Google says don’t use pretty permalinks!
We all love our WordPress pretty permalinks, don’t we? Aside from making our blog post links a lot more readable for other people, we’ve always believed Google favored them over the obscure dynamically generated URLs. Well Google has set the record straight in a recent entry at their Webmaster Blog.
While static URLs might have a slight advantage in terms of clickthrough rates because users can easily read the urls, the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking. Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static.
Here are Google’s recommendations:
- Avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static
- Keep your URLs short (this applies to all URLs, whether static or dynamic)
Does that mean we shouldn’t be taking advantage of WordPress’ built-in URL rewriting system just to avoid penalties in the search engine optmization department? I’ll take readability over PageRank anyday, thank you very much.
WordPress.com users can go ad-free (for a fee)
Matt Mullenweg has just announced at the WordPress.com blog that based on their experimentation with Google ads, they’ve decided to make displaying advertisements optional—but for a fee.
…Light advertising has allowed us to focus on free features for you guys rather than paid upgrades, and enabled us to invest in infrastructure so your blog is always fast and reliable and never shows a fail whale.
[...]
The No-ads upgrade can be purchased for 30 credits a year ($0.08 a day) through the Upgrades tab in your blog’s dashboard.
So that basically answers two things: (1) it costs a lot to keep things free so they’re running ads, though only at a reasonable amount; and (2) yes, you can finally remove them, though you’ll have to pay for it.
The next question would have to be: will WordPress.com users be able to make money for themselves by running their own ads? Matt says they’re thinking about it, though take note that it will probably a paid upgrade too.
WordPress.com now supports Google Gears
WordPress.com announces they now officially supports offline access through Google Gears. This means a faster and more enjoyable blogging experience.
To enable this feature, simply hit “Turbo” in your dashboard.
After that Gears will download around 200 files and store them on your PC. It will also update them when needed automatically in the background, no other actions are required.
For users using self-hosted WordPress, this feature will be coming soon in WordPress 2.6.
More WordPress blogs being hacked
Last time, it was a WordPress vulnerability that was resolved by upgrading to the latest version. This time, it’s a non-WordPress issue, specifically a redirect technique, that’s affecting a lot of WordPress-powered blogs.
The recent security issues concern hackers who work with Google and other search engine results and redirects traffic from your blog or website. The searchers clicks on the link and is redirected to the hacker’s site with the same search string used to search in the search engine. Most bloggers notice a problem when their site traffic drops inexplicably and/or their ad income drops.
Read Lorelle’s post for more information on detecting and eliminating this security issue.
Blogging about the Lozada Testimony and ZTE Broadband Scandal
“Ang salitang Pilipino ay tumutukoy sa isang bansa, ang bansang Pilipino. And sometimes, it’s worth taking a risk for this country.” - Jun Lozada
Controversies in Philippine current events almost always spill over to the Philippine Blogosphere because it’s a great way to hear from the many voices that would otherwise be drowned out by hype. This very moment, all eyes are on the brave witness in the ZTE broadband scandal, Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada. How have Pinoy bloggers covered the issue so far?
AWBHoldings.com has a short list of blogged reactions, including a link to Manuel L. Quezon III’s Twitter live tweets of the hearing.
Speaking of MLQ3, he has quite a number of lengthy blog posts himself, the latest being “The Witness”. Lots of links out too, including a plea from Lozada’s niece. It’s clear that aside from blogs running WordPress, Multiply will always be a goldmine Filipinos updating on their lives.
Then there’s the transcript of Lozada’s Exposé from Pedestrian Observer (also available at GMANews.TV).
Oh, and I found an awesome quote by Jun Lozada from Mary Ann Señir and an awesome caricature of Jun Lozada by Jed Segovia, both of which you can see at the top of this post.
This is just the beginning, so be sure to keep up with Jun Lozada and the ZTE Broadband Scandal (tools like Google Blog Search and Twitter are a big help).
Get Ratified!
You might remember that we got this WordPress Philippines party started by asking you to contribute in several ways: submitting themes and plugins, posting at the forums, and tagging your blog posts with “wordpressph”.
This time, we’re encouraging all of you to get your Philippine blogs listed at Ratified.org. Ratified ranks Filipino blogs according to various stats from Google, FeedBurner, and Technorati. And yes, Ratified is for Pinoys, by Pinoys. Sa’n ka pa!
WordPress Plugin: All in One SEO Pack
The All in One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress makes optimizing your blog for search engines easier, by automating a few steps that will enhance visibility with Google, Yahoo! and other search engines.
The plugin will automatically fix your WordPress blog’s title and meta tags for you, such that the titles is formatted properly (which would make it appear more friendly both to Google and to your readers’ eyes), and that the keywords are included in the header meta tags.
Search results also appear better in the Google results pages because the plugin will define your page descriptions to be the snippets of the actual blog posting, instead of some random words on your site, which can be very unhelpful to potential readers.
The All in one SEO Pack is from uberdose.com. Download and support can be found here.
