Having to search online for local businesses is becoming a right pain-in-the ass, especially if you have a local business in Irvine Scotland that is. It’s got to the stage where I just couldn’t hold back anymore and sent a letter to the local press, see what happens with it …

Here’s what I sent :

I’m not 100% sure if anyone within your office follows what the search engine Google. But lately there has been an influx of american .com websites invading our own google.co.uk data centre.

Anyway to cut a long story short, Google have basically placed more emphasis for the .com sites and when do a ‘local search’ within Google, outwith the Google Map Pack of sites, normally located at the top of the page, the organic listings is littered with businesses from Irvine, CA, US.

Why is this important, well try a few examples and you’ll see…

plumber Irvine
painter Irvine
electrician irvine
gas engineers irvine
car mechanic irvine
hairdresser irvine

etc…

Not exactly local listings and not very helpful for local businesses when Google crunches local businesses for a local search query into a ten pack map search.

Just thought you might like to know how Google is treating local businesses in Irvine.

All the best,

Paul

Small businesses are being treated as a joke, if you think getting listed in the ten pack map search at the top of the page is hard, then think again, it is easy to abuse and spam.

I had to laugh a few days ago when Google’s most famous engineer produced his latest blog post about page rank sculpting : PageRank sculpting : where Matt went into blog mode to inform webmasters and site optimisers why Google has binned the use of the ‘No Follow’ attribute.

The things that gave me the belly laugh was Matt’s comments about why, SEO’s (Search Engine Optimisers) failed to notice – for over a year – that Google had scrapped the use of ‘No Follow’ for page sculpting. TBH, I never noticed, and I’ll bet that 99.9% of those involved within the industry never noticed either.

So, you can bet Matt, had a massive giiggle to himself when he was penning his post as he not only mentioned it once but twice …

At first, we figured that site owners or people running tests would notice, but they didn’t.

In retrospect, we’ve changed other, larger aspects of how we look at links and people didn’t notice that either, so perhaps that shouldn’t have been such a surprise.

You wonder what else Matt has up-his-sleeve, that affords himself a good giggle at a webmaters/SEO’s lack of awareness. It does make you wonder and once again drives home the fact that we are all playing catch-up as to what Google requires for a site to rank well within their search engines. And that, for many, is no laughing matter.

With Father’s Day fast approaching (this Sunday, take note kids) I thought I’d blog about the type of pressies I’d like to receive instead of the usual DVD, paperback best seller, socks and a nice bottle of red wine (how on earth the kids pass for over 18 down at the local off-sales is beyond me). I’ve also thought about price range as well, what with this being hard times n’all, so all the geeky pressies are well under £20.00.

Fathers Day Gifts For Geeky Dad’s

USB Owl

This little feathered friend perches on your laptop and keeps an ever-trusted eye out for anything untoward happening near your screen. Although, it ain’t going to fly down and pick anything up for you, nope, the most he’ll do is flash his eyes and spin his head around. Childish, yes, geek worth, priceless.

Price : £12.99 URL : www.iwantoneofthose.com/usb-owl

Twitter Pillow

OK, right, I know what your thinking, eh, I’m a dude, what do I need a pillow for, well for one, if your like moi, sitting on your ass most of the day in front of a Mac or PC then your back-end is going to feel as flat as the Cheeky Girls’ breast size. You’ll need a soft pillow from time to time and why not be look cool as well as comfy with your Twitter pillow.

Price : $17.99 URL : www.geeky-gadgets.com/twitter-icon-pillow

Banksy Panda T-Shirt

Banksy is sooooo uber-cool, and if your a geek then your going to have make some space alongside your Monty Python and Dr Who collection for this urban master. I could have picked a number of Bansky merchandise to display here but the Panda T-Shirt is just so awesome looking in full Reservoir Dogs pose as well.

Price : £9.99 URL : www.ebay.com/banksy-panda-tshirt

Sat Nag

This would be ideal for any Father who is away on those lonesome tiring journeys and is missing the other half in the car, simply plug in the Sat Nag and it’ll be like she’s right there in the car with you. Guaranteed to get you lost in no time at all.

Price : £5.99 URL : www.play.com/sat-nag

If there is anything that we can positively take from the Iranian Presidential Election result is the way that we as a human race can communicate even over massive walls of silence that the governing powers put in place to keep their people quiet. Thanks, that is, to Twitter and Bloggers. Without them, many of the powerful scenes we have seen on our TV and internet news channel feeds would have been diluted or not heard at all. Yes, the voice of the people is alive and well, and its twittering like mad to remain so.

The Iranian state has now declared to its civilians, that if they continue to document what is happening on the streets of Iran in the mass public stages of demonstration, they will face retribution from the feared Revolutionary Guard.

However, there is a dark side to all of this Twitter Civilian Journalism, facing everyone who uses Twitter as a micro-blogging tool. You are being watched! The Secret Service are of-course monitoring feeds, Twitter’s own real time Search is a great way to watch and label those using the site for political motivation no matter how just or unjust, dependant on which side of the wall you belong too.

And so it comes to pass, the 1,000,000′th word in the English dictionary is, Web 2.0, what a massive dissapointment. Having being online when Yahoo Geocities was the ideal place to pop-up a few webpages before the dot.com bubble burst, truth be told, it probably became more popular after the 2000 crash. Web 2.0 is a trendy word no-doubt, and seemingly it has caught the attention of those mothballed wordsmiths whom select which words are deemed fit to appear in proper english language.

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