Google search: Tip to search better on Google

Search on google is pretty simple: just type whatever comes to your mind & hit Enter or click on the Google Search button and you more than often find exactly what you were looking for. However the following tips can help you refine your technique to make the most of your searches:

1. Put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. If you put quotes around "electric curtains," Google won't waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word "electric" and another set containing the word "curtains."

2. Similarly, put a hyphen right before any word you want screened out. If you're looking up dolphins, for example, you'll have to wade through a million Miami Dolphins pages unless you search for "dolphins - Miami ."

3. Google is a calculator. Type in an equation ("32+2345*3- 234=").

4. Google is a package tracker. Type a FedEx or UPS package number (just the digits); when you click Search, Google offers a link to its tracking information.

5. Google is a global White Pages and Yellow Pages. Search for "phonebook:home depot norwalk , ct," Google instantly produces the address and phone number of the Norwalk Home Depot. This works with names ("phonebook: robert jones las vegas , NV") as well as businesses. Don't put any space after "phonebook."

6. Google is an atlas. Type in an area code, like 212, to see a Mapquest map of the area.

7. Google is a units-of-measurement converter. Type "teaspoons in a gallon," for example, or "centimeters in a foot."

8. Google is a stock ticker. Type in AMZN or GOOG, for example, to see a link to the current Amazon or Google stock price, graphs, financial news and so on.

9. Google is Wal-Mart's computer. Type in a UPC bar code number, such as "12345250015, " to see the description of the product you've just "scanned in." (Thanks to the Google Blog, http://google. blogspace. com , for this tip and the next couple.)

10. Google is an aviation buff. Type in a flight number like "United 22" for a link to a map of that flight's progress in the air. Or type in the tail number you see on an airplane for the full registration form for that plane.

11. Google is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Type in a VIN (vehicle identification number, which is etched onto a plate, usually on the door frame, of every car), like "VJ3SE1157MT001832, " to find out the car's year, make and model.

12 . Google is a curreny convertor. Type USD to INR to get the current x-change rate.

Amazon vs Walmart: Price war?

Is the value of a good book immeasurable? Think again! Walmart and Amazon have a feeling that it hovers somewhere under 10 bucks. The two online giants have begun a deep-discount war that is more reminiscent of neighboring delis or much like the fight between the Ambani's of India. It all started with Walmart's promotion offering of their top 10 pre-ordered books (including Sarah Palin’s memoir and new books from Stephen King, James Patterson, John Grisham, and Michael Crichton) for only a sawbuck — including free shipping. Amazon responded by matching their price, but as of this morning, both deals had slipped down another notch to a staggering $9 per popular new hardcover.

Due to the costs of producing; warehousing; shipping; selling; and marketing books, hardcovers cost way more than $9 to get onto the store shelves. Paperbacks are cheaper to produce, but a lot of costs were absorbed in hardcover publication. Besides, American reviewers still don’t take paperback originals seriously, and review attention is a major part of publicity for a book (as radio is for music). The economics behind book publishing is very tight, and margins for all involved (aside from a few big name authors) are very slim.

Although it might spell better deals for the common man, it’s hardly an auspicious sign for the vitality of the industry. It’s even worse news for independent booksellers who aren’t able to compete at anything near the level of Sam Walton’s little corner store.

nofollow and pagerank sculpting in seo

what is page rank?

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. It is named after Larry Page and is used by the Google Internet search engine.

what is nofollow?

"nofollow" is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking (i.e. show not pass on page rank) in the search engine's index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring. In common mans words "nofollow" is method (introduced in 2005 and supported by multiple search engines) to annotate a link to tell search engines “I can’t or don’t want to vouch for this link.” In Google, nofollow links don’t pass PageRank and don’t pass anchor text.

what has changed?
According to Matt Cutts (Google) offers a simplified description of the PageRank process, where a page's value flows out to the various pages it links to equally. When the nofollow attribute originally came on the scene, Google would just remove those links from the equation, according to Cutts. So if a page with 10 "PageRank points" to share had ten links on it, and five were nofollowed, each regular link would pass two PageRank points.

Cutts today said that Google changed this practice more than a year ago to keep the nofollowed links in the equation, but not passing any PageRank points. So in that same example, the regular links would each pass 1 PageRank point, and the nofollowed links would still "use up" their allotted points, even though they did not pass those points on. You can read the full article here...

find out of print books

Out of Print Books are hard to find. But here is a list of places that you can look for on the internet!

1. Amazon - partners with Bibliofind so that it will automatically check for used copies of any title which includes out of print books.

2. ebay - the largest marketplace for books infact any item for that matter

3. lulu : - they do print on demand. You might be able to print some of the our of print books.

4. infibeam - partners with retail book outlets which sell old/used copies of books.

5. Old Children's Books

6. Better World Books . A good place to shop for books because it sells libraries' unneeded books and splits the profits of the sales between the libraries and organizations promoting literacy worldwide.

7. Abebooks
Claims to be "the world's largest online marketplace for used, rare, and out-of-print books." Note there are also Abebooks sites in France, Germany and the UK. It is a subsidiary of Amazon.

8 Biblio: Used Books, Rare Books, and Out of Print Books http://biblio.com/

9 Bookfinder -- another meta-search engine for used book catalogs.

10 Main Book Shop -- claims to be "the largest selection of publisher's overstocks and remainder books in the world."

dashes vs underscores in url for SEO

Which parameter is a better separator for words in a URL for SEO purposes?
a) hyphens/dashes (-)
b) underscores (_)

There is none other to answer this question other than Matt Cutts. Infact one of matt cutts responses clarifies it in a nutshell "if you already have a system set up to do underscores and have links/rankings, it’s probably not worth changing things over. But if you’re starting on a new domain, I’d go with dashes." In this post Matt describes in detail of how google treats dashes and underscores and atleast as of now dashes is a better choice for Google!

Some more results about google based on SERP counts

1. Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for george washington, George Washington, and gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN will all return the same results.
2. _ < & are treated like letters/numbers, not word separators
3. Google thinks ? [ ] ` { } are treated like spaces separating words
4. ‘ . / = \ are treated like spaces separating words if they are within quotes. If they are not inside quotes, they are treated as if they are spaces and are inside quotes.

Alexa Rank: boost alexa ranking

What is Alexa? According to alexa.com
Alexa is useful resource for people to discover information about websites. You can use Alexa to discover how popular a site is (based on its alexa rank), to find new sites, to learn who owns a site and a lot more. Whether you are a web professional trying to size up your online competition or you're just trying to find the best website to buy a new TV, Alexa is for you.

How does it work?
Alexa ranks sites based on tracking information of users of its Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and from integrated sidebars in Mozilla and Netscape.

Is it accurate?
There is some controversy over how representative Alexa's user base is of typical Internet behavior. If Alexa's user base is a fair statistical sample of the Internet user population e.g., a random sample of sufficient size, Alexa's ranking should be quite accurate. In reality, not much is known about the sample and possible sampling biases. A known source of bias is the self-selecting, opt-in nature of Alexa traffic tracking software installation, but the significance of this bias on rankings is not known

Other issues:
* Alexa does not get you much direct traffic (unless you get into the top 100). It gets mostly Ego searches from webmasters looking at their own domain.
* With a small sample audience minor changes in site traffic can represent huge changes in Alexa rating
* In simplest terms, Alexa is truly biased toward a webmaster audience
* On April 16, 2008 many users reported dramatic shifts in their Alexa rankings. Alexa confirmed this later in the day with an announcement that they had released the new Alexa ranking system, claiming that they now take into account more data sources "beyond Alexa Toolbar users".

Also, The Alexa toolbar is regarded by many vendors, such as Symantec and McAfee, as spyware!

Why do you hear so much about Alexa and why is it being promoted so heavily by some e-marketer’s?

* Sometimes (not in call cases) webmasters, advertisers and ad networks use your blog’s Alexa rank as a gauge to determine the worth of a link on your website. If you depend on link or site selling as a form of monetization you’ll definitely want to increase your Alexa rank, because it’ll increase your bargaining power when it comes to ad pricing.
* Sorry to say, though, it’s mainly ignorance–most people don’t read the fine print about how the stats are being generated. The rankings aren’t worth much-except for ego.
* Most people see graphs and rankings and think automatically it’s legit. Numbers can’t lie can they? (Note sarcasm) We get that it’s hard to believe. I mean who wouldn’t be concerned when you go to Alexa.com and see certain sites, maybe competitors websites, higher than yours. You are competitive and want your to be higher. But really, who cares about rank, if you don’t actually get more business?
* Another trick is the quick con of shady e-marketers by getting website owners to install the toolbar to inflate the stats by having them visit their own site, and sell the results back to them as being some kind of expert. People love numbers and graphs. Few ask questions on how the info is determined.
* Think of this, if we were pushing you to install the Alexa Toolbar, and we know you are a regular reader of this blog, then my Alexa rating would also rise (along with your site). In short, a pyramid scheme of Alexa ranking.

So if you still think you want to increase your rank, read the rest!

1. Write content that is related to webmasters. This can fall in the category of domaining and SEO, two fields in which most webmasters will have the Alexa toolbar installed. Promote your content on social networking websites and webmaster forums.
2. Write or Blog about Alexa. Webmaster and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This gradually has effects on your Alexa ranking.
3. Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums. Webmasters usually have the toolbar installed. You’ll get webmasters to visit your website and offer useful feedback. It’s also a good way to give back to the community if you have useful articles to share with others.
4. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.
5. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers. Be sure to link to Alexa’s full explanation of their toolbar and tracking system so your readers know what installing the toolbar or extension entails.
6. Work in an Office or own a company? Get the Alexa toolbar or SS Firefox extension installed on all computers and set your website as the homepage for all browsers. Perhaps it will be useful to note that this may work only when dynamic or different IPs are used.
7. Get Dugg or Stumbled. This usually brings massive numbers of visitors to your website and the sheer amount will have a positive impact on your Alexa Rank. Naturally, you’ll need to develop link worthy material.
8. Pay Cybercafe owners to install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as the homepage for all their computers. This might be difficult to arrange and isn’t really a viable solution for most. I’m keeping this one in because some have suggested that it does work.

Horror Books too good to put down

Books by Stephen King Of course. It's hard to choose the best one, since the best of his works do different things.

1. The Dead Zone is also about pure evil, and our responsibility to fight it. The hero, Johnny, has an accident that should have killed him. Instead, it puts him into a prolonged coma. When he wakes up from it, he has psi abilities--he can see the future, and he can read a people's past by touching them or their belongings. Confronted with a politician whose future capability for evil he can see clearly, Johnny has no choice but to prevent this future.

2. The Stand is especially interesting in that, after having a military virus escape and wipe out most of the population, he shows society rebuilding itself. One community rebuilds along democratic lines (though King makes it clear that without determined and somewhat autocratic leadership, democratic institutions would not survive); the other society is driven by Randall Flagg--either the devil or his close kin. Inevitably, the society of evil feels compelled wipe out the democracy, and the democracy has to protect itself. The Stand contains some of King's most interesting characters, including the Trashcan Man, Randall Flagg, and Glenn, the sociologist/philosopher (who clearly is spouting Stephen King's own ideas). Critics scoff at the idea that King has anything serious to say, but this book presents a convincing argument that there are a few genuinely good people, a few genuinely evil people (or hideously damaged people), but the great majority of the human race is morally neutral, ready to go either direction depending on their surroundings.

3. It: Children are the chosen victims of a timeless monster, but they are also the only people capable of seeing and understanding the threat. King is one of those rare people who has never forgotten what it feels like to be a child. He understands more than most that children experience present reality in a way that adults, protected by their ideas of how the world is supposed to be, cannot; confronted by the same evil the children see, the adults deny the evidence of their senses. This means that the children must deal with an evil far too great for them, alone. And even then, they only thwart the evil--it's still there, lurking, so that many years later, they must go back and kill the monster forever. The children are well-drawn characters, each of them outcast and bullied (another of King's standard themes is how adults choose to ignore the bullying that makes children's lives miserable).

2 states by chetan bhagat

'2 States' is a story about Krish and Ananya. They are from two different states of India, deeply in love and want to get married. Of course, their parents don’t agree. To convert their love story into a love marriage, the couple have a tough battle in front of them. For it is easy to fight and rebel, but it is much harder to convince. Will they make it? From the author of blockbusters Five Point Someone, One Night @ the Call Center and The 3 Mistakes of My Life, comes another witty tale about inter-community marriages in modern India. 2 states brings out the complexity involved in an Indian wedding especially when people across castes enter into a marriage. Its not about convincing the immediate families but the bigger families as well. Love marriages around the world are simple:

Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy.
They get married.

In India, there are a few more steps:

Boy loves Girl. Girl loves Boy.
Girl’s family has to love boy. Boy’s family has to love girl.
Girl’s Family has to love Boy’s Family. Boy’s family has to love girl’s family.
Girl and Boy still love each other. They get married.

So as one can see Chetan bhagat has tried to capture this intricate system in his latest book. The book is a good read, though thoroughly predictable it was probably meant to be that way so as to identify with the reader. Some dialogues are really funny, like the "kick ass and need ice" simile brings a smile to your face... all in all the best part of the book is the Dedication. Have fun all you readers!!!!

The idea of Justice by Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, is Lamont University Professor, Harvard University. He is known for his contributions to welfare economics, for his work on human development theory, welfare economics, famine, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, gender inequality, and political liberalism. He is a distinguished economist-philosopher who won the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on welfare economics.

Amartya Sen has one idea in his "the idea of Justice". He claims that John Rawls' theory of justice relies on just institutions working with a social contract towards a transcendental (i.e. unachievable?) vision of a perfectly just society. Sen critiques this for ignoring real actual achievable outcomes, excluding wider interests and failing to address behavior. He proposes instead that justice should operate by comparing actual outcomes through a process of `unrestricted'(page 44) public reasoning. He offers one example, of whether a flute should belong to a child who can play it, a child who has no other toys, or the child who made it (although he frequently but vaguely refers to meta-examples of slavery and women's rights).

The author argues that economists have tended to content themselves with an overly simple picture of human motivation, rationality and well-being. The author argues that people are not purely self-interested. They care for others and observe social norms. They do not always reason mechanistically, seeking least-cost to given ends. They question the point of their aims and the worth of their wants. Well-being has no single measure but is comprehensible. Its elements are many and do not amount to just utility or some cash value equivalent.

Tying the whole together is the author's confidence that, though values are complex, economics provides tools for thinking clearly about complexity.

The author concludes with democracy which can take many institutional forms. But non succeds without open debate about values and principles. To that vital element in public reason, 'The Idea of Justice' is an important contribution.