Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

Randomly generated tag clouds

Jun 27, 2007 2 Comments »

Tag clouds are those highlighted and dimmed tags/categories you often encounter on various blogs and websites. The most read categories, or the categories with maximum posts under them, get the maximum emphasis. Tag clouds are a good way of telling your visitors what are your greater interests and what posts the visitors on your blog or website read the most.

But the problem with such tag clouds is that their emphasis is governed by the number of posts you’ve written under particular tags or by the number of times the posts have been read. This is a good way, but sometimes lots of important posts are neglected merely because they don’t belong to a “popular” tag, or many people haven’t read them yet. They’ll very soon get buried under the more popular posts.

The Focus cloud concept [ link via Focus Cloud [concept] ] counters this problem by leaving the highlighting to “god”, that is, your items are randomly highlighted. This works well if your blog or website doesn’t have lots of irrelevant content (you shouldn’t anyway have irrelevant content but sometimes we cannot help it). Some bloggers post 5-6 less important posts and then a couple of important posts every week and if their tag clouds are generated randomly, the important posts won’t get the desired exposure.

I still prefer the first method of managing your tag clouds. The first method, dictated by performance and content, makes sure the good, popular posts get more exposure. Of course, its downside is that sometimes posts that don’t deserve much fanfare get maximum exposure due to some search engine quirk or time-based relevance, or even fad value. A good solution would be a tag cloud that is driven by the popularity factor, but can also be controlled by the publisher.

Update: Aaron from http://foobr.co.uk/ just posted a comment saying:

Hi, I think you picked up my post wrong. I wrote my version of the Focus Cloud as I was annoyed at other people’s ‘random’ implementations.

Instead my concept uses a points system which ensures that the most recent tags (your current focus) are given an extra ‘boost’ so that they can perform on an equal footing with more established tags.

Aaron makes perfect sense. According to Aaron’s idea of generating tag clouds the most recent posts too get some exposure so that they get the initial needed push. But I wasn’t referring to his post when I wrote about the tag cloud being generated randomly. I mentioned that I got random tag cloud link via his blog.

More links on tag clouds:

• Tag Clouds for Democratic Debate
• Tag clouds - what they are with examples
• What Does Your Tag Cloud Say About You?
• The Usefulness of Tag Clouds

Technorati Tags: tag clouds, random tag clouds

Are Blogging Jobs Available?

Jun 23, 2007 No Comments »

An article in the New York Times, titled Can Blogs Become a Big Source of Jobs says:

The bottom line is this: while running a Web log is a skill that more and more employers seek in their employees, finding full-time work in that world is still unusual.

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Google defines Net Neutrality

Jun 20, 2007 3 Comments »

Network neutrality — the concept that the Internet should remain free and open to all comers — has been a major public policy priority for Google over the last two years. But anyone who has followed the debate closely knows that one of the challenges raised by our opponents has been defining what exactly the term means. The fact is, net neutrality can mean different things to different people.
Last year Google and other members of the Open Internet Coalition played a big part in the congressional debate over net neutrality. Earlier this year, the FCC agreed to take a fresh look at the issue and seek public comments. We figured this would be a good opportunity to help clarify what we mean when we talk about net neutrality, so yesterday we filed these comments with the FCC. A few key points: [ What Do We Mean By “Net Neutrality”? ]

A good explanation.

Technorati Tags: net neutrality

Are the RSS feeds really beneficial?

Jun 16, 2007 4 Comments »

Yesterday I was writing a small page on RSS feeds to tell my non-technical readers what RSS feeds are, how they can subscribe to them, and what are the benefits of subscribing to RSS feeds. It’s been just recently that I’ve started getting some decent traffic (more than a thousand visitors per day) at Writing Cave and it’s exciting/disturbing to see the RSS feed subscribers counter going up, all of a sudden, and plunging down, the very next day. So I was just wondering, is all this getting worked up about my RSS feed subscribers worth it? It seems completely a different world when I see the counts on other websites, take for instance, Problogger.net, that boast of more than 25,000 RSS feed subscribers. But what’s the use of stopping these 25,000, highly interested readers from coming to your blog because they can read your complete posts through their RSS feed readers? We try to write engaging posts regularly so that people come to our blogs to read them. From the readers’ point of view the RSS feeds make perfect sense, but of what benefit are they to the publishers, the bloggers? I did some research and found the following benefits of encouraging your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds:

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Whom should you choose? Google Adsense or Independent Link Sellers

Jun 15, 2007 1 Comment »

Asks Darren on Blog Republic. Actually, the thing is

Google has been on a remarkable tangent lately concerning a form of advertising that they don’t like. The type of ad is a “Text Link Ad” that is very familiar to almost all bloggers. Google now has a reporting tool inside of “Webmaster Central” where you can turn in your competition for “selling links.”

Does it mean Google may disallow you to use Adsense if you sell link space to other companies such as Text Link Ads? The angry comments on Matt Cutts’ blog post seem to say that but what he means is, links should not be bought for increasing your page ranks, and it makes perfect sense. Links used for page rank should only be voluntary and they should appear for the value of the content not for money.

That said, what if Google penalizes you for selling link ads from other sources? What if the company stops paying you for the Adsense clicks and drops you from its listings? Well, many blogs and websites are making good money selling direct ads. For instance, I don’t see Adsense ads on Techcrunch.com and the last time I read they were selling advertisement space for $10,000 per month. Further, there are many websites that don’t depend on Google for traffic.

Personally, if I ever have a choice, I’d prefer independent advertisers to Adsense because first, with Adsense it’s hard to select what ads appear on your blog or website, and they pay very low. If you have quality traffic, you can earn more by publishing links and ads from link brokers and other online advertising companies.

More links on link advertising and adsense:

• Google Text Link Ads vs. Text Link Ads
• Google’s Take On Text Link Ads
• Paid Links - Now Google Officially Says “Report Them” - Why?

Technorati Tags: link advertising, adsense, text link ads, online advertising