News Blog

At Netconcepts, we often work with clients who have portfolios of domains. Some of these may be domains from other businesses or sites that have been acquired that are no longer active, while others are typo and brand protection names, and still others may be used for marketing purposes. These portfolios can range from a handful to hundreds or even thousands.

When kicking off work with a new client, one of the things we look at is their portfolio to see which domains are in use, what other sites they have, and which domains are parked or have redirects in place. We want to establish whether any domains are being used inefficiently. If a domain is returning a 404 Not Found and isn't currently in use, then we'd like to redirect it to a more appropriate destination to capture any traffic or link juice that may be going to the old domain.

What is more likely to be the case though is that the domains are just redirected to the main site. So what we are really interested in is how they are redirected. Many times, these domains are set up with 302 Temporary Redirects. While these redirects will still get the traffic and search engine spiders to the right destination, unfortunately these redirects will not pass along any of the PageRank or link popularity.

Once this has been identified, it is a pretty easy thing for the client's IT group to make sure their domain portfolio is working optimally. As you can imagine though, when working with a portfolio with hundreds or thousands of domains, this can be quite a task. There are individual header checkers like Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer (which is great and there is rarely a day that goes by that I don't find myself there) and Firefox add-ons, but that can still be a task with several URLs. There are some bulk checkers, but even those tend to have limits on how many URLs can be checked at a time.

But here is a quick and easy solution, demonstrated with some of CNET's own domains, that anyone can use to check a ton--maybe even two tons--of URLs using Excel and a simple formula and one of my favorite Firefox add-ons, Link Counter (see that link for an earlier post on using Link Counter and download).

Step 1 - copy and paste the URLs to be checked into Excel.

List of URLs in Excel spreadsheet.

Step 2 - if "http://" wasn't already present for the URLs, place it in a cell by itself.

Step 3 - write out this simple formula (adjusting your cell references if need be):
=HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE($A$1,A1),A1)

*if the URL list already includes the "http://" protocol, then the formula is even simpler:
=HYPERLINK(A1,A1)

Hyperlink formula to create live links.

Step 4 - copy that down for your entire list.

Step 5 - go to the "File" menu and select "Web Page Preview"

Web page preview with live links.

Step 6 - when this opens in Firefox, right-click on Link Counter in the browser status bar and select "Check link status."

Server status overlay using Link Counter.

Step 7 - now would be a good time to do some spot checking on some of the URLs, but otherwise, rejoice in the time that has been saved.

This can also be a way to double check whole lists of domains for canonicalization being in place, similar to the examples used here.

So I've been meaning to do some write-ups on some browser toolbars and plug-ins that may be useful for SEO purposes...and leave it to Rand at SEOmoz.org to remind me of this with his review of 12 popular browser toolbars.

Link Counter (download) is one that I absolutely love both for what it does and its simplicity. Links play a very important part in SEO, both internal links as well as external links. Are they live or broken, 301 redirected, HTML or JavaScript based? Unfortunately the one thing it doesn't seem to manage is showing "nofollow" links, but there are plenty other tools out there that do that.

The best way to get a feel for Link Counter is to see it in action, and one of the best places to see it in action is on an e-commerce site. E-commerce sites are often rather complex with many links on a page, links out to external sites, to product pages, JavaScript windows, and more. Let's use Onlineshoes.com for our demo.

A new security company, Haute Secure, is offering a free beta version of its safe surfing toolbar for Internet Explorer that blocks malware from downloading onto your desktop. Firefox support is expected soon. Entering an already crowded field, the Haute Secure toolbar hopes to distinguish itself by taking the best of Exploit Prevention Labs Linkscanner Pro and McAfee SiteAdvisor, and then adds additional layers of protection. If they can pull it off with the final release, Haute Secure could be a must-have add-on for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The Haute Secure toolbar hooks into 70 processes running on your Windows XP or Windows Vista machine. Forty of these are related to browsers (in the initial release, Internet Explorer). The remaining hooks will be used for specific applications such as Microsoft Office PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat.

Unlike McAfee SiteAdvisor, which tends to block an infected site entirely, Haute Secure allows access to the page after stripping out the malicious elements. And unlike SiteAdvisor, Haute Secure doesn't use a database, but analyzes each page on the fly, similar to the approach used by Linkscanner Pro.

And like Linkscanner Pro, the Haute Secure toolbar is also able to block specific elements of a page that are deemed malicious, allowing you to view the page safely. Haute Secure also uses phishing reports from Stopbadware.org, and can warn you of fraudulent sites, although in initial testing Linkscanner Pro blocked more phishing sites than did Haute Secure on our test machine.

In addition to proactive scanning, the Haute Secure toolbar also uses white and black lists to block known bad sites. Haute Secure was founded in 2006 by former Microsoft security engineers.

Dell took notice earlier this year when customers and the media reiterated complaints over the glut of crapware, or preinstalled PC software, packaged with new computers. Many PC makers said they do offer ways for consumers to wipe a new computer's slate clean. But this week, Dell announced it would hand more control over to customers during the purchase process.

Dell.com customers buying an XPS system, Inspiron notebook or Dimension desktop can select a "no software preinstalled" option. This will eliminate productivity, ISP, photo and music software, but not everything.

Adobe Reader, trial versions of antivirus software, and Google tools still come packaged on the desktop. PC makers have sold more of the desktop space on new computers in recent years as yet another way to squeeze out profits from the generally low-margin hardware business.

Dell also has a video up on its site showing how to use a software uninstall utility it offers on both Dimension desktops and Inspiron notebooks. See it here.