Microsys Blog

Just a quick update for those following development of our sitemap generator program.

The new version 2.0.2 contains improved support for video sitemaps and new support for code sitemaps. While support for both sitemap file kinds may still have a few rough edges, you can now create complete video sitemaps and code sitemaps for most websites in a fully automated way

Should you encounter any issue or have feedback, please let us know. We will be ironing out any issues in the next release. We also intend to improve our sitemap generator tutorials section soon including those tutorials covering the more exotic sitemap file kinds

The last few days I have been working on creating a database covering common questions I have received about Google Webmaster Tools, XML Sitemaps, HTML Sitemaps and the A1 Sitemap Generator program itself of course

The FAQ covers almost everything including how to diagnose and solve crawling errors, handle websites on unstable webservers, scan large websites, questions about XML Sitemaps Protocol, weird Google Webmaster Tool issues, how to configure A1 Sitemap Generator etc.

If you have ever had any questions regarding sitemaps, I highly recommend checking our
sitemapper tutorials and the new sitemap questions and answers database

I make and Sell Software for Living.
As a developer and publisher of software, I have for a few years now been using Google Adwords to run campaigns for my software. While the complexity of creating and optimizing successful campaigns with Google Adwords increases the more time you spend with it, I have always had a good amount of trust in Google. However, what I have found has given me a little doubt in my heart.

Low Quality Websites in Search Network
I came by a blog post by Marketing Shift which shows that the Google Search Network encompasses a lot of websites, and not just websites and search engines of high quality. Indeed, looking at the Google Search Partners website, at least I get the impression that websites in the search network are search related. As pointed out in the blog post, the search network also contains websites that have little to do with search, an important distinction when it comes to setting initial bids. However, that is not really what makes my heart jump…

Websites in Search Network Costing you Money
While above is bad enough, it’s the fact that websites such as GameCopyWorld are part of the search network. At least that is my conclusion as I have had an ad show while I had content network disabled. I believe the website is using Google Search Box / Adsense for Search. Yes, I don’t develop games so why do I care? Well, the before-mentioned website may have many buying-willing users which simply are searching for a way to get paid games to work… But I have a strong suspicion that there exist many more websites in the Google search network without any significant amount of users willing to pay for software.

Let me list a few reasons why I think this is bad from an advertiser perspective:

• People on websites that promote and distributes solutions to circumvent copy protection solutions most likely not do not have a high user percentage share that are willing to buy software.
• The search network is enabled as default. If you decide to keep it on, you are forced to bid the same on all search network partner websites as you bid for searches on Google search engine itself.
• You can’t opt out of individual websites in search network. Yes, you can opt out of websites in content network, but not the search network.
• Google does not share a complete list of search partners.

Alternatives to Google Search Network
I personally have disabled advertising on search network. I rather focus my time and money on campaigns where I can control as much as possible. Here are some alternatives that I am currently doing or considering:

• Advertise on Google search engine itself. Easy, transparent, and high quality clicks.
• Advertise on Google Content Network. Using tight adgroups combined with site exclusion and huge number of negative keywords makes this doable.
• Advertise directly on other search networks. Some paid search advertising solutions and networks are MSN Adcenter, Yahoo, Ask, and LookSmart.

I wrote this blog post since I know how hard most shareware, indie game, and software developers have to work. Whether big companies or mom-and-dad software operations, we are all not just competing against each other, but also against a high amount of software piracy and copying. I much rather spend money advertising on websites that are clearly relevant and not associated with something that compromises the success of my own business.

Getting Indexed and Ranked in Search Engines
You know how to optimize pages for search engines and build links to your website. What is next? Well, a question you need to ask yourself is if you are distributing internal link juice properly. Are you sure the internal link structure of your website has an optimal flow of link juice towards your important pages? If so, you stand a better chance of having search engines index and rank them. The process of optimizing this part of your website is by most search engine marketers called PageRank Sculpting.

PageRank Sculpting Explained
The idea behind the name PageRank Sculpting is not hard to understand. PageRank is the name of the algorithm Google uses to calculate importance for pages based on linking across the entire internet. Mind you, PageRank is just one of many algorithms Google uses to actually rank your pages in search engine result pages. The sculpting part comes from the ability to control how link juice flows throughout your own website.

PageRank Sculpting Examples

1. Many blogs are full of links to various social bookmark and community services. I love social websites such as StumpleUpon, del.icio.us and Digg, but there is a downside to them if you are running a blog.

   Say you are writing a blog post that has one or two links to websites you find interesting. You may think you are giving some nice link love to them; however, by far most of it will be eaten by all those social bookmark links many blog posts are filled with.

   I support the idea of linking to other websites, but at least consider nofollow links that are repeated in each and every blog post you make. If you don’t, even the link juice that flows through your internal links may be diminished in value.

2. The other more conventional area of PageRank sculpting is simply to ensure your important pages, e.g. those promoting your products, get more internal link weight than less important pages such as legal and contact.

   Strategies vary, but if you have a vast number of non-important pages, you can nofollow or limit the number of internal links to them.

PageRank Sculpting Tool
This post would not be complete without a pointer to a website analysis tool we offer that can help you experiment with PageRank Sculpting using robots.txt, noindex and nofollow in <meta> tags, and nofollow in <a> link tags.

A1 Website Analyzer can scan your entire website and all links in it. You can also enable/disable various options for finding links (e.g. enable/disable nofollow support).

After website scan has finished you are shown the entire website and with columns of data for each URL. The important columns in the context of PageRank sculpting are:

• Links to external URLs.
• Links to internal URLs.
• Linked by internal URLs.
• Calculated importance score.
• Scaled importance score.

The importance is calculated by weighing the strength of all links and pages within a website. Links gives more juice if they come from an internally highly linked page that contains few other links. The scaled importance score is logarithmic and have range 0..10.

If you want to control link juice flow and sculpt your PageRank, A1 Website Analyzer is the website analysis tool you need

Sometimes I get asked about priority values in XML sitemaps created by A1 Sitemap Generator. You can choose one of the following ways to handle priority values:

• Have XML sitemap priority values calculated based on all internal links within the website. There is a setting to prevent “extreme values” to be used, e.g. 0.0. This is the default configuration.
• Override priority and set same value for all pages, e.g. 0.5.
• Leave out priority values in total. This is probably preferred to using the same value for all pages.

For more information about how priority values are calculated, see our XML sitemaps priority value article.

The new release of our sitemap generator tool has gone through months of development with special focus on increasing website crawler performance. However, that is not all Lots of feedback (thank you) has helped me to improve program user interface, add new options and fix various issues across entire sitemap generator program including in sitemap builder, sitemaps ping etc.

For those of you creating XML sitemaps using A1 Sitemap Generator there are some excellent news.

I have been hard at work in engineering the website scanner engine with a special focus on improving the already fast crawler while also have it consume much less memory. I am happy to report I succeeded at both

Overall this update focused on:

• Increase crawler speed
• Minimize memory usage
• Various user interface improvements
• Various crawler engine improvements

If you are already a registered user of A1 Sitemap Generator, updating is as easy as downloading and installing the newest version.

With the new release of A1 Website Analyzer it has become easier to understand the internal linking structure of websites. Our website analysis program can help you see detailed information about all pages in a website, useful if you are trying to understand how page rank and link algorithms distribute across the site.

After scanning, you can view data for all pages. 5 columns in particular will be of interest to you:

• linked by internal
• links to internal
• links to external
• calculated “importance” score
• importance score scaled

The importance takes into effect the respective strength of all pages and links within your website. Example: A link carries more weight if it resides on a highly linked page that contains few links. The scaled importance is logarithmic and assigns a value between 0 and 10.

In addition to above data, A1 Website Analyzer also shows document character set, file size, response time etc. As a small extra bonus, you can even have your entire website scanned for HTML errors. That is, however, slightly slow since it uses the online W3C HTML validator API – and takes much care not to stress it .

Earlier today I wrote an article with a comparison of website sitemaps. The sitemap types explained include:

• Text file sitemaps.
• HTML and XHTML sitemaps.
• RSS sitemaps – RSS feed sitemaps are often used by blogs.
• ROR sitemaps – really RSS feed sitemaps with some custom extensions.
• XML sitemaps – also called Google Sitemaps and XML Sitemaps Protocol.

In my comparison of different site map kinds, I also explain:

• Background information and history
• Level of support by search engines
• Common and best usage tips and tricks
• Complete sitemap file examples

Have you ever wondered if ROR is actual RSS + some extensions? And howcome XHTML, ROR, RSS and XML sitemaps protocol all use XML, but still result in 3½ different sitemaps? Then read my article about website sitemap differences today!

I have recently written an article about crawling of websites which explains and shows how to solve many common crawling problems.

Things covered include:

• Having multiple domains with mirrored and/or distributed content.
• Consistent usage of www (or not) in front of domain names.
• Usage of Javascript for navigation.
• Broken links and redirects.

And many other things, about 10 in total, that can result in problems for a website crawler. The article focuses on solving all website crawl and scan problems using A1 Sitemap Generator. For those who have websites where crawler problems can not be solved, the article also shows how you can still create complete HTML and XML sitemaps for your website by configuring the sitemap creator program.

Read the article and make your website crawlable by search engines now!