Free iPhone

So, if this site still has any readers you will have noticed that I haven’t bothered with any new posts for some time. For this, you can blame google. For whatever reason (one that they won’t share with me), they have decided that this blog is bad, and should be penalised.

I first noticed something was awry back in November, when the 3,500 visitors a day I was used to, suddenly dropped to about 200. As most of this site’s traffic is generated from Google searches – this was the first place I looked for the reason.

Strangly, at the same time (almost the same day in fact!), Google decided to increase the PR of this site to PR4 – so they think it is fairly trustworthy, it had sitelinks for numerous keywords, and was being picked up by the blog search (displayed in a seperate area on the Google search results), yet they hit me with a penalty – and a pretty severe one at that!

To give a an example or two, this site was the number 1 search result on Google for “Free iPhone Blog”, “Bejeweled Blitz Cheat”, and a few other terms. Try those searches now – and see where I am. Hint – start looking on page 5 of the results.

How do I know this is a penalty and not just poor SEO? Try a search  for blog.freeiphone4me (this site, without the www or .co.uk bits), again, you’ll find us on page 5. Then try the same thing for the main domain “freeiphone4me”, and you’ll also see it buried down on page 5.

So, Google has definitley hit this site with a 5 page or 50 place penalty, but why? and which site is the problem, the subdomian (this one), or the main domain? and how do I find out? and how do I fix it?

I have tried the usual things -

Removed the majority of internal links between the domains

No-followed most external links

Removed a few link-exchanges

I even refunded a $600/year sponsor and removed their link

I have asked google (via webmaster tools) to reconsider this site on 3 occasions, but each time nothing changes.

So, what else can I do to rid myself of this Google penalty?

Just a quick post to get some feedback on this view of Ad Blocking software - Is it time to start blocking Firefox users?

What do you think?

If, like me, you own a legitimate copy of Office 2007 but for some reason are getting the “This copy of Microsoft Office is not genuine” notification message after installing the latest OGA update, you will want to use this workaround to disable the annoying pop up messages.

Using ‘My Computer’, navigate to C:/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office12 and right click on the Office application you have installed, e.g., winword.exe.

Right-click an select the ‘Run as Administrator’ option to run the application.

Once Word has opened, click on the Microsoft button (top left) and scroll to the very bottom where you will see a button called ‘Options’. Click this and then select ‘Add-ins’.

Select ‘Manage: COM Add-ins’.

Uncheck the option for ‘Office Genuine Advantage Notifications’.

Click ‘OK’.

Now repeat this for every Office Application you have installed.

This will only prevent the “This copy of Microsoft Office is not genuine” notification message from displaying. The software will still be installed.

For any of my readers thinking of heading to one of the wonderful islands of Malaysia for their holidays this year, you may want to make use of this new Malaysian Island Review website. The site is completely independant and the reviews are written by actual travellers and holiday makers so you can expect good honest reviews from real people just like me and you.

Reviews are scarce at the moment but this is a new site so it will take some time to get really established but it is already looking like a great tool for travellers.

Amazon liked the iPhone E-Book Reader Stanza so much, they didn’t just buy the app, they bought the whole company! That’s what the New York Times makes it sound like, quoting Amazon spokesperson, Cinthia Portugal:

“It’s very early days for e-books, and we believe there is a lot of innovation ahead of us. [...] Lexcycle is a smart, innovative company. and we look forward to working with them to innovate on behalf of readers.”

Translation: Amazon, not content with Kindle, wants to own the E-Book space. All books space, actually. All space in general, pretty much.

Lexcycle, for their part, claim not to be making any changes to the Stanza iPhone users all know and love.

But how do we feel about putting all our E-Books in one megacorp’s basket?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Amazon Buys iPhone E-Book Reader Stanza