Author Archives: Abhi

New salt lake police car – Wow

I just managed to get a running pic of our new salt lake police car. It is great looking car, gives you a feel of MNP (Multi national police). This looks like exclusive for salt lake city as it is mentioned on the car. Did you notice it?

Exclusive picture

right on my blog)

new saltlake police car

Great going kolkata police!

Abhirupa advises Google about use of Blogs

My technical team is using my blog for their experiments (in return of blogging back the experiment to my blog), I was thinking of taking some days of rest from blogging but here comes a blunder from Google (my sole rescuer- you know it helps me search everything….from my lost brain to my hair pin) – an email that said:

Hello,

We are writing to share some important information with you about referrals to the AdSense product. As part of ongoing efforts to optimize revenue opportunities for our publishers, we’re
constantly experimenting with new revenue-enhancing features as well as tweaking those products already available to our publishers. This is the case for referral units directing visitors
to sign up for AdSense. After experimenting with this program over the past year, we’ve concluded that there are other products that are of higher value than this program to publishers in your region. As a result, referral units for the AdSense program will be retired in the coming weeks. Referrals to other products and services remain unaffected.

If you’re currently displaying referral units on your site directing users to sign up for AdSense, read on below for details about what to expect in the coming weeks. In early January, the option to add referral units directing users to the AdSense product will no longer appear in your account. You will continue to accrue earnings for all existing referrals yet to generate $100 until late January, at which point the program will be fully retired. Existing referral units will continue to appear on your pages.

By the end of January, you should remove all referral units directing users to AdSense from your pages. Referral units that you do not remove will continue to be displayed on your pages as normal, but conversions will no longer be recorded. We suggest you replace the AdSense referrals with referrals to another product or service or an additional ad unit. Thank you for referring users to AdSense in the past. We apologize for any inconvenience this news may cause.

Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important new AdSense features.

SPAM OR GENUINE?

google - spam or genuine
As a user it is very difficult for me to cross check the authenticity of such emails. This advice goes to Google and all the businesses. Here are a few things that you must do to have an educated and aware  customer. (I think the whole blogosphere should take the charge):

  • Step1: Send an email to all your customers (and new users) that any email not having a blog URL should not be trusted. Inform them that every email sent to customer will have a copy on the official website.
  • Step2: Create a blog called /customer/ (or something) and keep a copy of the email sent to the customer (or a small blog post that an email was sent). This will let the customers know that the email is genuine.
  • Step3: Whenever you send an email send the URL of the blog post along with it. This will make it easier for your (techy and non-techy) customers to verify the source of the email.
  • Step4: Put a google analytics and keep tracking how many people are cross checking the email authenticity. I advise you to track this using some other application than google analytics, which can even track which users have clicked the link. This is very much possible with applications like phplist (I haven’t used it, I asked our technical department for help). If some users are not clicking on the links make sure to reach out to them through phone to avoid such phishing.
  • Step5: Enjoy a better business model for email communication with your educated customers.

How to find supplemental index ratio?

Recently the technical people of our company were talking about supplemental ratio (almost a new thing for me….though I had this notion that supplement pages are duplicate page.) I was very curious to know what is this supplemental index ratio and how one can find it. I contacted our technical heads to know about it (We surely have smart technical brains to answer almost all the questions)

How to calculate supplemental index ratio?

  1. Go to google and search for site:yoursite.com , example google.com/search?q=site%3Ameabhi.com .. It says 36 results (This includes all the pages regular and supplemental)
  2. Now do site:yoursite.com/* example google.com/search?q=site%3Ameabhi.com%2F* (It says 8, this is the regular pages only) OR even you do a search in aol for site:yoursite.com search.aol.com/aol/search?query=site%3Ameabhi.com (It also says 8)
  3. Now (36-8)/36 = 28/36 = 77% is the supplement index ratio for meabhi.com, which may be quite high.

OR

You can use mapelli.info/tools/supplemental-index-ratio-calculator/?domain=www.meabhi.com (this says 75% but it might be some other datacenter for the total indexed pages as it says index pages = 32 instead of 36)

Supplement pages are not all that bad these days but still you can get a better ratio. Tedster explains what a supplement page is all about.

Other important discussion about supplement results:

  1. Supplemental goes mainstream – July 31, 2007
  2. The Ultimate Fate of Supplemental Results – December 18, 2007

How to reduce supplement ratio for your site?

I did it as experiment google.com/site:meabhi.com+-site:meabhi.com/* to see the pages that are tagged supplement now I will like to eliminate it one by one. I offered my site to our technical team for experimenting with supplement results as it is quite new. I will post more about the pages that have gone to supplement results.

Google teaches content writers about future

You may be wondering that what Google has to do with content writers, look at the ad here (it is a screenshot). Do you see an arrow towards the left bottom? Have you noticed such ads (adsense ads) recently? Even the malls are doing something in the same line.

google ad and content writers

What am I talking about?
I am taking about space, space available for ads. In malls the normal banners are getting replaced with changing LCDs. Within a allocated space you can display more than one ad. Google is doing the same here, within the allocated space it is displaying more ads to get more out of per inch allocated space.

What can a content writer learn from it?
Web page space (In out office we can it web estate) will be a scarcity (if not already)  and a content writer will have to use these tricks to represent contents in different layers. Say you write step 1 in a detailed format and then give a arrow button  for step 2, once clicked it will show the content for step 2 without refreshing the page. This will just refresh the section of the page which needs the new content.

This will help us keep our content scanable but still very effective and detailed. Thanksies Google for teaching us one more thing.

Finally I am #1 Abhirupa

It is a dream come true to be #1 Abhirupa on web and here I am finally. It wasn’t very difficult to achieve as the competition was very lessfor my name . Anyways how does that matter (haa haa)! What matters is that I am #1 Abhirupa now.
I am number 1 abhirupa

Still I am not happy with the description that comes in google, it says,

Abhirupa Purkayastha – Simplifying content
Abhirupa Purkayastha – Simplifying content · Home · About Abhi. It happened to me……..thanks to YOU ( Linked Abhirupa Professional Links – – ) …
www.meabhi.com/blog/ – 47k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

I have added the needed meta description with the help of our technical team. Thanks for the help. Yesterday we saw some videos on how important is meta description and the indirect effect of it on Google rankings (not many people know about it). I will get a better google listing description soon.

Update 12th Jan 2008 (early morning): It is updated using the current meta description which says,

I am Abhirupa Purkayastha, a web content writer by choice. You can contact me at admin@meabhi.com. Read my blog for more details.

This is more user readable snippet. From technical desk (I don’t know much about it but this is the code that was added to the header.php file of the theme)

<meta name=”description” content=”<?php if ( is_single() ) {
single_post_title(”, true);
}
else if(is_home())
{
echo “I am Abhirupa Purkayastha, a web content writer by choice. You can contact me at admin@meabhi.com. Read my blog for more details.”;
}
else {
bloginfo(‘name’); echo ” – “; bloginfo(‘description’);
}
?>” />

Some say love it is

I am a content writer and thus have a license to pen down my thoughts about everything that is present under the sun!  But here comes a post about a four lettered word known as LOVE; a feeling whose depth can not be measured in words. Since ages writers all across the globe have tried to encapsulate its meaning….but all in vain!

 I was listening to this song that prompted me for this post:

Some say love it is a river
that drowns the tender reed
Some say love it is a razor
that leaves your soul to bleed

Some say love it is a hunger
an endless aching need
I say love it is a flower
and you it’s only seed

It’s the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance
It’s the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance
It’s the one who won’t be taken
who cannot seem to give
and the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long
and you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed
that with the sun’s love
in the spring
becomes the rose

Love is wonderful
Wow! so wonderfully written that I am listening to it for almost 10th time. “Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows lies the seed that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes the rose.” Amazing words!

People who have never fallen in love can never understand what it is and people who have ever fallen in love can never explain it. I pity on people who can not comprehend the depth of this four lettered word. It is certainly the most beautiful feeling you can experience.

 Ohhhhhh I love this one too!

“No one falls in love by choice,
it is by CHANCE.
No one stays in love by chance,
it is by WORK.
And no one falls out of love by chance,
it is by CHOICE ”

Other beautiful songs I am listening to:

  1. Have You Ever Been In Love
  2. All Out Of Love

what is love for you?

What is love according to you?

Tip #2 credibility – Making content attractive

I will continue my series on making content attractive. Today I will cover a very important factor, the credibility. We don’t like a speaker because of his great speech ability but because of the trust, same happens for content. It is surely the job of the reader to check the credibility of the content but as a content writer it is my job to make the job easier for my reader. It will be unfair if I write the whole article. I will quote Stanford researches.

1000s of results for one search, 1000 different website saying different things, and people what to check the trustworthiness of the content. How to improve the credibility? Here is a small list:

  1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. (Give links, author’s pic and details)
  2. Show that there’s a real organization behind your site. (Good logo, about us page, linking to BBB etc)
  3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide. (Tell them stories, show testimonials)
  4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.
  5. Make it easy to contact you. (All type of contacts with proper names and pics.)
  6. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).
  7. Make your site easy to use — and useful.
  8. Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently). (Show the date when it was updated, right there with proper link title who updated or reviewed it)
  9. Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).
  10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. (NO GRAMMATICAL MISTAKES ALLOWED for a content writer)

Check in them details at http://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/index.html. Do comment as there are more things that can help us increase the credibility. I will also pen down some examples here (wish I had some more time today).

Tip #1 Link title – Making content attractive

I will be focusing on content writing. (As planned I took some interviews yesterday and will be posting it soon.) Every time we attend a team meeting, a conference or a video class we see one clear message passing through, “You need to make your content simpler and scanable“. I will post a series of blog posts on how to make your content simpler and scanable. I will start the series with Link titles. Link title is a blessing for content however it is not used very frequently.

  • What are link titles? As it says, it is the title for a link (no it is not the anchor text). Lets take an example to understand.
    <a href=”URL” title=”Link title”>Anchor text</a>.
    When you mouse over the link it shows the link title as a tail.
  • Link titles helps you in budgeting:Every click by your reader is expensive, less clicks implies very targetted content. Link titles can save you some clicks.
  • Web estate is very expensive: Web estate is expensive and link title can save a lot of your web estate. It works on top of web estate.
  • Link title is a silent speaker: Link titles stay there as a silent speaker. It comes up when you want them to come up.
  • Link titles make your content more attractive and effective.
  • Example
    Lets take an example on how it can be useful. Paragraph without link titles “When you are under heavy debt you can consider following five options 1) Settle it by own 2) Professional Debt Settlement 3) Professional Debt management 4) Bankruptcy 5) Do Nothing“.The same example with link title
    “When you are under heavy debt you can consider following five options 1) Settle it by own 2) Professional Debt Settlement 3) Professional Debt management 4) Bankruptcy 5) Do Nothing

Can you see how link titles can make it so effective. What is your opinion?

Never lie to ur mother!!!!

never lie
I’m not saying that you ‘do’ sleep with her, and I’m not saying that you ‘do not’ sleep with her. But the fact remains …….

The story begins

A Mom comes to visit her son Kumar for dinner…..who lives with his roommate Dimple. While having dinner, his mother couldn’t help but notice how pretty Kumar’s, roommate was. She had long been suspicious of a relationship between both of them.

While watching the two interact, she started to wonder if there was more between Kumar and Dimple. Reading his mom’s thoughts, Kumar volunteered, “I know what you must be thinking, but I assure you, Dimple and I are just roommates.” About a week later, Dimple came to Kumar saying, “Ever since your mother came to dinner, I’ve been unable to find the silver plate. You don’t suppose she took it, do you?” Kumar said , “Well, I doubt it, but I’ll email her, just to be sure.” So he sat down and wrote :

Dear Mother:
I’m not saying that you ‘did’ take the silver plate from my house, I’m not saying that you ‘did not’ take the silver plate.. But the fact remains that it has been missing ever since you were here for dinner.

Love, Kumar

Several days later, Kumar received an email from his Mother which read

Dear Son:
I’m not saying that you ‘do’ sleep with Dimple, and I’m not saying that you ‘do not’ sleep with Dimple. But the fact remains that if she was sleeping in her OWN bed, she would have found the silver plate by now under the pillow…
Love, Mom.

Lesson of the day: Don’t Lie to Your Mother………..especially if she is Indian!!!!

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