Brilliant Thinking

Beware the dreaded vendor lock in … Although most ISPs these days allow you to modify DNS details and once you’ve registered your domain you shouldn’t need to change the registrar, there are some occasions you might want or need to.

One such occasion required one of our clients to transfer a .uk domain away from IoMart and they said that to do so would require a fee of £49.99+VAT to release the domain. Since 10 years of domain renewal fees cost less than this, this sounds to me like a ransom to not release the domain. It is in fact cheaper to go direct to Nominet and pay them to change the IPStag (£15+VAT).

Remember to check the small-print if you’re registering domains to avoid the dreaded vendor lock in. Personally, I think this sort of behaviour should be outlawed by automated ISPs.

Any business selling IT goods and services over the internet, by mail order or by telephone may wish to review its terms and conditions in light of new guidance published by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) last month. According to it-director.com, ‘The guidance is intended to assist businesses to comply with the Distance Selling and Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations or, as the OFT puts it… “how to make IT contracts in general fairer for consumers.”‘.

The full 77 page report can be found on the OFT website.

A summary of the implications for IT vendors can be found on IT-Director.com.

In the January 2006 survey Netcraft received responses from 75,251,256 sites, an increase of 897K sites from December 2005. With the gain, the Internet resumes its pattern of steady growth, which was interrupted last month with a decrease of 219K hostnames, which was the first decline in Netcraft’s survey nearly three years. The loss was the result of the expiration of 1 million “.name” domains at Zipa.

The full January 2006 Survey with more information, graphs and also some information about a change for domains at GoDaddy.

Google is to start selling video online, offering a way for people to search for and buy TV shows and more through its site. Google is the latest company to explore the idea of selling video on the net, following Apple who led the way with its iTunes online store.

Google, however, does have a unique twist on its video service. Any company can put their content up for sale at any price. (Five cents is the minimum charge for a download.) Google takes a few pennies from the sale, and the content makers take most of the cash.

Google has created its own DRM (digital rights management) system for the service but will support rival systems as well, Page said. Not that the world needed another DRM mechanism.

The web giant’s co-founder Larry Page announced the service at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. US network CBS is making shows like CSI and Star Trek available to buy online.

Read more about Google’s other announcements at CES on The Register and BBC Technology.

Search engines are a complex beast, but the main guidance is to have good content, well written with key words that you anticipate people to be searching on well placed in said content. Plus, search engines can take several months to fully index and “understand” new websites. The lag is due to people abusing how search engines work, so it is believed that they put websites “on hold” (sandbox) for a period of time to make sure they are legitimate.

There are numerous factors that affect ranking in search engines, and we find this page helpful:

    http://www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php

It gets quite technical and full of jargon, but does highlight the top ten factors affecting search engine ranking positions (SERPS) out of 5:

1. Title Tag - 4.57
2. Anchor Text of Links - 4.46
3. Keyword Use in Document Text - 4.38
4. Accessibility of Document - 4.3
5. Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages - 4.15
6. Primary Subject Matter of Site - 4.00
7. External Links to Linking Pages - 3.92
8. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - 3.77
9. Global Link Popularity of Site - 3.69
10. Keyword Spamming - 3.69

Aside from the content angle (and ensuring that the key phrases you expect to be used are present enough, but not too much - this constitutes keyword spamming and counts against you), one other significant factor is linking - both in to your site from other websites and out from your site to other websites. The goal here is to get other sites that are related to your business area to link to you - this suggests to the search engine that you are like those sites and that those sites think your content is good, so search engines should think your content is good too (a sort of “who you know” model in cyberspace). Remember that you need a few links out as your site needs to be seen as a good “networker”.