Is your website Manually Penalized by Google?

Google will tell if your Website has been Manually Penalized


If your website’s position in Google for a particular search query has suddenly dropped from the first page to, say, the fifth page of Google search results, chances are that your site has been manually penalized – maybe you did something that is not in accordance with Google’s webmaster guidelines.Earlier, it was almost impossible to diagnose the reason for a Google penalty and website owners could only guess whether their site was affected for violating guidelines or because of other factors beyond their control – maybe another site had better content and that could have pushed your site down in Google without you doing anything “black hat.”Well I hope none of us would ever need to use this but in case your site gets penalized in future, you can always ask Google through a reconsideration request and they may offer you an hint for debugging in the right direction. 
                   The Search Quality Team writes on the Webmaster blog:Now, if your site is affected by a manual spam action, we may let you know if we were able to revoke that manual action based on your reconsideration request. Or, we could tell you if your site is still in violation of our guidelines. If your site is not actually affected by any manual action, we may let you know that as wellIf your site has been manually penalized in Google for violating guidelines, you need to file a reconsideration request and wait until they revoke the penalty. If the site is not ranking due to a bug in Google algorithms, or because of access issues (like your server is down), they’ll let you know that as well.Here’s one of the older videos from Google that talks in detail about reconsideration requests – the Webmaster tools UI though may have changed in these years.

Mind Mapping App for iOS is now Free

Mind Mapping App for iOS is now Free
Mindjet is a neat iOS app that you may use to create mind maps, capture notes or to brainstorm ideas on your iPhone or iPad. The app was earlier selling in the iTunes store for $8.99 but, with the upcoming launch of Mind Manager 2012, the mobile app is now available as a free download.Getting started with Mindjet is easy.

                                        Tap and hold a topic to create a child or a sub-topic. Double-tap to change the formatting or the shape of a node. You may also include images, hyperlinks and additional text in the various nodes.You can connect the Mindjet app to your Dropbox account and the mind map files created on the iOS device will automatically synchronize with your PC or Mac folder. Since the app uses the native .mmap format, mind maps created on the iOS device can also be edited using Mind Manager software on the desktop and vice-versa.

Inforgraphics: SEO vs PPC

SEO or PPC, which is better?

Crossing continents over birds..!

Snails rode over birds to cross continents?
Like humans use aeroplanes for flying, snails may have ridden over shorebirds or stuck to their legs to cross Central America twice in the past million years, said scientists."Just as people use airplanes to fly overseas, marine snails may have used birds to fly over land," said Mark Torchin, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.The idea goes back to Charles Darwin, who speculated that migratory birds could transport snails to distant places.
                                              Sometimes such events trigger devastating biological invasions -- introducing new diseases, wiping out resident species or causing economic damage to food crops, according to a Smithsonian statement."There's also a big difference between one or two individuals ending up in a new place, and a really successful invasion, in which several animals survive, reproduce and establish new populations," added Torchin, the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: B reports.\

"Not only snails, but many...organisms may be able to 'fly' with birds," said study co-author Osamu Miura, assistant professor at Japan's Kochi University and former post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institute.In 1940, George Gaylord Simpson, who studied natural history recorded in fossils, coined the term "sweepstakes dispersal" to describe the unlikely events in which animals cross over a barrier resulting in major consequences for diversity of life.