Melayu Boleh revisited

One thing about Search Engine Optimisation is that you cannot afford to rest on your laurels. Take my 'Melayu Boleh' project for example - which started out as a competition initiated by Mohd. Suhaimy but later became a personal campaign to dislodge porn blogs from Google search results for the above search terms.

I eventually won the challenge on February 02, 2007. That was a great effort and in fact, the first results page didn't have any links to porn sits for a while.

On January 12, 2007, my post was #4 in Google search results for melayu boleh. It even went up to #2 and I think that was the highest it ever went up to.

It later dropped and I had to work hard to bring it back to #8 position in Google - 18 Aug 2008.

However, I stopped bothering after a while and now my post is nowhere to be found on Google results.

You can Digg it here.

Alleycats' Loga passes away

While going through the Star Online, learnt that Loganathan Arumugam passed away the Mount Miriam Hospital, Penang at 10.50am today at the age 54. He had been suffering from cancer. Read it here.

He is survived by his wife, a son (23) and a daughter (20).

Loga was a member of the Alleycats, one of the longest lasting bands in Malaysia (maybe in the world). The band was formed in 1969 and have been entertaining us since then. They have have 29 albums in their name. besides their love songs, he and his elder brother David, were also famous for their Afro hairstyles, which they retained.

The last time I saw them live was at Uncle Chilli's Fun Pub and Restaurant, PJ Hilton, Petaling Jaya. The group will not be the same without him.



Here are the lyrics:

JIKA KAU BERCINTA LAGI

Jika Kau bercinta lagi
cintalah sepenuhnya
jika kau bercinta lagi
jagalah kau hatinya

engkau yang memilihnya
tanpa memikirkan tentang diriku
kini ku hanya dapat berdoa
agar berbahagia kau disampingnya

Jika Kau bercinta lagi
cintalah sepenuhnya
jika kau bercinta lagi
jagalah kau hatinya

aku tak dapat menghalang
engkau punya kemahuan sendiri
biarku hidup hanya mengenang
peristiwa yang tak dapat ku lupa

kini aku hanya dapat berdoa
agar berbahagia kau disampingnya
selamat tinggal
aku mengundurkan diri

Rest in peace Loga.

Tags: Alleycats Melayu Loganathan Arumugam Music

Visitor Statistics

I do check my site statistics from time to time. Right now, I have several site meters running on the blog - don't ask me why. However, I find that Google Analytics provides the most informative visitor statistical analysis. Of course, you have to do the deeper analysis yourself.

It was quite interesting to learn that the 5 most popular page on my blog are:

1. Melayu Boleh.
2. Freemasons in Malaysia
3. Tricked into holding a contest
4. Keys to Our Apartment &
5. FAQs

The top 5 keywords used to get to my blogs were:

1. melayu boleh
2. flora damansara
3. ok lah
4. lah &
5. domain cheap

The top keyword used to get here as well as the top post on my blog, may be a proof of the theory that a there are a lot of naughty guys around searching for adult content on the net using certain keywords and unfortunately, a seemingly innocent phrase 'melayu boleh' happens to be one of them.

Anyway, I found out that most of my visitors are still from Malaysia. Take a look at the graph below (this year till date):


They make up 40.27% of the total visitors. It used to be around 80% middle of last year. This represents a drastic change in visitor statistics. As expected, visitors from UK come in second making up 17.81% of the total, closely followed by visitors from the US (17.70%).

Visitors from India have also more than doubled. It was less than 1% last year. Might have something to do with the fact that I joined Orkut recently. Read my post 'Most popular social networking site in India'.

Have you checked your site stats recently?

Tags: Google analytics Keywords Melayu boleh Site statistics

Melayu Boleh project update

It's one more day to go before the Wangcyber forum's "Melayu boleh SEO Challenge" ends and 18 days after I started my Melayu Boleh project.

It's been an interesting experience and I learnt a few new things. My blog post went up to 4th position in Google search results just 2 days after I wrote it. Then it disappeared altogether for a few days.

It was at 2nd position for several days before it came down. Right now, my post is:
- #7 in Google
- #5 in Yahoo
- #4 on Altavista
- On 7th results page on MSN

That's pretty good, don't you think so?

Tags: Melayu boleh Malay SEO

Search engine rankings

Some of you might recall that I had recently joined a challenge, which I call the Melayu Boleh Project. It was really amazing because just two days after I wrote the post, it went up to the fourth ranking in Google search results for the phrase "melayu boleh".

Unfortunately, just a day after that, I found that my blog post was nowhere to be found in the search engine results. I am happy that it is #21 on Yahoo!

I learnt a few things from this SEO exercise. You may get up there quick using some tricks (legal) but it does not guarantee that you can stay up there for long, especially if it is a blog post.

Surprised to learn that searching for "Melayu boleh" and "melayu boleh" give different results.

Anyway, I am contented with the fact that my post is #2 when you search for the phrase on Google for blogs.

UPDATED: As of 18 Jan 2007, my blog post is #2 on Google and #19 on Yahoo!

Tags: Melayu boleh Malay SEO

Ethnicity of my kids

I was given a form to fill at my daughter's pre-school. We were required to provide some details including her ethnic background, language spoken at home and religion among others. According to a friend, who's been a long time resident in the UK, this is a recent development and he was not very happy about it as he considered it as a case of Big brother being too nosy. Anyway, I was not really concerned with that. After all, it not something unheard of in Malaysia.

We were a bit confused what to fill in under Ethnic background and we finally ticked the "Mixed others" option.

It's quite funny but the issue of our kid's ethnicity has come up on more than one occasion. When we first arrived here in Coventry, some people were surprised when I told them that my kid's birth certificate says "Melayu" under Keturunan (meaning ancestry or descent), meaning my kids are Malay.

I guess they normally follow the father's ethnicity.

My wife once joked that is precisely the reason why they say "Masuk Melayu" (join Malay) whenever you marry a Malay. Melayu Boleh lah!

I am OK with that as long as my kids don't forget the father's (my) side of their heritage and start waving a Keris around.

BTW, the definition of "Malay" according to the Malaysian constitution may differ from that given by anthropologists. Refer to Article 160 of the Malaysian Constitution for more details.

Related posts:
- Mixed marriages and the melting pot

Tags: Ethnicity Melayu boleh Malay