They can also be a pain to find. Not all font collections include mini-pixel fonts in a blatant act of prejudiced against the vertically challenged. Little fonts big world, people. So we figured we’d do the sleuthing for you and collect them all here, for your perusal. Consider yourself covered whenever you need one of these fonts for a flash app or even a really teeny letter. Each entry includes the size and a sample of the font. Enjoy.

04b-03 (16pt)

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

04b-08 (16pt)

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

04b-21 (21pt)

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

04b-24 (16pt)

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Pixel Six

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Cubic Five

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Square Dance

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Handy

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Hellovetica

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Accent

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Arma Five Fonts

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Ronda Seven Fonts

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Easta Seven Fonts

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Westa Seven Fonts

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Tempesta Seven Fonts

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Charriot

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Smirnof

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Silky Wonderland

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

YoungDantes

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

piXelize

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Everyday

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

BM harry-A10

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

BM mini-A8

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Semplice Regular (8px)

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Bavaria Regular (8px)

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Frucade (8px)

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Aurora Regular (8px)

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Marke Eigenbau (8px)

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Teachers Pet (Sans Serif)

Download & Source »
Sans Serif font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Kharon4a_v01

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Fixed v01

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Kyrou 7 Wide

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Kyrou 9 Regular

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

Silkscreen

Download & Source »
TrueType font, downloads available for MAC & PC.

That’s it. Know of any other fonts for inclusion? Drop us a line!

Follow us on a magic carpet ride of SEO splendor as we look at some positive examples of search engine friendly navigation and talk about what these examples mean for you and your business.

What makes for a spider friendly navigation? This is an out of the box CMS world we live in nowadays, so most navigation is already fairly SEO friendly. However, you can still run into absolute messes that need navigational clean-up and occasionally just need to be started again from scratch.

If you are reviewing a website that you think could be an SEO car-crash waiting to happen, here are some signs to look out for.

* The drop downs don’t work with Javascript disabled.

* Global and header links appear as images and not text.

* Tons of internal links disappear when you browse the site with JavaScript and CSS disabled.

* Any SEO-enabled toolbar you have installed report a lower than expected number of internal, followed links.

* The text-only version of your page that Google has on cache also shows the lack of internal links.

Search engine friendly navigation is a rather simple process. It requires only properly structured HTML, along with some CSS for all of the fancier bits. If you want to get technical for a second, if you are specifying a new navigation for your website, you should be asking for a “cross-browser drop-down cascading validating menu.”

HTML is simple, once you get the hang of it. Otherwise, you should be looking out for an unordered list of links in the text-only/Javascript and CSS disabled view of your page. It will look something like this.

• About
  • History
  • Team
  • Offices
• Services
  • Web Design
  • Internet Marketing
• Contact Us
  • United Kingdom
  • France
  • USA
  • Australia

For some fantastic examples, you should bookmark CSSplay.co.uk’s CSS menus page. And while we are at it, here is another great real-world example. Also, since I have your attention, take a look at this site with JavaScript and CSS disabled in Web Developer Toolbar:

There are so many other examples out there, and once you get more of a grasp of what to look for you won’t be able to help noticing good and and examples as you peruse the Web. If you have some good examples of search engine friendly navigation, don’t hesitate to drop us a line via email or the comment box.

Back in 1999, when Prince’s song was a reality and reality television took up only sixty percent of the market, online start-ups began to discover CPC ad networks. This was an exciting time for the Internet. Money seemed to literally grow on trees(virtual ones anyways.) Flycast, Valueclick, Lycos, Go. These were all hot buzzwords among the new generation of web marketers and advertisers. Just pay for a few clicks and you were well on your way. In short, it was an exciting time to be online.

Flash-forward a decade or so and things have changed. When you start buying nowadays there are a host of new concerns. Marketers have grown leery of the networks and exchanges that aggregate inventory across hundreds of properties. There are so many behavioral networks, video networks, and ad exchanges that are impossible to tell apart. They offer only one thing, cheap inventory. It’s like one giant dollar store. And we all know how high-quality the goods are you get from a dollar store. Even the purported strength of ad networks, direct response marketing, don’t hold up to intense scrutiny. In short, online ad networks offer less bang for your buck than other means of driving customers. What a difference a decade makes.

So. Online ad networks are not worth their weight in e-mail. What about mobile ad networks? They fare quite nicely, actually.

Why is this? Simple really. It’s all about the money. Mobile advertising networks bring much more value to the mobile Web marketplace than their PC-based counterparts bring to the PC Internet. Sure, it’s easier to reach a mass audience on the PC-based Internet than it is via a mobile platform. However, the people you do attract via mobile tend to be worth more. This is because mobile platforms tend to be more of a “closed system.” This means the people you do attract are or less, well, a captive audience. The reach of the carrier decks — mobile providers’ home sites, which are the sole mobile Web experience for many users without high-end handsets –are just too good of an opportunity to pass up for many advertisers. This is with good reason.

Mobile ad networks also offer a host of analytics and measurements that your typical mobile content site does not. The technology of serving ads across many mobile sites offers a great view of consumer usage by handset, operating system, and carrier. For one, AdMob’s research report is a great resource. Check it out. Most other ad networks offer similar services. Not only do they give you a great database as to who is using what and when, they also offer insight into consumer behavior. In short, they have filled a huge void. Advertisers can now measure the success of calls to action, link requests, mass e-mails and just about anything else. In the world of online marketing, measurement is key.

Having said that, mobile ad networks are not without their faults. As they proliferate, the need to be choosy becomes paramount. Look for networks that offer total transparency. Networks should be willing to share a site list so advertisers know where their ads might appear. They should also be willing to share some sense of their inventory shares so clients can understand how much they rely on certain types of sites as a source for ad space. The best ad networks will also advertisers to blacklist sites they don’t want to be featured on. The really best ad networks will report back and tell advertisers when their ads ran. Look for all of these features to maximize your joy(and profit.)

So mobile ad networks are go. This may change in the next ten years, but for now it’s 1999 all over again.

The Clone Stamp tool samples pixels from one area of an image and copies them to another part of the image. You use your brush to actually “paint” areas using another area you have set to be “cloned.” The tool allows usage of any brush tip or shape, which allows for very precise control over both manipulated areas. You can also sample from one image and apply the clone in another image, so long as both reside in the same color mode.

Look at the sample image below. We are going to remove the butterfly from the background. The results will be the same with any image and object you choose.

1. Open up your image in Photoshop.

2. Select the Clone Stamp tool ().

3. On the tool options bar, open the Brush pop-up palette and select a medium-sized brush with a medium-soft edge. For this example, we’ll set the brush diameter to 200 pixels and the hardness to 50%. It’s a good idea to use a soft-edge brush, otherwise you will see a very hard line where the cloning takes place. You want it to seem as natural as possible, after all.

4. Make sure that the Aligned option is selected.

Now set a sample point in the area you want to duplicate and clone to the next area. When you select Aligned in the options bar, it means you will reuse the most current sampling point no matter how often you stop and resume painting. This is important because if it is not checked, then you’ll end up reusing the same pixels every time you paint.

5. Move the Clone Stamp tool pointer to the dark area on the left side of the butterfly. Hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) and the pointer becomes a set of cross-hairs. Click once to set that point as your sampling point. Release the Alt or Option key. Easy peasy.

6. Click and drag the Clone Stamp tool over a small area of the butterfly’s wing. As you drag the cursor, the wing will start to disappear as it is replaced with the pixels you’re sampling from. The cross-hairs that appear to the right of the Clone Stamp tool indicate the source area of the image that you are replicating as you drag. It may sound complicated but once you get to this step it will make perfect sense.

7. Release the mouse button and move the pointer to another part of the butterfly wing. The cross-hairs will maintain the same spatial relationship to the Clone Stamp tool pointer that it had when you made the first stroke. This is the beauty of clicking on the aligned option at the beginning of the process. You did do that, right?

8. You can reset the sample area anytime by performing this procedure. Simply hold down the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) key and click once. You will need to do this several times to completely remove the butterfly. Don’t forget to re-size your brush as you go. Keep cloning until you have removed the side of the butterfly on the dark side of the moon tar macadam.

9. Reset the sample point and do the same thing as before on the white side until you have cloned “out” the rest of the butterfly. To finish the area where the butterfly sat, take samples above and below.

That’s it! Not so hard right? Don’t be afraid to keep re-sampling as you go on. And don’t worry. As you clone more and more, the shortcuts will begin to become second nature. Eventually it will be like riding a bike. Below, feast your eyes on the finished product.

First, for the newbs, a handy definition of linkbait as it pertains to SEO practices:

“Linkbait/Viral Content: The practice of crafting web content to attract attention and awareness in the form of natural links given by bloggers, news media, researchers, forum posters and other website contributors. This content can include any combination of static or interactive elements, but is almost always targeted at a specific subset of web audience members who have the ability to influence/create links, share content and spread a message virally (see Linkerati).”

But why talk about it? Pictures are worth, um, thousands of words I once heard. Here are a couple helpful infographics.

(SOURCE: Forrester Research via the Groundswell Blog)

Just a few years ago, three to be exact, linkbait users were targeting 30-50% fewer people than today. This doesn’t mean it’s easier, per say, but it does mean the opportunity to influence has risen dramatically. In short, your audience pool has widened.

So why does linkbaiting carry so little risk of penalization or devaluation?

1. Viral content works hand-in-hand with the functioning algorithms of search engines. Since these engines sprung forth in the early 1990s, they have been attempting to use the web’s link graph to identify content that people have found fundamentally interesting and worth sharing. Doesn’t this sound a lot like viral content?

2. Devaluing your linkbait content carries with it a high risk. There is a slippery slope here for these engines. An argument could be made that every piece of content on every website is technically designed to be linkbait and thus, every natural link should be “suspect.” This is, of course, supposing linkbait is considered to be a manipulative tactic which it is not always the case. Creating web content and creating linkbait are one in the same. Quality content attracts eyeballs. Why penalize this?

3. Search engines have always touted the profitability of so-called “natural links.” This means the links are independently created and editorially minded, and thus serve as an honest recommendation for a URL’s worthiness. These are exactly the kinds of links linkbaiting attracts. After all, why linkbait something nobody is going to like? That defeats the entire purpose.

4. Not to beat a dead horse here, but linkbait is simply great content. These are the kinds of links engines and engineers are constantly recommending as the core strategy for good SEO. When a linkbait is heavy on the bait and light on the link, then people simply tune it out. It has to be good content in order to attract the, well, links.

However, there are high risk ways to go about this and there are low risk ways. Popular blogger Matt Inman wrote a post highlighting some of the most dangerous implementations of manipulative link attraction, but these are most definitely the exception rather than the rule. Let’s take a look at a scale of low-to-high risk quantification:

* No Risk – Production of relevant (on-topic and with the site’s offerings) viral content with no manipulative link schemes. These are promoted ethically and organically on and off the web.

* Low Risk – Production of relevant viral content with potentially manipulative promotion (paying those with powerful social media accounts to help “push” the content into visibility).
This is low risk because the links are still created and given organically and editorially. Even if you managed to, for example, bribe Digg into promoting your story on the homepage, if that story attracts natural links from bloggers, writers, journalists, website owners, etc. it’s still fulfilled the search engines’ principles of high quality content that naturally derived editorial links. Not entirely ethical, but still low risk.

* Moderate Risk – Production of somewhat “off-topic” linkbait that is only loosely tied into the content of the site. These links probably won’t be devalued but it’s possible that they won’t provide as much help to the other sections of the site or it’s overall domain authority and ability to push up the rankings universally across the domain. So, not risky per say but potentially a waste of time.

High Risk – The combination of off-topic linkbait and manipulative push practices, possibly with other less-than-honest tactics like manipulative or irrelevant anchor text pointing to the content’s “sponsor” or “creator.” Typically, this is fine to do, but when employing certain types of “off-topic” anchor text, you need to be careful.

Extreme Risk – Creating content that attracts natural adoption of link code that recommends or points to something other than the original piece intended by the link creator. This could happen by crafting micro-sites on a topic, attracting links and redirecting them to off-topic, commercially focused pages/sites; embedding links into a “copy + paste this code” piece that visitors may not realize links to a location they didn’t intend to endorse etc. Basically, this is bad form so why are you doing it anyways? Stick to quality links that go where it says it’s supposed to go.

So, as always, viral content is a good thing when handled and used appropriately. Just stay on the up-and-up and you’ll do fine. To help inspire you, here are some particularly impressive viral content projects:

• Viral Video Done Right
• 10 Facts Every Westerner Should Know about the Middle East
• A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis: The Bailout
• Web Development Project Estimator
• Economic Recovery Dashboard
• Infographic of US Swine Flu
• Amazon Acquisitions and Investments Leading up to Zappos
• How Different Groups Spend their Day
• Military Spending Worldwide
• Information is Beautiful
• The Booze Death Calculator
• Tim Series of Reported Occupations in the US (AKA Job Voyager)
• Online Dating Advice: What to Say in a First Message
• Modern Mugs and Creative Mug Designs

F5 Networks recently surveyed 250 companies’ senior IT Personnel about Cloud Computing, and one thing remains consistent – IT managers cannot come together regarding the consensual definition of the term. In fact, the survey represented no less than six separate definitions of cloud computing, and participants could not designate which was “right.”

The two most popular definitions were:

* Cloud computing is on-demand access to virtualized IT resources that are housed outside of your own data center, shared by others, simple to use, paid for via subscription and accessed over the Web.

* Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud.”

Interestingly, despite this massive confusion as to an exact definition, cloud computing continues to gain ground amongst IT professionals and the general public. In fact, 99% of the respondents to F5?s survey are actively discussing or implementing a cloud solution within their organization. More than half (66%) have set aside sizable budgets to implement said solution.

Additionally, IT Managers have high expectations for what can be “offloaded” to cloud environments. This is, of course, interesting depending on your own vision of what cloud computing is. 75% of the survey respondents believe PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) is part of the cloud. 66% said Iaas (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) should be or already is included. Interestingly, the most popular buzzword of all finds relative obscurity in the survey. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) registered with only 60% of the participants. Can’t win them all, SaaS.

The things that drive the need for a public cloud are quite different than requirements reported by private cloud users.

* Public Cloud – #1 efficiency, #2 reducing capital costs, #3 easing staffing issues

* Private Cloud – #1 reducing capital costs, #2 agility, #3 easing staffing issues

It’s interesting that there is so little consensus given IT managers and their propensity for wanting to find out how things work. The critical technology must be addressed and defined before 100% of IT managers get behind the idea. The main concerns they want addressed before adopting could computing solutions are Access Control, Network Security, and Server and Storage Virtualization. Once that is done, then cloud will be here to stay.

McAfee’s study, “The Security Paradox” takes a look at how small and medium organizations that employ between 51-1,000 workers deal IT security and cyber threats. Both are, as it stands, on the rise for SMBs.

One scary point the report makes is that SMBs the world over(and especially in North America) feel as though they are too small and therefore hold too little value to be attractive to hackers. However, recent trends indicate quite the opposite.

SMBs exhibit quite a few traits that make them alluring to hackers and other ne’er-do-wells. Small and medium-sized businesses usually have a limited palette of resources. Their security measures are are usually out of date and inadequate. Their employees are often ill-equipped to deal with serious cyber threats. Taken together, these three problems equal big trouble for little businesses.

Jeff Green, Senior VP of McAfee Avert Labs confirmed, “High profile attacks [on larger enterprises] are becoming less frequent because they are often detected quickly. Attackers are favoring stealth attacks that quietly infiltrate systems [of small and medium businesses].”

To reverse this alarming trend, small and medium-sized businesses are going to have to make some sweeping changes that will affect the fundamentals of their budgetary concerns. Here are some scary statistics. Apologies in advance.

Today:

* 52% of SMBs believe they are not well known enough to be a target for cybercrime.

*46% believe hackers could not make any money by accessing their information.

* 45% of SMBs think they hold little value to hackers.

* 44% believe cyber crime is an issue for larger organizations.

* 35% of SMBs are not concerned about being a target of cybercrime.

* 34% don’t think their information has value outside the organization.

Even worse, a large percentage(74%) of SMBs allocate three hours or less each week to IT security. Also, half of the companies surveyed feel adequately protected by the default settings on their IT equipment. This is all, of course, podunk. The results of this ignorance has resulted in stolen data, downtime, decreased productivity, non-compliance, lost sales, and a tarnished reputation.

Businesses who fall prey to a cyber attack usually experience a week or more of downtime as they try to set everything right again. Real, out of pocket, costs hover at about $41,000. That’s a lot of office furniture.

So what are you supposed to do?

Well, it starts with attitude. Simply recognize that you are at risk and move on from there. Don’t lose sleep over it but do take baby steps every day to rectify the problem. Talk it over with your IT people. Invest in some protective software that goes above and beyond the default settings of your IT equipment. Most of all, pay attention. Your employees and your customers may be aware of problems before you are. Remember, just because you aren’t AT&T or the US government doesn’t mean you are not a value to hackers. You are a value to your customers, aren’t you?

Mobile Industry Does a Great Job of Recycling

Typically the mobile industry looks through the creative outlets of the rest of the world, and cherry picks what it likes best. Usually this content is a dollar short and a day late. The mobile market takes the “path of least resistance” strategy.

This is because the initial objective amongst the mobile markets was to grow audiences to critical mass, get brands to buy mobile advertising inventory, and build mobile sites so ads have someplace to drive to. This has forced us we have rely on re-purposed creative content as the supply for ad units and site design assets. This was just the cheapest way to maximize outreach.

After all, the less money that goes into producing original content the more that can go into paid media and site production. This worked for a while, but the mobile market has grown too much in recent years to continue making this a viable option. The quality of original content simply has to step up.

Banners don’t bring home the bacon

It’s unlikely a consumer ever thought to themselves “Wow. I really can’t get that amazing banner ad out of my head.” The riches and prestigious trophies don’t go to text ads and clever expandable mouse-overs. Not to downgrade the importance of that kind of thing. They are typically worker bees in a successful campaign. They, however, cannot be the linchpin of said campaign.

Case in point, the winners at the yearly Effie awards hardly ever represent mobile content. This is because the content just isn’t there yet. It has not matched the level of quality present in the rest of the Internet. One day we’ll see a campaign led by a brilliant idea and execution on mobile that’s supported with other wise choices of channels and integrated messages. Hopefully this day will come soon.

The mobile platform has so many exciting new toys to play with. There’s accelerometers, GPS, mapping, user-initiated still and video images, click-to-call, and the ability to wake other applications along with old standards like interstitials, embedded video, animations, and audio. It’s enough to give you a headache, but assuredly they can all help your business thrive.

Budget is king

One of the main reasons creatives are slow to get involved in the mobile game is the limited budgets usually reserved for those campaigns. Mobile efforts simply need more funding so we can reverse this trend.

There is also a common misconception that the mobile platform is limited and thus would act as a “crux” of sorts for creative content. These people obviously have not seen a fully-enabled mobile campaign in the past few years. As us mobile-heads know, the sky truly is the limit here.

Marketing strategies, budget processes, measurement schemas, and account leadership must consider the mobile platform when planning out their campaign budgets. The demand is there for quality content. Now let’s fulfill it.

Build the momentum

Sure, there are already some really talented creatives working in mobile. That fact cannot be disputed. We are certainly on the right track. But why not speed that track up a little bit? The momentum has started. Baby steps have been taken. But it’s time for that baby to grow up.

Social media. The world is flipping out over it. It’s easy to see why. Social media represents an easy and instant way for companies to interact with a customer base on the fly. Social media doesn’t only connect companies with current customers, however. It also connects companies with potential customers. This is perhaps even more important.

Not all comes up roses in Tweetland though. There are several unsettling problems arising with social media that questions it’s validity as an enhancer of business-related profit.

So what’s the deal?

The enthusiasm for social media (and especially Twitter) is stronger than ever. However, that enthusiasm is dampened a bit by one uncomfortable fact: It’s become nearly impossible to measure the success of social media. Sure, each platform features it’s own set of metrics. Twitter has followers. Facebook has fans etc. But without something external to tie it to, those are jus high scores in the social media video game. What does it mean for you and your business? Being popular is certainly great for companies, but it doesn’t always translate into profit. So what is the benefit?

The B-word

Of course, the default answer always comes down to “branding.” Branding. That most ephemeral of concepts that, along with “engagement,” is always listed as the main benefit of the Internet age. However, branding is often just a distraction. No real results to report? Let’s just talk about how your brand is “improving.” Pretty soon your company’s logo will be like the Rolling Stones lips, right? No matter what you think branding is, you have to find a way to measure it. Here are just a few possibilities:

- Direct brand mentions

- Links with brand-related anchor text

- Branded search volume

As long as you have some kind of a number, you can calculate some kind of ROI.

Target a Response

We have all become guinea pigs. We are all learning how we go, trying to figure out how to use Twitter and Facebook to drive real business value. There’s the direct response approach, of course. But why not target it a bit? Put out a special offer through social media channels, and you can measure the response. When you can measure something, you can get close to an accurate ROI.

Take a cue from the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas. Their head of marketing has delved into another aspect of social media. Their employees monitor Twitter to spot dissatisfied hotel guests, then send off staff to fix the problem. Then they had back on to Twitter to try to measure the response. How many problems did they intercept? How many were they able to solve? What does solving one customer’s problem equal in real dollars? These questions can now be answered and with that comes an approximation of real value.

Find a Comparison

Lee Odden once told me an anecdote regarding his company. He said the company drives about 15-20 major media mentions per month from social media. He estimates that this equates to paying a PR firm $10,000/month. These are not traditional metrics but they sure do help to drive a point home. Social media, when used effectively, can replace the need for professional PR.

Just Measure It

What’s to be afraid of? It’s just social media ROI. It won’t bite. Well, not literally anyways. Stop making excuses, stop mumbling about branding, and find a way to quantify social media success in real dollars. You’ll be glad you did.

One note. Yahoo doesn’t refer to this suite as “webmaster tools.” I am using that phrase to simplify things and, besides, we all know what they really are. Yahoo calls it Site Explorer, but so many people think of Site Explorer as a backlink checker so I wanted to differentiate it’s varied and useful set of components. Let’s move on, shall we?

URL Removal Made Easy

You know the problem. You have a URL that you want excluded from search results. There a few obvious ways to go about this: The meta “noindex” tag, exclusion via robots.txt, or password-protecting the URL itself. These solutions will handle 99 percent of any problems you may encounter.

However, there is that prickly final one percent. It’s in these cases you pull out the big guns. Suppose the URL has already been nixed from your server but Yahoo just hasn’t recognized it’s dismissal yet, what then? After all, this makes the URL show up in SERPs with potentially humiliating results. This is a case for Yahoo’s URL removal tool. This will delete the URL from Yahoo’s index. No fuss. In the left navigation of Site Explorer, find the “Delete URLs” tool in the “Actions” section.

However, use this tool with caution. Here are some points to remember before you go in for the kill.

* A deleted URL will disappear only from Yahoo’s index. It will still appear on every other index across the Internet.
* You can only delete up to 25 URLs from a given site. If you are in need of some major, major URL removal, say 100s or more, you are gonna have to look for another tool.
* Yahoo Site Explorer classifies URLs in an odd way. You can inadvertently do some real damage if you delete a “directory”-based URL. Be extremely careful not to delete any URLs that are tied to directories which may feature pertinent URLs. You don’t want to get rid of anything by accident.

Update on URL Parameter Tool

Yahoo’s parameter tool can be extremely useful. One cool use is the ability to filter up to 10 parameters, as opposed to three which used to be the cap. This is great news because most sites with very problematic URL dynamism have more than three URL parameters, but few have more than 10.

Crawl Errors

This tool is extremely similar to Google’s tool of the same name. If you’ve used that one before, then you know what to expect here. The Crawl Errors section lists URLs on your site that are, for various reasons, inaccessible to Yahoo’s crawler. This includes the usual suspects: 404 errors, pages excluded by robots.txt and so on.

Top Queries

The goal of this tool is to give you an overview as to which Yahoo search queries lead to “views” and “clicks” from Yahoo SERPs. Views here means something different from what you may think, however. It simply means the user has an “impression” of the page, meaning they saw the page information on a Yahoo SERP. This tool isn’t finished yet, as noted by that rascally “beta” tag. Look for more improvements soon.

Statistics

The Site Explorer “statistics” section provides a useful snapshot of data about your site. This includes, but is not limited to, the total number of crawled pages, “all known” pages, inbound and outbound link data, and the total number of known hosts on your site. These numbers are not clickable as of yet, but the tool still offers a ton of useful information.

In Conclusion

Yahoo and Google aren’t the only kids at the webmaster playground, but they are two of the strongest. It’d be wise to get to know all of the services they both offer, and while you are at it, do your best to tackle other engines as well. Bing, for instance, also offers a similar suite of tools. Until next time.