Google news is broken : try kidd kraddick divorced

Seems like google news is the latest target of seo tactics. I have been aware that blogsearch was always vulnerable to spamming as it focuses too much on the title and recency. However over the last few days, I have been observing the disturbing trend of the same thing happening with google news.

People just target the keywords that are hot on google trends, write an article without much of research and try to monetize the traffic that flows in especially after integration of google news into universal search. I have been researching the trend for quite somedays now and got an awesome example today.

For some reason the keyword kidd kraddick divorced has become hot on google trends today. Searching for the keyword gets you 2 articles in the google news section. Both the articles are wirtten in a menner as if the kidd kraddick divorce happened recently. The fact is it is a pretty old news which was obvious from the wikipedia article that puts the date as April 2008 and this forum post dating back to September 2008. The 2 guys do not seem to have done even basic research as a 5 minute search got me to these articles.

May be Google needs to think hard about the quality control of the sites that it is serving up under the news section. Especially since we put a lot more trust on topics appearing under the news section.

Update1: Tarun of techbanyan seems to have done his homework better as he atleast refers to the divorce happening in April. The other site is a blatant copy paste of wikipedia site and google is serving it up under news section!!!!!!

Topics: Uncategorized

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Fighting the writer’s block

It has been close to a month since I wrote the last post. Everyday I think that I must write a post today. Then I sit down infront of the laptop, log onto the admin page and start thinking about a topic to blog about. Then it happens. My mind comes out without any idea. It feels like torture after sometime and then I decide to postpone the process to the nextday. I am afraid I am suffering from the dreaded writer’s block.

How did I get the writer’s block?

I think I got to this condition by reading too much advice about how to become a better blogger. I was never a blogger in true sense. I am good at creating websites that solve a specific need like the website for walkins in India, sending sms through resume and a website for buying and selling used mobiles. Binaryday was started to help me prepare for the second hand mobile website. I started writing about mobile phones and related stuff to understand popularity of keywords and other market study related thing while the website was being developed.

However while blogging I got to know many wonderful bloggers and I started to like the blogosphere. Unlike the website world where another person with a similar website becomes a competition, in blogosphere others writing about the same topic become your friend. Then I started writing about my experience about doing seo for my own website. However all along I did not follow any rule. I wrote about anything I wanted to write about.

Then I started to read about how to become a better blogger, because I believe in being the best in whatever I do. People suggested focus, so I started to focus the blog on a particular topic. That is where the problem started. I started to enjoy blogging less and less. That started showing up in the results. To solve that problem I took the path that had always helped me in the past i.e the technical way. I started focusing on keyword research and seo to become successful at blogging.

That is when I got into the writer’s block. I am still trying to solve the problem and this post is an attempt at the same. Let us see how things move from here.

Topics: Blogging Tips

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System restore in Windows 7

System restore feature was introduced in windows xp. The popularity of windows xp system restore feature has ensured that the feature is avialable in the latest OS offering from microsoft i.e windows 7 that too in a much improvesied form.

Understanding System Restore

If you have not encountered system restore in earlier versions of windows then think of it as a undo command for microsoft windows. If your os starts behavings badly after installing a particular programme or because of a virus etc, then you can use system restore to take your computer back to an earlier date when it was working fine.

How does System Restore in Windows 7 work

If you enable system restore then it takes periodical snapshot of your system and stores them as restore points when you make any significant changes or install any driver. When you use system restore to solve a problem it simply overwrites your current file system by this backed up configuration. Since the backed up version did not have the problematic software or virus, the problem gets resolved.

Scan for Affected Programs before doing system restore in Windows 7

A big problem with system restore in windows xp was that there was no way to find out what all programmes will be deleted after the system restore. The problem has been resolved to a large extent in windows 7 through a feature called scan for affected programmes. It will provide you a list of prgrams that will be uninstalled after the system restore, thereby making it easier to decide if you need to back up certain files.

Topics: Resources, Softwares, Tips and Tricks, Tools

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Review and Free Download of bitdefender antivirus 2009

Ease of use of bitdefender antivirus 2009

The biggest problem with antivirus softwares is that they are way too cumbersome. It is possible to download and install the software in less than half an hour. BitDefender is capable of logging when files were last accessed, and if a file hasn’t been used since the last scan, BitDefender skips it.

Many people, me included, get infected with virus as they forget to update the antivirus softwares in time. BitDefender updates its virus signatures every hour unless you adjust it to a longer interval.

Effectiveness of bitdefender antivirus 2009

Most important aspect of a software is its effectiveness. In several tests conducted by antivirus comparison sites, bitdefender antivirus has scored better than other more expensive antivirus softwares. One of the key features developed by bitdefender is a virtual machine on which it can run suspect codes to check if it is virus or not. Hence bitdefender is one of the few antivirus softwares that is not dependent on signature files to identify virus.

bitdefender download

Bitdefender antivirus 2009 comes as a paid software. However it provides an option to download the antivirus software for free as well. I have downloaded the bit defender internet security 2009 from the above link. I shall update this post with my experince soon. In the mean time you may go though my post about How to remove recycler virus on USB

Topics: Tools, antivirus

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Fake movie torrents to fight piracy

Some wars are best fought with Guerrila tactics. What is the second most important virtue of torrents? ease of use, right? What if we can take that away? Instead of trying to fight the spread of movie torrents in the legal way should the movie producers not make it extremely painful for the users to download movies using torrents?

How to make movie torrents a painful experience?

1. By creating confusion. Seed fake movie torrents in the torrent search engine. The user will never know what he is downloading till he has downloaded.
2. Use torrent search engine experts to move the fake torrents to the top.
3. Put up millions of computers that will download the popular movies from the torrent sites. Considering the amount of money movie producers loose to piracy, this may be a small cost 

Movie torrents may be the most beautiful thing to have happened to mankind or the movie torrent may be the worst enemy of the progress of humanrace depending upon whether you belong to the movie production group or movie consumption group. These are just some random thoughts of mine. Check my posts about rapidshare premium account and Most viewed videos

Topics: Idea

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How to remove recycler virus on USB

The recycler virus is one of the most dreaded viruses. The most dangerous thing is that recycler virus makes use of portable devices like usb drives to spread itself. Basic modus operandi of the virus is to keep itself as a hiddent, read-only executable file on the USB. It also inserts a line into the autorun file of the usb pointing to itself. And once you double click on the usb, the virus runs and infects the clean pc.

removing the recycler virus is as simple as listing files on your usb drive along listing hidden files as well. Look for a file autorun.inf and delete. See my post about removing virus from usb for the exact steps. Techpavan has a good post about how to remove recycler virus from usb as well.

Topics: Tips and Tricks

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Download windows 7 upgrade advisor beta

We at binaryday seem to be too impressed with windows 7, the latest operating system from microsoft. We have previously blogged about windows 7 themes , windows media player 12 or wmp 12 and Free Download Directx 11 with Directx 3D for Windows 7 and Vista. In this blog post I shall be discussing how you can download windows 7 upgrade advisor.

What is windows 7 upgrade advisor

Windows 7 upgrade advisor is a tool that will let you know if all hardware and software on your pc are compatible with windows 7. It can be installed on windows vista and xp. The windows 7 upgrade advisor will hopefully protect users against unpleasant surprises.

Where to download windows 7 upgrade advisor

The beta version of windows 7 upgrade advisor is available at the official microsoft site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/upgrade-advisor.aspx

How to install windows 7 upgrade advisor

As with all other products from microsoft, installation is a piece of cake and quite intuitive. So I need not explain this step.

Topics: Resources, Tips and Tricks, Tools

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Windows 7 Themes

Themes provide a really easy and useful way to change the appearance of content of windows and break free from the default look. Windows 7 themes is one of the many cool features of Windows 7 that include windows media player 12 and Directx 3D to name a few.

Windows 7 Themes

Some of the best themes of windows 7 are available at the official website of microsoft at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/Windows7/Personalize. Mike Swanson has put together a cool theme for windows 7 at http://www.mikeswanson.com/wallpaper/Mike%20Swanson%20Macros.themepack. However while windows 7 themes have made it comparatively easy to get a cool look, that is not good enough reason to migrate your operating system.

Windows 7 themes for Vista

If you intend to continue with Vista O/S and get the looks of Windows 7, then you can do so by using windows 7 themes for Vista. Some of the best themes for Vista are available at http://giannisgx89.deviantart.com/art/Windows-7-Style-For-Vista-102269037, http://pankaj981.deviantart.com/art/Windows-7-Inspirat-76378417, http://vistaaero.deviantart.com/art/Windows-7-M1-Original-Theme-90127567 and http://deskmundo.deviantart.com/art/Windows-Seven-M1-VS-76834286

Windows 7 themes for XP

If you need to get a look similar to windows 7 on your XP machine, then you should consider using a windows 7 theme for XP.

http://rapidshare.com/files/193530863/Windows_7_M__20VS_2.zip, http://www.askvg.com/download-sevenvg-refresh-theme-with-superbar-for-windows-xp/, http://dopeysneezy.deviantart.com/art/Windows-7-Complete-109505907

Topics: Tips and Tricks, Tools

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Convert docx to doc with free docx to doc converter

Need to convert docx to doc 

Many people struggle to open docx files with microsoft word as the docx format was a new format introduced by microsoft in word 2007. Many other versions of microsoft word do not support the docx format. The official solution for it is to convert docx files to doc format by using microsoft compatibility pack. However using microsoft compatibility pack for docx to doc conversion can be quite cumbersome, especially if you are a technologically challenged person

Free docx to doc converter to the rescue

I am constantly surprised by the number of free tools that are available online. As I was researching for a convenient way to convert docx to doc format, I came across docx2doc.com. Docx2doc.com offers an online tool to convert docx to doc instantly. Let me know your views of docx2doc.com if you have ever used them before.Btw you may like to check my other posts about windows media player 12 , Free Download Directx 11, rapidshare premium account and Rapidshare download Manager.

Topics: Tips and Tricks, Tools

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Rapidshare download Manager and Rapidshare manager : Be aware of spywares

I have previously written about rapidshare premium account and rapidshare downloader because of the interest shown by the blog readers in these topics related to rapidshare. This is the third post in the series of posts about rapidshare tricks and I shall be discussing about Rapidshare download Manager and Rapidshare manager in this post.

Rapidshare manager is the official download utility from rapidshare

Rapidshare manager is an utility provided by rapidshare itself. It allows users to upload and download multiiple files simultaneously. As typical with rapidshare, there are several restrictions on free users. Still the rapidshare manager is the official utility from rapidshare and hence worth a try especially you are sensitive about security related issues. You can download Rapidshare Manager at http://www.rapidshare.com/rsm.html

Rapidshare download Manager and Spyware

Having provided links to 5 free rapidshare downloader, I just realized that many rapidshare download managers can be a potential spyware. Hence if you must use a rapidshare download manager, make sure that you do enough research on it to satisfy yourself that, it is not a spyware.

Topics: Tools

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Nero 9 | Nero 9 Download

Nero 9 is the latest version of the popular Nero software. Some of the highlights of Nero 9 includes

• Fast and easy rip, burn, Autobackup, and copy functions 
• ability to copy, burn, share, upload, and create music mixes.
• Convert music and DVDs to play on your iPod and other mobile devices

As can be seen from the post above, there is a significant improvement in the user interface of Nero 9. Nero 9 comes with a tape scan feature that allows easy preview and scene selection from digital videos.

Nero 9 Download

As with other versions of Nero, Nero 9 continues to be a not-free software. However the 15 day trial verion is free and can be downloaded here

Topics: Resources, Tips and Tricks

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Windows media player 12 or wmp 12 | Review and Download links

Microsoft seems to be giving up its cnfrontation strategy and gradually moving towards a collaborative strategy with Windows 7. Many previously bundled programmes will ship separately now. However windows media player 12 or wmp 12 is going to be one of the few programmes that are going to ship along with windows 7. Btw do check out my post about Free Download Directx 11 with Directx 3D for Windows 7 and Vista.

Windows media player 12 or wmp 12 : the latest media player to ship

The Windows media player 12 is the latest media player to ship from the microsoft assembly line. Actually only the beta version has been made available. The final version will be released along with windows 7 only. In a notable shift from the past, even other formats including H.264 and AAC are supported.

The new interface for Windows media player 12

The biggest improvement on wmp 12 seems to have happened on its interface. wmp 12 comes with brighter and lighter interface. The windows media player 12 comes with 2 distinct interface modes i.e Now Playing view, and Library view. The interface would be pretty familiar to existing wmp users even though some buttons and toolbars have been moved around a bit.

“Play to” the coolest feature of windows media player 12

Windows media player 12 makes it easier to play music with any external device with the pc through a cool feature called “Play to”. It can stream to other computers in your HomeGroup, so, you can actually play back on the HTPC connected to your sound system while browsing your library on your laptop.

Download windows media player 12

Unfortunately, even after lot of Googling, I have not been able to locate a link to download windows media player 12. While I could find some rapidshare links, they were mostly for the spanish version of wmp 12. Let me know if you find a link for english version of windows media player 12.

Topics: Tips and Tricks, Tools

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5 free rapidshare downloader

The need for Rapidshare Downloader

There seems to be a lot of interest for rapidshare premium account as Rapidshare seems to be doing a perfect job of annoying the free users with slow download speed, delayed start of download etc. If you are trying to download movies, you will have to download multiple files, which makes the process of downloading files from rapidshare even more frustrating.

Free Rapidshare Downloader to the rescue

The frustration is not so much about the delay in downloading the files from rapidshare as anyways the download takes long. The frustration is because of the need for the user to intervene in the download from time to time. Rapidshare downloader softwares make the process less frustrating by automating this process. With a good rapidshare downloader software you can input all the download links at once and forget all about it.

Popular free rapidshare downloader software

1. http://www.rapget.com/en/
2. http://www.rapidme.com/
3. http://www.knowledgetraders.com/rapidharvest.php
4. http://www.4shared.com/file/70381361/767cfc2f/RapidsharePlus.html
5. http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Download-Managers/Rapidshare-Auto-Downloader.shtml

Let me know if you use any other rapidshare downloader.

Topics: Tools

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A Blog earning report with a difference

Earning reports are a great way to learn about how other bloggers are making money and to pick up some new ideas for yourself. I have previously covered the earning report of several other bloggers. The earnings, eCPM of these bloggers fluctuated widely. However one common theme between these earning reports was that they made >90% of the money from advertisements.

However today, I came across the earning report for shoutmeloud. The report seems to have made me question several of my assumptions. And you must read the report if you think that advertisements are the only way to go for small blogs. While Harsh has made 120$ from adsense, he has made more than 140$ from dreamhost referral programme, 160$ from blogging services and another 50$ from private ad sales.

It will be interesting to observe if his earnings hold up in the next few months as well. Nonetheless Some interesting ideas worth exploring.

Btw you may check earning reports of Nihar here. He says how changing from Kontera to infolinks has increased his earnings significantly.

Topics: Blogging Tips, Make Money

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Keyword research in action

What is common among my posts regarding rapidshare premium account,core 2 duo vs dual core, gmail proxy,how to remove virus from usb, ntldr missing vista, and free bollywood movies download? I had written all of them after significant amount of keyword research. Each of them get me more than 200 pageviews daily and they bring in a good amount of my total traffic. Goes on to show the power of keyword research.

Topics: Blogging Tips, SEO

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Free Download Directx 11 with Directx 3D for Windows 7 and Vista

I seem to have found a new interest in technology. After writing a post about free rapidshare premium account yesterday, I am back with a post about free download of Directx 11 for Windows 7. The few people who visit this post regularly for posts related to blogging, need not worry. The reason I am not posting about blogging is I am in the middle of a really good research about twitter. So please bear with these posts about Directx 3D while I complete my research.

Directx 11 for Windows 7 is the latest graphic technology

If Directx 10 was the preferred version for Vista, Directx 11 is the recommended graphic technology for Windows 7. Directx 11 is available as part of technical preview for public testing. It has got several new features. Hence our recommendation is that you must download Directx 11 ASAP.

Free Download Directx 11

The following are the links to the section on microsoft site from where you can directly download Directx 11.

• Download Directx 11 SDK here
• Download Directx 11 End-user runtimes here

Directx 11 with Directx 3D

The Directx 3D seems to be generating lof of buzz. Honestly I have not been able to figure out what is great about Directx 3D. Please leave a comment if you know the answer. The links to download Directx11 3D are the same as the ones listed above.

Topics: Coding, Idea, Multimedia, News, Resources, SEO, SEO Experiment, Tips and Tricks, Tools, Uncategorized

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Free rapidshare premium account tricks

There seems to be a high demand for free rapidshare premium account going by the large number of blog contests with a rapidshare premium account as the prize. Hence I am taking a break from normal blog posts about blogging and writing some tips that you can use to get a rapidshre premium account for free.

Google Alert for rapidshare premium account

From time to time bloggers post a free rapidshare premium account username and password to attract new users to the blog. You can see the blog posts about free rapidshare premium accounts through google blog search. However most of the time the account would be useless by the time google picks it up. You can solve this by creating a google alert for ‘rapidshare premium’. This way you will get alerted as soon as anyone makes a post about rapidshare premium account.

Get a free rapidshare premium account by accumulating rapid points

You should consider creating a free rapidshare account. Then upload some interesting videos and share it with friends and blog readers. You earn rapid points for every download from your rapidshare account. Once you have enough rapid points, they shall give you a rapidshare premium account for free.

Advantages of a rapidshare premium account

If you have been wondering why the hell you need a premium account, then let me tell you that rapidshare has some real luxury for its premium customers including unlimited parallel downloads, unlimited upload space, fast connection speed among others.

How do you manage to find free rapidshare premium accounts?

Topics: Resources, Tips and Tricks

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Paralysis by analysis : Are you suffering from it?

It is applicable to a situation when a person/team/organization spends too much time analyzing a problem that they are left with too little time to work on the ideas generated by the discussion. I have suffered from this disease myself in the past.

Here are some symptoms of paralysis by analysis

• You spend more time reading blogs about blogging and less time on writing posts for your blogs
• You have not changed your blog theme in the last 3 years because you have been searching for the perfect theme
• You never get time to build links for your blog because you were busy reading articles about how to get links
• You have not sent an email to another blogger asking for link/interview/review because you are not sure if he will read it

Just Do it

The easiest way to find out if a trick works is to just do it. If it works great. If not big deal. I will try out something else.

Topics: Blogging Tips

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Higher Bounce Rate can be Good

Few days back I had made a post about the larger amount of blog traffic that will be generated for search terms related to IPL 2009 and had asked my readers about how do they plan to take advantage of it. Harsh has left a comment that

Using Google trend to drive traffic is good strategy, but then if its not your niche , you will simply end up increasing your bounce rate. Is int it??

I was going to respond to him in the comments section. However I just realized that many established bloggers and webmasters seem to have accepted the theory that high bounce rate = bad quality as gospel truth. That is NOT necessarily TRUE.

I Love high bounce rate on certain pages

You read that right. I love high bounce rate. I actually brainstorm for quite sometime everyweek trying to increase the bounce rate. And trust me I have not gone mad. Not yet atleast

High Bounce rate means higher CTR for adsense

What are the normal advice you have heard/read for decreasing the bounce rate? Provide lot of interesting links to your other pages from the body of the post, at the end of your post, provide links to your most interesting posts from the sidebar etc. Now think about what those interesting links are doing to your adsense blocks. All those interesting links are competeing with the adsense blocks for the attention of the user. As you succeed in making the internal links more and more interesting, the adsense blocks continue to become less attractive. Is it any wonder that your CTR keeps going down.

Answer to some queries about high bounce rate raised in the comments

I think Nihar, Tarun and Harsh have raised some really valid points in the comments section. Instead of answering them in the comments, I will deal with them here.

1. If you are blogging solely for money, then a higher bounce rate is good: I think this statement is true for most bloggers who monetize their blogs through ppc. However if you are monetizing your blog through affiliate products or if you want to monetize your blog by selling some service/product then this does not hold good
2. If you want to convert a google reader into a regular reader then you need to give them some option: Again true. However you need to answer some questions to know if it is true for you
   •  
     •  
       •  
         • What % of your feedreaders actually read your blog daily? It is less than 15% for most of my blogs
         • How much you would have earned by putting an adsense block at the end of your post
         • What is the worth of the feed subscriber to you
3. A High bounce rate will decrease your ranking: Fair and logical point. However I and several authority figures in SEO do not think that Google has started using bounce rate as one of the quality parameters. My experience with the post about core 2 duo vs dual core bears it out. I think this is because bounce rate as a ranking factor is quite noisy and susceptible to manipulation.

Topics: Adsense, Blogging Tips

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SEO Problem: Home page dominating the internal pages

I have been working on a resume website to try out my seo skills and to put my theoretical learnings into practice. My progress on google.com has not been great though the site has started to get some fairly good results on the google.co.in domain for search terms like sample resume, fresher sample resume, java sample resume etc.

While I continue to study the reason for this sharp difference in ranking on google.com and google.co.in, I had decided to try my hand a single word keyword i.e resume. For this purpose I created a specific page about resumes with optimized title tag, meta description, h1,h2 tags and keyword usage etc. The page has been indexed by google for somedays now.

However I am facing a unique issue and on close examination I see that issue being repeated on my other domains as well.

• My initial content about sample resume was ranking at 90-100 range on Google.
• Google avoids keeping 2 pages of the same website on the SERP. For really good authority site it puts up 2 links as well
• Now google seems to be ignoring my new page. Since the original page was not optimized for resume as a keyword, it continues to linger at 90-100 position only.

Have you ever faced an issue like this? What is the solution to this issue?

I will appreciate some links to my sample cover letter page as well. It is right now at 45 position for “sample cover letter” and I shall like to see the effect of external links on the ranking.

Topics: SEO, SEO Experiment

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