In theory, this is a marketing blog, focusing on search engine optimization, web analytics and other web marketing topics. So what does Wordpress security have to do with Google and SEO?

Well one downside of the extended web ecosystem is that the same idiots who jump the queue in the supermarket will try to exploit your good blog as a way to jump their way to the top of Google’s search results.

One thing is certain, you won’t be feeling very groovy if you have the misadventure of being de-listed by Google as has happened to several of my fellow blogger friends.

I’m not a Wordpress security expert, and I don’t play one on TV. That said, there are a few Wordpress security best practices worth considering for your Wordpress installation.

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By announcing to the world the version of Wordpress you are running, you greatly simplify the work of a hacker. Peter Westwood’s post documents how to suppress output of the Wordpress version number in feeds and blog posts. I’ve packaged his code in a very rudimentary Wordpress plugin which will hide the version number in blog and rss feeds. The plugin only suppresses the Wordpress version information automatically inserted by Wordpress 2.4+.

You may still need to remove any hard coded version information in your theme. Look for a line like this:

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress <?php bloginfo('version'); ?>" /> <!-- leave this for stats -->

and remove it.

Installation:

• Download the plugin
• Unzip it to your plugins directory
• Activate it

Use at your own risk.

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Regular readers of this blog be warned – this article is about the internet infrastructure needed to insure Internet users are online in the first place. We can perform all of the search engine optimization (SEO) we want, but if our target audience isn’t online due to lack of access, our results are going to disappoint. Marketing professionals are thus warned: what follows is a look at a potential technical solution to the digital divide.

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A common issue facing companies and organizations with an international presence is how to deploy multilingual sites across one or more Internet domain(s). In other words, should one put all the sites on a .com or .org domain, perhaps taking advantage of directories on the web server to separate each language? Is this the best solution for existing and potential customers? Will there be problems with search engine indexing and visibility?

After having tackled the issue in various SEO projects, I decided to share some of the issues that should be considered when choosing the right path for your company or organization.

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Last summer I looked at the different web statistics available for benchmarking the competition. From a marketing point of view, the result wasn’t very good. Poor methodology and a lack of transparency mean that most publicly available web statistics are worse than useless: by providing a false sense of confidence, they can lead to bad business decisions.

It is thus with much interest that I note the announcement of a new web marketing benchmarking comparison service from Google.

Integrated into Google Analytics, this functionality will be limited in scope:

• Sites must use Google Analytics and enable their participation in the program.
  • Competitors such as Fireclick’s web analytics benchmark index make some data publicly available without having to use the tracking tool. I can already think of the work-arounds some companies will find to this issue.

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So what is the state of the Internet in Italy in the year 2008? Armed with an ambitious, varied agenda spanning two days, speakers from Italy and abroad tried to answer this question during the conference STATEoftheNET, held February 8 and 9 in Udine.

We didn’t need to wait long for an answer. Stefano Quintarelli, in the first session, noted that only 22% of Italians are using broadband Internet, by now a requirement for full participation in the world of Internet. This compares with 55% in the United States, not to speak of countries where the broadband penetration is even higher. Effectively 78% of Italians are cutoff from everything the Internet can offer, from basic information retrieval to active discussion of current events. Some are cutoff due to the lack of a universal service mandate – they cannot get broadband access (the so-called digital divide). The majority of the cases are probably due to people who don’t perceive sufficient value in all that Internet can offer.

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For a long time I’ve resisted the tempation to create a profile in Facebook – one can’t be everywhere, no? (Andrey Golub being the exception!)

Certainly there aren’t a lack of places online to find business partners.

However, I recently received an e-mail from an American woman I met at a meet-up of SEO (search engine optimization) Professionals in Manchester, England. In essence, she refused my invitation for LinkedIn, saying that she is already in Facebook, and for now, that’s enough.

Adding to this, Microsoft is buying a piece of Facebook for a significant amount of money; maybe its time to answer the messages in my Inbox with the subject “I’ve added you as a friend on Facebook”.

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Fresh back from this weekend’s RomagnaCamp, I’m taking a brief break from a “posting hiatus” to report on the event.

After a quick touristic visit to Ravenna on Friday, I caught the bus for Marina Romea. This turned out to be auspicious as I was able to met Giuseppe Lamuraglia of e-net, a company which distributes small solar energy power supplies. Italy has a strong history of renewable energy generation; it was the first to generate electricity from geothermal energy in 1904.

Friday afternoon was dedicated to informal discussions (including wind power with Marco Fabbri) just meters from the beach - a nice transition from the summer holidays. The weather was appropriately windy; despite the sun, most of us were under-dressed.

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Several months ago a client inspired me to write a comprehensive guide to keeping website content out of search engines. Usually website owners are focused on the opposite side of search engine optimization, insuring web content is well indexed. Yet, as many can attest, search engines can be all too efficient at finding documents they shouldn’t. Thus, the need to understand what options exist, how they work and which search engines support them.

One problem with the techniques available up until now is that options for digital media have been limited. The official way to keep video, audio and pdf files out of search engines was through the robots.txt protocol, not a very efficient tool when setting indexing options on a file level.

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In the course of a search engine optimization project, I’m often asked during the competitor analysis phase why one website ranks highly in Alexa, while another ranks highly in an other statistics supplier’s top websites survey.

As our two part article Web statistics for internet market research: pick a number, any number illustrates, there are a plethora of services offering web statistics. Website owners often cite their Alexa rank to demonstrate how much more important their site is compared to a competitor’s. Other website owners will pay for Nielsen//Netratings panel research, a sampling technique born in the 1930s which surveys about 0% of Italy’s adult population – no wonder then the IAB has called this technique outdated.

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More than two years after Google launched its Google Desktop Search for Windows application, limited initial support for the Linux platform is available. Of the top three major search engines which offer desktop search software (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft), Google is the first to try to win the hearts and minds of both Macintosh and Linux users. Yahoo and Microsoft solutions are both limited to Windows.

For Google, search is strategically important, wherever it happens.

Why are the search engines offering free desktop search software?

Desktop search is strategically important to search engines. Personal computer users searching for information with a desktop search application are just one click away from seamlessly integrated web search.

Controlling desktop search means controlling traffic to a web search engine – a very lucrative business as demonstrated by Google’s economic results.

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Marketing professionals know that brands are worth big money. A brand name and logo serve as an instant shorthand to convey a mental image of a product or service. Companies invest extensively when developing and launching a new brand name. Once launched, brand names are fiercely protected.

Looking for Trenitalia?

It was thus with surprise that I noticed several weeks ago traffic to Trenitalia being redirected to the parent group’s website which carries the old retail name, Ferrovie dello Stato.

Looking for this?

This is what you’ll get.

Stranger yet, timetable queries made from the Ferrovie dello Stato home page produced results using the orario.trenitalia.com subdomain with the Trenitalia name and graphics. Upon closer inspection, I noticed the redirect was accomplished with a simple client side meta refresh tag – rather than the preferred server side method to set a permanent 301 or temporary 302 http redirect status.

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Last November Luca Meyer organized the first Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) in Milan, in conjunction with the IAB Forum interactive marketing event.

All of six people were present to represent the Internet’s accountability side in Italy. A pitiful number when you consider the thousands of visitors at the IAB Forum.

Since the Milan WAW, Giovanni Lorenzoni has worked to keep the ball rolling by organizing Web Analytics Association / WAW events in Bologna. Yet therein lies the problem: with the apparently small Italian web analytics community spread across the peninsula, significant meet-ups can only occur when there is a critical mass due to an Internet industry event happening at the same time.

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In just a few years, businesses oriented social networking websites have taken off. The industry leader, LinkedIn, counts more than 10 million members despite only being available in English.

To take advantage of a professional social networking web service, a user completes a professional profile and invites professional contacts to connect to the profile. Most sites, with differing degrees of success, offer the possibility to upload contacts from an email system and/or a file of contacts.

Who should insert a profile?

Professionals seeking career opportunities, consulting offers and business deals have everything to gain from the visibility a profile in a business oriented social networking site offers. Most services offer a basic profile and set of features free of charge. The real cost is the time it takes to fill out and maintain a profile.

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