Archive for August, 2007

Supplemental Pages - How Google Beat Database Designed Web Sites!

Jeff Walters August 21st, 2007

Several years ago I developed a huge online book store with more than 15,000 books cataloged across the site. It was a difficult task written in PERL with a MySQL database. Yes, PERL, it was a while back. The site was developed with Google in mind. Indexes of books by category, author, type, style, etc. were developed to act as fodder for GoogleBot, Google’s search engine spider. This method worked extremely well for several years, until recently.

Google has developed what they refer to as “Supplemental Pages”. Or in SEO talk, pages of lesser value in the eyes of Google. Google claims that these “Supplemental Pages” are to provide supplemental search results for specific searches that Google doesn’t have a lot of results for. From what I can see, this is partially true.

In reality, it’s to decrease the value of these huge database driven Web sites. If you review your Google SERP, you’ll probably notice that non-supplemental pages often rank better than supplemental pages. It’s these results that draw me towards this article.

How Google determines what is considered a supplemental page is fairly simple. It’s based on the number of links to a page. Take your typical Web site design, for an example: head navigation, footer links, left side navigation elements. The pages linked in your header or footer will typically have more links pointing to them, as compared to other pages deeper in the hierarchy of pages in the Web site.

You may be questioning the value of PR at this point. PR has failed Google in some ways. Database driver Web sites have been able to drive up PR just by the mere size of the Web site; example: 100,000+ pages. Don’t misunderstand my point, it’s still a good indicator of the value of a Web page, just not a supplemental page.

Cheers,

Jeff Walters

Best Free Popup Stopper

Jeff Walters August 12th, 2007

The Google toolbar is not only a great tool, but it has a built-in popup stopper. Well, it may not be the best popup stopper out there, but it’s pretty good. Not only will it stop most of the annoying popups, it will give you a quick and easy way to search using the world’s most popular search engine; Google.

Download it at:
http://toolbar.google.com/

Another great tool for stopping all kinds of annoyances is Proxomitron. It opperates by actually transforming the pages you visit. It has all kinds of settings for blocking things such as popups, pop-unders, ads, flash animations, status bar ads and others. It might not be the easiest program to use, but it’s also worth a look.

http://proxomitron.info/

Cheers,
Jeff Walters

Laser Cutting for the Glass Industry

Jeff Walters August 12th, 2007

Laser cutting changes are coming about in the glass industry; including the automotive and aerospace industries. Glass is being made thinner and thinner in order to increase the overall strength per thickness.

Let me back up and explain in a little more detail. Glass in general can be very brittle, but it’s the air hardening process that makes the surface of the glass strong. The inside of the finished glass is relatively much weaker. So, most of the strength in the glass is towards the two surfaces that are treated. Make the glass thinner and you create a stronger piece of glass per measure of thickness. The ratio of strength to thickness is much greater; often on the order of 10 to 20 times stronger.

Apply these thiner sheets of glass together with plastics and you’ve got yourself one hell of a strong piece of glass, possibly to be used in the next generation of US Air Force fighter jets.

But, it’s just not that easy to do when you cut your glass with a diamond cutting machine . Current autoclaving processes of thin layers of glass cut by diamond cutters produce many failures. Cracks are very common during the hardening process, and overall yields can be as bad as 8-10%. This dramatically drives up the cost of production.

Laser Photonics has come up with a better solution; Zero Width Laser Cutting Technology (TM). This unique patented processes can laser scribe glass to produce a controlled separation with a non-dimensional cutting line. The resulting edge is incredibly strong. Using this process to produce mulitlayered glass will increase production yield up to 99%, saving the glass industry millions - if not billions of dollars. This is truely a revolutionary process that will change the glass industry very soon.

For more information, visit:

Laser Photonics, LLC.
and
Fonon Display and Semiconductor Systems