Recently I noticed that Google's "Googlebot" was using this website's search engine. This is not exactly surprising since a website's search engine may be able to find pages that are not well linked to by others. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how the Googlebot performs its task. Here are some entries from the log (truncated so that its easier to fit into the page):

Last night I discovered that all CSS capable web-browsers would make the page content above an anchor vanish when that anchor was linked to. For example, clicking on the comments link for a blog post would result in all content above the comments section to disappear under the page header. This is rather unpleasant behaviour since it looks unprofessional, and it is impossible to scroll up in order to view the rest of the content. After hours of fault-finding and internet scouring, it turned out to be the "overflow hidden" method that was being used in order to make the sidebar and main content equal in height.

Recently the OWB web-browser for Amiga OS 4.x was updated to version 10, and last night I upgraded and tested this website with it. To my horror OWB was ignoring the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) stylesheet and presenting the user with an unformatted page. Initially I thought that CSS might be broken, but no other website that I visited had this problem. Even stranger was that the webpage was shown properly when viewed from a version that had been saved to disk.

This month, the major change to this website was a proper logo, and corresponding layout changes. This was motivated in part due to Google disabling my AdSense account (thanks to visitors to this site making invalid clicks on AdSense advertisements). Other improvements to usability, have also been made. I did intend to write a blog entry regarding creating logos with no budget, but I have lacked the free time necessary to make that happen. Maybe later...

A screenshot of the new and improved HDRLab website.

This website has undergone some changes recently in order to improve its usability. In chronological order, they are:

Some visitors may have noticed that the Google avertisements on this website have disappeared. This is due to Google deciding to disable my account because they detected "invalid clicks." Last month I noticed an unusual spike in AdSense earnings and expected them to drop again. Well, the earnings didn't drop at all. It looks as if these earnings were due to people deliberately clicking on advertisements that they have no interest in. Whilst I did suspect that this was happening (all the clicks were on the top banner, and there were too many of them), I am personally not responsible for them; nor did I know of any way to counter this. Naturally, the Google Adsense "invalid click" detection algorithms picked this up, and my account was promptly disabled without warning. I did appeal, citing that I am not responsible for these clicks, but I received a standard email reply stating that the account would not be reinstated.

This month has seen further development of the RadeonHD driver, and a few more OpenGL templates. Fewer additions to this website occurred because I have been spending more time working on various projects. Unlike other websites, adding pages to this site requires extra work to develop the software/technology upon which the page is based (except for random musings in this blog). This results in fewer updates, but also less rambling.

When was the last time that you used a web directory in order to find a site? In fact, when was the last time that you used a web directory for anything? The last time that I even looked at a directory was after Website Grader noted that this website did not appear in DMOZ or Yahoo's directory. Other than that, I probably haven't used a directory to find information in over a decade. My first instinct is to use Google, and just try different keywords until I find what I'm looking for.

I stumbled upon an interesting and potentially useful website grading service today. Website Grader examines the homepage of a website, and brings together data from multiple sources in order to give an idea of how effective the marketing effectiveness of that website. More importantly, it provides tips on how to improve. For example, this website is not listed on DMOZ and Yahoo Directories, something that could be done in order to improve ranking.