Working at Home on the Internet

The Value of Old Posts

Way back in January, when I first installed the Verizon DSL using the Actiontec GT704WG Wirless Router I wrote about the problems I was having with the installation.

I also wrote of the solution I came up with after all the trials and tribulations I had dealing with the incompetent help line. That was actually 11 (eleven) months ago.

As things work out, someone sent me an E-mail to the Old Address that was still linked in the post on the New Blog asking if I could help them. It seems they were going through the same problem. They couldn’t come up with the Drivers for the equipment and couldn’t get any satisfaction from Verizon (same problem I was having way back when).

I uploaded the files for the fix to http://workingathomeinternet.com/actiontech they can be copied (downloaded) to a hard-drive. Restarting the computer should allow the system to find the proper Drivers.

Sorry, Verizon and Actiontec, but if it’s proprietary, then you should make if easier for your customers to access the Drivers.

The Moral:

The value for me is, someone found an Old Post related to their problem through a Google Search.

The value for them is they found the information they were looking for on an Old Post of mine through a Google Search.

The Old Posts Involved:

My Dilemma

It’s Finally Over

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November 22nd, 2006 at 07:00am | Posted by Joe | Attitude, Basics, Blogging, Google, Keywords, SEO | 9 reader remarks | Print This Post

How Google Treats Blogs

I have been monitoring the term “working at home” on Google Alerts since forever, or at least as long as I have been Blogging.  For the First Time, I actually saw the Working at Home on the Internet Blog listed on October 26.  It even showed that day’s post… How to Build a Blogging Community.

My posts have showed up in the Google Alerts every day since then for that term.

 

What I did notice though, is that the Alerts had changed.  Instead of showing just the results from Google, they also showed the results for Google Blog Alerts (that’s where I showed up).  I never changed anything in my search request, but I think they expanded the search results they deemed relevant.  This is a good thing (I think).

First, the day they changed the alerts, my Blog started showing up in the results. (Good)

Second, Nothing showed up in the Google Alerts for the Standard Search. (Bad)

 

Does this mean that Blogs are Less Relevant to Google?  I don’t know, so I started to look around for answers in the Google Search.

I, of course, looked up “working at home” in the Standard Google Search.  I almost gave up after quite a few pages, finding nothing that wasn’t either corporate or an organization until page 14.  There I found my FeedBurner link on the top of that page and on page 16 the Blog Carnival Account link.  Neither showed my actual Blog or Address. (I just double checked, and Neither of them show 15 minutes later).

I did the same in Google Blog Search and it showed my Blog multiple times in the results.

 

That’s when I decided to check some of the Blogs I read that are better known.  Each one of them have www. in their URL or at the least are affiliated with a Blog Network.

I looked them each up by name, not the URL, and found most of them on the First page of the Standard Google Search.  Why this is, I don’t know.  The have, for the most part, been around for longer than my Blog.  But not all.

 

Is it the fact that they used the old standard www or that they are linked to hundreds of other Blogs through a network?  Does Google identify them as a Webpage (because of the www) and consider them more important?  Some of them post a few times a day, others only once or twice a week.

 

I guess the real questions are:

Am I doing something wrong?

Does the old www make a difference?

Does belonging to a network really make that much of a difference?

 

Help me out here guys, I want to be rich and famous too.  Or at least get into the Standard Google Search results.

Addendum:  I found that through Blogger Search (owned by Google) that my post on the (semi) Finished Basement was picked up.  Not sure what that means…

November 11th, 2006 at 07:30am | Posted by Joe | Basics, Blogging, Google | 5 reader remarks | Print This Post

Google Search for Your Site? Y/N

I hope you noticed, I put a search (Google/Site) in the top of the sidebar. It replaced the Subscription by E-mail link, which is now in the RSS section below.

I have used search before on the old Blogger Blog and it did fairly well. I read a post that Lara wrote today that convinced me to use it here. I had contemplated it for a little while but didn’t want to overcrowd the Blog. Her post led me to realize the importance of using search to help readers find what they are looking for.

Google Search now offers a Web search and searches of 3 different URL’s of your choice. Something to consider, even though you can use any .com you like, you Can Not use the search for different pages ie. /WP or /blog. If you are like me, and quite a few other people, that makes for a difficult choice.

Since I do have a Webpage on my .com index URL, I can use the search for that. But, my intention was to offer choices to search the Blog, then the Website and/or my Freeware Finds Blog then the Web.  Not happening.

It’s beyond me why AdSense doesn’t allow for pages since in a lot of cases (like mine) the search is more useful for the specific page(s) involved. They have it for themselves, “search google/adsense” why not for everyone else?

As I said, I really wanted to offer the opiton of a search, so I will leave it for now. I will keep an eye on it and see if it is of any use to anyone.

Do you have a search option on your site? Have you had any problems with searches on specific pages (/blog or /articles)?

September 28th, 2006 at 03:57pm | Posted by Joe | Advertising, Blogging, Google, Resources | 8 reader remarks | Print This Post