StumbleUpon Unveils Most Stumbled Sites for 2009

StumbleUpon Unveils Most Stumbled Sites for 2009

StumbleUpon has had quite a year. They bought themselves back from eBay and launched a URL shortening service, among other things. Now, they’re revealing the most stumbled sites for their historic year that was 2009.

Here they are, broken down by category:

Arts

Jim Jarmusch Quote - 278K Stumbles
Aled Lewis Illustrations - 253K Stumbles
Pepsi Logo Response - 229K Stumbles

Bizarre/Oddities

99 Things You Should Have Seen On The Internet - 471K Stumbles
Scary Good Facepaint - 374K Stumbles
Slightly Warped Curiosities: Gibraltar Airport - 352K Stumbles

Food/Cooking

26 Cakes Perfect for Geeks - 290K Stumbles
Pasta Pie Recipe - 231K Stumbles
Hasselback Potatoes Recipe - 231K Stumbles

Environment

Air Traffic in 24 Hours - 130K Stumbles
Free Heat from Old Window and Soda Cans - 113K Stumbles
Think About Your Morning Latte - 112K Stumbles

Humor

Cheat Sheet for Travelling Back in Time - 472K Stumbles
Life Summarized in 4 Bottles - 439K Stumbles
As Luck Would Have It… - 369K Stumbles

Music

8 Tracks Mix: Songs that Make You Feel Better - 368K Stumbles
Gizmodo: Proof That Birds are Secret Composers - 313K Stumbles
Fun With Rap Music - 298K Stumbles

Photography

Peter Funch Street Photography - 410K Stumbles
Stunning Wildlife Camouflage - 356K Stumbles
14 Rare Color Photos From the FSA-OWI - 341K Stumbles

Science

Robot/People Art by Kacie Kinzer - 230K Stumbles
Photographs of and from the Hubble Space Telescope - 219K Stumbles
Default Password for Roadside Led Signs - 184K Stumbles

Travel

12 Most Amazing Pools in the World - 196K Stumbles
9 best Train Journeys in the World - 172K Stumbles
Anderson Cooper’s Blog: 28 things I wish I’d known before I started traveling - 165K Stumbles

Video Games

Ball Droppings - 292K Stumbles
Amazing Mario Level - 214K Stumbles
Canabalt - 192K Stumbles

Study Results: Search Engines, Meta Robots Tag and Robots.txt

Study Results: Search Engines, Meta Robots Tag and Robots.txt
Welcome to the second part of a two-part series that tests search engine reactions to the meta robots tag and robots.txt. In this part the results of the experiment and testing we set up in the first part will be presented. For details about the experiment background setup of the test pages and user-agents please refer to the first part. You need to have read it very carefully to easily understand this one….
Business Productivity Online Suite From $10 per user per month. Includes a 12-month subscription. Min 5 seats.

6 Google Stories for Wednesday, October 7, 2009

6 Google Stories for Wednesday, October 7, 2009

There was a ton of news about Google today (in addition to the two [see here and here] we’ve already covered today), so let’s dive right in:

Search Options was released on the mobile version of web search for Android, iPhone, and Palm WebOS. By the way, that’s the second time in a week where a mobile update is for those three types of devices. Blackberry and Nokia phones are noticeably missing while omitting Windows Mobile is no real surprise.

Google Maps released a major update, with improved details for parks, bike paths, and college campuses.

The Google Webmaster Central team is proposing new standards for making AJAX sites crawlable.

PDFs in Google’s search results are getting the “Quick View” treatment. Since July, Google has added the option, which is based on the same technology used in Google docs, to 50% of the PDFs in their index.

Google is testing Cloudboard, as pointed out by a great post over at Google Operating System. Cloudboard is an online clipboard that would enable copying between Google services including GMail and Google docs.

Google held a press conference today (a response to Microsoft Open House?) and mostly told reporters a bunch of stuff we all already know. Here are a couple of tidbits that stood out: They talked up the new Verizon agreement to sell Android mobile phones. They said the prices publishers set for their own content don’t affect SERPs but that traffic could indicate which content is more relevant for searchers. Otherwise, it was your regular Google stuff - defending their book settlement (which they’re re-negotiating), defending their luxurious culture in a recession, and how they’re good not evil (like Microsoft is, don’t ya know?!).

Australian Newspaper Publishers: Search Engines Break Into Homes, Steal Content

Australian Newspaper Publishers: Search Engines Break Into Homes, Steal Content

Newspaper publishers are reaching such new lows with their arguments against search engines, I wonder how they stay in business at all. I mean, doesn’t journalism require gathering facts and analyzing them?

The latest low is an Australian newspaper publisher who says that search engines indexing newspaper sites is essentially breaking and entering.

WRONG.

If anything, your newspaper is like a dance club, and you can deny entrance to the search engines if they’re not dressed up enough for your taste. Just slap some no index code on your robots.txt file and it’s like hiring the best bouncer in town.

Because, let’s face it, you want eyeballs at your website. Otherwise, why have one? People find a ton of content through search, but if you’re not liking the engines, just block them. Simple as pie.

Google PSA: News Publishers Can Use Robots.txt to Block Us

Google PSA: News Publishers Can Use Robots.txt to Block Us

Google is once again reminding news publishers that they do not have to be indexed by the search engine. All they have to do is slap some simple code on a robots.txt file to block the Googlebot.

News publishers, for whatever reason, can’t seem to understand that Google doesn’t host their content. Perhaps they think that the web is a system of interpipes that are built high in the clouds where they’re burning holes through the ozone layer or something. Sigh.

The truth is that news publishers want to charge for access to their sites, just like they charged for print editions. So, they want Google to pay to index their site. If they were truly concerned about the Googlebot, they would simply block it. But they know how much Google sends traffic to their sites. They’re just playing dumb.

Remember when newspapers did charge for access to online content? And that didn’t work out? So they offered it free with ads? Because they don’t own the news and it’s going to spread around the interpipes no matter what they charge?

So here’s my PSA to news publishers: The web has largely been built on the path of least resistance. And thou protesteth too much.

Keyword Research Robot

Keyword Research Robot
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Google Indexing Robots.txt Files? - Advanced Forum Thread

Google Indexing Robots.txt Files? - Advanced Forum Thread
In today’s forum thread of the week, it was actually ME who had a question! I noticed that our robots.txt file had been indexed by Google and was curious if others had ever had this happen.

Blocking Complicated URLs with Robots.txt

Blocking Complicated URLs with Robots.txt
If you have a large web site you might have some content that you do not want the search engines to index — perhaps for duplicate content reasons or you simply don t want someone casually stumbling across it. You know you can use robots.txt but what if you need to block thousands of pages or block only certain files within a folder This article will explain some of the more advanced uses of robots.txt. You will even learn how to block dynamic pages …

Using Robots.txt to Control Search Engines

Using Robots.txt to Control Search Engines
Robots.txt is a text file you put on your site to tell search robots which pages you would like them not to visit. Robots.txt implements the Robots Exclusion Protocol, which allows you as a web manage…

What On Earth Is A Search Engine Algorithm?

Each search engine has something called an algorithm which is the formula that each search engine uses to evaluate web pages and determine their relevance and value when crawling them for possible inclusion in their search engine. A crawler is the robot that browses all of these pages for the search engine. Read more