Random babble by Paulh

Running an old version of WordPress?
Then you Google rankings are at risk!

Old versions of WordPress have plenty of security vulnerabilities, hackers can install malware, or simply insert links in your content. Google doest want to send users to these hacked sites and cannot trust sites that have had links inserted throughout the site.

Recently DaveN a top seo saw what can happen when to your rankings when your site is compromised.

There is always a chance you site gets compromised in some way or another, but if your running a particularly vulnerable version of a CMS that is being highly abused  then its probably easier and smarter for the likes of Google to just abandon your site(just as you probably have).

Google has already started warning webmasters using very old versions of a WordPress.

(this comes from )

Guess you could try and hide the version of WordPress you are using - would help stop the hackers from finding you, but dont hide it 100% and you could lose your trust with google - easier to just upgrade! If you manage lots of wordpress sites ther are tools about to upgrade all your sites from one interface.

301 redirecting(permanently moving) non-www to www is something i have done for years, but only today did i realise there was one simple mod_rewrite rule i could use for all my sites.

The old method i used was

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.assertica\.co\.uk*$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.assertica.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

Nothing wrong with this, it works well, but becomes a pain when you have to edit the rule for every domain - easy to make a mistake with all those dots and slashes if you’re a dyslexic monkey like me.

So today i created this nice easy rule that works(at least it should) for all domains without the need to edit. So simple. So for anyone installing a script on multiple domains you no longer need to edit the non-www to www bit for every domain.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.*$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

Be interested to know if anyone finds a setup where the old rule works but the new one doesn’t. Of course for either rule to work you’ll need hosting that supports or emulates Apaches mod_rewrite

Bill Slawski has written a review of google patents “Key Relevance Review of Google Patents”

For any SEO trying to stay in the arms race with Google these patenets combined with google research papers offer a great insight in to where the monster is heading.