I just wanted to let you all know that I have posted my 2011 Holiday Gift Guide.  I will be updating the page with new items as they are added.

I will also be hosting a giveaway in November for all items that we receive a sponsored giveaway for.  Depending on the number of items sponsored there will be one giveaway with one winner or several giveaways with one winner each.  More to come on that.

We are looking for products to be featured for:

• Women
• Men
• Kids (Baby & Elementary age)
• Electronics
• Stocking Stuffer’s

If you would like to be included in the our 2011 Holiday Gift Guide, please submit product information, description, price, image, etc. via our PR Contact form or via shawn@shawnann.com and we will get the process started.

Thank You So Much

I wanted to do a special post for both Ellen and Pampers to say THANK YOU and to let others know that there are some really wonderful people out there.  Other than the fact that Ellen and I had only been visiting each others sites to post our giveaways or to enter giveaways, we’ve never met in person or talked before this.  So you can imagine what was going through my mind when I read the email she sent me that day.

So to Ellen of Thrifty & Chic Mom and Pampers I want to say:

Some of these are for the Baby Bath Blog Event going on, some of them are more Mom Tech items that I’ll be putting out there for some great Father’s Day gifts, and then there’s this great kids item!

OHHHH I just can’t wait!  One of them is almost set to post so keep an eye out!

It’s just a quick little change, the correct code is below.

<a href="http://shawnann.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://shawnann.com/images/button.png" alt="Shawn Ann's World" /></a>

Thank you for all your support!

Right now I’m using the yellow version of the theme, it’s cute and neutral. When I find out what we are having, possibly next Tuesday, I will be changing the color of the site to represent a boy or a girl and I’ll be sticking with that color for a while.  If I don’t find out Tuesday, then I should for sure find out on March 3rd, as long as the baby cooperates!

If we are having a boy the site will be teal & peach (unless I change the peach color):

If we are having a girl the site will be pink & green (which is what I’m rooting for)

For now, we’ll just have to wait and see.  So, what do you think of the new layout?

Some of you may have noticed that Frugal Plus is no longer available.  Apparently Jill was having a hard time keeping the site going without problems with the hosting company so she has decided to just do away with it.  Yeah, I’m a bit annoyed because I put a lot of time into set up the originally not to mention posting reviews, setting up accounts for advertising, etc., and now the site is gone.  The worst part of it is I’m not able to get any of my old posts, at least not in an easy way, which really pisses me off.  Guess I’ll know to make sure I get all my stuff next time so I don’t have to go through any of this again.  Oh well, I’m getting my posts the best way I can and they will still be available for everyone to view.

Anyway, I have been searching Google for about the last week trying to view my old reviews in the Google cache system to get copies of those reviews and get them back up and online here at Shawn Ann’s World.  The problem with that is that because all the pictures were hosted on the Frugal Plus site I cannot download them and then re-upload them to here.  So, any reviews that have pictures, which is just about every one of them, may not have the same pictures as the original review.  Although I kept most of the pictures I took for the reviews, I didn’t keep pictures of the products in the boxes and pictures of the product before it truly became the product so I will have to improvise in those areas.

I’ve already imported about eight of my old reviews and I have about 15 or so of them in draft because I need to get pictures included, however I know I’m still missing many reviews that I did.  I’m still working on getting them, but it may take time.  If by chance I worked with you when I was posting over on Frugal Plus and you are looking for your post it will eventually make it’s way onto Shawn Ann’s World, I’m doing my best to get it back up and online.  It’s going to take time, but I’m doing my best.

ETA: If you are just going to post negative comments about this post, don’t bother, I will just delete them.  This post isn’t meant to be ill towards Jill or Frugal Plus, it’s just letting those that I’ve worked with when I was there that I will get their posts back up and online for them and everyone else to read.

There are several services out there for getting the statistics of your site and depending on what platform you use there could be more or fewer places.  For instance, I use WordPress to run my site.  It’s a great platform and because I own my own domain I can get statistics from just about anywhere.  Within the WordPress platform there is a Site Stats area that tells you how many views you have on any given day, week, or month along with your top posts and referrers.  I also use StatCounter which is a free web tracker for your website, which basically does the same thing as the WordPress Site Stats.  Then there is the Google Analytics, which again does the same thing.  Yeah, I have my bases covered.  Or so you would think.  The problem is each of these trackers runs differently.  Each of them takes their tracking information at different times of the day and some more than once a day.  Some don’t bother to check if the person going to your site at that very moment has been there earlier that day or if they may come back.

So what’s the problem with this?  Well, you get different results from each of them and most PR firms and companies don’t rely on those numbers, they rely on the numbers from Compete, which are even more different from the other sites.
As you can see from the above image, these are my statistics from last year.  You will also notice that there are two separate stats from both StatCounter and from Google and that my Google Stats start in September, when I signed up with them.  You can see that the numbers for each are very different.

But that’s not all.  You then have Alexa ratings and Google PageRanks that you have to worry about.  There are problems with both of these “Rating Systems” also.  First let’s look at Alexa.

Alexa is a free traffic metrics, search analytics, demographics, and more for websites.  It’s basically a site that tells you how another website ranks to them.  How it works?  Who knows!  However, I do know that in order to be counted by their system the person browsing the net MUST have their toolbar installed on their computer for tracking purposes.  So in other words, if your readers are just normal people, as just about all of mine are, they are NOT counted in the Alexa stats!  That’s right, they don’t count, it’s like they never visited your site.  You can go from a rating of 1,000,000 down to 50,000 or better in a matter of weeks if you get a bunch of people with the toolbar to come to your site and look around every day.  But once this little routine stops you will watch your numbers jump back up almost as quickly as they dropped.  The lower your rating the better your site looks.

Google PageRanks is another one of those ranking system that NO ONE knows how it works or understands it.  From my understanding of it, if you are linked up with other sites for good reasons then you get points.  If you are selling text link ads on your site (linking with other sites for money) then you lose points.  If someone with a higher ranking links to you it’s good.  However, the ranking never seems to update.

Back in September 2010 I decided to finally take use of my shawnann.com domain that I was finally able to get back. So I moved my site from shawnann.org, which had a Google PageRank of 3, and moved it to shawnann.com.  Initially I still have my rank of 3 but around late October or early November my rank dropped to 0.  Why?  Don’t really know, figured it was because I switched domains.  I seen a lot of other bloggers complaining that when they moved from Blogger to WordPress (their own domain) that they lost their page rank.  So I figured the same happened to me.  Well, I lost A LOT of review opportunities because my rank was a 0.  NOT FAIR!  So I decided to spend a little time investigating this because many, MANY, companies rely on the bloggers they work with to have a good Google PageRank (usually they want a 3 or better). This is what I found.

On the Google Webmaster Central Help someone posted the question (1/26/2010):

When was the last time that google’s PageRank has been updated? and when it will be update again?

And the first two replies, which were by a Google Employee, were:

http://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq–crawling–indexing—ranking#pagerank

And then the next answer, by the same Google Employee:

We do Toolbar PageRank updates 3-4x/year but to be honest, it’s not something that you need to wait for. The PageRank shown in the Toolbar is an older snapshot of the PageRank that we use internally (which is continuously updated). Changes in Toolbar PageRank will not change anything with your site’s crawling, indexing, or ranking, so as a webmaster, I’d strongly recommend focusing on something else.

So, let me get this straight. A ranking system that is looked at by just about every company out there that works with bloggers is NOT UPDATED and not worth focusing on!!!!  That’s right, when you go to the PRChecker site to check on your Google PageRank it probably isn’t correct!  It’s correct for them (Google) internally, but those of us who actually look at these numbers and have relied on these numbers don’t get to see their actual rank.

That’s not all.  I also found this in the FAQ: Crawling, indexing & Ranking from Google:

#pagerank
Q: My site’s PageRank has gone up / gone down / not changed in months!
A: Don’t worry. In fact, don’t bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner. If you’re looking for metrics, we’d encourage you to check out Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business.

Again, Google telling you that the Google PageRank is useless and you shouldn’t even bother thinking about it!  They also suggest you check out their Analytics, which as I pointed out earlier is way different from other statistical sites, so that doesn’t help too much now does it!

Oh, and don’t get me started on places like Technorati, who recently revamped their entire rating system and still doesn’t make any sense!

So why do so many companies rely on numbers from places that are either not important (said by the companies own employees) or completely different numbers than other places?  If you ask me and probably just about every other blogger out there that does reviews and giveaways, we’ll all say the same thing.  Those numbers mean absolutely nothing.  None of them are consistent and from the looks of what I’ve posted they aren’t worth looking at.

Due to the enormous amount of spam lately I am closing all comments for posts that are older than 20 days.  I hate doing that because there are posts and pages that people will want to comment on, but until this spam issue gets under control or if this doesn’t help then it’s the only thing I can think of doing for now.  I HATE SPAM!