Karlonia.com

This week we have a good variety of search queries to deal with, including some for pages that were not previously indexed. The most popular pages have not changed much since last week, although the compilation post on short funny sayings has made it into the top ten.

increase alexa rank without toolbar — If you want to do this by surfing your own site, you can use the Firefox extension Search Status and you will get Alexa credit for the page views just as if you had the toolbar installed. For other tips on increasing Alexa rank generally, see 10 Methods for Increasing Your Alexa Rank.

computer running too slowly — Try some of the tips from my Fix the Computer CPU Speed page. Most of the time a slow computer is a symptom of too much clutter, either in terms of installed programs that shouldn’t be there (viruses, malware, and the like) or having too many processes running at one time. On the other hand, if you’re trying to run a high-end application such as a modern PC game and it’s too slow, you may have a hardware issue to deal with as well.

how can i have weblog for free — Interestingly, I came up #5 in Yahoo for this one, and the listed result was my page on free text links. As for the question, you can always get started with a free weblog rather easily with blogspot.com or wordpress.com. However, if you’re really serious about blogging, I would recommend getting your own domain name and a reliable paid hosting service.

eponyms with examples — This is a page I have not received traffic to in a long time, so I am glad to see that someone searched on a relevant query for it. You can find my essay with examples of eponyms here.

is sendearnings.com real? — Yes, SendEarnings is certainly real. Better yet, they actually pay! See SendEarnings Confirmed as Paying Program for details.

can i put my cell phone in the refrigerator — Sure, why not? If you have any other household members, they might see this as a little odd but I certainly won’t mind!

dual monitor aquarium screensaver — Fortunately I have an article that deals with a virtual aquarium screensaver program, and my mother confirmed that it actually works well with dual monitors.

what could you make your kids as a sweet quick snack? — There are lots of options here of course, but one thing that I have used myself for a quick snack is the good old bowl of cereal. Most cereals are pre-sweetened anyway and it is certainly easy to prepare. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a somewhat more nutritious alternative, you could start with an unsweetened cereal and add some of your favorite fruit to it for sweetness.

My search query stats for the past week indicate that the summer period has seen an increase in the number of people with ant infestations in their homes. They are also dropping their cell phones in the water at near-record rates, and rejection letters are now more popular than ever. I even received one of these dreaded things in my email regarding an affiliate program that I had applied for nearly two weeks ago. Needless to say, I was not amused. Now I will deal with queries to the somewhat less popular pages.

‘has led to’ or ‘has lead to’ — In most cases, you would want to use ‘has led to’. The only exception that I can think of would be a case where the context of the sentence is referring to the metal lead.

what ingredient in vinegar makes it basic — Actually vinegar is acidic, not basic. The pH of typical store-bought vinegar (5% acidity) is around 2.4. The ingredient that makes it acidic (and also gives it the sour taste) is acetic acid.

is door-to-door political campaign necessary for winning — This depends on the type of campaign. If you’re in a local race with a fairly small geographic area and do not have a strong incumbent advantage of some sort (that is, you’re not already heavily favored to win), running a strong door-to-door campaign as part of an overall GOTV (get out the vote) effort would certainly help and may even be necessary if your opponents are already doing this. However, in a national or statewide race the dynamics are somewhat different because it is usually not practical to meet every voter by going door to door. In these cases, other types of advertising will probably be more effective, although the door-to-door tactic could still make a difference if the race is very close and you have enough staff on hand to canvass lots of neighborhoods.

Frequent deleting of files slow down computers? — Yes, deleting and installing lots of files over time can slow your computer down by causing too much fragmentation of your hard drive. However, defragmenting your hard disk(s) with an application such as Auslogics on a regular basis can prevent this type of performance deterioration.

A short article about the importance of english language — I’m not sure if this is short enough for you, but here you go: Importance of English Usage and Proofreading.

can you mix Canola oil and peanut oil frying chicken — Yes - I actually do this fairly frequently when making my beloved General Tso Chicken recipe. The reason for this comes down to economics. If money is not a major issue, I will use all peanut oil because it gives the chicken pieces a better flavor and also seems to help somewhat with the texture. However, canola oil is usually less expensive and still provides an acceptable flavor as long as the batter is good. In order to have the best of both worlds I will use both types of oil and stir them together in the frying pan to evenly distribute the flavor before adding the chicken. I usually use about 20-30% peanut oil, which will be enough to noticeably improve the flavor without adding too much to the overall cost.

is there a game like dance dance revolution you can play on the internet — You’re probably looking for Flash Flash Revolution.

ignorant husband — Ok, I can imagine this one being the basis for an ample variety of humorous replies For now, all I can think of is that if you really need a search engine to find your husband, your marriage probably isn’t doing very well! And if he’s really ignorant, do you still think you can educate him? Hmmmm…

In order to keep up with eligible search queries during the week, I have been keeping a running list of them in a separate text file on my computer’s desktop. However, in addition to the queries that I eventually answer in these posts, there are several others of a different type that have been accumulating in the list from previous weeks. These are queries that I do not have immediate answers for because they fall outside my particular areas of expertise and would require more research than I have time for at the moment. Therefore, this week I have decided to switch things up a little bit and post some of these phrases from my “not sure” section in the hopes that some of you can answer these more easily than I can. If you happen to have some relevant information for any of them, you can simply copy and paste the phrase into the comment section and type your answers below it.

what is the maximum withdrawal from atm machine in us — This probably varies according to the associated bank or maybe even the ATM network, but I do not have an exact figure handy for the overall maximum limit. There may be regulations at the state or federal level that would apply here also, but I would need to research this.

processor specs — They are probably referring to a computer’s CPU (Central Processing Unit) and are looking for an easy way to access the technical specifications.

how to change processor speed from registry — Similar to the processor specs query above, it is possible to use the registry entries to alter the CPU? Changing the registry is usually seen as a fairly drastic step and not something that should be attempted by novice users, so I would definitely want to get more specific information on this before recommending anything.

will tv work after getting wet? — Back when I was a small child, I remember managing to short circuit a TV once when I accidentally spilled some soda through the little grooves in the back of it. As far as I know, the TV never worked afterward. However, I’m not sure about whether modern televisions are still similarly vulnerable to getting wet and malfunctioning like this. It has been a long time since I have done any serious TV watching.

how to trick the atm — This is somewhat of a “black hat” query, but if anyone knows of a situation in the past where an ATM has been successfully tricked, it might make an interesting article idea for my humor category.

something to snack on that won’t make me fat — I could probably come up with some relatively low-calorie snack options if I thought about it long enough, but I wouldn’t really consider myself an expert nutritionist at this point. Some of you may have some creative ideas on this, which could also form the beginnings of a separate article.

maximum withdrawal ATM machine bank of america — This is something that I would actually like to know because I happen to use a Bank of America ATM for local cash withdrawals. However, my account is with another bank, so I don’t know what their maximum limit is. The most that I have ever withdrawn from one of their machines at any one time is $200, but the daily maximum amount may be higher than this.

do i need photographic proof for having a mortgage — I’m not sure about this one because I have never tried to apply for a mortgage before. But I know that lots of other people have.

do you have to claim child support on mortgage application — I asked my mother about this one, and she seems to think that the answer is no. But again, I have no personal experience with this, so it never hurts to get a second opinion.

should the internet be blamed for decrease in standards of grammar and written language — According to my mother, who has ample experience as a professional educator, part of the reason for the decline in correct English grammar usage is that it is simply not being taught or emphasized in the schools nearly as much as it once was. I’m not sure that I would credit/blame the Internet as a contributing factor to poor English usage, however. If I could gather enough opinions and/or statistics on this, it could make for a very interesting (and perhaps controversial) editorial opinion piece.

Once again it is time to review the search query stats and select the next batch of questions to answer. Although the topics of rejection letters, ants, and gasoline/crude oil are still the leading pages for attracting search queries, my little tutorial articles on How to Uninstall Yahoo Toolbar from Firefox and How to Remove Yahoo Toolbar from Internet Explorer have managed to rank fairly well in Yahoo and are now picking up some traffic. Meanwhile, my little blog commenting campaign from last week is still producing favorable results from MSN, with 68 hits coming from Live Search during the past 24 hours, plus a few more queries that are fully displayed in FireStats.

does amazon accept alertpay — According to their site, apparently not. Amazon does not accept PayPal either, although they do accept many other types of payment methods. Here is the official word on this from Amazon’s Help page:

Payment Methods We Accept

Amazon.com accepts American Express, Diners Club, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, Eurocard, Visa, Visa Check Cards, payment from your bank account, Amazon.com gift cards, Amazon Store Card, Webcertificates, and checks, money orders, traveler’s checks, or cashier’s checks denominated in U.S. dollars and drawn on a U.S. bank.

We do not currently accept international wire transfers, PayPal, or Smart Cards. For grocery purchases, we are unable to apply manufacturer’s coupons, food stamps, or any other payment method not listed above.

easyhits4u is it scam — No, EasyHits4U is just a regular manual traffic exchange. You do not have to pay anything to join, surf, or receive traffic from them, although they do offer the option of purchasing blocks of traffic or upgrades. You can read my latest post on EasyHits4U here.

how does USAA atm fee reimburse work — Any ATM fees incurred are reimbursed all at once at the end of each month. However, before the end of the month these fees are still counted as debits, so you may need to keep track of them for a while if your account balance is low. Note that USAA has a reimbursement limit of 10 withdrawals or $15 in total fees per month, whichever occurs first. The reimbursement payment will show up as a deposit on your monthly bank statement.

general tso’s sauce recipe — I have a pretty good formula for a General Tso sauce here, along with the full recipe for the chicken and batter.

pro and con of paying taxes on internet — I have been receiving several of these types of searches lately (a related one is “pros and cons of the current tax system”), but they are difficult to answer because I cannot think of any pros to Internet taxes or the current tax code, except perhaps in the case of very specific special interests or politicians who have some sort of sadistic desire to take away more of our economic freedom. Overall, the tax system is in need of a major overhaul in terms of both fairness and simplification.

“selling articles” writing — If you’re a writer, you can sell your articles at Constant Content and even make a pretty good income with it after you get a significant number of articles approved. I have recently received two payments from them for previous article sales; eventually I will put together the relevant information on this and write up an official payment report.

speed up process of drying phone — There are a few different methods for this, including hair dryers, putting the phone in dry rice, or even putting it in the refrigerator. You can read more about how to dry out your cell phone after it has gotten wet here.

there their they’re where were lesson — Although I have not yet dealt with where vs. were, I have a fairly comprehensive article on the correct use of their, there and they’re here.

As I was looking through my traffic statistics yesterday, I clicked through on a visitor’s MSN Live search query for “karlonia” and discovered something interesting. Included in the first page of results at #6 was my Adbux referral link! Here is a screen capture that I took earlier today of the results page (click on the thumbnail to enlarge the picture and see the full image). I have drawn a little arrow to the left of the position where my referral link is displayed.

It is also rather odd that MSN is ranking my About page at #1 and my main URL at #2 even though my About page has very little content. Meanwhile, sitting at #4 is a snippet from a comment I had made on another blog a few months ago in a mostly successful effort to get my post on gasoline and crude oil ranked highly enough to bring in traffic.

Perhaps more significantly, I noticed that my overall search traffic volume for yesterday had sharply increased from the previous levels. At the time I checked the stats, there were 86 hits coming from search.live.com within the last 24 hours compared with an observed average of 25-30 hits per day since February. It just so happens that on the day before yesterday I had embarked on a blog commenting spree and dropped comments on about 30 other blogs and linked these with my most recent post on the Entrecard outage. Since this was the first time since January that I had made any significant effort to gain more backlinks through blog comments, there is some anecdotal evidence that these links may have served as tasty food for the MSNbot spiders, leading to more of my pages being indexed and perhaps higher rankings as well.

I have already observed a similar pattern with MSN back in January when I had made a similarly concerted effort towards blog comment linkage and noticed an increase in Live Search queries from about 7 per day up to the average of 25-30 per day as mentioned above over a two-day period after making the comments. There was also a very favorable but delayed response from Yahoo and Google in terms of the number of pages indexed and the overall search traffic volume. The increase in traffic from Yahoo was more pronounced and occurred about two weeks after the comment links were placed; it took Google about one month to fully credit the links but the results were still noticeable.

These observations may have notable implications for beginner or intermediate bloggers who are looking to increase their all-important targeted search engine traffic. Commenting on other blogs with well-placed links to the internal pages of your site can give you a significant boost with MSN and eventually the other search engines as well. Since Microsoft’s notoriously sucky search engine (did you know that only 28.8% of MSN searchers actually click on an organic result while the other 71.2% of them are going for the sponsored links?) is actually indexing referral links amongst their other oddly placed results, it is theoretically possible to make some extra affiliate sales by matching up chosen usernames with whatever keywords you think might draw traffic from MSN searches.

In spite of a recent power outage at Entrecard’s data centers due to an unexpected electrical fire, traffic from the search engines is holding up pretty well. Even with the removal of all traffic from Entrecard over the past 24 hours, I am still maintaining a traffic flow of over 320 unique visitors per day for Sunday, which is normally my lowest day of the week in terms of search traffic. This indicates that my overall SEO strategy is still humming along nicely, although I still need to get out there and drop some relevant comment links on other blogs in order to give us a more substantial boost in the rankings. I am hoping to eventually bring this site up to at least 1000 uniques per day, which would increase the potential for significant monetization and perhaps open the door for some private advertising deals.

maximum atm surcharge state of michigan — Although I was ranked #1 for the keyword at the time of my clickthrough, my article did not directly address this. I looked at some of the other results in an attempt to find a more direct answer to the query, and the closest thing I could find was an article referencing a General Accounting Office (GAO) study which found that the maximum ATM surcharge fee for Michigan at that time was $3.00. The average fee for all banks was $1.00, while the average was $1.27 if banks not charging ATM fees at all were excluded from the calculations. However, this data appeared to be several years old, so the maximum fee may be higher than $3 by now. If you happen to have more recent data on this, please let me know about it in the comment section so that it can be included in my article.

how to find good clickbank product bum marketing — According to the Affiliate Project X guide, Clickbank products with a gravity between 10 and 70 are generally good targets to use in articles for bum marketing purposes. It is still possible to use products with a gravity greater than 70, but you will likely face much steeper competition and need to target your keywords to more specific phrases. The standard “[product name here] review” types of posts will be difficult to obtain good rankings for at this level.

Choosing products with a gravity below 10 can be more risky because they have not proven themselves yet and may not convert well for you. In all cases, it is a good idea to check out the product’s “pitch page” (that is, the long copy sales letter that attempts to sell the product) before promoting it. If the copy is poorly written or does not make the product look very enticing, you would probably be better off by choosing another product.

Most recent non leap year that is divisible by 4 — The most recent year in the past that meets this criterion would be 1900. Going forward, it’s 2100. For a more specific explanation, see my article on Leap Year Facts and Trivia.

clickbank check — A copy of my most recent Clickbank check can be found here. They’ve been around for about 10 years now and have proven themselves to be a reliable affiliate network that provides an excellent monetization option for websites, particularly when good SEO strategies are implemented by the site administrator.

reclaim bandwidth from XP — Yes, this is possible; by default Microsoft operating systems will reserve about 20% of the bandwidth for themselves, which is usually more than is necessary. You can reclaim this bandwidth by tweaking your Control Panel settings. This may result in faster Internet surfing and download speeds. The instructions for how to do this are explained in my Microsoft Sucks Bandwidth article (look below the video).

find recipe for pulled pork sandwiches — Here you go: Harley Hog Pulled Pork Sandwiches. I have made this one several times, and although it requires some time and preparation, the overall “yummy factor” is definitely worth it. I still need to take a good picture to include in the recipe post, however.

the process of making gasoline from crude oil is called? — In general, we just call it “refining”, or the “refining process”, but a more specific term would be “fractional distillation“. See the linked article for a more detailed explanation of this. Meanwhile, if you’re looking to save money because of those frustratingly high petrol prices, you can check out this new product I found that is supposed to provide information on adjusting your engine to use fuel more efficiently.

is clixsense a scam site — No. I have actually received a check from them, and so far they still seem to functioning well. Although I have not been as active with Clixsense as I was before, I have been bringing in some small earnings from them through referrals. If you can manage to attract some referrals who upgrade to the Premium account and will stay fairly active, you can receive a nice boost to your affiliate income.

For this week, current events have caused searches related to gasoline and crude oil to increase, while my previously popular Flash Flash revolution page continues to be mired in Google’s supplemental index. Overall, the pages on rejection letters and ants continue to be the top performers in terms of traffic, with my cell phone and Fair Tax pages also continuing to do well. Meanwhile, here are the next eight queries from my “interesting long tails” list:

which is correct english? May 26th 2008 or 26th May 2008 — In the USA, the first date format is correct if you include a comma after the day of the month and write it as May 26, 2008. As far as I know, it is not necessary to put the “th” after the number, although this blog’s theme creator seems to have included it for some reason. The second format, written without the “th” or the comma as 26 May 2008, is also correct and is commonly used throughout Europe. This is an important distinction to remember when looking at dates that have been abbreviated to purely numerical forms and separated by hyphens or slashes.

For example, in America this date would be written as 5/26/08, but in Europe it would be 26/05/08 or 26-05-08. This can be quite confusing if the day of the month is 12 or less, so if you are at a website and are unsure about how to read the date, it’s a good idea to look at other dates on the page for clues. If you see one that has a value greater than 12 as the first number, this refers to the day of the month, not the month itself.

Lunar eclipse and its consequences for Women — This particular query brought the visitor to my ignorance vs. stupidity page, where I recalled a very interesting passage from a medieval history book that I had read several years ago. It referred to an old superstition from the early Middle Ages in which women were believed to derive their female powers from the moon, so whenever there was a lunar eclipse, these powers were thought to be temporarily reduced. The actual text of the passage is quoted on the linked page and still ranks today as one of the most humorous things that I have ever read.

does leap year keep the calendar accurate — Yes, the idea of a “leap year” was introduced in order to make the calendar more accurate by keeping it in alignment with the astronomical solar years. Although the system’s accuracy is still not perfect, it is a much closer estimation of actual solar years than the previous system was. For a more detailed explanation, see my Leap Year Facts and Trivia article.

real data entry not advertising — KeyForCash is one of the few programs I have encountered that offers real data entry jobs as opposed to doing advertising for products or affiliate programs. If you happen to run across any other sites that offer real data entry opportunities, please let me know so that I can properly review them.

homemade coke blak — This query came through from Dogpile and indicates that there are still some people searching for the infamous Coca-Cola Blak. The Coca-Cola company has stopped selling this particular beverage in the United States due to lower than expected sales, although I have read that it is still being marketed in a few other countries. Fortunately, it is still possible to create a homemade version that tastes nearly identical to the actual product. The linked article provides the instructions for how to make it.

WHICH IS CORRECT LIE DOWN OR LAY DOWN– If you are referring to doing it yourself, it’s “lie down”. If you’re doing it to something else, it’s “lay (the object) down”. For the full explanation, see Correct Use of Lie and Lay.

is it important to peel the skin off zuchhini? — From a purely clinical standpoint, there is no significant danger in eating the skin, so whether or not you use the peeler in this case is not really important. It comes down to matter of personal taste and preference. In general, I have not found it necessary to remove the skin, especially if I am planning on cooking the zucchini as part of a recipe.

hillbilly vs. redneck what is the difference — Although both hillbillies and rednecks are stereotyped as being simple, economically poor, and relatively uneducated folk, the hillbillies are generally found in rural, mountainous areas such as the Appalachian mountains, while the rednecks inhabit the lowland areas of the southeastern United States. There are other differences also; this forum post at Fredericksburg.com does a pretty good job of explaining the basic characteristics of rednecks, hillbillies, and few other related groups.

Once again it is time to review some of the search queries from the previous week and answer the top questions for which I have the relevant information conveniently stored in my brain’s database. Before I get into the actual keywords, let me take this time to thank all of you who have commented on my posts for the past few weeks. I have been pleasantly surprised with the popularity of my English usage series of posts as they seem to have struck a nerve with some pet peeves of many people, while others are finding them useful because they are learning English as a second language and are able to benefit from having a definitive usage guide for certain groups of words.

Meanwhile, the payment reports and GPT-related posts also seem to be attracting some favorable attention; my last posts on SendEarnings and Treasure Trooper even received a few unexpected Stumbles. They are usually able to draw a fair amount of search traffic also because I can target the names of the programs or websites as keywords. Often these types of keywords have little competition, making it relatively easy to rank for them and attract clicks from people who are searching for information on whether or not a certain program is legitimate or has actually paid anyone. As a nice bonus, they also help with monetization because I can include my referral links and receive commissions as passive income, which helps to pay for ongoing site maintenance expenses as well as compensate me for the time it takes for me to do the necessary research and write the articles.

Now we can look at this week’s most interesting queries:

Read the rest of this entry »

During this past week, Google seems to have reshuffled my pages in the search results again. Although my overall search traffic hasn’t changed much, Google has decided to drop my Flash Flash Revolution page out of the main index after ranking it consistently in the #11-20 spots but has steadily increased my ranking for Fair Tax Pros and Cons, which had moved all the way up to #3 as of last night. Google works in mysterious ways - there have been several such instances of pages increasing in rank even though they do not seem to be receiving any backlinks, yet other pages are being dropped completely out of the main index for no apparent reason. Meanwhile, here are the eight most interesting queries for this week.

have a lots of work vs have a lot of work what is correct in english — The correct phrase would be “have a lot of work”. Writing “a lots” would be incorrect because the article “a” is singular while “lots” is plural, creating an inconsistency between the noun and its modifier. You could say “a lot” (singular) or “many lots” (plural), but not “a lots”. I should also point out that the phrase “a lot”, while grammatically correct, is considered an example of informal usage in this particular context. In other words, if you are writing a business letter, an academic paper, or any other type of formal document, it would be better to write the phrase as “have much work”.

How do you cut Zucchini into Pasta? — You can use a julienne style cutting technique to slice the zucchini into long strips that somewhat resemble pasta but have a lower carbohydrate content and glycemic index. Further details can be found at How to Make Julienned Zucchini Pasta.

what to do when your computer slows down — There are several general maintenance operations that you can perform in an attempt to remedy a slow computer before resorting to paying lots of money for technical assistance. Things like antivirus scans, disk defragmentation, cleaning your registry, and several other relatively painless procedures may be able to improve your computer’s performance. More details are located at Fix the Computer CPU Speed.

in the computer keyboard where is the processes tab — If you are using a Windows operating system, simply hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys simultaneously and press Del. This should bring up the Windows Task Manager with the “Processes” tab automatically selected. According to a comment made on one of my previous posts, a similar operation can be performed on Linux systems by opening up a console window and using the ‘top’ command.

what is simple interest amortization? — “Amortization” refers to the process of paying off a debt or financing a loan over time. The “simple interest” part means that the interest you pay is calculated at a flat rate per month over the life of the loan and does not compound. Simple interest amortization is commonly used as a method of financing major purchases such as auto loans or mortgages on homes or other real estate.

what draws ants into the house? — Although there are many things that may cause ants to wander into your house without a formal invitation, they are particularly attracted to leftover food crumbs, sugar granules, and spilled sugary liquids such as sodas or heavily sweetened Kool-Aid. Keeping your floors and kitchen countertops clean is a good first line of defense against ant infestations.

what the ingredient of Nsima? — Nsima is essentially corn (maize) that has been ground into flour and mixed with water to form a nutritious paste that somewhat resembles mashed potatoes in appearance. It is a very important staple food in Malawi, Zambia, and several other African countries.

how to make gasoline at home — With the recent rise in crude oil and petrol prices, this is certainly an understandable query and is something that I would like to figure out how to do. Unfortunately, building a refinery in one’s backyard does not seem very practical, and digging up the required raw materials generally requires heavy equipment and more land area than most of us have on our current properties. If anyone knows about an alternative method for producing gasoline that would be practical for home use, I would certainly like to see it!

More questions are arriving through the search queries this week, some of which have been surprisingly thoughtful and challenging. I have saved some of the more difficult questions that I do not have immediate answers for in my text file, where I can refer back to them later for further research. Meanwhile, I can deal with the relatively easy ones first.

why gun control is needed? — Gun control is needed so that you can accurately aim your firearm at its target when necessary. Failure to properly control your gun can result in unfortunate and embarrassing accidents, and may also provide misguided politicians with an excuse to take away even more of our freedoms than they already have. Remember to use both hands whenever possible.

pros and cons of cigarettes — This one really deserves a separate article, but I can think of a few points to start. Pros: 1) Purchasing cigarettes provides economic assistance to farmers, manufacturers, and others employed in the tobacco industry, 2) Consumption of cigarettes gives governments an excuse to tax them, which is not really a good thing per se, but as taxes go, I see this as a preferable alternative to an income tax, 3) Heavy use of cigarettes reduces the life span of most smokers, thereby culling the population somewhat and reducing its environmental impact. As a bonus, non-smokers like me should have less competition in the search results Cons: 1) increased risk of lung cancer (and a variety of other diseases), 2) decreased lung capacity and physical endurance, 3) decreased economic efficiency due to cigarettes becoming more expensive.

atm fees can add up — Yes, this is true, especially if you are fond of using ATMs frequently. You can reduce ATM fees by using banks that reimburse them or by withdrawing more cash on each ATM visit, which will result in fewer trips to the machines and less money being spent on fees over the long run.

if you enter your atm number backward what will happen — You will get an “incorrect PIN” error. There is an urban legend that has been circulating as the result of an email hoax which suggests that entering your PIN number backwards can be used as a way of secretly summoning police in the event you are being robbed. However, my research indicates that there is no actual truth to this rumor.

how long has scurvy been around in history — Scurvy has been around as long as people have because the human body cannot produce its own vitamin C. However, problems with scurvy became most noticeable during the Age of Exploration (approximately 1500-1800 AD) due to the long periods of time required to complete voyages combined with the rather poor diets of most ship crews during this period. Of course, ignorance was also a major factor — it was not until the 20th century that the link between vitamin C deficiency and scurvy was established.

do I need an exterminator to get rid of ants? — In most cases, no. There are plenty of ways to get rid of ants in your house without having to resort to calling in an exterminator. Some of them are actually rather creative and relatively environmentally friendly.

how much do bums make — This varies significantly depending on the type of bum, geographical location, and various intangible factors such as desire and motivation. If you’re a bum marketer, there is no theoretical limit to how much you can make because the income is passive and derived mostly from affiliate sales of an indeterminate number of products. For ordinary bums, their income will depend mostly on the amount of panhandling they can do and the kinds of items they can obtain through dumpster diving or other exploratory activities.

is sendearnings a scam? — No, I have already confirmed payment from them. However, I wish that they would implement PayPal payments as an alternative to the relatively slow “snail mail” checks. Many people have been asking about this in the search queries, which suggests that SendEarnings and other similar programs could expand their member base if they would add PayPal as a payment option.

Earlier this morning as I was commenting on a post related to keyword stuffing on another blog, I had a major “WTF moment” when I followed up on some research from my earlier article on Google returning sexist search results. While it seems that Google and Yahoo are no longer returning statements such as “did you mean he led” and “did you mean shelled” for the “she led” (broad match) query respectively, MSN is still ranking the page “Where She Led Me” at #2. In case you’re curious, are reading this at later date, and cannot turn up the result in the search engines, the aforementioned page can be found at http://www.necessaryprose.com/whereshe.htm.

After looking at the page again, I also realized that this is a classic example of keyword stuffing - EVERY sentence in that run-on paragraph begins with “she led”. As I was typing out my comment on the other blog, I was essentially agreeing with the conventional SEO advice that we should not try to use a high keyword density because it could be flagged as spam and will not make a noticeable difference anyway. When I noticed the “she led” result, I had to amend my comment somewhat and provide a caveat example of how keyword density can still have an effect with “non-Google search engines”.

But then came the real kicker - I looked up at my FireFox Search Status display and noticed that the page actually has a Google PageRank of 3! It is also ranked #47 in the Google results for the “she led” query, which may not seem terribly high, but considering the fact that there are 12.4 million total results, it seems that Google thinks that this page still holds some importance. Go figure…

So apparently in their infinite wisdom, the almighty Google gods have seen fit to “spank” my entire blog from a PR 3 back to zero (for reasons I have yet to determine) even though it has 399 articles that are supposed to have solid, informative content, yet this little keyword-stuffed page gets rewarded with a PR 3?! Sorry Google, but this time I’ll have to score one for the “PageRank is useless” camp!

Over the past few months, I have been receiving a significant amount of traffic from GoodSearch.com, one of those “minor” search engines whose actual queries never display in my FireStats. I know that I am receiving traffic from the site because their URL regularly displays in my referrer stats, and I can usually tell what the search query was by looking its parameters.

By coincidence, as I was browsing through Constant Content this morning, I happened to run across this article by Sarah Borroum that describes what GoodSearch actually is and how it operates. Apparently it is a search engine that is designed to help various nonprofit and charitable organizations by donating a portion of its revenues to the cause of your choice. The actual search results are ported over from Yahoo, so in terms of SEO considerations, the strategies for ranking with either engine would be the same.

You don’t have to have extra money or time to help one of your favorite non-profit organizations. In fact, you can help a group you care about — a school, an animal shelter, or even a political group — without leaving your computer.

Goodsearch.com has figured out a way to let you, the search engine user, make a difference without getting out of your chair. Just use the search engine or shop through the Goodsearch.com portal. Most of your text searches earn money for the organization you’ve chosen.

You don’t have to give any personal details to start searching for donations. There’s no registration required. Just go to Goodsearch.com and use the search box to find your favorite charity. Some of the more popular organizations that are currently benefiting from these searches include the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Save Darfur, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

The site adds more organizations on a regular basis, so you should keep checking back if your favorite cause is not yet listed. Better yet, why not add the non-profit yourself? Goodsearch.com offers a form that lets you suggest organizations that are not yet listed, so take advantage of this if your favorite group is not yet on the list.

Goodsearch.com makes money through commissions that it receives when users shop through the site. Fifty percent of this money goes to the organizations. The more the group’s supporters search or shop, the more that organization will receive.

So, if your Web searches earn a buck, your favorite group gets fifty cents. That does not seem like much, but you are probably not the only person who uses the search engine to help that particular group. If twenty people have selected that organization, then there is more money to donate. Convince a hundred people to search on that group’s behalf and the donation can be a lot bigger.

And if you’re ready to spend money of your own, hit the Goodsearch.com Web site and look for the “Shopping” link. Various stores will donate a percentage of your purchase to the organization that you’ve listed. So, you get to enjoy new stuff and help a group you care about at the same time — all without leaving your computer.

Another good thing about this site is the fact that Yahoo! Search powers the engine. You get good, reliable search results, just as you would if you went directly to the “regular” Yahoo! site to search.

You can also add a Goodsearch.com toolbar to your Web browser. For Firefox users, this is an added drop-down menu choice on the search bar. The addition is not intrusive, and makes it very simple for you to remember to use Goodsearch instead of your usual search engine.

Goodsearch is an easy, free way to help non-profit organizations. You’re going to use a search engine anyway — probably more than once a day — so make a small adjustment to your search habits and you’ll be one more Goodsearch user who is making a difference.

Search engine traffic here at Karlonia continues to move along nicely, with queries related to rejection letters and flash flash revolution topping the list. The topics of “Fair Tax”, cell phones, theraflu, funny quotes, and crude oil have also done quite well this week. Regarding the surge in traffic to the rejection letter page, I am looking for some samples of actual rejection letters that can be used as templates for other people to use. Specifically, most of the searchers are looking for ways to reject job applicants in a positive or neutral way that “buffers the bad news” so as not to alienate future clients or employees. If any of you happen to have something that fits this description, please send it to me through the contact page. If the content looks usable, I will give you credit for the submission when I publish it in the relevant section. Now for some of the other queries:

causes of technophobia — There are various reasons for technophobia, a condition that generally encompasses the fear of computers and technology. They range from simple skepticism and resistance to change all the way to extreme environmentalism or political motives. One thing that remains constant is that technophobia must be overcome at some point if one is to make money from blogging or other online endeavors.

funny words of wisdom — Back in November I finally put together some of my favorite quotes into a post and even included a funny video of classic “Bushisms”. The page is finally starting to pick up some significant traffic, although I really need to aim a few more backlinks at it to keep its position consistent in the rankings.

history of scurvy — This is another topic that has been surprisingly popular recently. A few days ago, there was a small rush of people searching on keywords specifically related to scurvy cures in 1600. I am also still receiving queries suggesting that there are many people who need a significant amount of education about this classic disease.

how to rank well on ask.com — To some extent, ranking on Ask is pretty much the same as ranking for the other search engines; most of the standard SEO conventions still apply. However, Ask does have a few peculiarities that you can read about in my article on How to Optimize Your Site for Ask.com. The two “biggies” to remember are to use a sitemap (Ask’s crawler tends to be slow, so this will usually get more of your pages indexed) and not to worry about nofollow links. Fortunately, Ask does not recognize the rel=’nofollow’ attribute, so all of those links from nofollow blogs should still count.

preparation of thyme infusion — I’m glad that someone finally searched on this one. My short, outsourced article on thyme preparation and usage could really use a fresh crawling and probably some additional content as well.

reason for leap year 29 feb — This is another one that has been receiving a surprising number of searches lately, especially considering that this year’s leap day occurred almost two months ago. Nevertheless, if you want to read up on the actual reasons for leap year, my article contains some interesting facts and trivia on this particular topic.

how should i start off a argumentative paper — There are some tips for writing argumentative papers here. I might as well point out that it should be an (not a) argumentative paper because the article is being placed before a word that begins with a vowel sound. Come to think of it, this would be another good topic for an English usage post.

google simple explanation of oil refinery — I have a fairly simple explanation of the refining process at my article on How Gasoline is Made from Crude Oil. Interestingly, this query was made on MSN, not Google.

Now that the infamous tax date of April 15 has passed, search traffic to my national sales tax page has leveled off, but it looks like various food-related queries are on the rise. Meanwhile, there has been a significant increase in the number of people who are trying to get rid of ants, and many of you are still dropping your cell phones in the water and wondering if rice or cat litter will fix it. Strangely, my article on how to write an argumentative paper does not seem to be receiving much traffic anymore; perhaps a well-placed internal link will prompt the search engine spiders to re-crawl it and restore its rightful place in the rankings.

firefox alexa rank extension — You’re looking for the Search Status extension, which will display a site’s Alexa rank and provide lots of other useful information. You can find a link to it on my useful Firefox extensions page.

19th century sailors ate this to prevent scurvy — Sailors mostly ate citrus fruits such as oranges, lemons, or limes to prevent scurvy once they found out that these actually had an effect, although any food that contains vitamin C will do the trick.

can i put my cell phone in rice if it gets wet — Yes, you certainly can, and if you look at my article on how to fix your cell phone, there is even a short video demonstration of how to place the phone in the rice and dry it out properly. I have also included some product suggestions under the “Cell Phone Accessories” subheading.

there’s a difference between ignorance and stupidity — Yes, this is correct! Check out my article on ignorance vs. stupidity to find out exactly what those differences are.

can you make vinegar? — Yes, it is pretty easy actually, especially if you already have some vinegar to use as a starter culture. Probably the most difficult part is the waiting time required to complete the fermentation process. See the how to make vinegar article for details.

can cayenne pepper be used for ants — Yes, it can be used as a repellent for ants, along with other strong or aromatic spices and plants. My page on how to get rid of ants describes some other methods that will work as well.

what to do when your computer slows down — This is usually a matter of routine computer maintenance; things like running antivirus scans, disk defragmentation, and cleaning out your registry will often fix most slowdown problems. Detailed suggestions can be found at Fix the Computer CPU Speed.

does Globaltestmarket have something on their website to check to see if your check has been sent — Although I could not find a “Payment History” page from my account area, I did notice that GlobalTestMarket now has a blog where they often mention sending out checks, including the relevant geographical region and redemption periods.

Search traffic is continuing to hold steady this week, as the increasing longevity of the site coupled with a growing amount of content is beginning to draw traffic from several second tier search engines and aggregators. Interestingly, the post from last November on how to write a job applicant rejection letter is currently my top performing page, now totaling over 1100 visits during the last 30 days. Also doing well are the articles on getting rid of ants and fair tax pros and cons. Now we will address some of the other pages and their related queries.

will the atm eat my card after 15 seconds — Sometimes yes; this depends upon the location of the ATM. Apparently some of them are programmed to “eat” cards after 15 seconds if they are not removed from the machine’s slot after completing a transaction. This was probably implemented as some sort of security measure so that if you forgot to retrieve your card, another person that came behind you would not be able to easily steal it.

planet hollywood pulled pork recipe — I actually have a recipe for pulled pork sandwiches that I have tried several times and found to be very good, although it does take a significant amount of time to do the cooking and preparation. It is a slightly modified version of the original recipe from the Harley Davidson cafes, one of which happens to be located near the Planet Hollywood in New York.

what was the civil war fought for — Once again, the query does not specify which civil war we are talking about here, but if we go on the assumption that this is related to the American civil war, the reasons varied according to who was being asked. Each side had different reasons for fighting the war, many of which are summarized in my civil war essay, which was also a review of the book What They Fought For by James McPherson.

canned fruits and vegetables prevent scurvy? — Yes, as long as said fruits and vegetables contain vitamin C (most of them do). This is the “magic ingredient” when it comes to preventing and curing scurvy.

cantaloupes in HEB stores with salmonella — This comes from an incident last June where cantaloupes along with a few other items were temporarily removed from HEB store shelves as part of a recall when a few of the fruits tested positive for salmonella. I posted about the related news story not so much because of the recall but because of the incredibly sloppy (or nonexistent) proofreading efforts of our local KRIS-TV news reporter, who managed to publish the report while it still contained six noticeable English usage errors.

libertarian coffee mug — These are being sold (along with other libertarian-themed merchandise) by the LPStuff.com site, which has significantly improved its item selection and marketing efforts over the past several months.

is beef tongue fattening — This depends on what you would call “fattening” and how much fat you manage to cook out of the meat before consumption. For reference, raw beef tongue contains 18.2 grams of fat per 4-ounce serving according to CalorieKing.com.

how relevant are public request on constant content 6 months old — The relevancy of public requests on Constant Content depends upon the specific needs of the customers making the requests and what they are planning to do with the content after a successful purchase. In general, if the request is already six months old, then I would not expect it to have much relevance (chances are that the customer has already acquired the content from another source), but it never hurts to write an article for the request anyway. Even if the original requester does not purchase it, there is a good chance that someone else who desires articles on the same kinds of topics will come along later and generate some sales for you.