If you are launching new sites for clients, make sure you set the expectation that it is likely to be 7-8 months before the site achieves any real results in Google.

Due to the search engine optimisation tricks employed by the SEO industry, Google is more reticent about adding new sites correctly.

I've certainly seen this lately, brand new sites are there, but only show for obscure searches, I cannot confirm that it takes 7-8 months to index correctly. I can confirm that I have been banging my head trying to get such sites to appear in the expected results.

"The Long Tail comprises the almost infinite variety of human interests and desires that mainstream offerings cannot fully satisfy.'"

At least this is one of the many definitions. This page is good. Very good. I'm going to spend a lot of time here. There's even a wikipedia page.

There's a lot of comment and speculation about the possible Google's comment spam solution, if indeed that's their solution. I'll implement it on my hosted blogs—of course, and it'll be transparent to the user.

However, I wonder at it's effectiveness. Sure, it takes the incentive away, but will this be enough to stop comment spam? There's the point about getting other search engines to do the same, getting all blog technologies and individual blogs to incorporate the feature... Maybe the incentive to comment spam will disappear over time? I wonder how long that will be.

My problem, currently, is with referer spam, though we tell Google not to look at the referer page, still they spam. Their reason, "if I spam a million sites a day, and a handful of links actually increase my Google Page Rank, that has to be worth it, since it cost next to nothing to do, and pays in better search listings."

Reports of a Dracula-style attacker on the loose biting innocent people has spread terror throughout neighbourhoods in Birmingham, causing many to fear the darkness of the night.

Eek! I've been over to Brum several times the past week or so. Fixing the Government Office for the West Midland's intranet. Luckily, during the daylight hours. Heh!

"They think in Iran you can just go in and hit the facilities and destabilise the government. They believe they can get rid of a few crazy mullahs and bring in the young guys who like Gap jeans, all the world's problems are solved. I think it's delusional," the former CIA officer said.

Seymour Hersh said last night on BBC news that there was no way anybody could stop this, now that the neo-cons are in charge in the Whitehouse,

>His decision means tickets will be in even more in demand when they go on sale on April 3. Phone booking lines will open on a Sunday, when the exchange is less busy, to avoid last year's problems, when hundreds of thousands of fans were unable to get through. Tickets will cost £125, up from last year's £112, and will be limited to two a person.

In an attempt to foil touts and avoid tickets being sold for extortionate sums on eBay, photo ID will be required.

I'd like a bit of that this year, maybe take the kids. I've been twice: once in 1984 and once in 1991.