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Originally Posted by Rebecca (PayforPrecision)

“I love that crocodile's style,  such a snappy dresser. ”

don't give up your day job!

Seemed very fitting during the Citizens Advice #scamaware month, that our sister company which hosts Edinburgh Trusted Trader is getting scammed 

Ever since signing up with 118information, we have been plagued with aggressive and rude sales calls from so called utility providers. They have claimed to be our utility provider, claimed that we need to sign some paperwork as we are a new business, etc etc...

The humorous thing is the address they are talking about is Edinburgh Trading Standards 

Common numbers that we seem to be getting calls from are: 0161 272 5551, 0161 273 2600 and 0161 274 4662. 

It's water off a ducks back, but there is a serious side, and it's a reminder how intimidating these calls can be for the unwary or vulnerable.

If you start a new business, unfortunately you will get plagued with these calls, so remember to keep common sense batteries fully charged, never agree to anything from a cold call, and never be afraid to put the phone down.

Signing up to the Telephone Preference Service can also help reduce these calls.

Just goes to show, no ones immune!

Can't really criticise as you flagged a typo we has on our business upsell page, and it had been there for years 

I love these games 

Here's a few from my travels round India, Health and Safety.... 

No idea why so many people die each year in traffic related incidents!

I thought this was the point John Mueller was making, the fact it doesn't add any value. so bob.plumber would have no keyword value as plumber, in the same way plumber.com doesn't rank for .com as a keyword (other than geographic).

I agree from a UX view the new domains make much sense, but would like to see evidence of a bob.plumber ranking well versus a bob-plumber.co.uk

It's quite interesting reading about it on various SEO forums, the industry seems to be pretty split either way. Be nice to get some hard factual data that will prove it one way or the other.

I'm ashamed to say I never have 

Great idea to reach a younger audience though, offering a festival ticket in return for blood!

Hmm, made me feel guilty now, shall have to look at visiting our local centre.

Any other blood donors out there?

If you need to find your local centre: ww.blood.co.uk

This is an interesting post from John Mueller, Google Engineer and current public spokesman of all things SEO.

Recently we have all probably seen, heard or even bought one of these new fancy domain names. eg .london .plumber .website .tax .reviews etc etc.

There has been a lot of SEO urban myth been written about the merits and pros and cons of these domains. eg bobplumber.co.uk saw his website traffic quadruple when he moved to bob.plumber and countless other versions of the same story.

But is it true?

Does one of the new domain names hold any advantage over the old ones such as .co.uk or .com?

According to John Mueller from Google, the answer is no.

How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search? 

our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.

Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?

No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.

So as far as Google is concerned, bobtheplumber.co.uk and bob.plumber will be treated completely the same.

But I'm not convinced. Users searching for a plumber maybe drawn to the bob.plumber listing, as it looks and sounds more obvious. If this is the case, then surely part of Googles algorithm will see that the bob.plumber is popular, so reward it with a shove up the rankings?

I guess the only way to know for sure is to test this, and no doubt plenty of people have already started, so I shall be watching SEO sites with interest.

But officially, Google doesn't see any difference or favour any domain over another.

Here's the full Google blog article: Google's handling of new top level domains

What does anyone else think? Anyone got any evidence to argue against it?

Just a day in the life of the Traffic cops 

Saw this on the beeb...

"The motorist had removed the front wheels, doors and engine from the van to lighten the load before hoisting it into the rear of a grey hatchback.

He then lashed the two vehicles together with one blue strap and set off towing the combo."

BBC News: Gloucester driver caught towing van-strapped-in-car-boot

There really are some dumb people in this country...

Went to the Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford last Sunday, as I confess to being a bit plane barmy. So here are a couple of self indulgent pics, plus an emotional final ever touch down at Fairford of the mighty Vulcan, as she is being grounded in October this year

We've just updated our Open Graph tags on the forum, basically what Facebook and Search Engines use to decide how to catalogue and display data from an individual forum web link.

If you have updated your forum profile with your Facebook page (personal or business), it will now automatically show up if anyone shares one of your forum threads on Facebook. eg:

You can click on any of the above images to see the actual Facebook post.

One thing that Facebook is funny about is images. So to make a post more "shareable" adding an image (copy right free or credited) makes it look visually more appealing.

An image can be anywhere in the post, or any subsequent replies, or system will auto add the correct image information for Facebook.

If there isn't an image, then we will automatically add a default forum one, which is the cartoon traders from the top of the website.

Presentation wise, the bigger the image, the better it is displayed. Smaller images will be displayed to the left of the text, such as the No Smoking thread, or larger ones above text such as the Dragons post.

So feel free to get creative. To see how it works, just take the web link of any forum post and paste it into Facebook. Facebook should then do all the hard work for you, and add text and an image.

If anyone needs any help, gets stuck or is unsure, just shout