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The Telegraph Website is Down – All Pages Return 404

Stuart — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:52:24 +0000

The Telegraph Website is Down – National newspaper, The Telegraph, appears to have come across some technical difficulties – the entire site is returning a 404. Try accessing the homepage or clicking through to articles via Google News and all pages have been removed. As one of Alexa’s Top 1000 websites, any downtime will results in a significant loss of traffic and revenue. Areas on sub-domains are still currently intact, however the majority of visitors entering through the homepage and the majority of news items will have difficulty navigating away from the 404 error pages to the remaining content.

Google Reminds Not to Block Your CSS & Javascript Files

bernabe.sobrevilla — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:49:36 +0000

Google Reminds Not to Block Your CSS & Javascript Files

Google recently released a “public service announcement” video that basically tells us NOT to block the CSS and Javascript Files for the reason that it might help search engine crawlers to better understand the content and structure of a site.

Most of us might definitely worry that our source code might be visible & searchable, therefore becoming more susceptible to theft if we do this. However, Matt Cutts says that “Googlebots are pretty smart about not crawling stuff to fast“. Here are few reasons why you should not block your CSS & Javascript:

• Googlebot will get a better idea about your site when crawling in CSS.
• If you use flash or other page element that requires Javascript, Google would be able to crawl the said web page more effectively if Googlebots are not blocked

If you don’t see any harm of doing this simple reminder, (not unless if you probably have something to hide). Take your chance! Go ahead and remove those blocks from the robots.txt so you can let Googlebot discover your site.

French Court Fines Google for Offering Its Maps Service for Free

Jane — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:40:30 +0000

French Court Fines Google for Offering Its Maps Service for Free

News recently spread throughout the SEO community that Google was subjected to a $600,000+ fine after a French court has found the search engine giant guilty of unfair trading.

Bottin Cartographiques, a French mapping company, filed an unfair competition complaint against Google basing on the allegation that it is using its dominance to wipe out competitors specifically by offering Google Maps to the public free of charge.

The court ordered that Google France and its parent company pay a fine of 15,000 Euros and 500,000 Euros in compensation to Bottin Cartographiques. That sums up to about 680,000 in U.S. dollars. The amount, of course, is relatively small to a company as large as Google. What is troubling though is the number of anti-competitive or anti-trust precedents they currently face.

Spokesperson for Google France said that the company is studying the court’s decision and promised that they will appeal the verdict. He said, “We remain convinced that a free high-quality mapping tool is beneficial for both Internet users and websites.”

Source:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisbarth/2012/02/02/france-to-google-youll-pay-for-making-that-free/