Jonathan Ross has landed himself and sex manic Russell Brand (and all round good guy) a suspension and a serious finger wagging at, over the controversy of telling Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs that Brand had f**cked his Granddaughter.

More than 18,000 people have complained to the BBC, this lady was on TV complaining.

To be honest I didn’t think she looked like a Russell Brand fan, but it takes all sorts.

I would like to know how many of the 18,000 complainants had actually listen to the show which was pre-recorded early in the week, I bet not even 1%. What about the people that allowed it to air? Maybe we should burn them at the stake? Apparently after the show aired there were only 2 complaints and they were for the swearing, not the prank.

OK the calls were undoubtedly piss funny if you’re a Brand fan :) and in bad taste if you’re not, but the BBC’s radio program review process is to blame here. It was a pre-recorded show, they let it air but more than that on the day the show was recorded, a producer called Andrew Sachs on his mobile to ask whether they could play the recording in question.

Andrew said:”The signal was poor and I couldn’t really hear what was being played down the line to me.”, “But I asked whether they would consider allowing me to come in the following week and then the recorded segment would not have to be included.”

He said Ross had “personally delivered a letter of apology and some flowers” since the broadcast.

hmmmm didn’t I read recently that the BBC are trying to cut back on spending … £6 million a year for Ross now that’s a big saving I guess…and as for Gordon Brown getting involved I would have thought he has more important things to be focusing on right now like the state of the country the recession.

DaveN

I was speaking to a fairly experienced SEO freelancer this morning  - been in the business three years and a pretty smart guy – and was shocked to learn he wastes an entire day each month preparing ranking reports for his clients. He manually checks the results for the thousands of search terms he’s targeting, in a bunch of separate search engines. Enter term, press search, eyeball results (clicking through to pages 2-5 if necessary), rinse, repeat.

I’m sure many of you reading this are questioning my use of the words “fairly experienced” and “pretty smart” right now, but Dave reminded me a lot of SEOs are self taught and it’s easy to pick up bad habits or retain holes in your knowledge you don’t know you have. With that in mind I thought I’d paraphrase the advice I gave to my time wasting friend this morning.

The tools
There are lots of tools available for ranking reports but most are of the “SEO Swiss Army knife” variety . We steer clear of those for a variety of reasons.
As the reports I need personally tend to be for a couple of dozen to a couple of hundred search terms I find the following tools meet my needs and let me do the job without installing (or paying for) lots of extra software:

•    Mozilla Firefox
•    Aaron Wall’s Rank Checker extension for Firefox
•    Jeremy Gillick’s Switch Proxy extension for Firefox
•    Microsoft Excel or, if you don’t want to spend a single penny on this, Open Office Calc.

The process
Assuming you already have a keyword list in your spreadsheet program simply fire up Aaron’s Rank Checker (one installed it adds a button bottom right of the Firefox status bar), select the “Add multiple keywords” option and paste those babies in. Add the domain, press save, name the keyword set (I normally use the domain name in question) and you’re almost ready to go.

Before you run your report you’ll probably want to adjust the “delay between queries” in the options for this extension, as Google et al don’t like frequent, automated searches. Searching too often could mean no results or (rumour has it) “poisoned” and misleading results. I have this “courtesy setting” at 10 seconds between queries, leaving a full 40 seconds between searches (assuming you’re hitting MSN , Yahoo! and one local Google in addition to Google.com). Plenty to avoid looking like a bandwidth hog I hope (and if anyone reading this can advise of a safe rate at which to do this kind of thing I’m all ears).

That’s about it. Press “run” and leave the extension ticking away in the background while you get on with more productive tasks such as checking YouTube & Facebook.

Using proxy servers
There are two reasons you might want to use the Switch Proxy extension in conjunction with the above: to avoid being labelled a bandwidth hog (i.e. making too many queries to a given engine in a certain time period), and to get geo-targeted results.

On the first, you should be avoiding this if at all possible…ranking reports are typically a once a month job so no need to enact a mini dDOS attack on the engines. If the MD of your biggest client is on the phone demanding a report RIGHT NOW you might want to do it on the hurry up though. In that situation use Switch Proxy to send Rank Checker’s queries via an anonymous proxy, then spot check afterwards from your own IP address (or another proxy physically located close to the one you used) to make sure your rank checker results are a close or exact match for those you see with your own eyes.

The second and more common reason for rank checking via a proxy is to get geo-located results. If your client site has a geographic focus other than your own, or no specific geo-focus at all, you’ll probably want to use a proxy close to their physical location so you get as similar results to them as possible. On larger projects you might even need to run multiple reports from various locations to get a global view, though that level of detail can probably be omitted unless you’re working for one of the Amazons or Ebays of the world.

One proviso to the above: Rank Checker is a Firefox extension, not an application in its own right. Save & edit features might not be what you expect and its possible to lose saved data with an errant click. Save everything you do to a file from your spreadsheet application and you won’t go far wrong though.

That’s how I do it…would love to hear from anyone who has quicker tools, a slicker process or advice for staying on the right side of the search engines while doing this kind of thing!

Added by Dave : my point of view on this “I’d rather pay a little more to amazon.com, than daves-gift-store.. just because I believe that Amazon will deliver the goods before Christmas and not go bust !!”

Online retailers of gifts like books,toys, music and games are set to make a killing this year in the lead up to Christmas. The major player’s such as Amazon.com steal the limelight and leave many other online gift shops in the shade. Is this because of their outstanding levels of customer service we ask ? Taken at random allgiftsonline.com what chance do they have competing with the likes of Amazon.com ?

After my recent experience of buying online at Empire Direct  and the total  let down with delivery and poor customer service  I would certainly think twice about trying to secure Christmas presents online this year. What if the product simply doesn’t turn up ?  If the large online retailers have problems outside of the seasonal  online shopping rush, what chance do they have of fulfilling shoppers requirements at peak times?

Dan Horton SEO

A man who looks younger every day thanks to the boost search can give you is celebrating his Birthday today. Mel Carson. Happy Birthday!

Mel is well known on the speaking circuit these days and a good front man to Microsoft. Check out his public speaking tips.

Iv’e met Mel through Dave and I guess we share a certain sense of humour.

Dan Horton SEO 

A Beanbag or a Bean Bag. Well, that’s the debate that has been circling the office like wildfire in a dry timber shack this afternoon.

DaveN has been sent a beanbag chair from Sumo lounge. He calls it a “His Bean Chair” which he is  very defensive over, in-fact so defensive I received the V salute when in a meter proximity.

He’s often caught brainstorming SEO issues whilst immersed in the red plumpy sack. Dan McSkelly the latest SEO team recruit has taken up deep mediation  (Some call it Kundalini) on this polystyrene haven.

Rory seems somewhat lost in the expanse of the love chair.

Space age and rip proof nylon, well Dan Horton  couldn’t resist this super size pillow, to him  it’s a love sack of stain proof resistance.

To promote this urban lounge gear we need a model of real calibre, much like those on the website www.sumolounge.com. Someone who is willing to drape themselves appropriately in the DaveN office. Any offers ?

Dan Horton SEO

Added by Dave : We only review things we have in the office and you can’t pay me to review something I haven’t seen, played with or used, and not all make it to the website like that God awful orange drink … yuck, or a few books that where crap :), If i review a product it’s because I generally like the the product