'Build great content!...' (c) Matt Cutts

Recently I was watching one of the Matt Cutts videos on the Google Webmaster Channel and once again heard from him the idea - that is the best thing a webmaster can do for his site to get high traffic is to build a good content, make it useful for visitors. Well, I totally agree with this idea, but as always there is BUT.

This is like telling to any offline company owner to just make good products and people will buy it for sure and leave a huge competition off the equation. And it's tremendously true for online businesses. You can not come up with next FaceBook or Twitter any given day and expect visitors will flood your site within weeks. 

There are niches on online market where a competition so high, so there is literally no way to make your product or service being stand out of a crowd. I know that 'never say never' but at this point it seems like everybody around you have tried every tiny marketing idea to promote their site and so either you leave the field or....put a Black SEO Hat on...

I realize that Matt will never admit publicly that 'just make a good product' is not a silver bullet to make your online business successful one. As well as it is physically impossible to come up with the best 10 sites for any given query, because it's very subjective thing - what is better and what is worse. I know there is a thing as customization of your search results and even Google SearchWiki but I don't think it works efficiently enough at this point. And so we keep fighting for this spot on top 10 or at least top 20, but it's easier to come up with next 'Yesterday' written by Paul and John and hit the Top 10 in a chart then get a high ranking by some highly competitive keywords and get into Google Top 10 Search Results page.

Omigili Figures Out How To Hack Google For Real Time Results

I wonder how soon Google will present it officially as a new feature, I bet Googlers do play with this function a lot to see if it really gives you what you expect from it - real time search data.

Omigili Figures Out How To Hack Google For Real Time Results: "
Way to go dudes at Omgili!


By now you probably know about the 'Search Options' feature Google introduced in May. One of its features is to limit the search results by time frame. By default the available time frames are: Any time, Past year, Past week, Recent results and Past 24 hours. Past 24 hours is nice but still far away from Real-time. What Google isn't telling you is that you can search in the past minute and even in the past second. The trick is to change a parameter in the URL that will narrow down the time frames. ....Notice the URL parameter qdr:d. I assume qdr stands for Query Date Range (sounds about right). All you have to do to search for the query in the past minute is to change the parameter to qdr:n, and for the past second to qdr:s.


Past Minute:
http://www.google.com/search?q=barack%20obama&hl=en&output=search&tbs=qd

Mac OS 10.5 Mail app hints - additional header area fields.

By default a new message has only two fields - 'To' and 'Subject' and it's perfectly enough for 90% cases when you have your reply-to address and signature pre-defined in your email account settings and basically you don't need to change anything in your message header fields.

Now when want to change signature for different messages, reply-to address or even smtp server to send a message from, you need a bit of customization and here is what you need to do:

1. Click on the small square field in front of a Subject line and click on 'Customize' and now by checking these fields you can specify which fields you want to have in hand for all your new messages. 
2. CC, BCC, Reply-to and Priority fields are on the list next to 'Customize' item on the same pop-up menu.

To specify different signatures you need go to 'Preferences --> Signatures', to specify different smtp servers to send your messages from go to 'Preferences --> Accounts --> Choose account you want to specify servers for and then click on drop down list at 'Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): ---> Edit Server List.

Mac OS 10.5 Mail app hints - 'To Do' items in Gmail via IMAP

Finally I've cut some time to post Mac OS hints. I would like to begin with the most frequently using app which is Mail.


One of the Mail features which was presented in Mac OS 10.5 was the ability to add Notes and To Dos for email messages, it's especially useful feature if you have iPod Touch or iPhone as you can sync your 'notes' and 'to do' items between your Mac and iPhone / iPod Touch. 


It works really simple and effective - whenever you need to take any action about a particular email you add 'to do' item by right mouse button click anywhere in a message or even use a text in a message as a text for 'to do' item. By adding 'to do' items you get a list of them, for each item you can set a date, due date, priority or status 'done'.


Now be aware that if you use Gmail as your email service provider you will face with an issue which up to date both Apple and Google hasn't addressed, which is a conflict between how Mail and Gmail treats adding, editing 'To Do' items via IMAP protocol. Basically there is only one way, which may help you to handle with this conflict.

1. Go to Mail preferences --> Composing --> Create Notes and 'To Do's items in: On My Mac.
2. Close Mail and log into Gmail via browser, go to Settings and then either go to 'Labs' and specify 'Enable' for 'Advanced IMAP controls, then go to 'Labels' and uncheck 'Show' for 'Apple Mail To Do' items OR simply delete this item. Close your browser and get back to Mail.