Google search redirecting users to bogus websites

Google search is one of the most reliable and safe search that exist on the net today. And when you search for it and you get redirected to some weird website that was different from what search was showing, it really creates poor user experience. While Google has been very careful about user experience, but this time it seems that "bad guys" have got the trick. 

If you are getting redirected to some other website its not the Google fault but the malware that has been installed on your PC. Further, most of the antimalware programs fail to detect it. And all Google can do is to make you aware about the situation. Surprisingly enough, malware seems to be targeting only Google search without affecting Yahoo and Bing. Giedrius Majauskas has written a nice guide to get rid of this problem and solution seems to be working for me.

Malware gets activated only when someone searches with Google. Further, I guess these are designed for certain specific keywords because when I search for certain words I get redirected to some other website while with some other words it works just fine. I am not sure about this "keywords targeted malware" but that is just what I got from experience.

Things you should take care about :

While there are many free AV available, many of them are just doing more harm than good. So if you don't have any reference about the AV don't click "download" button. Few AV programs once installed can never be removed unless you format your PC completely. 

Avoid downloading files and running  programs that needs you to edit your host files. Most the "illegal" programs wants you to edit your host files by pasting some IP addresses and other stuff manually which we might not be understanding and can lead to such problem. 

Optimize your YouTube videos to rank higher in YouTube Search

On October 17,2008 TGdaily reported that YouTube has surpassed Yahoo and has become the second largest search engine after Google. Later on March 28, 2001 Times of India reported that YouTube still stands ahead Yahoo and other search engines. This data clearly shows how important it is for you to optimize your videos for YouTube.

Which niche of blogging is most popular in India?

Whenever one wants to start a new blog, the first hindrance that comes to our mind is "what should I blog about?". Answer to this question is really very easy as and very difficult too. The short answer could be something like this "Blog about whatever you are passionate about."

Enlarge images on Facebook and Twitter (an other social sites too)by just hovering over them.

All the social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter has many images on it. Some are thumbnail images while few are bit larger ones. Many of them needs to be clicked to enlarge them. While sometimes images do not load when we click on them to enlarge. This usually happens with me when I use Facebook. This is sometimes bit frustrating.

How to ask your readers - Are you sure you want to leave/navigate?

I have seen many blogs and websites asking their user to confirm before they leave the page. I personally don't use that feature but if you want to have that feature on your blogger blog, I am going to teach you how to do that.

How to add Custom Image in footer of the blog?

In my previous tutorial we discussed about how to add custom header in blogger blog. That was straight forward thing as blogger provides facility for that. But we may wish to add custom image in footer of blogger blogger blog. It is pretty easy to do that. You need an account with image hosting site. You may use Google Docs or Photobucket. I will teach you using Photobucket. So if you are completely new to all this, first you will need to create account with Photobucket. See my tutorial Understanding Photobucket.

Once you have a photobucket account upload your image there.

Note: Please have the image of appropriate width. Those instructions are very clear here, I recommend you to see the screencast for better understanding.

Step 1 : Go to your blog dashboard and select the blog that you wish to edit.
Step 2 : Go to template and click Edit html.

Step 3 : Click proceed.

Step 4 : Scroll down to following code:

<![CDATA[
      body {
        min-width: $(content.width);
      }

You may use Ctrl + F to find this code. See the screencast for details.

Step 6 : Just after <![CDATA[ add following code:

footer {
background : url (URL where image is located);
}

Replace URL where image is located with the actual URL. See screencast.

Step 7 : Click save template. Now see your blog. You should see the footer image.

If you have any problems, please let me know in the comment section.

How to Follow a blog that does not have follow Gadget?

Most of the bloggers offer their readers the option to follow their blog. However, few blogger don't add follow gadget. I don't know what are the reasons but I guess it depends on blogger. Some bloggers are so popular that they get direct traffic. Like Rashmin Bansal would be getting lots of direct traffic just because her blog is popular and she is a very well know author and Youth expert. Her blog does not have follow gadget. Some blogs rank so high is search that they don't need repeating visitors. There can be various reasons for not adding follow gadget to blogger blog.

But some blog (like that of Rashmi Bansal) are so interesting that you may wish to follow it. So there is any easy way to do that. However you need blogger account to do that. I guess if you are avid blog reader you must be having a blogger account. If you don't have it..you can create it easily.

Go to your blogger account. You should see your blogger dashboard. If you don't have any of your blogs it would be empty probably. Just scroll down to Reading List area. 

Just click Add

You will see the following box.

Add the URL of the blog you want to follow. 

Choose if you wish to follow blog publicly or privately. 

Click Follow. 

You are done! 

How to overcome referral spam problem in blogger blog?

What is Referral Spam?

Few webmaster inject their site URL in blogger stats of our blogs. So we can see their site as referring site in our stats. Just out of curiosity we click on the URL and they get the traffic. This kind of activity is called Referral spam.

What is Google doing about it? 

Google knows this issue quite well. When they observe this kind of activity they block them. But webmaster change their behavior which Google blocking system fails to detect and they again start appearing in stats. 

So what should Blogger users do about it?

Nothing! Simply ignore those URL. Those URLs are artificially injected in stats because webmasters wants you to see them. Just don't bother about it. It is just URL that appears but no one actually views your site. You are not getting any traffic from those site. It is just a kind of "pollution" making your blogger stats unreliable. If you see Google Analytics stats for your blog you would not see any of those URL reported there. If you don't have Google Analytics installed on your site, you should install it to monitor your traffic sources and other stats about your site. See How to add Google Analytics to Blogger blog?

Importance of ALT attributes for Image tag.

Images are inevitable if you want to retain your readers interest. Images convey the idea in just one glance. But search bots can't see images. From my experience I can say...bots are incredibly stupid. They just don't use their brain. And how can they? They don't have any!

So if you image is about your cat, bots won't understand that. We need to tell them that this image is of my cat. Weird right? so this makes it important to use alt attributs with image tag.

I am a great fan of Matt Cutts. But here I would wish to clarify the small mistake he has made here. Alt is not the tag. It is the attribute for the image tag. If you know HTML you will understand what I mean. Else just leave it..even if you don't know HTML you can learn how to add alt attribute to blogger blog images?

Video: Importance of alt attributes.

Don't forget to add labels if you are using new Blogger

Blogger has launched the new interface for you blogger dashboard. The new blogger dashboard is bit "modern" and as the entire Google is going under major changes Blogger too took the part in that change. However, it may take some time to get acquainted to new interface. At same time we may forget to do certain things just because the position of those entities has changed.

One such entity in Labels. Labels are indeed important as it gives some information to search engine as well as the users. Older version of blogger had label option just below the area where we write our post in blogger.

See this image:

But in the new Blogger the position of label has changed. It has moved to right side and might go unnoticed. See the image below.

Now as Label box has moved to right, just dont miss that out. Do add proper labels. It matters!

How to embed YouTube videos without YouTube logo?

When we embed any YouTube video, it has a YouTube logo over its control bar. Obviously, logo stands there to advertise YouTube. But it may drive traffic away from our site. So one may wish to embed Youtube videos without Youtube logo. The feature is called modestbranding.

This feature removes youtube logo from control bar. But YouTube logo appears on the corner of the video when somene hovers over it. But this reduces the chances of it being clicked. So I think one should implement it, especially when you are embedding someone else's video.

Video with the YouTube Logo:

Video without YouTube Logo:

Following is the i frame embed code shown below:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/iDIrr7OTuFk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Just add ?modestbranding=1 as shown in the code below:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/iDIrr7OTuFk?modestbranding=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This is remove YouTube Logo from your player control bar. Also please note that underlined URL represents the URL of the video watch page. It will be different for different videos. All you have to do is add ?modestbranding=1 after URL.

If you are also using rel operator to switch off the related results at end of the video you may need to separate rel parameter from modestbranding parameter with the help of ";". So code would be as follows:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/iDIrr7OTuFk?rel=0;modestbranding=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

How Google +1 affects search results?

Google +1 button helps people "vote" for your site or to be specific, pages of your site. Google has not given out the word about how are they using Google +1 recommendation is Search results. However, we are sure that they do make some difference in search results.

I had my old blog which I had to abandon for some reason (How I failed at blogging initially?). I used to click Google +1 for all of my blog post on that blog. When I tried to search Google for "Remainder Theorem" which was the title of my one of the blog post, I was surprised to see it was at first page of Google Search. Note that I was logged in to my account and I could see "You shared this" below that search result. See the screenshot below:

Later I logged out from my account and made the same search again. I could not find that post in first hundred pages even. So Google uses +1 to display results when you are logged in.Of course they might be using it when you are not logged in. But it directly impacts your search if you are logged in.

If I +1 some post about topic ABC and I search for it again while I am logged in, I am surely going to see that +1ed result in the search driving me again to that page and helping that site to retail visitors.

I would love to here your opinions about +1. So mind sharing some thoughts?

How to change playback speed of YouTube videos?

When I uploaded by previous video for my post How to offer newsletter subscription to your blogger blog readers, I observed this feature. Though this feature is not available for all the videos and it sometimes appears for my video and some times I vanishes away.

I think YouTube is still experimenting this feature. See the following screenshot :

On my playback bar I could see the button with "normal" label. It basically denotes that video is running at usually speed. If you wish you can increase its speed up to 2 times or decrease its speed to 0.25 times. So if you have a boring official presentation or some audio lecture, you may like to use 2x speed. If the video is about some beautiful girl, you may wish to reduce speed of video to 0.25 times. Hopefully, this feature would be available for all the videos soon.

How to offer Newsletter subscriptions to your blog reader?

Newsletter is the great way to inform your blog readers about any updates to your site. You may just send out a message to collect their opinion. Google friend connect provides any easy way to send out the newsletter to all the members of your site. However, to use this method effectively you need to have some good number of followers who has subscribe to your newsletter. 

Step 1 : Go to www.google.com/friendconnect and login with your Google (Blogger) account username and password.

Step 2 :You will see the page as below.

Step 3 : You should see your blog listed on the sidebar as shown in the above figure. However, if you can't see the blog, you can use the form "Tell us about your website" to add your blog/website to the list.

Step 4 : Once you have your blog listed in the list, click on the blog for which you want to send a newsletter.Following page should appear on your screen.

Step 5 : Click on Sean a newsletter. Than Go to Newsletter Gadget. Also select the desired colors so as to make them suit to your blogger template.

Step 6 : Specify the Headline text, Standard text and width of newsletter gadget.

Step 7 : Click Generate Code. This will generate code for your newsletter gadget for your blogger blog.

Step 8 : Copy and paste this code in the HTML/Javascript Gadget in your blogger Blog.

Still have any doubts?? Check out this video walk through!

Related:

How to send Newsletter to your blog reader?
How to add any external widget in blogger blog?

How to enable read more feature in blogger?

If you want your users see number of posts title instead of one long post, this feature would be useful to you. Blogger has a ability to add read more link at bottom of the page in just one click. You can let your users see few initial lines of text so that you can they get get the idea about what your post is all about. If they wish to read rest of the part, they can simply click on "Read More" and enjoy the entire post.

Below is the video walk through that should help you to enable this feature: