Joe Levi presents Greener Living through Technology

Background

Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK, etc.) index web pages by spidering web pages and applying a secret algorithm to figure out page ranking.

Spiders (or “bots”) do this for each indexable page on the internet on every indexable domain. That’s where a lot of web developers get caught between usability and Search Engine Optimization.

A page called “default.aspx” may reside on my server, but users (including spiders) might be able to reach it by going to http://www.JoeLevi.com or by going to http://JoeLevi.com. The file is the same file with the same content, but spiders see it as two separate pages on two separate domains. This can negatively influence that page’s ranking in two ways: 

1. by having the same content on multiple sites Search Engines may think you’re trying to spam them, and might reject your page entirely, or by applying some type of “negative points” in their secret algorithm;
2. by splitting the relevance of your page across however many instances of that page exist in the Search Engines index; in other words, if you have 2 domains pointing to the same page, the relevancy of those pages is some percentage totaling 100%, theoretically splitting the relevancy in half (now imagine if you have 5 domains, plus their “www” variants… you can see why this article is titled “Preventing SEO Schizophrenia”)

How to attack the problem

First, it’s just fine to have multiple domains, and it’s still best practices to point your domain and www. prefix to your site. It’s also still a good idea to register .com, .net, and whatever other misspellings of your domain name you think users might attempt when trying to get to your site.

BUT, and here’s the kicker, you can’t just point them all to the same site and have the contents look the same — fragmenting your Search Engine placement, having your pages removed for spamming. So how do we address that?

301 Moved Permanently Response Status

HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol), like most protocols, uses headers to provide session- and meta-data. HTTP 200, for example, means the page was found and all is well. HTTP 301, on the other hand, means that the page has permanently moved, and can then tell the client (which may be a web surfer or a Search Engine bot) where the new page is located. This is a key point: if the client is a spider, it can then update the Search Engine’s index to effectively combine the multiple entries into the one page that it truly is.

While you can add this header response to each and every page on each and every site, I’d recommend a little code magic instead.

Here are ASP.NET C# and VB implementations to place in the PageLoad event of MasterPage or a control loaded across all pages on your site (a header control, for example).

ASP.NET C# Implementation

   1:  string strServerName = Request.ServerVariables["SERVER_NAME"];

   2:  if (    (Request != null) &&

   3:           (strServerName.IndexOf("www") == -1) && 

   4:           (strServerName.IndexOf("prototype") == -1) &&

   5:           (strServerName.IndexOf("admin") == -1)  )

   6:  {

   7:           Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";

   8:           Response.AddHeader("Location", "http://www." + Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_HOST"] + Request.ServerVariables["URL"]);

   9:           Response.End();

  10:  }

ASP.NET VB Implementation

   1:  If InStr(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME"),"www") = 0)  Then

   2:      Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"

   3:      Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www." & Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST") & Request.ServerVariables("URL"))

   4:      Response.End

   5:  End if

Other  Resources

• 301 Redirect – How to create Redirects
• Steven Hargrove : How to redirect a web page, the smart way
• IIS 301 redirect

Quote of the Day: Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.

The following is an excerpt from Downsizer – Dispatch, the official email list of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. & Downsize DC Foundation.

Many people have asked: “What about people with no health insurance?” Or, “How many people die in America because they lack coverage?”

These are good questions. They were two of my main questions when I started researching this issue.

The most commonly heard estimate for the number of Americans without health insurance is 45 million. That’s a whopping, scary number. Alas, it is also highly misleading. John Stossel of ABC News has used research by the U.S. Census Bureau to expose the deeper truth behind this scary number. It turns out that . . .

• 37% of the un-insured live in households earning more than $50,000 a year (and 19% live in households earning more than $75,000). Can people at these income levels afford major medical insurance? Yes. Should they be subsidized by you and me? No. Subtract this group and the number of uninsured people drops to roughly 28 million.

• 20% of the un-insured are non-citizens. Should you and I pay to insure them through a top-down federal monopoly? We think not. Subtract this group and the number of un-insured people drops to roughly 19 million.

• 33% of the un-insured are already eligible for existing government programs. No new program is needed for people who are already covered by current programs. Subtract them and the number of uninsured people drops to roughly 4 million. This is much more likely to be the true size of the problem.

45 million vs. 4 million — that’s a huge difference! Now here’s the kicker . . .

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a standard health insurance deduction would make it financially possible for 7 million additional people to buy coverage. And another study by the Treasury Department arrives at a similar estimate. Thus . . .

Congress could wipe out the un-insurance problem in one swoop — not by creating a new program, not by spending more money, and not by monopolizing American health care, but simply by letting people keep more of their own money to spend on health insurance.

Moreover, as we understand it, the proposed health insurance deduction could be structured to apply to payroll and Medicare taxes too, which are regressive taxes that hurt low income Americans far more than income taxes do.

Best of all, a standard health insurance deduction wouldn’t just help those with lower incomes, it would help everyone who has to purchase their own insurance.

Now, what about the number of Americans who die because they have no health insurance? As far as we can tell that number is effectively very small, and almost certainly nothing like the 18,000 deaths that Michael Moore claims in “Sicko.” Here’s why . . .

Hospitals are legally required to provide treatment, regardless of ability to pay. Most doctors will also provide routine medical care to the indigent, because this is part of the medical ethos.

In fact, these are two of the main ways low-income non-citizens without insurance get treatment, in addition to the already existing programs at the local, state, and, alas, federal level.

This is not to say that some people don’t fall through the cracks, because of incompetence, or for other random reasons. They do. Perfection is not an option in this imperfect world. It is simply to say that our current system has no fundamental systemic flaw leading to widespread death such as we see with health care rationing in the socialist systems.

We could simply leave it at this and say case closed. Congress could solve the problem of the un-insured with one simple change. No federal health care monopoly is needed. In fact, we have shown that government health care monopolies in other countries have led to unneeded deaths through rationing and waiting lists. So . . .

These facts should be enough for everyone to oppose any further funding of personal health care expenses at the federal level.

But we aren’t done yet.

Our current system would still have problems, even if Congress closes the insurance gap by creating a standard health insurance deduction. After all, the horror stories Michael Moore tells in “Sicko” are true, and similar things would continue to happen far too often, even if we closed the insurance gap.

We can change the debate by forwarding these messages far and wide, and by pounding Congress, to penetrate their myth-shrouded echo chamber.

• We must let Congress know that we know the truth.
• We must tell them that we expect them to know and speak the truth too, and act on it, to improve our health care rather than make it worse.

Achieving these goals is up to you. We provide the tools to do it, but you must use them. Please do two things . . .

1. Forward this message to others.
2. Send Congress a message opposing further federal funding of personal health care expenses. In your personal comments you can cut and paste the above statistics to let Congress know that you know what the truth is, and that you know they have the power to make things better simply by letting people keep more of their own money. Send your message here.

Perry Willis
Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

Microsoft continues to innovate the creative process with their latest release: Microsoft Paint. The video below describes just a bit of what MS Paint is bringing to artists… and to the creative process in general!