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CONGRATULATIONS, Maxh, so pleased for you.

.. And you, and all other MLFers. May we all duck the bad things hurtling towards us, beat the trends and make lots of money!!

All best wishes, Linda

... And is something nasty happening to MyLocalForums plse? Some of the alleged replies (Dec 28) sound a bit spammy (ie generalised /bland, short, etc)? Or is it me just getting paranoid again?

Suggest you visit the Graduate Fog site before you decide what to do! Particularly the comments!

I think the first thing to do is to check that whatever deal you're offering is a genuinely good one from both parties' point of view.

Rah, rah, well done!!

Success is LOVELY, isn't it????????

Best wishes, Linda

Dunno whether these ideas will work - but this is what I'd be doing if it was me ....

I'd look for a few similar contract in another area of the country ... then I'd ring up the government customers placing them. I'd ask questions about the specs they used, what kinds of evidence as to suitability they wanted their potential suppliers to put before them and so on. Because they're public sector and because you're a small business, they'll probably be very helpful.

I'd also talk to small companies (those way out of your area) who've been successful in landing business of the type that interests you. Again, I think you'll find them very helpful ... particularly if you're quick to offer reciprocal help (eg information about sector relevant developments, etc).

After you've done this research, I suggest reading extremely carefully any background information the customer offers potential suppliers plus any reports in the press relating to the contract. Government purchasers usually provide more than enough information about their requirements; what's hard is getting your "pitch" right.

Good luck! I hope you'll let us know how you get on. Linda

As I understand it, the Tory right wing always got very hot under the collar about the Convention on Human Rights (because they thought it was nasty foreign stuff, associated with the UN and EU ...).

If I'm right, though, an earlier UK government (a Tory one?) did a lot of the drafting of the C on HR and they based it on what they were used to in British law.

More smoke and mirrors??????

I've wondered the same thing linastylist ....

I tried to find alternative sources of information to the Google keyword tool ... it took me quite a long time and I didn't come up with anything useful.

In the end, I decided I'd just concentrate on trying to improve the visiting rate and the amount of time visitors stayed on my site. That's more than enough of a challenge, isn't it????!!!!! (not to mention very rude words!).

Best wishes, Linda

CONGRATS Mark!! Very well done!

Hi all

Am wondering plse whether any of you have details of a reliable human contact at Google who can arrange the setting a preferred domain for my site without me risking further site verification problems? I haven't found Google Forums very useful - the categories never seem to fit the problem I'm experiencing at the time and I often don't understand the issues either.

When my site was re-designed (with new CMS as well) and changed servers some months ago, Google refused to let me access Webmaster Tools because they weren't sure I owned the site. It took a lot of time and effort for my web hosting / web design company to sort out the verification issue and all of us felt very bruised by the experience. We knew site verification should have been a dead simple process - and it wasn't.

Webmaster Tools still says the site doesn't have a preferred domain. Remembering (hopefully correctly) Tomsk's advice, I believe it would help my rankings a bit if I set the site to have a preferred domain.

Accordingly, I clicked the bit in Webmaster Tools to tell Google I did want a preferred domain ... and it came up with the ominous message "verify this is your site" .....

I'll live without a preferred domain rather than take risks. I decided I wouldn't even try to see whether I could sort it out for myself and took the problem to my web design / hosting company ...

Guided by the horrid experience of trying to sort out the verification problem earlier, Keith emailed back saying "The problem is when you go to set up the preferred domain it says it wants to verify the site. Now that has been done for you and your site has been verified in your name so I don