But what about things that Google doesn't do as well?

When you do a Google Search, Google of course does not search the entire internet for that query. Google searches its index of the internet, and the information that appears highest in your Search Results could be days or months out of date. For most searches that probably won't worry you too much. Although it can be frustrating waiting a number of days for Google's "spiders" to re-index your website after you make changes to it. But what if you're interested in finding something that wasn't on a webpage a few days ago? What if you're interested in finding information about an event that happened a few days ago? Or even a few hours ago? Or even a few minutes ago?

Google has added some additional search options to the sidebar to help resolve this. You now have the option of narrowing your search results to pages updated within a certain time frame, such as the past year, past month, or even past hour. However, since Google can only produce results for the pages it has already indexed, many of the results that you would get from a search for the past 24 hours wouldn't be as comprehensive as one you would get from the past week because Google hasn't crawled all the new pages yet. 

Increasingly, I have been turning to Twitter for certain kinds of real-time information.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard of Twitter. Twitter claims to be a service dedicated to answering the question "What are you doing?", but users of Twitter know that its range goes far behind that.

I don't want to go into the ins and outs of how to use Twitter's search tools and #hashtags and @replies (if you'd like to learn more, just let us know and we'll be happy to send you an eBook all about Twitter). The constant stream of updates from all over the world on Twitter means that for certain questions (was that an earthquake?, have they announced the new iPhone yet?, what's happening in Libya?), answers are available on Twitter as things are occuring.

When you are relying on a network of peers for information, accuracy is a very real concern: Celebrities from Eddie Murphy to Justin Beiber have been reported as dead on twitter recently. Incorrect reports of celebrity death have frequently been circulated wildly after first appearing on twitter  - even causing erroneous headlines in international news. Celebrity death hoaxes aside, the immediacy and volume of Twitter make it a valuable tool for instantaneous information: something Google Search isn't all that great at.

In 2009, Bing added the ability to search Twitter right through their site. Twitter results are updated (on Bing) every 60 seconds - but as yet, Bing is only indexing high-profile Twitter users. I'm not convinced that mixing up tweets (which are 140-character long snippets) with other web search results is a great idea, or that you can get the full benefit of a Twitter search by only focussing on a few high-profile users. Google also had a similar agreement with Twitter for indexing tweets, but discontinued this practice after July of last year - effectively ending their highly touted real-time search. 

Don't think Bing continuing this functionality changes my mind on the Google vs Bing saga though - if it actually worked well, Google would just start doing it too.

You can follow Jack Marlow on Twitter.

If you require support during this time, please leave us a message on 1300 932 243 and we'll be sure to get back to you.

The Jack Marlow office will be open every day (excluding public holidays) over the Christmas period for any support queries. No rest for the wicked!

Some of us are taking a short break, but if you have an urgent request, a member of the support team will be here to handle it.

2011 has been quite eventful for us; rapid growth, a (huge) new office, new staff, exciting projects and, of course, ongoing improvements to the Jack Marlow CMS. We hope you've had as much fun as we have!

Here's to a relaxing break and a prosperous 2012.

I'll be covering a lot of ground, from the basics of how to generate traffic in the first place right through to how to keep your existing customers coming back for more.

How to Make a Website That Works - Turning Visitors into Customers.

• Integrating your website into your marketing mix
• How to get more traffic
• How to keep people coming back
• How to turn traffic into business
• How to make sure that business becomes repeat business

There's room for up to 12 participants, still a few spots available - see here for info on how to book:

http://www.schmooze.net.au/site/oneevent.php?id=515

I'm presenting the workshop in association with Schmooze, a great networking group that started in Canberra but opened in Melbourne at the start of this year, and Servcorp, an Aussie-born multinational who do serviced offices and virtual offices at locations all over the world.

Hope to see you there!

Having outgrown our current office space, it's time to leave the wind and water views of Docklands, and make our way to fabulous Flinders Lane. We're all pretty excited about setting up camp in the heart of the Melbourne CBD (and having access to lots and lots and LOTS of coffee shops!).

We are still hard at work while desks are being dismantled around us, so there will be no interruption to support services during business hours, and absolutely no interruption to network services at all.

Thank you to our clients for your support thus far - we look forward to growing with you. Especially now that we have the floorspace to do it. FOUR TIMES the floorspace, in fact!

A change is as good as a holiday (apparently), but something that isn't changing is our main phone line. You will still be able to reach us on 1300 932 243.

Stay tuned for our first post from the new office. See you Monday!

Let’s have a closer look at a couple of them...

First up: WCIG. Westgate Community Initiatives Group Inc is a not-for-profit employment services provider ‘committed to affirming the right of every individual to a meaningful role in society’.

In a little over six weeks, we've turned around a ground-up rethink of who we are, what we do, and how we can do it better. I think we're doing pretty well.

Our old tagline was "a human approach to web development" -- which has always been what we try to do, but I'm a big believer in using less words.

So we've kept it simple. We make websites - that work.

• We're plain speaking
• We get results
• Our CMS is a doddle to use
• Our clients are getting real results from their websites

The future's looking bright.

I have to say a big word of thanks to:

• Our awesome team, who've cranked this shiny new website out at a million miles an hour.
• BRB Creative as always for their top notch work.
• Clients who've been patient with me over the last couple of weeks as I've pushed this project through.

By the time this goes online, we'll be at our relaunch party at Watermark Bar. Photos are to come.

Oh, as is a follow-up blog post with some big announcements :)

Exciting times.

Two and a half years ago, I started this business with Mark Stevens. As well as being a 50% shareholder and director, I built our network, wrote the software we build our websites with, and have handled our more technically challenging projects.

Last week, I bought the other half of the company.

Since the beginning of 2009, Jack Marlow has built hundreds of websites, grown from three to six (sometimes seven) people in the office here, and we now haul a pretty serious volume of data, traffic, and business for our clients each month.

Since the beginning of 2009, Twitter has grown from 75 million users to 200 million, the ASX 200 has bottomed out, gained nearly 50% then lost 10%, Justin Bieber was unleashed on an unsuspecting public, and Australia has gone from a 100-year drought to 100-year floods ... but that wheel in Docklands still hasn't reopened. :)

Times change. Things change. Business changes.

So anyway - effective last week, Mark has left the company to pursue other endeavours, and I've bought out his shareholding.

As dramatic as that sounds, it's not a drastic change. For those two and a half years, my work has been in the background - building our network, writing software, building our trickier projects and planning for the future. The main thing that changes is that for the next two years and beyond I'll be front and centre instead.

What does this mean?

For our clients? Nothing changes - not immediately, anyway. My first order of business is hiring more staff - at least three, in fact. We've got a new project manager coming on board in a couple of weeks, and we're hunting around for more production and support staff. We're busier than we've ever been at the moment, and if even half our plans come together, we'll stay on that trajectory for the rest of the year!

Within the next two months, we'll start moving across to a model where each of you will have an account manager, who's your go-to-contact for anything you need. Of course you're not stuck with having to speak to them - anyone can help, but your account manager will keep in touch with you every two or three months to make sure you're getting what you need from your website.

Over the next six months, I'll be running a project to roll out a whole heap of additions and further improvements to our platform and CMS - updates on that project will come through on our blog as we progress. The laundry list of additions we've got in mind is too long to dump in here (not to mention we're still workshopping it!).

One thing this business has never been into is penny-pinching for upgrades. If you've bought in by having us build you a website - you're in. We want you to be happy with what you've got, and we want your business to succeed; so for the most part, changes and improvements come through gratis for all our clients.

But - those are all medium-term and long-term goals. In the short term...

It's our birthday!

Exactly two years ago last week, this website went live. We'd been trading for a while before then, getting ourselves up and running and me busily working away behind the scenes building the CMS - but it wasn't until we poked our heads up in the form of this site that we really started to push out into the market properly.

With our (minor) changes to direction, new strategy, and changes to our branding, we'll be ready to grow to the next phase - and that means a new website. A blank canvas. A fresh start.

On the 21st of July, we're going to have a birthday party. Which will also be a launch party - for our new website.

We've already started work on it.

We can't wait to show you. We think you'll like it.

Internet Explorer 6 was a great web-browser in its day (and it really was much better than its predecessors!), but that day has long passed.

Last week, Microsoft launched their IE6 Countdown website: it contains some shiny graphics and information about how and why you should move away from Internet Explorer 6.

If you're still using IE6 I strongly recommend that you upgrade to a later version of Internet Explorer, or switch to another browser. Mozilla Firefox is very popular, but my preferred browser these days is Google Chrome.

Password Reuse.

A common strategy for dealing with password overload is to use the same (or very similar) username and password combinations for every service. That way, there's not so much to remember.

I know that it's tempting but this probably the worst thing you can do. I've even spoken to people on the phone who have given me a password that they want to use for their website or email and had them admit that it's the same password they use for their internet banking. Now I would never use this information to steal money or identity from any of my clients. But is everyone you speak to so trustworthy? What if a service you sign up for is hacked and people get a hold of the passwords? Once somebody has one of your passwords they may now have access to everything.

Simple Passwords.

Another strategy is to use very simple or insecure passwords which are closely related to the service you're signing up for.

This is another very dangerous idea: remember that it's not curious people that you need to concern yourself with most, even disgruntled employees or customers. "Bots" (automated computer programs) will often plug in common username and password combinations to any form they can find.

What to avoid:

• Commonly used passwords such as "password", "opensesame" or "letmein".
• Any part of your name, company name, trading name, tagline, address, or any other information that appears in your email signature, on your website, etc.

What to do:

It's all very well for me to tell you what not to do, but having a large number of passwords is a very real problem.

If someone gets into your twitter or facebook and starts posting as you, your reputation may take some damage.

If someone gains access to your email address they may also get the ability to retrieve or reset passwords to multiple other services.

If someone gains access to your internet banking, you may be in big financial trouble. 

Make sure that you create very secure passwords for the services which you really need to keep safe. Change them regularly and don't reuse them. If you can't remember these passwords it's fine to write them down and lock them in a desk drawer or safe!

For some services it may not be such a big deal if the account were compromised. For less vital services (as long as gaining access to those services doesn't let them reset or gain access to more important information) you're probably fine to re-use passwords across those less vital services.

More disappointing was the use of this disaster for self-promotion. I saw several people offering to donate in return for “retweets” on Twitter or “likes” on Facebook; understandably, there was also a lot of backlash for that sort of behaviour.

Another brilliant example of how technology has helped with the crisis is Nearmap (an Australian mapping company) - Nearmap isn't as popular as Google Maps, but in most cases have much more up to date and higher resolution imagery.

High resolution images from Nearmap show minute details of the devastation of the recent flood disasters in Brisbane and Ipswich. The photographs were taken at the request of the Brisbane and Ipswich councils and the state government and will help assist with cleanup efforts. You can switch back and forth between different photographs taken only days or weeks apart.

Although the worst of the flooding seems to be over, and businesses in Brisbane are reopening there is a lot to rebuild. To donate to the flood relief appeal, please visit the Queensland Government website.

When Google or another Search Engine indexes your website (looks through it and stores information about your website for when someone does a search) it will follow all of your links to read all of the information on your pages.

A good way to ensure that the search engine sees all of the pages on your website is to provide a sitemap to the search engine. A good Content Management System will build and update a sitemap for google to read automatically.

All websites running the Jack Marlow software have a sitemap for Google which  is updated whenever you update the structure of the site. Find out if your content management system automatically updates the sitemap served to Google. Along with listing the pages a good Sitemap will also tell Google the relative importance of pages and how frequently they are likely to change (so that Google Spiders know when to come back and update your listing in the Search Engine)

If you don’t have a sitemap generated automatically, you’ll need to get a sitemap which you can update as you make changes to your website: there are a number of Free online tools which will generate a sitemap for you:

Try: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ or search on Google for "Generate XML Sitemap".

Further Reading:

About Sitemaps (On Wikipedia)
How to Create a Sitemap (Google)

2010 has been an absolute cracker of a year for us; new staff, exciting projects and some major upgrades and improvements to the Jack Marlow CMS.

Here's to a relaxing break and a prosperous and enjoyable 2011.

Holiday Trading Hours

The Jack Marlow office will be closed from noon on 24 December and will re-open at 9am on Monday 10 January.

During the holiday period we'll be monitoring voicemail so if anything urgent comes up please leave us a message on 1300 932 243 and we'll be sure to get back to you.

Would you use the words “This is a billboard” on a billboard? Or start a brochure with “welcome to our brochure”? Probably not – pretty much everyone knows that a billboard is a billboard and a brochure is a brochure and pretty much everyone knows that a website is a website.

Following on from my 1 Minute SEO blogs on headings and link text you’ll remember that the words you use in headings are important as are the words you use in links.

Don’t waste valuable word space on links that state “click here”. Links are often brightly coloured and eye catching – if you use words which relate to the destination page your visitors will be easily able to find the page and information they’re looking for on your website. And you’re also telling Google more about what you do.

Use relevant keywords in your headings. Don’t waste heading space saying “Welcome to the [company name] website”. Use that space to immediately grab your visitors attention and let them know the benefits of your products or services - and tell let Google know at the same time what keywords are most important to your business.

When Google “spiders” (reads through a website and follows all of the links it can find) your and other websites it may associate the words used in a link with the destination page. When you link through to internal pages on your website make sure that you link using the keywords that are relevant to that destination page.

You can also use this to help build up associations with terms you may not use frequently, but which your prospective customers might use to refer to your products or services.

The first page your visitors see is your homepage and you only have a limited amount of time to capture their attention.

Additionally, Google and other Search Engines will see your homepage as being the most important page on your website: it’s the page which people will link through to and will probably have the highest “Page Rank” (a ranking of how important the page is).

Text on your homepage can be crucial for telling both your customers and the search engines about who you are and the benefits of dealing with your company.

Remember that you don't need to have your company name in your main header: Use that space more efficiently by putting keywords in your main header (but be careful not to be 'spammy').

Further reading:

• How to write a header for your homepage
• "As a rule of thumb, if you can read your headline and then reasonably say, 'So what?'... it isn't strong enough" -http://bit.ly/cNFdze

When Google reads through your website it will try and work out what your website is about – this is so that Google can match your website up with search queries that your potential visitors might be making.

Make your important words stand out

Google, and your visitors, will pay more attention to text which stands out: headings, bold or italic text will call out to your visitors. Think about what your potential visitors are looking for and make sure that those questions are being answered in a way which is easy to find and see.

A good content management system will allow you to easily add headings and other formatting to the text on your website – and make sure that that formatting appears consistently throughout your site. Google won’t necessarily pay attention to the size or colour of text but it will pay attention to whether or not particular text is set as a “heading” and what level that heading is.

Be careful – setting all the text on your site to Heading Level 1 (the most important heading) is not going to help you out very much. Neither Google, nor your visitors, can get a lot of information if all of the text looks equally “important”. Use your headings in your website copy in the same way that you use headings in your other text copy: just pay a bit more attention to the keywords that you put in them!

While “Flash” (A kind of software which produces animations) and image based menu and navigation systems can make your website look good, they can seriously impede your website's ability to be read well by Google, and consequently your position in search engines may suffer.

Google and other Search Engines read the text on your website and may associate the words used in links with the content on those other pages: A flash navigation system won’t be able to be read by Google and google won’t be able to read the words on any image buttons you’re using.

If your potential visitors are using Google Instant Preview then they'll see ugly grey boxes in place of your flash elements.

Additionally, Flash doesn’t work on Apple devices such as the iPhone, iPod or iPad  so some of your users may have difficulty navigating your website if you’re using a flash-based menu.

Think about having text links in your menu: a good web design and development company will be able to make text links which are just as attractive and eye catching as images.

If you absolutely must have an image-based menu think about including additional text links which link through to your content: but don’t go overboard. A page full of links will turn visitors off and may look suspicious to search engines as well.

What is Instant Preview?

Using Instant Preview, anyone searching Google has the option to see a popup preview of what each website looks like as they move their mouse over the search result, without leaving the page. This means that a potential visitor will be able to get an idea of how your website looks before they even click through to your site!

For the first time, the way your website looks is going to have a big impact on the number of visitors you can expect from Google.

The Good

If you've got a great looking website and you happen to have a highly-ranking competitor who has a website which doesn't look so good... well it might not matter so much if your website doesn't rank as highly as theirs does.

The Bad

On the flipside, though, if your website doesn't look as good as it could then you might lose out on clicks as your visitors are turned off by the preview of your site and head for a competitor with a better looking website.

The Ugly

The preview of your website only shows text and images - not animations. If you have a full Flash website - or a lot of the graphic elements of your website use Flash - the preview of your site will be nothing but a big grey box!

Flash websites can look stunning - but they've never performed well in Search Engines, and are unusable on iPads and iPhones. With Google Instant Preview on the way, it's never been more important to keep Flash to what it's good for - animations and videos - and stick with text and images for the important elements of your website.

If your website is looking a bit dated, or was built using Adobe Flash, it's probably a good time to think about getting a new look.

The intricacies of “browser bugs” aren’t important to anyone that’s not a web developer and even in our office here we have different opinions about which is the “best” web-browser. The important thing is to make sure that your visitors all have a great experience, regardless of which browser they prefer to use.

Internet Explorer (46.5%)

Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser and comes bundled with Windows.

Firefox (29%)

Mozilla Firefox is another popular browser and it has a large number of “extensions” which can add additional functionality.

Google Chrome (9%)

Chrome is lightweight and fast – our recommendation if you want to avoid bloat and excess functionality that you won’t use or if you’re tight on computer resources.

Safari (5.5%)

Safari is a popular web-browser on Apple Macs. There is also a Windows version.

Other Browsers and devices (10%)

Opera, Lynx... the list of browsers goes on, and there are pros and cons to each. Visitors could also use a mobile browser or some other device such as a screen reader or braille reader.

Only a few years ago, Internet Explorer was used by almost everybody. Back in those days it didn’t matter too much if a website was designed just for Internet Explorer. These days, though, it can cause problems as websites designed and built specificially for Internet Explorer (especially Internet Explorer 6) may not work correctly in other web browsers.

Up to half of your web traffic may be coming from browsers other than Internet Explorer – so if your website only works in IE you might be missing out on half of your online business!

Jack Marlow websites are all built to be cross browser compatible – that means that the website looks great and works well regardless of which web browser a visitor is using so our clients can be confident that they’re making the right impression to their customers and prospects.

*statistics used are those on Wikimedia for September 2010. See Browser Usage Share on Wikipedia for more detailed statistics and information.

 “Meta information” is information you can use to describe your website beyond the content on your site itself. Your Content Management system should allow you to add in Meta Information for your website, and for the individual pages on your website.

The three “Meta Tags” that pertain to SEO are called “Meta Title”, “Meta Description” and “Meta Keywords”.

What is the ‘Meta Title’?

The SEO Title appears in the title bar of your web browser, and appears as your site title when your site appears in a google search.

Placing keywords in the SEO Title of your website helps search engines and visitors know what your website is about: placing too many keywords here is a bad idea. Try to emphasise two or three important products and services that you offer - put them early in your title (ie at the start) and follow with your company name.

What is the ‘Meta Description’?

The ‘Meta Description’ is a short paragraph which describes your website. It appears in the google search results list under your SEO Title.

Only a very short amount of text will generally show up, so stick to one or two short sentences. The keywords you use here probably aren’t too important - but this is the text which will entice a searcher to click through to your website rather than another sitting above or below yours: so craft it carefully!

What about ‘Meta Keywords’?

Meta Keywords were used by search engines in the 1990s to rank and classify websites. Search engines do things differently now and don't use these fields.

Some SEO people will advise you to use these fields. You can place keywords into the Meta Keywords field if you wish, but placing a large amount of text here or irrelevant keywords may penalise you. You have nothing to lose by leaving this field blank.

But - number one for what? There are no search results on the Google homepage: before you see a list of search results you need to enter some search terms. There's no point being number one for searches that are completely unrelated to what you do, or are so esoteric that nobody will ever search for them.

If someone is promising you "Number One" on Google without talking about search terms?

Run.

If they do tell you they can guarantee you the number one spot for a particular search term?

Run anyway.

Nobody can guarantee your placement in the organic* search results.

Here's what Google say on their SEO guidelines:

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google.

Matt Cutts released a great video today on this subject (see below) and he ought to know what he's talking about - he's head of the webspam team at Google.

Generally the more popular a search term is (ie, more people search using those words) the more competition you'll have for that number one spot. While there's not a lot of point optimising for search terms that nobody is using, there's also not a lot of point getting a high ranking place for a popular search term if the people using that search term aren't your target market.

There are some great resources (check out Google Insights) out there for looking at the popularity of search terms, but it's not just about numbers.

Ask yourself: What sort of terms are my potential customers using to search?

So watch Cutts' video and let me know what you think!

*"organic" search results are the results that appear in the middle of the screen when you do a google search. not the paid results which are generally on a yellow background and labelled "sponsored links": if you want to be number 1 on the sponsored links that's not so hard; you just need to pay more money than anyone else advertising on those keywords

+ p.s the first few results on google.com.au for "gullible" are a bunch of dictionary definitions.. pretty boring.

Jack Marlow is looking for a motivated "hunter" to sell our innovative Content Management System (CMS) powered websites to SMEs. This is a great opportunity to deliver state-of-the-art, feature-rich websites including unique marketing tools with real benefits for potential customers.

Jack Marlow is a boutique web development company embarking on a huge growth phase and we want you to be a part of it!

The successful candidate will be:

• A self starter with at least 2 years sales experience (preferably selling websites, ecommerce or internet marketing solutions to SMEs)
• Enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the web
• Well aware of the marketing benefits that an effective website can provide to a business

And will have:

• A natural ability to build rapport
• An ability to listen attentively
• Plenty of enthusiasm
• A determination to succeed
• A resilient nature and a positive attitude towards cold calling and chasing leads
• A proven ability to close sales

We'd love you to apply if:

• You see yourself in a sales manager or BDM role in the next 2-3 years
• You've got an aversion to jargon and buzzwords (we do!)
• You don't take yourself too seriously!

Ideally you will have a network of SME contacts, or proven experience in building one. You will be responsible for identifying and contacting prospective clients. Your consultative sales approach will ensure you determine which features best match each prospective client's needs.

Reporting to the Directors, you will work to short and medium-term targets, and will be expected to work autonomously as well as within a team.

Full training on our consultative sales approach, and our products and services will be provided. You must have your own car.

The Package

You will receive a monthly retainer, sales commissions and bonuses, as well as phone and vehicle expenses. Base salary is in the 50-70k range negotiable - pending the targets we set and your initial performance. Sales targets are realistic and earnings are uncapped.

Email your application and current CV to Mark Stevens.

Apply online now!

Jack Marlow is looking for an enthusiastic and well-organised people person to help our support capacity keep up with the rest of our business - and we want you to grow with us!

The successful candidate will spend the first few weeks receiving on-the-job training in handling support calls and tickets from our clients.

After a few weeks, you will then step into a team leader role, and help us build a team of casual support staff. From this point you will be responsible for rostering the support team, monitoring its performance and workload, handling escalated support issues and reporting to the directors.

The support team will be expected to field all inbound calls to our primary phone numbers (we don’t believe in IVRs) – but will pass sales calls on to the appropriate staff.

The successful candidate will be:

• Professional and calm under pressure
• Highly organised and capable of organising others
• Relaxed, friendly, and patient with our customers
• Enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the web
• Excellent on the phone
• A quick learner
• Customer focused
• Able to take responsibility for problems and make a solution happen

You will need hands on knowledge and experience with the following applications:

• All common web browsers
• Dynamic websites (CMS driven)
• Common Email Client Software, including Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Mac OS X Mail, and Mozilla Thunderbird.

Please apply if you have:

• Experience in a technical support role (Level 2 or above preferred)
• Leadership experience of any kind preferred
• Excellent teamwork skills
• An aversion to jargon and buzzwords
• The ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical people
• An enthusiasm for the web and for great customer service

This is a full time (9-5) position, based in Docklands. Our support hours are 9am to 9pm, so some flexibility will be possible once you have established the initial team. This position offers an excellent opportunity for advancement into a management role as the business grows.

Please address your application and current CV to Elise Kendall.

Apply online now! This position has now been filled.

But enough of that.

If you're an Australian business, with your website hosted within Australia, mandatory internet filtering in the minimal form proposed is no cause for direct concern. Don't panic, don't run for the hills, and certainly don't, whatever you do, move your site overseas. Here's why:

1. It's not going to destroy the internet. People will still shop online.
   
   When it comes into effect, expect media interest for a few days, maybe some mild panic. Expect Youtube to run slower, and possibly Facebook, Myspace, Wikipedia, and others. Expect torrents of angry correspondence from internet users. Expect the minister to tell us everything is going fine, and most likely to continue accusing people who criticise the policy of being pro-child pornography.
   
   But also expect that when people want to find businesses in your industry, or buy your products, that they'll still Consult The Google. Or even better, your website. Internet use is far too entrenched now to be fundamentally changed by this. People who want to get around the filter will get around the filter, and the vast majority of people will go about their daily doings without change.
    
2. If you're hosted within Australia, you won't get blacklisted.
   
   The scope of the filtering regime to be implemented is, in summary, that material hosted overseas that would be Refused Classification (as a result of being excessively explicit, violent, etc) will be blocked by all Internet Service Providers in Australia. Primarily this will cover foreign businesses, however Australian businesses can be affected. When there was a 'leak' a few months back of what may-or-may-not have been the ACMA blacklist, it did contain a few Australian businesses. These fell into two categories:
   
   
   • Australian businesses producing RC, potentially RC, or R18+/X18+ content (primarily pornography). For a number of years now, hosting of pornographic material within Australia has been heavily restricted, where legal at all. While whether it's outside the scope of the filter to block some of this material is an open question, it's outside the scope of what I'm talking about here, as this material is not generally hosted within Australia.
      
   • Australian businesses (a tour operator is one mentioned) who were unfortunate enough to have their websites hacked/defaced with RC material, and were hosted overseas.
   
   Now for the first one, well, yes, you're in trouble, but as I said that's outside the scope of what I'm talking about. For the second group, you're also in trouble, but it's fixable.
   
   Hacking of websites has become the number one vector for infection of computers with malware. Malware and the porn industry online are closely linked (think of how much spam spruiks porn - sex sells!). Thus if your website is compromised by a malicious third party there's a good chance they're going to use it to push viruses, spam, pornography, or all three. All of which puts you as a website owner at risk of being determined to be publishing RC content and thus blacklisted, completely unwittingly, without notice or easy recourse to have yourself unblocked.
   
   Here's the kicker, though: This is only a problem if you're hosted overseas. Websites hosted within Australia are subject to takedown notices rather than blacklisting. Your hosting provider (such as us) would receive notification from ACMA of the content subject to a complaint, and a request that it be taken offline. A sensible hosting provider would pass this notice on, and suspend publication of your site until the issue is resolved (or possibly just remove the problematic content). Not a great position to be in, but far better than the alternative - you won't suddenly disappear from the internet for everyone in Australia. At least, not without being told why and given a chance to rectify the situation.
    
3. The mechanisms proposed will further slow down some or many overseas websites, but won't affect the speed of any domestically-hosted sites.
   
   The Enex test lab report discussed a few methods of filtering, but the primary (and what seems from my perspective the best way to achieve the stated aims) is what's called "Pass-by" filtering. In a nutshell, this works as follows:
   
   
   • Joe Public enters a web address (URL) into their browser, eg http://www.example.com/content/illegal.html
     
     
   • Their computer uses DNS to convert www.example.com into an IP Address of a server which hosts that site, e.g. 123.45.67.89
     
     
   • The request for that page leaves the customer computer headed for the destination IP Address
      
   • At the ISP, routing hardware is configured to re-route all traffic headed for IP Addresses corresponding to websites with content on the blacklist through their filtering equipment (this is theoretically possible to achieve with zero impact on traffic for other addresses)
      
   • The filtering equipment checks the URL being requested against the blacklist, and blocks the request if the URL is found to be on it
      
   • Otherwise, the traffic is allowed to continue as normal
   
   What this means is that if you share servers with a website found on the blacklist, all requests for your website will run slower, as they'll pass through the an additional filtering step, even if nothing on your website is blacklisted.
   
   This is why we can expect that Facebook and Youtube, and other sites with a broad array of user-supplied content, will run slower, as no doubt Facebook and Youtube URLs will (or at least should under the aims of the policy) appear on the blacklist. On the other hand, the Enex report noted that high traffic websites were capable of causing filtering to overload, so ACMA may choose not to blacklist content on such high-traffic sites.
   
   If you're hosted in Australia, you have no chance of attracting the performance penalty resulting from sharing servers with a blacklisted website, as Australian-hosted sites will not be blacklisted.
   
   If you're hosted internationally, especially on high volume, low cost hosting providers with huge numbers of clients, expect a performance hit.
    
4. Access to Australian-hosted sites for international visitors won't be slowed by the filter.
   
   Notwithstanding filtering regimes present in other countries, the filtering to be implemented here is implemented at an ISP level between the end-user and the rest of the Internet, and not at a hosting provider level or above. This means that it doesn't entail any filtering being put in the way of people overseas trying to view your site.
   
   ... so your overseas customers aren't affected either.

I have grave concerns about this policy, as do many others. But I also accept that like it or not, it's probably going to happen. Fortunately for us, it doesn't directly affect our business, or our customers. And while the stated aims look fine - in theory and/or on paper - I doubt all this will achieve much beyond that the ALP will curry favour with certain influential lobbies, and a large number of Australians - who never would have imagined doing so before - are soon going to become intimately familiar with using overseas proxy servers. And I'm not sure that's a good thing for anyone except proxy service providers.

* ...for your website, if you're hosted in Australia.

It's easy to forget just how much Google changed online search. These days it's difficult to imagine a world without Google Search (and Google Mail, Google Maps, Google Documents, Google Reader, Google Analytics, Google Trends... ).

Earlier this month Microsoft launched Bing, a replacement for Live Search (formerly Windows Live Search, formerly MSN search....) . Bing claimed to be a "decision engine" and I think they hoped or expected Bing to be another Google - the beginning of a dramatic change in the way we search online.

But after using it over the past few weeks all I see is... another Google. To me, It looks like Google with a new colour scheme. Only the search results aren't what I'm looking for... so I'm officially giving up and going back to Google.

Now it could be because I'm using the Australian version of Bing and all of the amazing things that make Bing so amazingly different are only in the US version of Bing, even so I am skeptical that another Search Engine could take over from Google the way Google eclipsed Alta Vista. Web Search was ripe for overthrow simply because nothing we had was any good. Google, unlike anything else at the time, just plain worked.

Given that Google does work, very well, it's hard to see another search engine taking over. For there to be another revolution in the way people seek information online there needs to be a leap as big (if not bigger) than there was between web directories (such as Yahoo! and Alta Vista back in the 90s) and search engines.