| That may be because the Google links are not actually
| to the website. Showing a visited link color depends on
| the webpage and your browser history. So when you
|
| I figured if it has the color that means it's been visited, the page
| is in the (firefox, say) cache. And that if you purge the cache, as
| they sometimes suggest doing, there will be no indication you've been
| anywhere. (and I like knowing because sometimes I want go to a page
| I've already been to, and sometimes I want a new page.
|

Yes, but Google is proxying through their own site. You're
never actually navigating directly to the target site:
www.google.com/q=whereYouReallyWantToGo.com

I thought that might prevent the site registering as
visited at DDG, because you never clicked on a link
to whereYouReallyWantToGo.com.

| go to DDG your browser may not see those links as
| visited because they're not Google links. I know DDG
| doesn't block a visited color because I see them.
|
| The last sentence, I don't understand at all.
|
As you said, visited links are saved by the browser
and normally the browser will show the visited link
color for those sites, but it can also be changed in
the webpage. CSS can be used to make the active
link and visited link color the same. That's not unusual.
In that case you'd have to view the page without
styles to see the visited color. But I know DDG is
not doing that because I see visited links colored
differently at DDG.

| He hasn't complained about that exactly, but he has complained that if
| a generic search is done, for supply, he doesn't come up anywhere near
| the top. He may have even paid to get himself higher, but his
| competitors are paying too. And alphabetically, his company doesn't
| start with A, like Acme does. It's much closer to the end of the
| alphabet, even though it's a good name -- notice how many other supply
| companies had similar names.
|
I don't think it helps much to pay. SEO is, to a large
extent, a flim flam operation. It helps to have frequent
page updates and to have lots of incoming links. It also
helps to be well established. But if there are a lot of
businesses in the same field it will be difficult to break in.

Also, SEO tricks can often downgrade one's rating. My
dentist hired a webpage designer who listed just about every
town in E. MA in the META tags. That's likely to hurt rather
than help. If Google sniffs SEO tricks they'll punish for it.

I did a website for a plumber a couple of years ago. He
was already #1 or #2 when I searched for a plumber
with his city name, but his site was junky. Meanwhile, his
web host talked him into getting a second site to improve his
ratings. The plumber made the second site with drag/drop
online, using mostly the same content as the first site. He
wouldn't listen to my warning, figuring that the college kid
making $7/hour doing tech support at the webhost was an
expert, and I wasn't. The result was that his first website
went down in the rankings. Google considers it a cheat when
you put the same content on multiple sites.

If your friend wants to increase traffic, the best bet would
be to do "link trades" with relevant trade groups or other sites
that make sense. For instance, the Chamber of Commerce
probably takes part in such link trades. He might also advertise
on Yelp and ask people to write reviews. Yelp and others have
been repeatedly accused of favoring companies that pay for
ads. I have no doubt that's true. I, myself, have been called
repeatedly by a contractor review site for builders. After
they explained the deal I realized that what they were really
talking about was ads, not listings and reviews. I'd pay a few
hundred dollars to be a member and I'd pay them a fee for
referrals. But the public facing company advertises a dependable
way to find trustworthy contractors.
In general I wouldn't put much faith in online reviews or
recommendations. Especially if the site is free to use. If the
visitor is not paying for advice then the reviewed companies
are almost certainly paying for rigged ratings. In that sense,
something like Yelp is a mixed blessing. But a lot of people use
it.

I don't think the first letter of the company will affect much
of anything.

| I should use my HOSTS file more. Frames? Frames on webpages? I
| havent' seen them for a long time.
|

Blocking frames is the only way to block iframes.
Fortunately, most sites no longer use frames. But
iframes have become very common. An iframe is
a webpage embedded in a webpage. But it doesn't
have to have a border or a scrollbar. On a typical
commercial page there may be 10 iframes. Google/
Doubleclick uses them for ads. Facebook uses them
for Like buttons. By putting their image in an iframe
it looks the same, but technically you've visited their
website. That allows them to run script and set
first-party cookies. One of the worst browser
vulnerabilities, cross site scripting, is typically done
through iframes. Criminals hack a vulnerable site, such
as a site made with Wordpress, and insert an iframe
to load something from their malware site. They then
run script from the malware site to do a driveby download.
At one point there was wide agreement
that iframes should be phased out. But then came
the spyware and high functionality of "Web 2.0". Now
iframes are very common.

In any Mozilla browser you can set browser.frames.enabled
to False in order to prevent loading external tracking and
many ads. But it will break a few pages. I find it works
best to use two browsers: One has NoScript and allows
session cookies, frames, etc. The other, which I use most
of the time, is optimized for privacy and security. No referrer,
no iframes, no script, no cookies, no supper cookies, etc.


| Years ago I was having trouble using Facebook search**, and I thought
| maybe it's because I wasn't registered, so I registered but told them
| nothing about myself, including my real name. Then my young niece had
| a page and she asked me to be a friend and I said okay if I can use a
| phony name. But then I started using my Facebook account in place of
| registering. Does that mean she gets spam from every website I sign
| into using my Facebook account?
|

I don't know much about that, other than what I read.
I think it means that if you buy kinky lingerie your niece
might get a message saying that you liked Acme Panties,
which has their new crotchless line on sale.

One thing's for sure -- if Zuck finds out that you didn't
use your real name you may be drawn and quartered for
the crime of "misrepresenting yourself in such a way as
to reduce the profits of advertisers." On Facebook, your
friends *are* the advertisers. (Czar Cheryl Sandberg says
so, recasting them as "brands", which she has the nerve
to cast as a category of friend:

Facebook "enables brands to find their voices. and to have genuine,
personal relationships with their customers" ..."to make marketing
truly social".

Who needs professional integrity when you've got
Orwellian psychosis helping to increase profits?


|
| The one in windows\system32\drivers\etc has only two lines:
| 127.0.0.1 localhost
| ::1 localhost
|

See here for info and a starter kit:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/privacytips.php5#hosts

You can also just write your own HOSTS file, and
there are other samples online. The only reason to
start with someone else's HOSTS file is to get the
list of common advertisers and trackers to block.


| In network settings, select
| the Properties of the tcp/ip item to see your DNS setting.
|
| I don't know how to do this. I used Start/network and got my router
| and my computer, but that's the place, right?
|
Control Panel - Network _ local area
connection (probably) - Properties.
Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). There
may also be an IPv6 entry. Click Properties.
Somewhere there you should see your
DNS server IP address(es).