SEO, SEM, web design, coding, iPhone, iPad, Android 

I love this: the goo.gl url shortener is now open to everyone! I know the folks that worked on this, so let me answer a few quick questions.

Q: Why are you doing this?
A: Google needed a url shortener for its own products where we knew the shortener wouldn’t go away. We also wanted a shortener that we knew would do things the right way (e.g. 301/permanent redirects), and that would be fast, stable, and secure.

Q: Why open it up to the public?
A: Initially we launched it only for Google to use on things like the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner. It only took about week before someone dug into the toolbar to see how the shortening code worked. One popular Chrome extension showed up within a few days and now has almost 70,000 installs. Clearly, a lot of people wanted to use goo.gl themselves.

Q: Fair enough. Any cool new features?
A: The main feature is that you can use goo.gl just by going to the web page. But if you go to http://goo.gl and login with your Google account, you’ll get analytics and history features for the urls you’ve shortened. Here’s what the analytics page looks like for a recent link I tweeted, for example:

Q: Is goo.gl an “X killer”?
A: No, goo.gl isn’t an effort to kill anything. I think the whole “product X will kill product Y” meme is getting a little threadbare. We needed a url shortener for Google itself. And then lots of people asked for this, so we’re opening our own url shortener to the world. Different url shorteners have different philosophies; I view the goo.gl philosophy as running a tight, fast service without piling on a ton of features.

My favorite Chrome extension to shorten urls is right here, but see the official blog post for other good extensions that use goo.gl. Danny Sullivan is also writing a screenshot-by-screenshot article over on Search Engine Land.

I hope you like the service. I’m biased, because I know the people that work on it, but why not give it a try yourself?

Let’s face it, the engines control search. They may keep tight-lipped control of their algorithmic secrets, but they also provide their users with tools that SEO practitioners can use to understand how the engines see their sites. These advanced operators offer a peek behind the curtain, enabling the patient SEO to discover and diagnose site issues. We’ll start by running through some of the queries and the engines they work on, and then dive into some real-world diagnosis using these operators. These are a tiny fraction of the operators available. I find myself using this handful of operators in different combinations on a daily basis as an SEO practitioner focused on the architectural challenges of a popular ecommerce site. For a ...

Let’s face it, the engines control search. They may keep tight-lipped control of their algorithmic secrets, but they also provide their users with tools that SEO practitioners can use to understand how the engines see their sites. These advanced operators offer a peek behind the curtain, enabling the patient SEO to discover and diagnose site issues. We’ll start by running through some of the queries and the engines they work on, and then dive into some real-world diagnosis using these operators. These are a tiny fraction of the operators available. I find myself using this handful of operators in different combinations on a daily basis as an SEO practitioner focused on the architectural challenges of a popular ecommerce site. For a ...

In this second part of a five-part series on Oracle Database XE administration, you'll learn about physical database structures. This article is excerpted from chapter 28 of the book Beginning PHP and Oracle: From Novice to Professional, written by W. Jason Gilmore and Bob Bryla (Apress; ISBN: 1590597702).
- Physical Storage Structures From the perspective of building queries, developing applications, and running reports, regular users, managers, and developers dont need to know much about the underlying physical structure of the database on disk. However, even a part-time DBA does need to understand t...

Aarron Walter recommended checking this out during his interview on The Big Web Show. Looks like a powerful resource.

Google just updated our SEO beginner’s guide! http://goo.gl/6EKX Now with glossary, more pictures, plus mobile device advice!

Interesting post about managing your money so you can retire early.

Wonderful little info graphic explaining how colors affect purchases on web sites.

I’m wondering when the freemium model turned into “you don’t pay so your feelings about our experience don’t matter to us.”

In this video, you’ll learn about additional box-shadow features, such as multiple shadows and inset shadows. You’ll also learn some advanced techniques, such as how to create a sunken well effect.

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