Google Spidered the Blog!

That was fast (6 days); VincentHayes.Blogspot.com just got spidered (only able to tell using a site restricted query). I'll update in a bit regarding natural ranking.

Skype for iPhone

As a recent iPhone convert, my only complaint (past the terrible texting) is that the cheapest plan available for the iPhone is fairly restrictive (~$80/month, can only call after 9, texts are counted both ways (receive/send = 2). Remarkably it's still cheaper than a Blackberry. Thankfully Skype is finally coming out with an app for the iPhone, and since I'm normally within range of a WiFi network, this is great news! I'll write up how well it works, hopefully this will allow me to bypass another~$20/month charge by allowing me to make calls during the day without issue.

Quick update - added a Flickr account, working on a Naymz account now. Naymz is a very well ranked site that is definitely a centralized repository of all sites you want associated with you.

Also, just a quick n00b trick that came up today. If you want to do a keyword search but want to exclude the keyword/site that you're trying to research, use a site restricted query. Example:

I wanted to know about Naymz.com and what people were saying about it, but they own the top10 results:
GoogleSearch: Naymz OR Naymz.com -site:naymz.com

Removes results from sites with the root URL of "Naymz.com". Of course they were clever, and have other site listings that still ranked ;)

Remove the "-" part, and you can restrict all results to come only from the site you specify, which is very helpful if you're trying to locate specific information such as contact info, or any reference on the site to a particular topic.

Google Rank-tracking

So I've spent some time creating a parser for Google results in Excel which will allow me to track top 10, top 20, etc. results for a given keyword or set of keywords, and identify if there are any URLs that can be promoted with some solid cross/back-linking. Basically I can just screen scrape Google, Paste-special values the data into a designated column, and have it identify the URL, rank, & snippet. Just FYI the blue hyperlink that's above each result (usually something like "Vincent Hayes's Facebook" or "Man Bites Dog") is actually the title tag, up to ~ 70 characters (after which Google just trims it with a "..." ). Though primarily for business purposes, I'm going to track rankings once a week just to see where I am and what keywords I'm associated with.
Currently for just my core name, no qualifiers, I'm not ranking well at all:

• 7 - LinkedIn Directory result, I just happen to be on the first page (past the link)
• 33 - LinkedIn (again), but this is my actual Public page
• 56 - Facebook, it's a (deliberately) private profile - I might make this public after some conscientious edits, as Facebook does have a wealth of information including backlinks
• 101 - Twitter

Any qualifiers/keywords attached, and I suddenly come right to the top (* = Vincent Hayes, no quotes):

• * Twitter - #1
• * Facebook - not so good, no results within reason (<50)
• * Bridgeport - Top 4, 3 twitter and Facebook as #1 (I was sick recently and tweeted about it: result? Google spidered my page right on that day and now ranks those results), Twitter result as #13 as well
• * LinkedIn OR Linked In - zero results in the top 10 other than the aforementioned directory listing
• * - LinkedIn is immediately #1 and #2, both direct links to my profile
• * analyst - #1 LinkedIn, #2 Twitter

Outside of work I'm going to create a grid examining keywords versus my name & rank, and see where I am. My initial gut reaction is that any kind of geocoded keyword (like the town I live in) is considered by Google to be a stronger qualifier than something like "analyst" or "LinkedIn". It's obviously important to keep consistent across all of my profiles :)

Looking into Spoke, Naymz, and started a Flikr (no content yet).

More later!

/Post

First Post, New Blog

My first post on my first public blog with my name attached to it. I'm working on my SEO and ORM skills (I am fairly new to this), and was looking for a good outlet for my trials (and their results), as well as an outlet for some more serious discussions on content that I come across regularly.

Test

Test post, there is an odd option regarding the timestamp and delayed posting

:edit: Post worked. It's going to be interesting to see how quickly this gets spidered by Google.