Ok we have been building a overlay for Chrome, Firefox and IE, while it’s still been built anything I should think about adding ?

The  Google Toolbar isn’t just for searching the internet, I will say that again the Google Toolbar isn’t just for searching the internet !”

SpellCheck, AutoFill, WordTranslator, AutoLink, Send with Gmail

and this is  just the Google toolbar, what about greasmonkey support and all the other toolbars out there, so please stop emailing me things like “you just have to search in the big box, google cleverly added the 2 together” that advice SUCKS MONKEY NUTS and you surely have no clue what you are talking about !

hey Chrome user go check www.photosynth.net  before telling me it works with everysite

DaveN

Why would Google allow me to add other peoples sites to my Webmastertools Dashboard and even thou I haven’t verified that I own or have access to that site they started sending me messages in my message center, It would have been nice if they had sent me a message about the penalties that my blog had picked up last week ! ;)

On Monday a post appeared on Google’s Webmaster Central blog that was so gobsmackingly strange I’ve had to let it sit for a few days to make sure my post-weekend reduced cognitive function wasn’t the reason I didn’t get it. I’m talking about Juliane Stiller and Kaspar Szymanski’s points on dynamic URLs vs. static URLs.

The post outlines a bunch of reasons why website creators shouldn’t create static versions of dynamic URLS (i.e. changing site.com/product.asp?id=99&brand=1 to site.com/sony/walkman). Among the reasons not to use static URLs they listed the following:

• They’re hard to create
• They’re hard to maintain
• It’s better to let Google guess which parameters are important
• If you want a static URL you should create a static equivalent of your content

The hard to create and maintain part might be true of some webmasters but I think the majority would greet that statement with a hearty “What the?!”. Most developers will have at least one tool in their box for URL rewriting, typically mod_rewrite when developing on a LAMP stack, though ASP has ISAPI_Rewrite and just about any web scripting language you care to name has functionality to write static (or semi-static) files to the file system. Static seeming URLs have been recognised as best practice for years, it’s not like this is bleeding edge technology developers are just getting to grips with.

As for letting Google guess which parameters are most important, I don’t even know where to begin with that. Does the Google Search Quality team really think they know my site better than I do? They’re good, but until they plant that neural chip Sergey is no doubt working on and start indexing the content of my brain that’s just not going to happen.

As for creating a “static equivalent of your content”, isn’t “static equivalent” just another way of saying “duplicate content”?

If that wasn’t enough reason to be scratching your head at the article there’s also plenty of factors they don’t mention which make excellent reasons for using static-seeming URLs:

• Improved rankings. Even if Search Engines drop URLs as a ranking factor it’s still going to help having a URL that’s keyword rich
• Security. I’m no fan of security through obscurity but given the choice to obfuscate or not I’ll do it, all other things being equal
• Convenience. Static URLs tend to be easier to pass around over IM or email.
• Portability. If I decide to change my scripting platform from ASP to PHP (or whatever) and don’t have full access to the web server I have to change all my URLs. Not if they’re static.

And the #1 reason we, and everyone else, should ignore this advice from Google:

• Usability. The URL is often the first thing a visitor knows about the page and they appreciate the early clue as to it’s content. Static URLs engender more user trust and goodwill than dynamic. People just like them. So if you like people, go static.

Oh, and the URL the post appeared on? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html.

Bizzare.

you work it out.