Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

For millions of people Google is an indispensable search tool that they use every day, in all facets of their lives. From work or school, research, to looking up movies and celebrities to news and gossip, Google is the go-to search engine.

But instead of just typing in a phrase and wading through page after page of results, there are a number of ways to make your searches more efficient.

Some of these are obvious ones, that you probably know about. But others are lesser-known, and others are known but not often used. Use this guide to learn more about, or be reminded of, some of the best ways to get exactly what you’re looking for, and quickly.

1. Either/or. Google normally searches for pages that contain all the words you type in the search box, but if you want pages that have one term or another (or both), use the OR operator — or use the “|” symbol (pipe symbol) to save you a keystroke. [dumb | little | man]

2. Quotes. If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes. ["dumb little man"] will only find that exact phrase. [dumb "little man"] will find pages that contain the word dumb and the exact phrase “little man”.

3. Not. If you don’t want a term or phrase, use the “-” symbol. [-dumb little man] will return pages that contain “little” and “man” but that don’t contain “dumb”.

4. Similar terms. Use the “~” symbol to return similar terms. [~dumb little man -dumb] will get you pages that contain “funny little man” and “stupid little man” but not “dumb little man”.

5. Wildcard. The “*” symbol is a wildcard. This is useful if you’re trying to find the lyrics to a song, but can’t remember the exact lyrics. [can't * me love lyrics] will return the Beatles song you’re looking for. It’s also useful for finding stuff only in certain domains, such as
educational information: ["dumb little man" research *.edu].

6. Advanced search. If you can’t remember any of these operators, you can always use Google’s advanced search.

7. Definitions. Use the “define:” operator to get a quick definition. [define:dumb] will give you a whole host of definitions from different sources, with links.

8. Calculator. One of the handiest uses of Google, type in a quick calculation in the search box and get an answer. It’s faster than calling up your computer’s calculator in most cases. Use the +, -, *, / symbols and parentheses to do a simple equation.

9. Numrange. This little-known feature searches for a range of numbers. For example, ["best books 2002..2007] will return lists of best books for each of the years from 2002 to 2007 (note the two periods between the two numbers).

10. Site-specific. Use the “site:” operator to search only within a certain website. [site:dumblittleman.com leo] will search for the term “leo” only within this blog.

11. Backlinks. The “link:” operator will find pages that link to a specific URL. You can use this not only for a main URL but even to a specific page. Not all links to an URL are listed, however.

12. Vertical search. Instead of searching for a term across all pages on the web, search within a specialized field. Google has a number of specific searches, allowing you to search within blogs, news, books, and much more:

* Blog Search

* Book Search

* Scholar

* Catalogs

* Code Search

* Directory

* Finance

* Images

* Local/Maps

* News

* Patent Search

* Product Search

* Video

13. Movies. Use the “movie:” operator to search for a movie title along with either a zip code or U.S. city and state to get a list of movie theaters in the area and show times.

14. Music. The “music:” operator returns content related to music only.

15. Unit converter. Use Google for a quick conversion, from yards to meters for example, or different currency: [12 meters in yards]

16. Types of numbers: Google algorithms can recognize patterns in numbers you enter, so you can search for:

* Telephone area codes

* Vehicle ID number (US only)

* Federal Communications Commission (FCC) equipment numbers (US only)

* UPC codes

* Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airplane registration number (US only)

* Patent numbers (US only)

* Even stock quotes (using the stock symbol) or a weather forecast regarding the next five days

17. File types. If you just want to search for .PDF files, or Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets, for example, use the “filetype:” operator.

18. Location of term. By default, Google searches for your term throughout a web page. But if you just want it to search certain locations, you can use operators such as “inurl:”, “intitle:”, “intext:”, and “inanchor:”. Those search for a term only within the URL, the title,
the body text, and the anchor text (the text used to describe a link).

19. Cached pages. Looking for a version of a page the Google stores on its own servers? This can help with outdated or update pages. Use the “cached:” operator.

20. Answer to life, the universe, and everything. Search for that phrase, in lower case, and Google will give you the answer.

These twenty mistakes are the difference between a very poor website and a very good website. You may know some of these mistakes already, but if you have avoided or corrected all of them you are almost certain to keep visitors coming in and coming back.

This list is especially important for new designers, amateurs or the experienced but sloppy who need a list to work from for a website spot check.

1. Bad Layout and Design - Yes, there are some ugly, unbalanced or overloaded webpages out there. Make your page a pleasant viewing experience. If you are not sure about the looks of you design, then let some people see a screenshot of your webpage.

2. Non-Standard Links - Why confuse your visitors with links that are different colors or fonts that vary from page to page. Don’t frustrate your visitors, it shouldn’t be a guessing game.

3. Iffy Navigation - Take it easy on the moving objects, trailing images and other stuff you see on kids websites. It’s just not that entertaining and it can get in the way and distract your visitors. Keep it stable easy to find and read.

4. Slow Pages - Who wants to watch your dumb load meter rack up the percents of loaded kilobytes or megabytes? Keep your pages lean and fast, under 50k if possible. Do not bore your visitors.

5. Wild and Crazy Color Schemes - Some pages look idiotic with overly bright colors, maybe even revolting. Your texts must be easy to read, not a sensational nightmare.

6. Spelling and Grammar - Errors in spelling and grammar make your page look amateurish or childish - always spell check.

7. Page Text - Keep your pages easy to read. Break texts into paragraphs or blocks. People scan pages more than they read them, make it easy on them.

8. Font Style and Size - Choose easy to read fonts and use the right size - not micro reading or headlines on every line.

9. Dumb, Out of Control Music - select background music that fits the subject matter and make sure it can be turned off easily.

10. Under Construction - Avoid having a visitor coming to you closed or not yet opened website. What’s the point? Give them a single page of content with a notice as to when the whole site will be available.

11. Untested Web Site - Always look at your website in multiple browsers and make changes accordingly before uploading your site to the web.

12. Sloppy Texts - Make sure all the right words are in all the right places - “Content is King” for readers and search engines.

13. Old Content - Updating your website is important, visitors need to see something new once in a while.

14. Too Many Clicks - Why should a visitor have to jump through page after page to find anything on your website. Make sure everything is only 3 clicks or less from the homepage.

15. No Contact Information - Keep your contact information easy to find and easy to read.

16. Free Hosting Service - When you see a webpage that has a name so long that it has at least one period in the middle of it you know it’s a free hosting situation. Everyone knows the limitations of free hosts and the limitations that they place on a webpage. Don’t use a free web host if you want to be taken seriously.

17. Advertising - Do not overload you page with ads, especially the big grotesque banners. Well placed, well designed ads are okay if you don’t overload the page.

18. Bad Images - Don’t make a visitor suffer missing graphics file or badly shaped or cropped images. Optimize your images and use the best heights and widths, and keep your files in the best formats - jpeg for Photographs and gif for artwork.

19. Website Best Viewed - Don’t say this on your website, it looks like a beginner’s website.

20. No Prices - If you sell something don’t waste your time hoping you will get email inquiries on your prices - just include a price with the item description.

That should do it. Follow these directions to correct the 20 most common mistakes in website design to make sure your webpage is in good shape.

Do you ever wonder who the smartest search gurus are? Udi is one of them, and the article from Popular Mechanics covers some great strategic issues on Google and it’s search strategy. What makes Google different, and powerful? To read the full article, you can always go to the link above, below are some quesitons I found interesting:

What makes Google philosophically different from all the other search engines? What is Google searching for that others aren’t?
I don’t think it’s about philosophy. It’s about getting people what they need, and about getting the results to be as accurate and fast as possible. We’re innovating, and concentrating just on the relevancy of results. Last year we made over 450 improvements to the algorithm.

There have been a lot of fads in search of late, such as Human Assisted Search and contextual search. Do those get folded into search as a whole? What are real trends in search and what are fluff?
So let me first tell you about Google. At Google we do not manually change results. For example, if we find for a particular query that result No. 4 should be result No. 1, we do not have the capability to manually change it. We made that decision not to put that capability in the algorithm—we have to go and actually change the algorithm. That is, we have to find what weakness in the algorithm caused that result and find a general solution to that, evaluate whether a general solution really works and if it’s better, and then launch a general solution. That makes the process slower, but it puts a lot more discipline on us and makes it more unbiased.

Whether it’s at Google or not, is there a market for human-assisted search, or is that something different?
I think that the general issue is, how do you get more input from people? How do you get people to contribute more information, more content? Search is about getting lots of signals and putting them all together. The art of ranking is, how do you collect lots of signals then put them together? Signals from people are the best signals. We have several tools—and we’re going to launch many more—that will encourage people to contribute more. This does not necessarily mean one should then create the search results manually.

I’ll give you an example of something that came last week. We were evaluating a certain algorithm that adds diversity to the result. We did live experiments, which means we launched the algorithm to a very small percentage of users and then see how that compares to the result without the algorithm. One of the queries that made a difference: The query was, New York Times address. And you would think you’d understand the query, and the first result right there on the snippet gives you The New York Times. It turns out that’s not what the user was looking for. They were looking for an address given out by a New York Times reporter the day before. And because of this diversity and because of our emphasis on freshness and highlighting fresh results, that particular address appeared somewhere in the results, and that’s what the user wanted—that’s what they went to and got the result. That was something that surprised even us. You don’t think that when someone searches for New York Times address that they’re not looking for the address. Language is like that. Intention can be ambiguous.

Putting privacy aside, to what extent does finding a profile of somebody help search?
Currently, if you allow us to keep your Web history, we will improve your search. By the way, if you do this, you can always go back and remove what you want to remove or remove the whole thing or revoke that permission. But it improves search in two ways. One is, we will tune the result for you slightly. We’re not going to change the whole page—we might change position 5 to position 3 here and there, but we’ll use whatever we can from your previous searches to adapt the current search to you. The second is, we allow you to search within your Web history, which can also be very useful. You may remember something you did three months ago and you don’t remember exactly how you did it.

Could that theoretically extend back forever in time? Is there a limit to how far back something like that could extend arbitrarily, or is there a useful limit?
When we look at the personal search algorithm, obviously time gets into it. As far as you’re concerned, if you want us to keep this, it’s up to you.

Is there a literally a slider of some sort where you say, 1 month, 3 months, etc.?
I don’t believe we do that, but that’s something we can consider if that’s a big issue. I don’t think it’s a big issue. I think it’s better to keep because you might need something from two years ago.

While we’re talking on the subject of personalization, a colleague of mine said that search as you know it is falling to the wayside and changing dramatically as social networking comes into play—trending toward this MySpace-Facebook model where people look to their friends or their community as the take-off point. Do you see that as a bona fide trend? And, if so, does search become less important?
Search has always been about people. It’s not an abstract thing. It’s not a formula. It’s about getting people what they need. The art of ranking is one of taking lots of signals and putting them together. Signals from your friends are better signals, stronger signals. On the other hand, many searches are long-tail kinds of searches. If you’re looking for what movies to see tonight, your friend can probably give you the best information. If you’re looking for the address of the business, the Web as a whole can give you better information. If you’re looking for something obscure about anything, again the web can give you much better information. It depends on the type of search you do—and how to take all those signals and put them together.

SEO Tip #10 is use keywords in your blogs title. We wrote about being news worthy a few days ago. Make sure your Keywords are in your blogs title, as that is what will be mixed in to the Google Search results. Google has been doing that in a few months, but now the news sections are getting even higher. Have you noticed my handle on our blogging and social networking area? It’s “News”, and you should always try to be newsworth, make sure you read that blog I wrote a few weeks ago.

Microsoft reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes like Windows Updates and interrogating your PC etc

You can get it back:

Click Start then Run and type “gpedit.msc” without quotes.This opens the group policy editor. Then go to:
Local Computer Policy
then Computer Configuration
then Administrative Templates then Network then QOS Packet Scheduler and then to Limit Reservable Bandwidth.