The website and the world around it
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Index to questions (incomplete)
Invasion of users' privacy/usurpation of users' machines
13. To what extent does requiring a someone to register for our sites (perhaps using their email address) affect the number of users we have? How offensive is this considered to be?
linked quotes:
You can still rid yourself of (the occasional visitor) by asking lots and lots of personal questions. Don't just ask for their email addresss. Ask for their mailing address, phone number, sex, age, hobbies, religion, race and some other things best not discussed here....
-Jim, in Top 10 ways to irritate your visitors, Search Engine Forums, 2/5/2001
"(One way to irritate visitors is to) Ask for visitors' Zip codes before allowing them to enter. This ensures that them pesky dangerous foreigners from far-away, exotic countries like Canada and the UK can't pollute your website by actually viewing it. (Or it makes them lie.)"
-Watsonn, in Top 10 ways to irritate your visitors, Search Engine Forums, 8/28/2001
other sources:
Bibliography
14. Some users hate cookies and/or disable them. Maybe the majority don't care or let us use their computer to gather information. How necessary is respect of privacy...especially from an international perspective?
other sources:
Bibliography
15. When is it appropriate to just provide the user with the plug-in needed to take advantage of my website? Do people get mad when we do this, and, how can we know that? Or, when and how should we provide alternatives for people who can't or won't get the plug-ins?
linked quotes:
"The really professional irritator will not settle for just one obscure browser plug-in. Go for the gold. Use several bloated plug-ins that no one has already installed. This should drive away all newbies because they usually have no idea how to install even one plug-in, much less three. Experienced surfers will be glad to spend 20 minutes installing plug-ins to view your unique content."
-Jim, administrator, Top 10 Ways to irritate your visitors, Search Engine Forums 2/5/01
other sources:
Bibliography
Leading others to your site/Search engine optimization
16. How far can one go before one is considered a shameless self-promoter? On the other hand, what good will our sites be if nobody sees them?
linked quotes:
"Think about your home page as analogous to a tradeshow booth. Why do you stop at some booths and skip others? And, no: having a live magician is not the answer for your home page. Clearly saying what you do and why users should care is the way to go."
-Jakob Nielson, Tagline Blues: What's the Site About? Alertbox 7/22/2001
"...the language of Shakespeare has become the lingua franca of the Web...This does not mean that webmasters should underestimate the power of having a non-English version of their websites, however. The fact that there are fewer German or Spanish websites, means that the chances of getting a good position in the search engines for pages written in these languages increases significantly....Many search engine optimizers are taking advantage of this. Even if they do not translate entire sites into -- let's say -- Dutch, they do perhaps translate an article or make a so-called doorway page in order to lure the Dutch into their main English site. As regards the Dutch, the Scandinavians and some strata of the Indian population, this may actually work fine, as most of them read English very well. Many Europeans, Latin-Americans and Asians prefer not read text not written in their own tongue, however, meaning that you will have to translate the main parts of a website in order to reach them. Now, that could be very expensive, if you have to hire a professional translator...."
-Pandia, On the size of the Worldwide Web, 10/14/2001
"When asked how to gain high rankings, Cutts (Google software engineer) replied, "The guidelines are pretty simple: Stay away from hidden text, hidden links, cloaking, sneaky redirects, lots of duplicate content on different domains, and doorway pages. Webmasters should also stay away from programs that send automatic queries to Google. The worst thing you can do is try to cheat: Shortcuts to boost PageRank or rankings usually do more harm than good. Even if an SEO [search engine optimizer] does think he's found a shortcut, about two-thirds of the time it may be a sting operation. Don't bother with link exchanges, signing guest books, or other tricks -- the best use of a Webmaster's time is building good content -- and honestly promoting their [sic] site. When Google punishes spam like cloaking, we sometimes take out not only the cloaked domain but the SEO's client as well."
-Matt Cutts, Google software engineer, in Defining Search Technology, by Paul J. Bruemmer, ClickZ Network, 1/30/02.
"...people misspell queries all the time, or include grammatically incorrect searches. However, you don't want to include a misspelled word on your or the site - even if it's a keyword...(however, the) Meta keyword tag *is* your solution for that situation. That's where you can include keyword misspellings, as well as international spelling variations (the word optimization vs. optimisation comes to mind)..."
-Heather Lloyd-Martin, What to do With Those Pesky Keyword Misspellings, Rank Write Roundtable, 2/7/2002
"A factor that many overlook, but that is just as important as keyword research and application, search engine submission, or link popularity, is the size, appearance, and cleanliness of your HTML coding. The size, cleanliness, and appearance and presentation to the search engine robots and spiders can be the difference between ranking #1 and #12."
-Andrew Gerhart, in Importance of Clean HTML Code to Optimizaton, Search Engine Guide, 2/26/02
other linked quotes:
Metatags ('01)
Search Engines ('01)
Search Engine Optimization ('01)
Cloaking and Doorway pages ('01)
International search engines ('01)
other sources:
Bibliography
17. How will the increasing commercialization of search engines and of the web in general affect our ability to lead people to our sites?
linked quotes:
"With users tuning out banners and other online advertisements, it makes sense to assume they'll be wary of commercially supported search results. I'll bet the average Web user wants to feel secure that commercial-free technology returned their favorite Web finds and not sponsored listings."
-Detlev Johnson, The future of search engines, 2/13/2002, searchengineguide.com
other sources:
Bibliography
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