Why Yahoo India web hosting service is not SEO friendly ?

I am availing Yahoo India's web hosting plan. The good things about the service are :

. Unlimited space
. Competitive rates
. Decent Hosting Control Panel with web based FTP etc.
. No service outages
. Good brand to give you confidence that they will continue to exist


There is a big BUT following this. This specially concerns any website which is looking to be SEO (search engine optimization) friendly, which these days everyone is.

Yahoo web hosting doesn't allow ".htaccess" modifications. Which most of the other web hosting solution providers out there provide because of it being so important for SEO. But Yahoo doesn't.


".htaccess" is a VERY important SEO feature. There are some really cool things that can be done that are a must for SEO. Listing below are things that can be done:

. Friendly URL : This feature allows every page on your site to be access with a Search engine friendly URL. Something like : "http://www.website.com/posts/the-topic-of-my-page-post.html"
 versus something like "http://www.website.com/posts.php?postid=462"
   The difference between the two version that are pointing to the same page post on your site, is that the friendly version of the URL contains post topic keywords. These keywords in the URL are ranked very highly by search engines and are more likely to rank your pages higher in searches. This is possible only through ".htaccess" modification which is not allowed by Yahoo.


. 404 redirect : As your website grows big, over a period of time there could be broken links because of moved/deleted posts/content. This problem of dead links pointing to non-existent content is where your search engine bot might land and find that a link to your site is dead link. It is possible that the search engine reduces its confidence in such sites, if there are too many such cases. Way to deal with this problem is to modify ".htaccess" to redirect any request to a non-existent content/page to something more meaningful, like your home-page with a error-message on top or a some other page which suggests other content on your site or external content which it deems as relevant to the original queried content. Thereby dealing with the problem of dead link in a much more algorithmic manner, satisfying search engine to quite an extent.

. 301 redirect : Old URL to new URL modification. For example if for any reason (change of topic of a post after it was first published) the URL of a page changes. It could again lead to dead link scenario described above. 301 redirects can be done through ".htaccess" modification, can make the request of the old URL converted to request for new URL automatically, hiding the face that there has been a URL change to the bot or the user reading. Again better way to deal with dead URL problem, and thats why good for SEO.

. Above mentioned are some basic things that are must have's for SEO done through ".htaccess" modifications. However there are some more advanced things that could be done as well, which sound like rarely used practically, like - accessing certain IPs only, prevent Image HOT linking, disable director browsing etc.


Other things being rarely used alright, BUT the top three SEO uses of ".htaccess" are considered must haves and simply can not be ignored. There are sites like www.woorank.com which give you a SEO rank based on how SEO friendly your website is and give you important tips on what could be the things to improve. These sites also look at features which are implantable only through ".htaccess" and unfortunately can not be done on Yahoo web-hosting.

To be fair to Yahoo web-hosting, it should be mentioned why they do not allow ".htaccess" modifications, there reasoning is that it exposes security risks. Considering this coming from the internet giant's technical experts, this might be right BUT how do we make justify :
. Most of the other web-hosting solution providers allowing this ".htaccess" modifications ?
. Why does SEO rank the features as important and expect them to be present ?
. Isn't this something that everyone out there is doing (more importantly your competing websites) and you might be losing out on a important dimension while your competitors have it.


Overall this sounds like an overkill that Yahoo web-hosting technical team is going after security wise and should be changed, my2c. Do share thoughts.

incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in Income Tax India website registration error : Internal error please try after some time

I was recently told by the customer care helpline from Income Tax department India, that there is a website where I can go and register my PAN number. After registering I will be able to view past filings, whether e filing or physical filing. Also it will be useful in checking status of current filings, refunds etc.

Today I tried to register my PAN number on the website, but got this error : Internal Error. Please try after some time.

Here is a screen shot of the error I got :

Initially the website registration had given an error saying this will not work on Google Chrome browser. So I tried with Firefox browser. The registration form showed but the above mentioned error did not let the registration finish. Share any solutions anyone who might have come across this error, knows. Thanks

Facebook Ads errors : "Save operation failed" "update table failed"

These errors I have encountered very frequently while operating my Facebook Ad account. Specially while I'm modifying the CPC amount. It just fails to update the amount giving the above mentioned error. This is quite frustrating experience specially because this involves the money being spent, and despite your attempts to modify Facebook is not accepting the updated CPC amount.

Another frequently seen error is :

Many times this is seen when modifying the running status of the Ad. For example If I'm trying to pause an Ad, It will show the above error "Save operation Failed" and it will continue to run!!

  The irony is i do not see such error very often as a Facebook user, but as an advertiser, I do a lot frequently, which is almost daily. Thing to note is that it is not just a one off error. It is seen for hours together, of course I will not sit on it for hours. I go back to work, check back after some time and it is still there!

Advertisers is the way Facebook makes money. The focus on user experience for an advertiser is not appropriate, specially given that these are seen very frequently.

What you cannot do on Facebook Ads - improvement required in targetting

Came across this limitation while creating Facebook Ad in targeting.

Explaining here with an example : While targeting Facebook ad there is a way to say "Show my ad to people who like Tennis". This part is good. BUT there is no way to add a exclusion rule like "do not show my ad to people who like Golf"..

So basically Facebook seems to have tonnes of information regarding what people like etc. based on which it can smartly target ads. But isn't it just a matter of exposing this as a exclusion also, in the sense described by example above. I may want to exclude people from my targeting based on what they like. But that as of today is not present in Facebook ad creation targeting options!

It can be an advanced targeting option that can easily be exposed and might find use for advertisers giving them much finer control on not just whom they want to target but also whom they do not want to target. Do share thoughts..