A blog on blogging, computers and such

I have had a couple of strange experiences lately. I’ve written a few things that are more than a little critical of a couple of huge corporations. Since then, I have twice had my blog infected with malware or badware, so that Google have blocked people from going directly to my blog from Google search results.

I am not critical of Google. I think that they did the right thing, given the presence of malware on my blog.

But the thing is, I run several blogs. This is the only one that has had malware. And now this blog has had it twice. And this is the only blog where I’ve criticised huge corporations. I can’t prove anything, I have no idea who did it, it is just strange. But I am cynical. And I am don’t really believe in coincidences. Not all that much.

I run a WordPress installation. So, the first time Google told me I had malware, I was running WordPress 2.3.2. I looked through all my posts. Then I looked through my PHP-files. I found a JavaScript that looked strange in a theme file. So I did a clean upgrade to 2.3.3 and changed theme.

A few days later, the malware was back. This time I upgraded to WordPress 2.5, and changed theme again. The theme is clean, the installation is clean, Aximet is there, only clean widgets and plugins. Just as the first time. I hope WordPress 2.5 makes this install more secure. This has cost me lots of time and work. I hate it.

Who knows. I am suspicious. I may be too suspicious. Have anybody else experienced anything similar?

Google Analytics is about to get a new facelift from Google, according to Web Analytics World.

Yesterday I had a chance to talk with Google Analytics’ Senior Product Manager, Brett Crosby regarding some of the new features being rolled out into Beta for Google Analytics. The one that I found most intriguing was their new benchmarking functionality which will allow users to compare your site’s metrics versus other sites. With opt-in permission from site owners, Google will be aggregating website data into different verticals allowing users to compare their data with companies in any other vertical.

Here is the blog about it from Google:

Benchmarking now available plus additional opt-in settings

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

We’re happy to announce the launch of two related new Google Analytics features: a beta version of industry benchmarking and a data-sharing settings page. Both are designed to give our customers more choice and better control over their data. We are also launching an integration with Audio Ads today, which we’ll discuss in more detail in tomorrow’s post. All of these features will begin appearing in customer accounts today, though benchmarking reports may take up to a couple weeks to show data.

Industry benchmarking is a commonly requested new service that enables customers to see how their site data compares to sites in any available industry vertical. We believe this data will provide actionable insights by providing context for users to understand how their site is doing. For example, if you have a travel website and you get a spike in traffic on Mondays, you may want to know whether other travel sites get that same spike on Mondays.

You can also compare your site against an industry vertical different than your own. For example, you might see that your industry’s traffic dips at certain times of the year while another industry’s traffic increases. Based on that information, you may wish to explore cross promotional opportunities to drive traffic back and forth.

For more information, take a look at the benchmarking FAQs in the Google Analytics help center.

Of course, benchmarking only works if people can opt to share their data into the system, so we’re also introducing a new data-sharing settings page. On this page, customers can choose whether to opt in or opt out of sharing their Analytics data. To be clear, we are not sharing individual data with competitors; we bucket data into industry verticals and then anonymize and aggregate the data. Once you opt in, it may take a couple weeks for the reports to populate.

You can also elect to share your data with other Google services. This setting will allow us to provide you with additional advanced new features. For example, many of you have asked us to integrate Conversion Optimizer (which is currently only available to AdWords Conversion Tracking users) into Google Analytics. By opting to share your data with Google, you’ll be able to take advantage of these related new features as they become available. For more information, take a look at the data-sharing options FAQs in the help center.

This is good news, especially for larger sites and relatively standard sites where benchmarking is meaningful and usesul. However, at this point too few details are available to make it possibly to really know in any detail how useful this will be. But it is sufficiently interesting for me, at least, to eagerly await momre news and information from Google.

One of the many signs of Google’s increasingly strong position as the number one search engine in the world, is witnessed in the lacking ability of Yahoo to make blog content searchable for its users.

I have just looked into the stats for my blogs. This is always interesting. But the single most interesting finding this time was that Google has delivered about 150 times as many hits to my blogs as Yahoo has. This difference is so large that it blows my mind. It really seems Google is running in circles around Yahoo as far as blog content is concerned!

I am unable to understand why. That is, I can see some explanations for it, but they only explain part of the difference, I think.

First off, I am using the XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress plugin. This automatically notifies Google and Ask about updates on my blogs, and they are both quick to index the content. But in order to update Yahoo I need an application ID. And the links in the plugin takes me to the Yahoo developer Center. And since I’m not a developer, I don’t register there. And no other info is provided by Yahoo either. So I dropped it.

I have tried to find out how to automatically ping Yahoo, but I am unable to find it on their pages. And info I have found elsewhere, doesn’t work because Yahoo have move their pages with no info about where it is now to be found. This, to me, is arrogance.

Second, Yahoo don’t seem to read sitemaps well at all. Both on my sites and on my blogs they serve up old versions of pages to users.

So, to me, it seems Yahoo is losing the battle because they simply are not adapting to the changes in cyberspace fast enough, and because they are arrogant. They expect site owners to go through a lot of trouble to find out how to best use them. Instead, they should recognize that they probably need us more (as a collective) than we need them, and be a little more humble and flexible. As it is, I think they deserve to loose the search engine war against Goggle.