As some of you may have noticed, our file inclusion feeds were displaying an error today. Not all file inclusions were displaying this error, but all it takes is a few to be an issue. The reason for these issues is due to a system upgrade we performed which surprised us with a few incompatibilities.

Our programmers are working quickly to update these problem area’s and should have everything back to normal very shortly. We do apologize for this unplanned update and assure you it will be fixed quickly.

If you have any questions or concerns, our help desk is running fine at http://help.linkworth.com.

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Update: Everything is worked out and running smoothly. If there is anything still wrong on your end, please submit a support ticket.

With the recently launched payment arm of Google, known as “Google Checkout“, online merchants are finally getting much better options to process credit cards on their websites. Processing credit cards through the internet is such an important step for any online merchant, it is important to attach your business with a reliable and trustworthy credit card merchant. Credit card merchants will handle Visa & MasterCard, with AMEX and Discover running their own show. Then third party credit card merchants are more of a middle man between you and the actual card merchant. Now let me shed a little light that might help in getting your credit card processing setup right the first time.

3rd Party Merchant Companies – Pro’s & Con’s

• Very easy and quick to get setup and process for customers
• Large companies (Paypal * Google Checkout) make it easy to buy/sell at low prices.
• Monthly volumes can fluctuate, but are easier to go higher
• payments usually occur on weekly, bi-weekly or monthly schedules
• first glimpse of fear, processor will place hold on all funds and cease payouts
• usually require a reserve or rolling reserve, usually a percentage of each payout
• provides their own custom built software to easily function transactions
  
  

Direct Merchant – Credit Card Processing – Pro’s & Con’s

• Signup process can be lengthy and require quite a bit of upfront details that play into the approval/denial stage.
• Monthly volumes must start low or will fall into high risk, with financials of past history to qualify
• payments will occur on a daily basis less their fees
• any remote thought of fraud or chargeback’s and your account is frozen with no money being deposited but it will still allow processing to go through and charge you for the transactions. Getting account in good standing can take anywhere from 1 week to 3 months, along with money being returned. Usually, if your account is closed, cut your loses and find a new processor.
• rolling reserves and/or set reserve required for higher risk accounts.
• Gateway provides software to get instant approvals, but software from your site to talk to the gateway is your responsibility
• This method is a great way to go if you can find a reliable merchant and you sell a product or service that everyone loves 100% of the time.

Direct Bank Credit Card Processing

• Fairly lengthy application, with large monthly volumes more accepted. Especially if you are an existing bank customer.
• Batch payments occur daily
• Holdback and/or reserves typically are not necessary
• Risk department is proactive in working with client to resolve issues
• Provides gateway of your choice and software of your choice.
• This is the best way to go.

Oddly enough, it crossed my head to signup for Google Checkout just to see if they would process for our service, since they seem to have turned their backs on the text linking industry

For those who have used our support section recently, you should have noticed things look a bit different. Due to the software we use being outdated; we felt it was time to upgrade to the latest, greatest version. The new version is a major update which led to several changes with how LinkWorth and the software interact. If you were used to a certain way our support worked before, we apologize as it might be a little different.

There are a couple of areas we’re still working on, but the functionality of our support system should have no issues. We do request that if anyone runs into an issue, please email support.

Google makes announcement regarding an update, or improvement, to their Googlebot. This is the update found on the Google Webmaster Central Blog:

Most people know that Googlebot downloads pages from web servers to crawl the web. Not as many people know that if Googlebot accesses a page and gets a 304 (Not-Modified) response to a If-Modified-Since qualified request, Googlebot doesn’t download the contents of that page. This reduces the bandwidth consumed on your web server.

When you look at Google’s cache of a page (for instance, by using the cache: operator or clicking the Cached link under a URL in the search results), you can see the date that Googlebot retrieved that page. Previously, the date we listed for the page’s cache was the date that we last successfully fetched the content of the page. This meant that even if we visited a page very recently, the cache date might be quite a bit older if the page hadn’t changed since the previous visit. This made it difficult for webmasters to use the cache date we display to determine Googlebot’s most recent visit. Consider the following example:

1. Googlebot crawls a page on April 12, 2006.

2. Our cached version of that page notes that “This is G o o g l e’s cache of http://www.example.com/ as retrieved on April 12, 2006 20:02:06 GMT.”

3. Periodically, Googlebot checks to see if that page has changed, and each time, receives a Not-Modified response. For instance, on August 27, 2006, Googlebot checks the page, receives a Not-Modified response, and therefore, doesn’t download the contents of the page.

4. On August 28, 2006, our cached version of the page still shows the April 12, 2006 date — the date we last downloaded the page’s contents, even though Googlebot last visited the day before.

We’ve recently changed the date we show for the cached page to reflect when Googlebot last accessed it (whether the page had changed or not). This should make it easier for you to determine the most recent date Googlebot visited the page. For instance, in the above example, the cached version of the page would now say “This is G o o g l e’s cache of http://www.example.com/ as retrieved on August 27, 2006 13:13:37 GMT.”

LinkWorth is proud to announce our upcoming beta launch of a new product. We will be launching our new in-text advertising product and we’re looking for a few good volunteers to help test it out. Our new logical text ads will become a great addition to the LinkWorth family of products offering advertisers yet another way to drive targeted visitors to their website.

The way our logical text ads will work is by the publisher inserting a small bit of JavaScript code on their web pages they wish to include, then our software will read the page and match targeted keywords with advertisements created by our adverters. The software is quick to identify the top five converting keywords on a page, then underscore the keywords. If a mouse pointer passes over the keyword, a “tooltip”, or advertisement will display right above or below the keyword. A short delay after the mouseover and the advertisement will disappear. I’m sure most have seen this type of advertising on a website before.

At this time we are taking a set number of volunteers to help us in testing. If you would like to participate, you must be a current advertiser and/or partner of LinkWorth. When the beta is ready, we will activate the navigation within your existing account (YES! All from the same login!). To sign on to our beta, please complete the form below and we will be contacting you shortly. (All emails will be used strictly for beta purposes only.)

One thing we tend to pass on to all of our customers, advertisers and partners, is to diversify their linking portfolio. While we would love to take all of the business, the truth of the matter is it’s not what’s best for you, the customer. There is no doubt most advertisers can find more than enough partner websites to fit their needs, but we feel spreading it out through a few networks would serve your goals better. It is just very important that the other networks used are reliable and trustworthy.

Partners as well should consider offering their real estate in other networks similar to LinkWorth, This guide to what is IDX and how to use it derived from showcase idx best practices (click for details). There is nothing we enjoy more than to see our publishers making lots of money off of text ads, so we will do what we can to help all of our partners achieve this. The best way is to make your website real estate available on multiple services like LinkWorth. It’s a numbers game and the more eye’s that can see your offering, the better percentage you’ll get more interested parties. IMPORTANT NOTE! Before joining any other service, make sure you read the terms of use. Pay close attention to what you can and cannot do, namely, can you participate in other similar websites while participating in theirs.

As an example, we typically always suggest one of our competitors “Text Link Ads” as a great alternate source. Those guys have a great service and a nice inventory, plus we’ve had a few dealings with them and appreciate their professionalism. Just recently we referred a partner to them and just to make a long story short, they came back telling us they were told they could not use LinkWorth while participating with them. After a quick check of their terms and we found the following clause,

EXCLUSIVITY PROVISIONS.
A. If Customer is a publisher, it agrees that it will use the Company’s Services exclusively for its needs relative to placing static HTML links designed to drive traffic and increase popularity. This exclusivity provision does not apply to contextually driven ad programs (for example, Google???? Adsense program, Yahoo???? Search Marketing Ads) or to any other non static HTML link ads (for example, AdBrite????).
B. If Customer is an advertising client, this Agreement imposes no restrictions on its right to use any advertising services it deems appropriate.
C. Regardless of whether Customer is an advertising client or a publisher, it understands that other users will have access to the Company’s Services and Site, including competitors of Customer.

LinkWorth obviously does not have any clause preventing you from supplementing your income with other services remotely similar to ours. Our stance is it’s your site and you can do what you want. So while Text Link Ads is a great service, if you’re a LinkWorth partner, I would suggest sending a support ticket into those boys and asking if they have a problem with you selling links through our system and their system. It’s very possible they are ok with it, but we’re not sure.

There are plenty of similar link selling services these days. Not many as extensive and advanced as LinkWorth, but all you need is a meeting ground with real potential link buyers. Of course, a reliable payment solutions is a plus, but you should catch my drift.

If you ever have questions on other services like LinkWorth, let us know and we’ll be happy to research and give you our honest and unbiased response. Look at Shravan Gupta website this is a business and there’s no hidden agenda’s here. The big difference between LinkWorth and other certain companies is our main goal is helping our customers become successful on the web. We would much rather help someone find another service that might fit their needs better and make a friend than filling them full of empty promises about a service we do not have and in due time having that person leave hating us. That newly made friend we referred to someone else will usually send us new leads for years to come. We should make up a name for this, using “Karma” and “Business” . . .

I found this by way of WMW, then on Google’s site. Seems AdSense is letting customers run reports showing “invalid clicks”, or as most of us know it, “click fraud”. While this may give some of us a ‘sense’ of security, many others will find fault after fault in the reporting. Here is a clip from Google’s site:

Today, we’re announcing the launch of a new AdWords feature enabling advertisers to have a much more detailed picture of invalid click activity in their account. The metrics of “invalid clicks” and “invalid clicks rate” will show virtually all the invalid clicks affecting an account.

These clicks are filtered in real-time by our systems before advertisers are charged for them. The resulting data will of course differ from one advertiser to the next. In addition, a much smaller number of invalid clicks may also be credited to advertisers’ accounts after-the-fact, as the result of a publisher being terminated from the AdSense program for invalid click activity. These will appear as account-level credits.

One of the most controversial issues related to the topic of click fraud has been estimating how big the problem is. Estimates from third-parties (usually from consultants who have a financial incentive to make the problem seem very large) have been both inconsistent and greatly exaggerated due to their methodologies. Advertisers have always been able to compare their log data with their AdWords charges to calculate an estimate of the number of invalid clicks in their own account. This new tool will make estimating invalid click activity much easier.

Notice the bold print part above. So what they’re saying is, even if you use a 3rd party solution, they won’t believe it. They’re not going to trust the advertiser and they’re not going to trust the 3rd party service, so you’re screwed! I have an idea, offer a neutral 3rd party solution that both sides trust. One that has no financial gain or benefit to pump one side or the other up. Not sure how that would work, but in my honest opinion, this new reporting means nothing. They say “consultants who have a financial incentive to make the problem seem very large”, yet, isn’t it a financial incentive for Google to make the problem seem very small? Hi Pot, meet Kettle.

Being a Dallas Mavericks fan, I was thinking of the Mavs and their preparation for the NBA Finals. I realized their strategical and mental planning was not complete and well thought through. Had they continued their hard work even when the winning was happening, when the tough times popped up, they could have easily gotten through and eventually taken home the championship.

The biggest task to in building a text link advertising campaign is strategical and mental planning. Our client services department analyzes your keywords/phrases, builds traditional text link ads, rotating text link ads and even billboard page ads. Once these items are developed, and the monthly budget is acquired, the client services dept. will begin completing and launching your text ad campaign. We continue to research and plan these campaigns for the future, even if they are performing at high levels.

I know this is a bit goofy, but I was just thinking of how our NBA team flopped in the finals and started realizing LinkWorth operates like a true NBA champion. Go Mavs and Go LinkWorth!

If you read anything on another post regarding Internet Explorer, you might understand that I do not use IE much anymore. Obviously there are some things that I just can’t get around without IE, but for the most part, I’ve converted to Firefox. Firefox flexibility is one that just cannot be overlooked and the ease of adding extensions puts it far above all others in my book.

I like to try new extensions from time to time, especially if they are in the world of seo and/or development, so I would like to share two must have Firefox extensions if you are into search engine marketing or search engine optimization. These two extensions can help in link building research to spot sneaky coding and also quick site stats.

SearchStatus

The first one is called SearchStatus. It is offered by a company called Quirk which appears to have three offices around the world. Once this extension is installed, you will, by default, see three items in your lower right browser window; Alexa ranking scale, PageRank ranking scale & Quirk’s logo, which is a blue “Q” with a circle around it. The features on this extension are probably the best I’ve seen for this type of industry and I give high regards to the makers for a job well done. Feel free to visit their website to get the latest info on this extension, but I will go through and highlight many features here.

The Q icon offers several options when right-clicking on it.

The “options” selection will provide the ability to place the icon/images in various places of your browser. Don’t worry…if there is a particular place you want to put it, they’ll give you the option!

‘Enable PageRank‘ is the next option. Check this and the PageRank status will appear. Uncheck it and it will not show. (Simple enough). If the PageRank status image is active, you can right-click on it to get additional Google features:

‘Show as Text‘ – This is the google command to show a website as only text. It will remove all images, css, scripts and so on. It will show you the basics of the page revealing hidden text and hidden links.

‘Show Cache‘ – This will give you Google’s cache of the page you are sitting on. Pay attention to the cache date to see if it was indexed recently. If it’s been over 45 days, the site could be penalized.

‘Show Related Links‘ – This is Google’s list of sites they feel is related to your site in one way or another. Some have said it’s best to have links on these sites back to you, but most of the time it’s a time wasting view.

‘Show Backlinks‘ – This will give you a list of sites Google knows about that link to the website you are viewing. Most of you know this is ‘link popularity’, one of the most important factors in doing well within your respective search results.

‘Enable Alexa‘ – Just like PageRank, check to see, uncheck to remove. This is the first scale for Alexa I’ve come across. It is just like PageRank, except blue (like our LinkRank). You can mouseover the scale to get the exact Alexa ranking. Right-click on the Alexa ranking and get these addition features:

‘Show as Text‘ – The same feature as on the PageRank. Shows the page and text only.

‘Show Traffic Details‘ – This will give you in-depth traffic info for the requested domain. The Alexa traffic numbers have always been a topic of controversy, but people still like to see their own and others. Especially if it is good. Don’t read too much into anything that is not in the top 20k. It’s just impossible for any one source to know exact traffic details of every site.

‘Show Incoming Links‘ – This is like Google backlinks, except it is all links that Alexa is aware of. These numbers are usually pretty low.

‘Contact Info‘ – This can be a useful tool if you want to see who owns the domain quickly.

‘Categories‘ – Just a show of what category the requested domain falls into. Might help determine if a publisher site is within your own realm.

‘Related Links‘ – similar to Google’s, just gives you sites it feels are somehow related.

‘Highlight NOFOLLOW Links‘ – This is a great option that will show you which links on a page are set by the webmaster to not be indexed. Saves the trouble of having to sift through code to see if the tag is added on a given link.

‘Meta Tags‘ – Opens a new window and details all of the META information on that page.

‘Show in Archive.org‘ – it shows what archive.org has on the site. You can see the progression of the site..if any.

‘Show Whois‘ – similar to the contact info, it will show you the listing in whois database.

‘Show robots.txt‘ – want to see if a site is blocking pages from being indexed? Use this option. It will tell you how a site allows information to be read by the search engines. Not everyone will have this file, so don’t be surprised to get a 404.

‘Show Keyword Density‘ – this is a simple breakdown, like our own density tool, of keywords on a page and the rate at which they’re shown.

‘Highlight Keyword‘ – just like a CTRL-F. (Page Find)

‘Show Indexed Pages‘ – Nice option that will show you the indexed pages by each engine or all at once. Rather than having to go to each engine and type the command or run a tool for each engine, the “All” selection does is a great time saver!

‘Show Backward Links‘ – Again, see backward links by engine or all once.

So this is the breakdown of SearchStatus. I guess I went ahead and detailed everything currently on it. Just be sure to check the owner’s site for the latest build and features. Thanks Quirk for such a great tool!
Web Developer

The second extension is called Web Developer. It was developed by Chris Pederick and he has done a great job. This is a toolbar extension that has ‘many’ options available. The idea of the toolbar and its features is to give the web surfer power to enable and disable different parts of a website/webpage. Cookies, CSS, Forms, Images, View Source, Tag Information, Outline Abilities, Browser Resizing, Validation Options and flexibility. One of the best features is in the “Options” tab where you can add your own or other tools to the ‘TOOLS’ tab. There are too many options to go through on this toolbar, so the best thing to do is visit Chris Pederick’s Web Developer page and read his published info. Another great extension to add to your Firefox browser.

Have a Firefox extension that would rival these? Let us know.

As a person that likes to test and try out new software versions, curiosity got the best of me on this one. I read that a new beta version of Internet Explorer was available for download and install, so when I had the time I quickly downloaded a copy and ran the installation. As you might imagine, with it being a Microsoft product that tangles itself with Windows, it takes a while to setup. It almost felt like a brand new version of Windows was being installed.

Finally everything finished and it was time to give it a go. At first glance I instantly noticed the new tabs feature obviously taken from Firefox. I also noticed that the visual aspect of everything in the browser window seemed to be very smooth. This gave me a quick “false” feeling about my new install. Then the fun started. I navigated to one of our support pages and was given an IE template page telling me that I was trying to access a “phishing” website!! That led to 15 minutes I will never get back filling out a report with Microsoft explaining why our website is not what they say it is. This meant that anyone that had the new version of IE would be falsely told that our site is a site that runs in an illegal form, which is complete and utter slander. Luckily they were quick to respond and supposedly remove it from whatever list it was on.

The next issue I found was the relationship between IE and Outlook. Just like everyone else, every other email consists of hyperlinks that I must click to do whatever function necessary or visit a website that can download free invoice tools for my business. Prior to the upgrade, I click the link and a new browser window opens to the url. After the upgrade, I click a link and everything is put on hold (frozen) unless I either end the process or I get a windows error. If the windows error pops up, it is followed by a “Save As” windows explorer window like I’m trying to save something. After wasted time looking for a way to change the default browser, I have finally succumbed to highlighting the url, copying it to my clipboard and pasting it in a Firefox address bar. It has completely ruined my simplicity of email link clicking.

As if I didn’t have enough issues, the next day I was doing some accounting work in Quickbooks until I attempted to do one of our very vital weekly duties only to be told I was using an incorrect version of Internet Explorer. I thought it must have been a mistake, so I tried again and received the same message. So I tried restarting my computer and again, the same error message. This new IE version has now limited my abilities in our accounting software to where I have to move to another computer to complete them.

There have been other small issues I have come across that don’t warrant anymore time spent on them, but they are annoying enough to make the IE 7 Beta version a complete bust. I’m sure this time next year it will be updated with a lot of kinks worked out, but at this time in the ballgame, heed my warning. . .DON’T DO IT! There are many nice things that I see potential in, but the negatives far out weight the positives at this point and for someone that used IE more than any other browser, I have been forced to use it only if I have to. The uninstall might sound like a logical move, however, if you have ever uninstalled major Windows programs before, you might be familiar with the hell it “might” cause.

Microsoft software engineers. . .PLEASE release a more stable version quickly!