New name

[SummerSkye]

With Oola's kind help, I have changed my name to SummerSkye.
After previous experiences I am a little bit paranoid about names on the Net being too close to one's own. Hopefully this site will remain a place for like minded people to meet and exchange views and ideas with no unpleasantness surfacing. :)

[eleanor2]

it will cheer us up when we read some of these new names. summer sky healing hands etc. hope you dont mind being called summer.

[Pippa]

Love the name change, I am equally filled with paranoid feelings on the net, but don't intend to miss out on the friendship this forum is allowing me.

[Redstart]

For the same reason I want to change my name too - how do you do it? And I wondered why you'd disappeared from my buddy list and summerskye had appeared in it when I didn't remember putting her there!

[Crocus]

Hi SummerSkye! Love your new name. Summery and 'islandy'!

[Crocus]

Hi SummerSkye! Love your new name. Summery and 'islandy'!

Stupid question, Oola, but is it possible for names on your site to be found on Google?

[Oola]

Quite possibly as the forum posts could appear on Google. It takes a while for them to appear so it's not a problem at the moment.

When a new website appears Google have things called 'bots' that automatically crawl over the public areas of the website...eventually it all gets listed in their search engines one way or another, as far as I know. But that is the nature of public chat forums I'm afraid. As long as you don't give out any personal info it shouldn't be a problem anyhow :)

Also if you're using an Alias (i.e. your forum name) people won't be able to glean much from that anyway.

[Oola]

Mandy if you want I can change your user name to something else? Just let me know

[Crocus]

Stupid question again Oola, how could the forum posts appear on Google?

[Oola]

Well basically because this website is a public chat forum, meaning if people locate it (difficult at the moment because it's not well known and has no links) they can read the posts without being a member, and not contributing.

Google have an automated system so that they can continually keep their search engines up to date with new websites. What they do is have these miniature bits of programming called 'bots' that come and automatically log things on the website, and then send the information back to Google, and thus the new website content appears on their search engines. Then if someone types in 'dartmouth holiday', eventually when the search engines have updated, probably somewhere in the deep depths of their search engine results for 'dartmouth holiday', the posts that have appeared on the travel engine part of this website that include the keywords 'dartmouth' and 'holiday' will pop up. But they'll probably be pages and pages back so won't be viewed by anyone anyway. This is the case for all public chat forums, like CL, Good Housekeeping etc.

But unless you've actively posted any of your details such as your email address or real name (VERY unlikely), nobody will know who you are, where you come from or what your inside leg measurement is.

Hope this helps!

EDit: I should add that if the forum posts are ever listed on google, they can take sometimes 6 months to appear...even the purplecoo posts don't appear really. It's really nothing to worry about :)

[Crocus]

Thanks so much Oola, for explaining!

[Pippa]

Thanks for all that information Oola, very reassuring.

[dinger]

love your new name especially when we look out on these dreary mornings we are getting .Summersky cheers me up

[sheddie]

Oola can you advise me how to get mandys Fairies to come up on google by using search words ie:- fairy book, fairy verses, fairy poetry book, fairy gifts. If you would like to link on let me know, i have got our web master sorting links out at the moment.

[sunflower]

Ooooh love that name....SummerSkye!

[Oola]

Hi sheddie

Well this is where it all gets a bit complicated and it's not quite my forte!

You see, Google has something that is known as Google PR (page ranking). Basically, the higher the page ranking, the higher ranking the website will have on the search engine when you type in your search keywords. I don't know the complete ins and outs of it, but I think the more 'good quality' links you get to your site (where you manage to get a link on someone else's website who has a high Google PR ranking already), the higher your PR will be, and then the higher up on the search engine you will eventually appear.

What I can do is ask Rich (my other half, he is registered on this forum) about it and get back to you. He knows more about it than me and might be able to explain how it works better. At the moment you're first in the results from Google if you type in 'Mandy's Fairies' into Google. But obviously you want to link to the keywords you listed, e.g. coming high up in the results for 'fairy book', 'fairy verses' etc....I think that you will need to do something called link building to try and boost the web traffic and chances of someone coming across your site.

So a website with a PR of 8,9 or 10 is likely to be something well known like amazon.co.uk - lots of traffic, lots of good links and good quality website copywriting and content...

I'll try and get Rich to explain in a bit better detail. I've also said to dinger that if/when I put the business directory up here she can have a link for free. I'll try and make a feature out of it.

Anyhow I will try and get back to you with some advice that is actually useful!

For now you can try and read:

http://www.searchengineguide.com/orbidex/2002/0207_orb1.html

for a simple explanation :) I'm not always clear and succinct in my writing...sorry about that ;)