Micronets Blog

For anyone who liked the original Slimbox, a lightweight version of Lightbox there is a new release as of 31/12/08

This release runs on jQuery rather than  mootools.

Christophe Beyls, the guy behind Slimbox says the new release  “Slimbox 2 is a 4 KB visual clone of the popular Lightbox 2script by Lokesh Dhakar, written using the jQuery javascript library.  It was designed to be very small, efficient, standards-friendly, fully customizable, more convenient and 100% compatible with the original Lightbox 2.” 

It is currently the smallest Lightbox-like script available for the jQuery library, and is faster than the original Slimbox

It’s pretty easy to setup, and gives a great, useable effect for displaying images fron thumbnails.

You can find Slimbox 2 at http://www.digitalia.be/software/slimbox2

To see it in action go to  http://www.micronet-it.co.uk/portfolio.asp

Whilst looking into why I could not get a particular site indexed by Live, it quickly became apparent what a troubled Search Engine Live actually is.

I always thought Live’s results came back pretty relevant to the search – from my own perspective. What I did not know was the sheer number of sites and pages that Live Search does not list for varying reasons – either:

1. Not indexed at all
2. De-indexed for no apparent reason
3. Only partially indexes sites, leaving out masses of information - one particular complainant on the forum points out Google has indexed over 5,000 pages, Yahoo over 10,000 and Live ? - A touch over 300 pages indexed.

Now all Search Engines have their own rules and guidelines for getting listed, or why they will de-index sites, and on the whole these are pretty straightforward. Google even gives an option to ask for reconsideration of delisting once you have rectified problems. Live seems to randomly list, de-index and leave out information for no apparent reason, and gives no hint of how to rectify. Google can be frustrating, but at least seems to work to some degree of rationality.

So, where does that leave us? Live search results are looking like there are big holes in them-  When I search for a product, service or information I want the widest search possible, filtered into the most relevant results. I am then confident I am missing as little of the information as possible – not perfect, but a comfortable way to search. If I want to search for a Gym in my local area, I don’t want to find the results don’t give me the closest one that has all I require because the owner cannot get his site listed.

Also when searching for a products, I want the widest possible search, to enable me to get the best deal at the best price - and that isn’t going to happen when the Search Engine has only 6% of the possible results from a particular site listed.

It seems I am not alone – Live has now dropped off the Hitwise List of Leading Search Engine in the UK

Google has almost 90% market share, Yahoo and Ask (powered by Google) make up 5% between them and Live? Sinking without trace, and if they don’t get their act together soon they will follow Cuil into the depths of irrelevancy, with less than 0.00% market share.

It may already be too late – with 90% market share in the UK, and all the new technology and increase in the amount of algorithms that will be applied to searches, and Personalised and Universal Search on the near horizon, including Video, Soundtrack and Image search (which Google assert will also make life harder for spammers), there may be no way back for Live.

The Upshot? Enough is enough. I have wasted enough time on Live – whilst 2% of the market can give plenty of leads, the time and effort to get that is not now worthwhile.

Live search seems to be throwing some curved balls in the indexing stakes. Whilst trying to get a site indexed, msnbot doesn’t seem to want to know. All other major players have listed weeks ago - Google, Yahoo, UK Ask all list the site, and it is nicely climbing up their rankings for chosen keywords.

The sitemap has been added, site authenticated, site has original content (no “dodgy” content), all other guidelines followed, Live webmaster console is even showing backlinks & outbound links – but no listing on the index.

This doen’t seem to be an isolated incident either – on searching the forum, trying to find answers, it seems that many people are experiencing the same problem – one of the admins seems to have more success in adding sites, (apparently using the same tool that is available to everyone – work that one out) but surely we should not have to go through this just to get a listing

The mysteries of Search Engine workings are well documented, and a whole industry emerged in the last few years around it – however, this has generally been around improving your ranking – not getting the site listed in the first place, a simple submit usually does the trick. However, things have got a little more complicated with the advent of webmaster tools, XML sitemaps, authentication, but not beyond the grasp of anyone with a basic understanding of web design or SEO.

Problems with ranking are one thing – every search engine  works to its own algorithms  so differing results are to be expected, if I rank badly with one engine, steps can be take to try and remedy the situation, but to not get listed when there is no obvious reason does not reflect well on Live – no wonder they are still relatively a small player in the industry. At this rate Google doesn’t have much to worry about anytime soon.

Strong words from Google CEO Eric Schmidt last week speaking to magazine executives on the Google campus. He asserts that the internet “is fast becoming a cesspool, where false information thrives.” He went on to state that Brands are an becoming increasingly important as a signal that the content that carry can be trusted. Great – reliable content, just look for a brand. But hang on, this depends on the brand – The Financial Times is a brand, in which the content can be rated as trustable, however, so is Football 365 – content that is highly speculative, sensationalist and of questionable validity.

No one can argue that the internet can be a less than perfect environment, but Schmidt fails to say how this content can be regulated When asked where the industry ends up if there aren’t outlets willing to pay journalists to create quality content however, he makes the suggestion of whether journalism should be a for-profit enterprise.

Wonder if Rupert Murdoch has stopped laughing yet?

Well autumn is well and truly here now – at least the weather is better than the summer!

Looking on the bright side, now I know why the Americans call it the Fall – it’s nice to see the stock market crashing through the floor, no doubt we as tax payers will be paying for this one for a long time to come. Was I on my own thinking that the government encouraging us to take out more credit to get us through the downturn of two or three years ago, and unsustainable, vastly inflated property and share  prices would head to a meltdown on a major scale?

Oh well, back to the grind stone - I must remember to work harder so I can pay the over inflated wages of some inept, incompetent, overblown bank executives who we have had to bail out to try and stop the whole economy collapsing.

This blog will be for comment on what’s going on in the world of web design and search engine analysis