Search engines are basically computer programs that search the Internet for Web sites. With over 85% of people using search engines to start their Internet sessions and about 81% of these people finding NEW Web sites via search engines, you can see why search and search engines mean big business.

You may have heard of ‘little-known’ engines like Google, Yahoo! and Live Search (formerly MSN)? Well, as you may have guessed, Google is the big enchilada of search engines with over 80% of New Zealand searchers using it to find Web sites and images. It’s important then, that Google likes your Web site so you can get in front of people online. Your next question is probably something along the lines of, ‘how does my Web site get loved up by Google?’

What search engines like Google go for
There are lots of factors to consider, but here are a few of the things about Web sites that search engines like Google tend to prefer:

• Sites that make their content accessible to spiders or robots (programs that index the Internet)
• Sites publishing lots of unique, relevant and interesting content
• Sites that offer a lot of textual content and aren’t heavily graphic or Flash laden
• Sites with lots of votes from other 3rd party Web sites (incoming links)

View more info about Web site design that’s search engine friendly. Good luck!

Try not to get sucked into the TV trap, but make sure you check out TVNZ’s television download service. If you miss an episode of your favourite series or want to enjoy a programme for the second time, then this may be for you. They’ve even included some classic moments from the archives of New Zealand television, alongside popular current shows from TV One and TV2 (my picks are the satirical Facelift and Eating Media Lunch).

And if all those hours of watching TV have whittled away your brainpower, don’t fret - it’s simple to use!

You can download programmes onto your computer to watch at your leisure through Windows Media Player, or you can view them straight away on your computer via the streaming option. All you need to do is purchase a licence to watch each show; it’s a steal at just $2.00 a pop. This fee allows you to watch the show as many times as you want for a period of seven days.

There’s great potential here for all screened television programmes to be available at any hour of the day. For now, it’s mainly New Zealand talent that’s showcased, but there are more programmes lined up for release online soon. Ondemand is a great initiative from our state broadcaster: cheers TVNZ!

Are you a news addict like me? For me, it’s essential to know what’s been happening in New Zealand and in every corner of the world, every single day. And yet I don’t read a newspaper (aside from the occasional Sunday news with tea and toast).

So what’s the story? Well, I read the news online. It’s updated almost instantly, is archived from previous days, shows links to related news stories, and best of all, it’s free! See my earlier post for proof that I love a free lunch.

While it’s good news that Kiwis are a media savvy bunch (with 80% reading a newspaper at least once a week), the bad news is that the 750,000 daily newspapers we read are gobbling up over 640 trees every day. While newspapers are fully recyclable, many end up in our landfills. So, not only is online news up to date and full of features, it’s good for the earth.

For a daily news fix online, my choice is Stuff, where you can read a collection of top national, world, sport, business and entertainment stories. Stuff also allows you to view the day’s stories from your own local paper and is quick to update the site with breaking news stories. For more independent news and indepth political analysis, try Scoop, a self-professed “fiercely independent” online news resource.

Around the world, papers are struggling to retain readers as more and more people head online to read the news. While that’s not-so-good news for media organisations and print advertisers, newspapers going online has been great news for readers and for the environment.

Outside my door last week, I found a box with my name on it. A big box. I wasn’t expecting anything, so it was with some excitement I opened the box to discover two large packets of bagel chips (like bagels, only cut up, cooked until crunchy, then seasoned). The next day, a tin of Mediterranean style tuna arrived unannounced (I don’t eat fish, but my cat does!). Later, bags of chewy candy and samples of olive oil materialized in my letterbox.

What did it all mean? At last, I’d discovered a source of free lunches!

Actually, I was reaping the rewards of dabbling in our Free Stuff category. Register for this, express interest in that, fill in a quick survey and before I knew it, I had free food arriving by the boxful. For New Zealand companies and consumers, it’s a win-win situation - they get your input into what products you’d like to see on the shelves of your local supermarket and you get a taste test for free.

As well as food, there are heaps of other freebies and giveaways up for grabs in this popular category. I’m awaiting my next tasty installment…

It’s great to have the opportunity to contribute to NZS.com’s shiny, new blog. As an optimiser, Web writer and Web marketer, I’m looking forward to sharing info, tips, news and views about each of these disciplines with you.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) - a brief intro
Search engine optimisation or SEO is all about visibility. Visibility on search engines in fact, just as its name suggests. It’s the process of enhancing Web sites with specific content, with the aim of encouraging search engines to feature these Web sites in their results pages. Web sites can then be found and seen by people using search engines (I’ll talk more about search engines in another post.)

Optimisers, like me, spend time analysing the words people use on search engines. We then optimise (or edit) the content of Web sites with these words in mind and promote sites to target specific searchers (and searches).

Getting to the top of the ranking…
If people use the Google search engine to find a Web design company in New Zealand, their search words may be, “new zealand web design”. At the top of the searches, at position #1, is Avatar’s Web site. Now this didn’t just happen… It’s partly the result of a successful optimisation strategy. (Phew! You might just think I know what I’m talking about now!) Tune into NZS.com’s blog for more insight into the wonderful world of optimisation and how it can help you improve your Web site visibility.

I don’t know about you, but last week I sent nearly 200 emails. Maybe I should adopt Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, “to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book”? I must have written a whole book worth of emails in my lifetime! With so much email rabbiting, I was ashamed to realise I hadn’t the first e-clue about where emails had come from…

With a little digging, I discovered that email was invented in 1971 by Roy Tomlinson, whose company was developing computer networking technology in Massachusetts. The project his team was working on would later become, um, the Internet. Tomlinson had the bright idea of combining two of his own projects and, voila, the first email message was sent. At first, Tomlinson kept the lid on his invention because email had been a pet project he’d done when he should have been doing, you know, work. Today, 87 million people use email to communicate every day.

Some of those people use email marketing as a clever promotional tool, bypassing the letter box (pricier, since the increase to 50 cents to send a standard letter) and going straight for the cyber inbox. With email marketing you can:

• Increase sales and bring customers back for more
• Get useful feedback from clients
• Reach people through one of the most popular applications on the Internet today
• Save money (no print or postage required)
• Get your message out there quickly

Beware though, New Zealand’s anti-spam legislation comes into force on September 1st 2007, so be sure to get up to speed on the new laws and get permission from all those on your mailing list.

You might remember news, back in June, of a couple who wanted to name their son ‘4real.’ Yes, for real! Pat and Sheena Wheaton, of Wellington, settled on the name after seeing an ultrasound image and being hit by the reality of their unborn bub. Pat told media: “With this name, everyone knows what it means.” The New Zealand Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages didn’t see it their way; apparently names starting with numbers are against the rules and all unusual names must be considered on a case by case basis. So, 4real is still up in the air.

But just what’s in a New Zealand place name?

Land Information New Zealand provides accurate information on all New Zealand land areas and seabeds. Their site is a useful resource if you’re searching for geographic information, maps and topography, or names of New Zealand places and streets. It’s also interesting to see the criteria for naming a place. Generally:

• Historic, geographic or locally meaningful names are okay (including names of pioneers or early explorers)
• Names of living people cannot be used (usually a deceased person’s surname is used)
• Descriptive names can be used, as long as they’re not the same as a name in an adjacent area
• There are no double ups
• Names can be corrected if a spelling mistake or earlier name is discovered
• Offensive names are avoided

Anyone can suggest new names or alterations to existing place names. These are brought before the New Zealand Geographic Board who look at the origin, meaning and significance of the name. Who knew there was so much in a name?

If you’re looking for a place in New Zealand, you might want to check out our recently launched New Zealand Maps section.

There is a type of software that exists that you are not only allowed, but are encouraged, to copy and give to your friends. This software is not second-rate or dubious quality but, just for example, it runs most of the world wide web.

The most famous name for this software is Open Source Software also known as Free Software, FOSS, FLOSS and Libre Software. It should be noted that the the term Free Software is a reference to freedom not lack of monetary price.

The main features of Open Source Software are:

• The complete source code of the software can be accessed and modified
• It is possible to get the software without any charge

Open Source software has been significantly growing in popularity since the birth of the Internet. One of the more famous examples of Open Source Software is the Firefox Web browser. There is also a free word processor and office suite called Open Office. The Web server that serves the pages of the majority of Web sites on the Internet (Netcraft Survey) is called Apache and is Open Source Software.

Arguably one of the most significant Open Source projects is called Linux and is an operating system (like MS Windows XP and Apple OSX). This Web site is served from a system running Apache on a Linux operating system.

Here in New Zealand we have a large and active community of Linux enthusiasts and experts. We have NZLUG which is a New Zealand-wide mailing list to get help on and discussion about Linux there is also CLUG in Canterbury, and WLUG in Waikato and a quite a few other places.

There are also New Zealand companies that specialise in Open Source Software solutions, like Catalyst in Wellington and Egressive in Christchurch.

Try this: Grab a copy of your local white pages (no, not the online version, a paper-and-ink copy!). Find a phone number for ‘J. Smith’. How long did that take? 10-20 seconds maybe? Not very long. Now choose a phone number at random that is likely to be in the phone book, say 321-1234. Using the phone book, find the person who has that phone number. Go on, I’ll wait. How long did that take? What was that? You haven’t found it yet?

Why is it that finding the number for J. Smith in the phone book is faster (much, much faster!) than finding the person in the phone book who has the number 321-1234? Because the phone book entries have been sorted by name. Because the names in the phone book are sorted, if we are looking for Smith, and we open the phone book at, say, Miller, then we know immediately that we needn’t look in the first half of the phone book. We can quickly eliminate large chunks of the phone book from our search. In contrast, when searching for 321-1234, we have no option but to look at every number on every page until we find it (or get to the end and find the number’s not even in there!). Sorting information is critical to be able to find what we want quickly.

Enter the World Wide Web: a large mass of completely unsorted information. How do we find what we want? We need someone to sort it for us. Fortunately NZS.com is working on this never-ending task for web sites relevant to New Zealand, and looking for what you want on the NZS.com site is fast and efficient.

To find out more about some methods computers use to sort lots of information, see the fascinating site Computer Science Unplugged, two authors of which are prominent New Zealand Computer Scientists.

We’re excited about the recent launch of a New Zealand Maps section on NZS.com, which we’ve already received good feedback on. One of the popular features is the ability to click (or link) directly to a city within NZ (e.g. North Shore Map) .

If you’re a regular user of the NZS.com search and directory, you will have seen a number of new additions turning up over the last few months. We’re happy to say that the addition of useful New Zealand related information is only going to increase as 2007 continues.

We’re always open to suggestions so if you have something you’d love to see on the NZS.com site, we have a dedicated Suggestion Box just for you. Let us know what you’re looking for!