Representative Expression

This is a response to good article that I read on the use of abuse to fight abuse and the issues that surround such activity. There is a link at the end to oringal article by David Cory Hart.

Much of the spam that we receive is sent in direct violation of various federal and local laws. Many purveyors of spam are, simply stated, criminals.

The only issue I have with the above statement is that not all countries regard sending SPAM as a contravention of their laws. Having a global policy of making it illegal would be almost impossible to enforce. What I do agree with David is that it should be illegal everywhere and those responsible treated as criminals where ever..

Now that there is a way for blogspot blog to add Google sitemap, and also a way to ping Google sitemap, does this mean that if a new blog have not been indexed yet, by adding Google sitemap to their blog and then pinging Google sitemap, one can get one's blog indexed faster?

This is part of a response I made to an email on the Yahoo Blogger support group to the above question. There had been a few questions on the subject in recent weeks so I thought I would post it here as post.

The answer or in this case answers is yes and no and now that I think about it, maybe....
If you host your blog on their servers (blogspot), it will take 3-7 days for them to find it.
If you host your blog on your own server, it will take around 5-7 days for them to find it.  (using blogger that is.. If say you use Moveable Type, then it will take them forevre to find it if you don't have any inbound links or tell them about it).
If you add a google sitemap and tell them about it, it will still take 3-7 days for them to get round to indexing it.

Also remember that just because you've told google about your site in say hours... It doesn't mean they will do anything with the data for weeks. It all comes down to the quality of the site content (and that goes with physical content as well site construction (coding, colour schemes etc)). Just telling Google about a site is a fraction of the story.

But, here is the word of warning I gave out before...

Yes Google have provided a way for you to authenticate your site by the use of a META Tag...
In order to prove that the sitemap you have submitted to Google belongs to you, they used to get you to upload an 'verification file' to your root directory. 
Google would then know that you had access to that folder and the chances were that the site was yours. 
Because some Blogspot users can't do this (because you host on blogspot not on your own web server), they provided a method for users to use a META TAG inserted in their template to provide the authentication.  

But being on blogspot you cannot generate a SITEMAP.XML (or SITEMAP.XML.GZ - the compressed version). 
Usually, this would be a file that contains ALL of the pages on your site.  So in the case of one of my personal blogs, a list to over 2500 individual pages.
There is nothing to stop you generating this SITEMAP file no matter who you are hosted with, but if you are on blogspot you cannot upload it to your sites root folder (because you don't have FTP access to that folder).
You cannot place it on a remote machine and then point Google Sitemaps to it because it has to be on the root folder of your website.
But don't despair...   You have two options, one of which is a tadge sneaky, but still alllowed.  

I've finally finished upgrading my web hosting website and its now available for taking live orders.
I'm still waiting for a few payment processor accounts to go live and these are easy enough to add as and when they become active.
For the moment you can select Paypal as the payment processor or a manual invoice step which allows you to place and order and then I email you back to sort out payment options.

So if anyone visits my blog, and wants to place an order, use the manual step for the time being and I will sort you out an extra discount.
Once we agree on a price, I will give you the access page for the payment processor of your choice with the new reduced fee.
For those people who are members of the 'forum', I'll even set you up accounts at cost. (Those who know which forum will know what I am talking about, those who are wise enough to work out which forum can also have the discount). After you have made your order, email me your 'forum' username and I will give you the true 'cost' price.

I am still working on adding much more content to the site, but wanted to get the basics out there and running. I am about to add the following sections:

• Web Site Design - This will include links to the various sites I have already designed and in operation right now.
• SEO - We will also be offering SEO services in order to help improve your site rankings.
• Blogging - More information on the blogging services we offer. This will include installations of many of the popular blogging applications and also dedicated accounts for hosting your 'blogspot' blogs.
• Add in the FAQ section - The FAQ module is there, but not visible at the moment as it has been causing cross-browser problems on verification. Its only a few minor tweaks required, its just getting the time to fix it that is the hassle right now.

To understand this, you have to think back to the last game of the season between West Ham and Tottenham, when 10 of the Tottenham team went down with food poisoning