the near future.

Top Ten Google Tips

May 12th, 2010 | Posted under The Internet, Web Hosting Tips | No Comments »

Top Ten Google Tips

Having a website is not just enough. One needs to optimize it in a way that it ranks higher in Google search pages. It is not a tough job after all if a few steps are followed. Here are the top ten google tips that would help you improve the google search ranking of your web page.

1. Use original content

The first and most important of the top ten google tips is to keep original website content, as Google has strict policy against plagiarized contents.

2. Optimize the homepage first

For a new site, one must choose a good domain name, and optimize the index page first.

3. Implement basic HTML

Editing the HTML code can help in improving search engine rankings to a great extent.

4. Select the correct keywords

Keywords should cater to what other users are likely to search, and not just what the website is about!

5. Proper content on the selected keyword

There should be sufficient text in the website that uses the keywords.

6. Use meta tags efficiently

Meta keywords and descriptions should be such that it describes the website and has the proper keywords

7. Create back links

Google calculates rankings on popularity and clicks per website, so back links are very useful

8. Choose a proper title

The HTML title tag is very important for search rankings and should have the keywords

9. Keep track of your page rankings

Installing the Google toolbar would help keeping a tab on your page rankings.

10. Use the “301” code for web page redirection

The 301 code is search engine friendly and should be used if pages are moved or renamed.

If these top ten google tips are followed, then the result is bound to show within weeks!

Track your site stats with Google Analytics

February 25th, 2009 | Posted under The Internet | No Comments »

Not so long ago, web statistics were pretty useless. There were thousands of sites that kept track of your visitors, but how they calculated these numbers differed with each service. Plus, a lot of those services weren’t really secure, and could be tampered with. The result; People lying about their visitors, companies started to realize this and gave people who really were sincere a hard time by not believing their stats.

Once again it was Google who came up with a solution (actually it’s starting to become scary how much influence these guys have): Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a service that tracks the activity on your website, with the help of a little script you install on your site, on every page of your website actually. Because of this, Google can generate information on just about anything that happens on your website.

For example, if you install Google Analytics, you’ll know how long people stay on your website, what pages they visit, how long they stay on each page, which page they leave from, what browser they use, what their resolution is and much, much more. And on top of that, I would almost forget, it shows you how much visitors you have, and how many page views those visitors are generating. Because Google is a trusted source (let’s see how that is in about ten years) people actually rely on the figures, especially because you can send them through Google (so you can’t tamper with them).

But the visitor count is actually just a side-effect. The coolest thing about Analytics is that you can figure out what are the strong and weak spots of your website, and deal with them accordingly. Then, you can link it to AdSense, and the circle is complete. Google saves the world (until we need to be saved from Google)!

Why YouTube beats your fancy video player

February 24th, 2009 | Posted under Computer Advice, The Internet | No Comments »

YouTube, otherwise known as ‘that brilliant idea that made a couple of guys an insane amount of money’, has become the easiest and most used way to share video on the web. It’s hard to imagine, but about five years ago, sharing video’s wasn’t as normal as it is now. Converting a video was a tough job, because you had to pick a format that was widely supported. Then you had to have a hosting account with lot’s of disk space, and the bandwidth to support all those people watching your video at your expense.

Then came YouTube, a free service that makes it very, very easy to upload and share videos, and, even more important, without the need to buy disk space or bandwidth. In a matter of months the video service became immensely popular and two years later, the whole thing was sold to Google (that’s what you do with good ideas nowadays; you just sell them to Google). They pumped in a couple of million dollars, and the service expanded, which made it the biggest online video service in the world (and I’m pretty sure in space too).

So YouTube is brilliant? The idea, yes, but it does come with some downsides. Videos can be no longer than 10 minutes and the quality is downright crap, sorry if I’m offending anyone. They made a cool new widescreen player last year, and there is the option to show videos in better quality, but still, it’s nothing compared to the HD players of, for example, Vimeo. That might be the case, but the brainiacs over at YouTube know what they’re doing. For example, Vimeo has brilliant quality, but lacks the user base that YouTube has. Therefore, YouTube gets away with the bad quality, and has time to slowly improve on that in a way that benefits both them and their users.

But you don’t want bad quality, you put effort in creating beautiful videos and you want that quality to be shown. So is it better to install your own video player? No! Even if you have millions of dollars to spend, you can’t beat the user base of YouTube. Think about what you’d rather have: ten people watching a video in the best quality there is, or ten million people watching a video that looks a little soggy, which doesn’t matter because everybody knows why that is the case. Do the math.

Google Apps Integration With WHM cPanel

February 7th, 2009 | Posted under The Internet, Web Hosting, Web Hosting Tips | 1 Comment »

Google Apps is Google’s toolset for communication and collaboration which include the following tools:

• Gmail: Google’s famous e-mail.
• Google Talk: Google’s IM or Instant Messenger
• Google Calender: Manage your events, schedule, and life.
• Google Docs: Word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation all done online and free!
• Google Sites: You can create sites, plus secure group Wikis.

Integrating Google Apps with WHM cPanel will allow you to use all of Google’s tools combined with your web hosting for an extra powerful package, which comes free with Google. They have two versions, the standard edition, and premier edition. We are going to focus on the standard edition, well, because it’s free. Free is nice.

Step 1: Go to their sign up page, and click on the Getting Started button.

Now after you have done so you will see this screen below. Chances are you are the owner of this domain if you’re going to be singing up, so select the first radio box, enter your domain like I’ve done below, and click the “Get Started” button. This will bring you to step 2.

Step 2: This is very straight forward, just simply fill in the rest of the fields, they are self explanatory. But the most difficult part is the DNS Management Requirements that Google has outlined. Bounceweb has made it easy, simply after you have done this contact our support department, provide your domain, and ask for these two items to be done:

• Configure MX reccords
• Create Custom URLs

We will handle all of the technical work, and let you know when it’s completed.

Step 3: Just fill in your username/password and you’re done. Oh and of course agree to their terms of use.

Last but not least you will get an e-mail from Google with the instructions, so you can just forward those to us in regards on the nameserver modifications, and you will have a shiny new login screen where you can access all of your Google Apps from. Take a look at the one we just created while writing this blog. WHM cPanel integrated with Google Apps.

Thanks for reading. If you have anything to add please go ahead, I hope your found this useful and fun. Maybe even a little bit exciting?