One annoying thing, and many people miss this, is that you should verify both the ‘www’ and non ‘www’ versions of your site with Google Webmasters Tools, even if you have a 301 redirect (as you should) setup from one to the another.

Why verify both the ‘www’ and non ‘www’ versions of your site?

• Google is pretty smart about the ‘www’ subdomain, but telling it you own both your domain and the ‘www’ subdomain just is another signal that helps your site. Google doesn’t automatically transfer the trust and authority it’s given to a domain to a subdomain. This is because it is possible for someone different to own a subdomain.
• Verifying both versions allows you to set the “preferred domain” (Site Configuration -> Settings) in GWMT, again another signal that can only help.
• If you ever have to move your site to another domain, you will want to submit a “Change of Address” in GWMT. You will not be able to do this unless both the ‘www’ and non ‘www’ versions of your site have been verified.

More on Google Webmasters Tools Verification

To verify your site in Google Webmasters Tools there are three methods (the third method is newer):

1. Add a meta tag in the of your home page
2. Upload a file to the root directory that GWMT provides to you
3. Add a DNS record for your site and telling Google about it.

DNS Text Verification was released in mid 2011 by Google.

There are many step by step articles and videos on how to do the verification, including in this blog. Also as one might expect, there is a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to do the verification if you don’t want to deal with FTP, editing your site or DNS records. Here are some links to resources:

• I cover both the Yahoo and Google verification process and submitting a sitemap.
• One of many videos on GWMT verification (covers the HTML file upload option and doesn’t mention DNS Text Verification). Most of these videos assume you are using particular hosting provider.
• Article that covers all three verification methods
• Why submitting a change of address is beneficial when you move domains even if you also use 301 redirects.

2010 is the year that Facebook came out from its walled garden, it’s no longer just a destination site that you hang out in, now Facebook is out and about in the wild. It started with the April announcement of a partnership with Yelp, Pandora, and other sites to share your data with those sites via a feature called “instant personalization“. Later I started noticing that you could use your Facebook login details to log into meetup.com, among other sites.

But what really got Facebook out into the Internet wild was the “Like/Recommend” buttons that was a hit with many websites. Corporations rightly realized this was a way to get site visitors to spread the word about their messaging and web content among their friends and the buttons were adopted like wildfire. The premise is core to the basic Facebook philosophy, in that people trust referrals from friends above all else. Contrast this with the Google philosophy, which is about discovering what is popular and authoritative in the websphere and getting that in front of the searcher.

If you are interested in adding the “Like” or “Recommend” Facebook buttons (there is no difference between the two), first read through this problogger post that might help you decide whether they are right for your website. The post pushed adding the Facebook like button to this blog further down my todo list as testing showed that tech topics tend to do better on Twitter than on Facebook.

The latest from Facebook is Facebook messaging. Facebook users have always been able to message one and other privately, the new feature takes that one step further with the addition of an externally available email address that matches your username, and also by interweaving your chats and texts into one central place . This is a shot across gmail’s bow (even with the recently introduced “priority” feature) and it could be a category killer impacting yahoo and hotmail as well. I wonder what it will mean to the email marketers, as facebook messaging prioritizes messages from your friends above any emails you get by being on a list.

Have you registered for your @facebook.com email account yet? It’s being rolled out in phases, but you can register now at: www.facebook.com/about/messages/. (I wonder, will having a gmail account delay or hasten the time I get my invitation?) Otherwise you can wait until a “Claim Your Facebook email” link shows up in your Messages view.