WikiLeaks suffers denial of service attack

The whistle-blower site WikiLeaks is experiencing a distributed denial of service attack, according to the @wikileaks Twitter account.  

The entire site has been made unavailable to internet users. When surfing to wikileaks.org, users are being presented with the following message.


 












Some of the American Embassy documents leaked contained nicknames for a number of world leaders. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is referred to as "Hitler," French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a "naked emperor," the German Chancellor is called Angela "Teflon" Merkel.

One of the documents refers to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddhafi's full-time nurse as a "hot blond," and another states that Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi loves "wild parties."

Using Google Insights to spot trends in keyphrases

Google Analytics does a great job of listing the keywords and phrases that customers are using to find your site, but where do you go to find the keywords that nobody is finding your for, or keywords which are taking your potential customers to your competitor's sites?   Your first call will be to Google Adwords where you can discover monthly/yearly search volumes and ask the tool to suggest new phrases, but website owners often overlook another useful Google tool, Google Insights.

The screenshot below is taken from Google Insights and shows a typical representation of the amount of  'interest' in two different search terms, wetsuit (blue) and wetsuits (red.) 

The first thing which stands out is how searches using the plural decrease as those using the singular increase, crossing over in August 2006.

Google Insights provides a list of the top searches and all the data is filterable by geographic location, time period (i.e. the last 7 days, month, year etc.)and category (there are many categories ranging from shopping, recreation and health to property, auto or business)

Using a combination of  filters, you can view a list of  "Rising searches." 

This list (right) was created by selecting shopping, over the past 30 days, UK and containing the word cheap. 

This type of information would prove very useful to a retailer selling christmas party dresses.

Website Preview in Search Results

By hovering over the magnifying glass in the Google search results, you can now see a quick preview of the site.  This will hopefully allow people to spot spammy sites without having to click through to them first.

Indexing problem for WordPress and Blogspot sites

Thousands of Wordpress and Blogger powered sites have been affected by a problem Google seems to be having with the Googlebot. Some high profile sites have had no new content indexed for 3 days.

Sites thought to be affected include The Guardian, Techcrunch and the Wall Street Journal