Category Google

The What:

Website owners who use SSL certificates purchased from Symantec prior to June 1, 2016 will need to replace them soon, or site users will begin seeing the warning show below. This includes SSLs issued from companies owned by Symantec, including Thawte, Verisign, Equifax, GeoTrust, and RapidSSL.

The When:

The Chrome v66 browser, which arrives mid-April, and Firefox v60, coming in May, will both display the above warning. Other browsers will most likely follow shortly. In October 2018, new versions of Chrome and Firefox will completely remove support of any kind for affected certificates.

The Who:

The major players in this scenario are Google (makers of Chrome) and Mozilla (makers of Firefox) on the browser side, and Symantec and DigiCert on the SSL side. DigiCert has purchased Symantec’s certificate-issuance division and is currently working with Google and Mozilla to repair the situation.

The How:

If your website’s URL begins with https:// then you are using an SSL certificate. To check it’s validity, you may visit the link below. Enter only your domain name (the www.name.com part) to see if your current certificate will remain valid, or if it will need to be replaced: The link is:

https://www.websecurity.symantec.com/support/ssl-checker

The Why:

A series of poor decisions and misplaced trust in 3rd party outsourcing resulted in Symantec issuing thousands of faulty SSL certificates. More than once. This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment event, rather it is a joint decision made by the major browser manufacturers, put in place over time, in an effort to maintain consumer confidence in the SSL certificate system in general.

The ‘What The Heck Do I Do’:

If you have a valid SSL, then you should be good to go. It wouldn’t hurt to re-check closer to October, though, just to be on the safe side.  If you get the dreaded ‘you must replace’ message, you have a couple of options:

1. DigiCert is offering to replace all Symantec-issued certificates (including those issued by the subsidiaries listed above) for free. To claim your free replacement, visit this link (the sooner the better): https://www.digicert.com/replace-your-symantec-ssl-tls-certificates/
2. If you prefer, you may request that your website host replace the SSL certificate with one from another company. There’s no guarantee that this will be free, however. Discuss your options with your hosting provider.

If all of this is more than you want to deal with, contact Diamond Mind Web Design for help at (417) 496-9905.

The Other Stuff:

For more information regarding the contents of this post, please view the following articles:

• A list of Symantec’s SSL-related issues: https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:Symantec_Issues
• Google’s plan/timeline and reasoning: https://security.googleblog.com/2017/09/chromes-plan-to-distrust-symantec.html
• DigiCert’s take on the situation: https://www.websecurity.symantec.com/en/us/digicert-and-symantec-faq

Perky voice on my phone today….

“Hi! This is Sarah, calling about your Google listing? I’m looking at my system here, and it still looks like your listing is incorrect. Correct listings mean you’re much more likely to be ranked above your competition. So if you’ll call me back at (1-800-number) and get me the correct information, we’ll get it all updated! ”

Translation: “Hi, I’m a scammer! I have no relationship at all with Google — you’ll notice I never said I actually worked there. I’m really trying to get your name, social, and any password info you’re dumb enough to give me! Have a nice day!”

I’ve heard from several of my clients about similar calls within the last few days, all with the same basic question: Is this legit or bogus? The answer — ding ding ding! — is BOGUS.  I tell them that Google is like the IRS — they will NEVER call you to ask for personal details about you or your business (unless you have specifically requested them to).

In fact, 95% of the contacts you may receive about business listings, either via phone or email (or even text) are scams of some sort or another. They may be straight up phishing scams like this one, or if coming from places like YP.com, scams of the “technically we’re telling you the truth, but leaving out some really, really important details” variety.  But that’s a post for another day…

I hope you all got the opportunity to check out the excellent Google Doodles honoring Sally Ride yesterday, on what would have been her 64th birthday. Sally was the first female astronaut in the United States, riding the space shuttle Challenger into space in 1983 and again in 1984. In addition to her inspiring career with NASA, Sally started a company helping to educate and inspire young people, with an emphasis on girls, to pursue careers in science.

Below are the five Doodles covering aspects of Sally’s life and career, as well as a “behind the scenes” video by the artist/animator of the doodles, Olivia Huynh. You may have noticed that the Doodles loaded randomly each time the Google home screen was refreshed.  This random image rotation effect can be accomplished with a small bit of Javascript, and we currently make use of it on several websites. If this effect is something you are interested in placing on your site, give us a call at (417) 496-9905.

If not, now would probably be a good time! Use this link to find out how Google sees your site:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

Simply put in your website address, and you’ll get a return page after a few moment’s analysis. If your site is good, it will look like ours. After yesterday’s “Armagoogle” deadline (okay, I stole that), if your site is NOT mobile-friendly, you may have already lost ground in your company’s page rank.  And if you haven’t yet, it’s only a matter of time — the web is a big place, and Google is determined to serve mobile search users only pages that can be accessed and used by mobile devices.

Wondering why this change is happening? It’s not exactly sudden, as Google has been marking pages as mobile friendly, or not, for a few months, but this news out of the wireless cellphone service world, coming just one day later, seems like it might be the first dot in a much larger picture.

According to the article from Business Insider, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, Google will now be offering a “pay-for-use-only” data service for cell phones.  And while it may be limited at first, if there’s one thing that has proven true over the past 20 years, it’s that Google sees the big picture better than anyone. It’s not that difficult to speculate that more dots will be coming.

In the meantime, if you need help with your website’s mobile-friendly status, call Diamond Mind Web Design at (417) 496-9905, or fill out our brief Contact Form.  We will be glad to assist you!

Like it or not, it had better be, and soon. Google is making a major change to their ranking algorithm, beginning next week on April 21st, that will strongly affect mobile search results. If your website is already mobile-friendly, great! You’re ahead of the curve. If it’s not, though, what will this algorithm change mean for you?

Well, let’s say you’re pulling Page 1 search result rankings for “brown barbaloots”, but your website is not mobile-friendly. After April 21st, if a search for “brown barbaloots” is made from a desktop computer, you’re likely (but not guaranteed) to still be in the same position. But if the search is made from a mobile device, expect a significant drop in your search rankings.

According to Google, “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.” What this boils down to is left unsaid: Users won’t be getting non-mobile-friendly-website results.

Don’t let that be you! If you are unsure about your website’s mobile-friendly status, use this handy tool provided by Google for that exact purpose. Simply put in your URL and Google will analyze your site and return its verdict. If it turns out to be a thumbs-down, what next? Depends on the site, as there are several possible options, including a redesign, a retrofit, and a new mobile-only site. If you need professional advice or help with moving ahead, call us at (417) 496-9905, or fill out our Contact Form.

If you’ve been on Google today, you’ve surely noticed the futuristic train sketch replacing the usual logo, as Google honors Raymond Loewy on his 120th birthday anniversary.

You may not be familiar with the name, but you are certainly familiar with the results of Loewy’s lifetime of work in the design field, whether you know it or not.  Each time you pass a Shell station, or visit the Post Office, or drink Coke from a bottle, you are interacting with one of Loewy’s creations.

Throughout his lifetime of work, spanning 70 years in the field of industrial design — emphasis on “design” — Loewy championed the notion that manufacturing could produce items that were beautiful as well as functional.  From cars, trains, planes, boats, and buses, to appliances, flatware, dinnerware, furniture, product logos and packaging, Loewy could “claim to have made the daily life of the 20th Century more beautiful”, as he himself once said.

Want more proof? Click on the Google logo, then click on the “Images” tab of results for a broad overview of the many items that Loewy designed.  Here’s a screenshot of just a small portion of one page:

Loewy’s work with corporate logos alone resulted in many icons that are still in use today, including Shell, Exxon, Nabisco, and the US Post Office. Several graphic designers of my acquaintance would give their eyeteeth to have legacies as lasting! 🙂

EVERY website has the ability to track certain basic data about you when you visit, such as time and date, your IP address (and therefore general location), and third-party referrer data (meaning how you got there from here). For the majority of websites, this information is merely passively collected and rarely, if ever, used.

If you’ve ever had experience with Google Analytics, you know that this data-tracking can be expanded much further, to include your computer’s operating system, type of browser, what you looked at on the site, where you went when you left the site, and so on. Many businesses (ostensibly) use this expanded information set to improve your user experience when you visit their site.

But you might be surprised to learn exactly how MUCH data is collected about you when you go to the 5 biggest (and most-visited) technology company sites on the ‘Net: Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo. Check out the infographic below to see what’s collected, and what that information is actually being used for. And remember, in most cases you provide, or allow, this information to be collected…

Article source: VentureBeat Infographic source: Baynet

Seriously, go do it! You might be surprised about what you find, especially if you are someone concerned with your privacy. Or with your online reputation, which these days equates to your reputation, period. Remember to put your name in quotes for more accurate results, and log out of any Google account prior to searching.

Keep in mind that most of the information you find about yourself online was originally put there by Y-O-U, particularly if it was through one of the social media platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn. There are plenty of sites out there, though, that gather all that information together in one place for the entire world to see — Pipl, for example.

In any case, you do have some control over what is out there. You can change the privacy settings on your own social media accounts (or remove information entirely), though that won’t get rid of it elsewhere once it’s been collated. You may have to visit each “aggregate” site individually to request removal of unwanted public information.

If that seems like too big a chore, you can always hire someone proficient in online profile management (such as your friendly neighborhood web designer) to attempt a clean-up for you. And all of this holds true for businesses as well as for individuals. Check out this infographic from PR-Daily for some online reputation specifics.

And here we always thought that “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus”! Not according to this infographic from InternetServiceProviders.org, which breaks down social media usage by sex.   Most of the stats fall into the “expected” category, i.e. females make up the lion’s (or lioness’) share of Pinterest users, and so on.

Among some of the more surprising conclusions:

1) Pinterest drives more business referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined.

2) Even though Google+ is dominated by male users (or maybe because of that), the average time spent PER MONTH on Google+ is only 3 minutes!

What stats from this graphic make you go hmmmm?