Sometimes not understanding why a website isn’t performing well can be a difficult thing to figure out. However, many times it is important to take a step back and look at what signals can be seen. When looking for technical concerns can appear to be a daunting task, however, we are going to review server responses and hopefully I can help you take a look at a website and not feel like you just pulled up to the intersection pictured here.

If you are like me, you like to leave the mechanics of pretty much everything important to those who know not only what is going on, but also how to fix the concern. But, if you are also like me, you really want to know what is going on and knowing what the outcome should be can ensure proper management of expectations, usually your own! To ensure accuracy you might need a tool and a couple of minutes to check things out, however, showing up at the desk of the person in charge of the web server with the right information is usually the first step in a speedy recovery if anything is wrong.

So, with that I will cover the most common classes and numbers of HTTP Status Codes, what they do and what they should do send the right signals to search engines.

HTTP Status Codes

• 200 Series – Successful
• 200 – The request has been successfully completed, aka “here it is.”
• 300 Series – Redirected
• 301 – The page requested has been permanently moved to the given page, aka “permanent detour.”
• 302 – The page requested has been temporarily moved to the given page, aka “temporary detour.”
• 400 Series – Error Request
• 404 – The requested information is not available, aka “can’t find it.”
• 500 Series – Server Error
• 500 – Internal server error resulting in inability to fulfill request, aka “too busy.”

I know, you are thinking, I know the lingo and what these mean to the engines but I really don’t know how or where to find these mysterious server responses. Here are a couple of tools that are easy to use and understand. The first is a plugin for Firefox called Httpfox and the other way, if you are using IE, Chrome or another browser, is to use a browser based tool like Web Sniffer. I prefer Httpfox because you can keep it running and check the server response code while you surf, bonus!

So, you know what to look for and you have the tool to check it out, what now?

Know when and why a certain server response should be used.

Every page you publish intentionally should return a 200 response, except your custom 404 page. This let’s the search engine crawler know that everything is good to go.

When you move or remove a page, intentionally or otherwise, a redirect should be in place to send the user and the crawler to the new location or to your custom 404 page. The biggest difference between a 301 and 302 is not just semantics of permanence when it comes to a search engine crawler. Search engines (speaking in generalities) do two things when they receive a 301 redirect, first, they note the new permanent location of the requested page while getting it on their list to crawl in the future and second, they pass the value from the previous location and drop it from their list to crawl in the future. This lowers the number of pages they need to visit plus it makes sense from a means of housecleaning. Now, a 302 redirect does something different, first, the crawler doesn’t necessarily not the new location because it is temporary and second, it doesn’t take the old page off the list and keeps the value for the previous page to be returned when that page comes back. This can impact the performance of websites in two big ways, it can trap value from flowing properly through your website and it doesn’t pull the old page from their crawl keeping them coming back for nothing. There are some theories that search engines only visit a limited number of pages when they visit a website, so keeping these old pages that don’t exist on the checklist keeps them from exploring deeper into your site.

OK, the 404 server response is one of the most misunderstood of all of the HTTP Status Codes, mostly because you return a page (custom “could not find page” is recommended, for instance take a look at mine) but you return a server response of could not find. This is important because it takes the page off of the list of pages to revisit and you the ability to track in your analytical package where these are coming from to either correct the link (internal) or request the publisher to correct (external).

Last, but not least would be a 500 response. This is an internal error at the server level and if this is the code you get, it should be addressed quickly by a technician.

What’s the big deal? Well, when you are building or optimizing a website you may need to affect changes like navigation, links and even page names. While doing this for optimal performance, many content management systems, or CMS, automatically change the name of a given page and set a redirect from the old URL, but this might pass a 302 response keeping all of the value the old page URL there and not passing through to the new name or location. This can also be impacted if you have made changes to address canonical concerns with the www or non-www and even http or https versions of pages that could be considered as duplicate content (bad) or dilute link value to multiple versions of the same page (worse).

Hopefully this will help you do a quick health check of your website and keeping it healthy, technically speaking, is the best way to ensure you are performing well in SERPs.

Server Responses – The What and Why for SEO
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Server Responses – The What and Why for SEO
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

What a whirlwind of activity that has surrounded the launch of a new browser. I don’t remember any browser getting this amount of buzz than Google has with Chrome. I really wanted to start posting information on Monday afternoon when the info leaked out and the firestorm got started. But I wanted to see how it all played out and has it been a ride!

There have been a lot of rumors that Google would develop their own operating system (OS) and their very own browser. The rumors about a Google OS turned into Google Docs and Spreadsheets and now the rumors of a Google browser are coming to light. The rumors continued, but largely went unnoticed.

Two years ago, CEO Eric Schmidt went as far as to say:

“The industry is obsessed with this browser question… It looks like people have some good browsers choices already,” Schmidt said.

“The way Google operates, we would not build a browser for the fun of building a browser and creating another choice… We would only do something along the lines you’re describing if there was a real end-user benefit. So far, we’ve seen the end-user benefit has been to augment or expand both AJAX and JavaScript, which is available on all the browsers. We’re working closely with Firefox, we have a good partnership with Safari and with Opera and a couple of others as well. That seems like a good answer for us right now, strategically,” Schmidt added.

But, Monday, Labor Day 2008, the information was out, Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped released leaked information about the new browser and the comic book, by Scott McCloud, that was to present Chrome to the world. Quite a different way to market an online product by a company that predominately works online, isn’t it?

So, this started the firestorm:
Search Engine Journal
TechCrunch
Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Land
Pandia
Marketing Pilgrim
TopRank

Which led Google and Matt Cutts to respond to the firestorm that was generated:
Official Google Blog:

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we’ve now made the comic publicly available — you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

Matt Cutts:

I can’t wait to talk more about Google Chrome, but I’ll hold off until it officially launches. Once people can download Google Chrome, I plan to talk about my experiences using Google Chrome, to lay some truth on you about questions you might ask about Google Chrome, and to give some tips for power browsers.

This was quickly followed by additional scrutiny:
Chrome: This Is Web OS, Make No Mistake
Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer
Google takes aim at Microsoft with new Web browser

Tuesday, Google launched a webcast to officially announce the release of the browser. Which was live-blogged by Matt Cutts (webcast video). The responses on Twitter alone were amazing. I watched and listened to the webcast and much of it was the same information that was released in the comic, but the biggest take-away was the “speed” of the new engine under the browser’s hood. There were live comparisons to Internet Explorer, the twitter buzz wanted to see it up against FireFox and I really wanted to see it challenge Opera, but no dice.

Not much time passed and Google responded to the fact that Apple users will have to wait for the new browser, Matt Cutts addresses concerns with the new browser’s interaction with big brother Google and common objections.

It didn’t take long for reactions to start flooding in:
Can Google Win The Browser Wars With Google Chrome?
Which was answered with – 44% of SEO/SEMs Say Google’s Chrome Won’t Win the Browser War
Google Browser Anti-Competitive [By Google's Standards]
Firefox counters Google’s browser speed test
Google’s Omnibox could be Pandora’s box – Privacy concerns
Does Chrome Signal The Removal of Google’s PageRank Indicator?
Google’s brand is pure gold, but its tech edge is unproven in the browser sweepstakes
Google’s Chrome Kills the Lucrative Toolbar Business

Then security exploits were found:
Exploit #1 – Google’s new Web browser (Chrome) allows files (e.g., executables) to be automatically downloaded to the user’s computer without any user prompt.
Exploit #2 – The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error when handling the “SaveAs” function. On saving a malicious page with an overly long title ( http://www.seopittfall.com/google-wants-you-to-be-social-and-share-your-stuff http://www.seopittfall.com/google-wants-you-to-be-social-and-share-your-stuff#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:36:55 +0000 pittfall http://www.seopittfall.com/?p=347

Google has launched a social bookmarking service aptly named Shared Stuff quietly.

But the news is out:
Google Shared Stuff – Google Blogscoped
Google Launches Google Shared Stuff – Search Engine Land
Google Shared Stuff is Delicious – Marketing Pilgrim
Google Wants You To Share Stuff – TechCrunch
Google and Being Social – John Battelle’s Searchblog

Here is the best description of the new product (from TechCrunch):

Shared Stuff is simple enough; users drag a “email share” button into their browser, and click it when they want to add pages to their Shared Stuff profile. Links can include an image, text extract, and/ or a user comment. The results can then be viewed directly, via iGoogle or RSS. An interesting addition is the option to use Shared Stuff to post links to other social booking sites as well, including Facebook Furl, Delicious, Reddit and Digg.

Friend can be invited by email, and bookmarks made by Gmail contacts using the service can be viewed as well.

Other aspects that make Shared Stuff more social includes a profile that you have limited, but valuable control. On your profile you have the ability to share your name, nickname, job, geographic location, short description (5,000 character max) and of course 10 links of your liking. Below you will see the profile section of a profile. As with many other social bookmarking sites, you can add a description and tags to help you manage your stuff and the ability to share your stuff via email and RSS/XML feeds.

Here is the new profile of the Google Shared Stuff

You just have to add a javascript link to your favorites on your browser, however there is no ability to add a button to your Google Toolbar which makes me think that they are really trying to keep the wraps on this new product.

So what happened to Google Bookmarks?

• Create bookmarks you can access anywhere
  Bookmark your favorite websites and add labels and notes to them. Your labels and notes are searchable later, and you can access your bookmarks from any computer by signing in.
• Save time with quick links to your favorite websites
  Use Personalized Search to find the sites you visit frequently and bookmark your favorites. Use the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer for quick access to your bookmarks and to easily create more.

A good question is why would Google discard their bookmarks service rather than adding the social aspects of shared stuff to their existing product?

If you would like a walk through of the new service, check out BlogScoped’s post which includes screen shots and instructions.

Have you added Google Shared Stuff to your Google Profile?

Google Wants You to Be Social and Share Your Stuff
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Google Wants You to Be Social and Share Your Stuff
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Windows Live SkyDrive is now in beta from Microsoft.

Here are some of the details of this new service:

Unlike the new Microsoft product, Google is offering online storage with limitations (and not free).

Gmail offers over 2.8 GB of free storage to all users, and that space is reserved just for Gmail messages. Similarly, Picasa Web Albums gives users 1 GB of storage just for Picasa Web Albums images.

There’s currently no way to use your free storage space from one product to house content from another. However, if you purchase extra storage from Google, that space will be shared by both products as needed as you upload or receive more data.

So, MSN is offering 250 GB of free storage for use with anything you desire, Google gives you the ability to upgrade your storage for your Google Services (currently just Gmail and Picasa) for a fee. Currently 6 GB for $20 per year, up to 250 GB for $500 per year.

Are we wandering into an online war for storage supremacy?

What are your thoughts?

Microsoft and Google Compete to Deliver Online Storage Solutions
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Microsoft and Google Compete to Deliver Online Storage Solutions
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

It’s not that much of a secret that Google likes Firefox. Whether you presume that it is because Google is for anything that is not Microsoft or that it is a better product. I don’t care to debate this, but it is apparent that Google, like Yahoo!, is now pushing IE7. Of course, with the Google Toolbar in tow.

According to Jeremy Zawodny, Google’s first attempt at this announcement was remarkably similar to Yahoo!’s page.

“Seriously, click those images and look at the full-sized versions. They’re remarkably similar. And I’ve checked with our PR group to make sure that this wasn’t just a template that Microsoft gave to all partners. It’s not.”

Or was it a joke?

Apparently, it ruffled some feathers. Jeremy offers some screenshots of both pages for you review. Interestingly, they are both from Firefox.

Copied by Google or Optimized for Google
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Copied by Google or Optimized for Google
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

With all of my talk of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I don’t always look at the other side of the coin. So, after a long relaxing weekend (unplugged), I would like to share some of the buzz that is going around about the engines that we look to entice, or at least appease:

Google Property Performance (Searchblog)

As shown by the numbers above, Google’s primary (duh) business is search.

MSN Loosing Market Share (LiveSide)
MSN has been seeing declines in their market share in search.

Here are a couple of sited reasons:

Yahoo! Pushing IE7 (Slashdot)
A whole lot of effort has been expelled by Google to help promote FireFox, and now it looks like people are thinking that Yahoo! is pushing Internet Explorer 7. Slashdot has a lot of talk about what is going on with Yahoo!

My preference? None. Like I have posted before, I look at my site in the browsers that are important to me, the browser that my users use. By the way, the majority of my readers and the majority of users on my companies websites is Internet Explorer 6. Take that how you will.

Search Engine Buzz
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Search Engine Buzz
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

How many browsers do you have?

I know what you’re thinking, How many am I supposed to have?

When you are building a website, it is important to see your site just as your users do. So, this begs the question: What browser do your visitor’s use?

Similar to the many available search engines, users have many choices when it comes to online browsing. So, what’s the big deal? Have you looked at what your website looks like in the different browsers?

Once upon a time, Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were the primary browsers, however, just like the search landscape, the browser landscape has changed.

The latest in the browsing marketplace
Internet Explorer still commands the highest number of users since they knocked out Netscape Navigator, but FireFox is closing in fast!

Mozilla built FireFox and gave the user more control with tabbed browsing (no more dozens of windows open in your task bar) and quickly grabbing market share from IE. Lending additional credence to Mozilla, Netscape has been built on the same platform. Just recently, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, following Mozilla’s lead in providing tabbed browsing and anti-phishing help. But, on the horizon is an important browser for development, Opera.

Back on topic, when you are looking a adjusting or adding to your website, it is important to see it through the eyes of your visitors. I would suggest that you check your website in the different browsers listed below and in a few screen resolutions.

Internet Browsers:
1. Internet Explorer
2. FireFox
3. Opera

You can’t Build a Better Website if you can’t see what your users see!

Browsing Alternatives – or – How Do Your Users See You?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Browsing Alternatives – or – How Do Your Users See You?
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Microsoft releases a new (now stable) browser, Internet Explorer 7.

Find about the features being offered with the new browser. These features are similar to some of the advances that Mozilla offered with FireFox’s most recent edition: tabbed browsing, RSS support and even new quick keys.

Take your own test drive and see for yourself.

Internet Explorer 7
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.

Internet Explorer 7
Copyright © 2004-2013, by Stephen Pitts aka SEOpittfall, All Rights Reserved.