Video Dating gone bad!

This guy needs to find love and quick or else he might be the next guy on the news or in jail. This guy has problems and I thought I would share. lol

Frustrated Video Dater Loses His Cool – Watch more Funny Videos

I blocked the country of ISRAEL!

Along the sames lines of the other countries who no longer can reach my site, Israel is now one of them.  They have consistantly shown me that they can not be trusted and therefore must be shut off from FriendPad.com.  With the continued efforts of the FriendPad.com community and my swift hand, we will make the place better each passing day.

Thanks to everyone who continues to help build a great community at FriendPad.com, the free online dating service.

Likelihood of Sex on a First Date

Based on a survey conducted at FriendPad.com, the free online dating service, it was found that over 60% of the users polled would consider having sex on a first date.  This includes more than one third (1/3) of the users declaring that absolutely they would have sex on a first date if given the chance.

The survey anonymously polled over one thousands (1,000) users of the free online dating site FriendPad.com over a 2 month period.  “This is a shocking discovery in today’s dating marketplace and specifically the insight into the interests in the folks coming to FriendPad.com today.” said Drew the site’s sole operator.  Sex has become a staple of the dating world and more and more people are jumping on the band wagon as the media continues on its path to make sex the cool thing to do whether you are in a relationship or not. 

These results are in sharp contrast to other studies that have been conducted in the past.  For example, a study conducted by YouGov on behalf of Craigslist about UK singles stated that “If I like someone on a first date, I would rather end the date with a nice cup of tea, coffee or other warm drink than by spending the night with them.”  However, on the other hand studies have shown that women in particular are letting down their guard more than they would have just a few years ago.  For example, a study done by The University of Texas School of Public Health showed that out of 740 women who were polled, 30% admitted to having sex on a first date.
 
Despite our alarming research, I think it’s safe to say that Sex is in and its here to stay and from the looks at it the folks at FriendPad.com are quite the promiscuous bunch of people.  From shear numbers, you have a greater chance this year of having sex on your first date than you did last year.  It’s a growing trend that will most likely continue to grow as the media continues to break down the guilt that previous generations have built up.

FriendPad.com is a 100% free online dating site based in Cleveland, Ohio United States who services members worldwide.

Free Dr. Pepper This Weekend

I am taking a bit of a break this morning from the usual to bring you a little something a friend of mine shared with me this morning. 

The company that manufactures the soft drink Dr. Pepper will be giving away free Dr. Pepper to anyone in America who wants it this weekend.  Apparently, they made a promise in March of 2008 that they would give a free soda to everyone in America if the long awaited Guns N’ Roses album Chinese Democracy actually went on sale this year.  The same album that the band started working on 14 years ago. 

Well the band heard the news and made it happen.  The album goes on sale this Sunday 11/23/2008 and Dr. Pepper now is going to pay up.  This Sunday starting at Midnight, everyone one in America can go to the Dr. Pepper Web site and get a free soda!  The coupon will be good until the end of February.

Have fun!

Here is the press release on Yahoo

Match.com rolls out personality testing to boost dating success

Match.com is falling on the eHarmony sword by implementing what eHarmony has done for years now, a personality test to help match you with others.  The only problem I see with it, is that it takes some 30 minutes to fill this out.  They appear to be seeing some success in their members filling out the test, however time will tell if users get frustrated with 30 minute test that they need to fill out at the site.  Eharmony takes it seriously and in fact will not even let you into the site without answering the questionaire. 

My question is do you think we should implement a personality test on our dating site, or do you prefer the fairly open nature of our site?

Snap makes $533,257 in the 2nd Quarter in Online Dating

So I just read an article about Snap Interactive who made over a 1/2 million, $533,257 to be exact, in the second quarter of this year and they run it completely off of social networks like myspace, facebook, hi5, bebo, etc.   It must be nice not having any servers to maintain.  That sounds like a lot of money, but with more than 1.4 million visits a day to its set of online dating applications on these social networks, that does not amount to much per visit. 

Snap Interactive is a company that has built 8 online dating related applications that essentially snap into other social networks and feed off of their user base to build up their members within their applications.

Online dating is certainly a big industry that money can be made in it, but you have to have that draw that brings people knocking at your front door.  Our claim to fame in the online dating world is that all of our dating site is 100% free.  So we rely heavily on you actually liking the site and spreading the word.  Help us out!

Online Dating Traffic

Online Dating Traffic

I took a look at the dating traffic that we are receiving in the United States and there seems to be a trend of traffic coming from California, Texas, Florida and New York.  California is leading the charge. 

Anyone have any ideas on how we might extend our reach into other states.  I understand that there is a concentration of people in these states, however there are a lot of people spread through out the other states as well.  My goal is to better fill out these other states so that people have an equal chance at dating someone regardless of where they live within the United States. 

I would like to eliminate the emails that I get on occasion when people say that we don’t have very many women that are within my age range where I live.  Well the problem there folks is that we are not getting many visitors from Omaha Nebraska for obvious reasons.  There are not as many people who live in Omaha Nebraska compared to a New York city.

If anyone has ideas, please share.

Top Dating Sites

Recently, I did a post on free dating sites to show what competition that I am up against.  Well in the world of online dating, there are many other competitors other than just the free dating sites.  The big boys in online dating are the ones charging fees to gain access to their full suite of features.  Unlike our free dating site which gives everything away for free, these sites charge you cold hard cash.

So I went ahead and cherry picked the cream of the crop of online dating listed below.  These dating sites will charge you money.  Even if they offer something for free to get you in the door, they will eventually charge you cold hard cash before you know it.  You will find someone that your interested in and then out of no where the site will ask you for money before being able to contact the person of your desire.  Beware.  If you want a free dating site, then navigate over to FriendPad.com.

First of all, if you don’t want to pay money, FriendPad.com is a good alternative.  Here are the other top paid dating sites.

• Match.com - $29.95 per month
• eHarmony.com - $59.95 a month
• Lavalife.com - Buy Credits
• Yahoo Personals - $24.95 a month
• True.com - $49.99 a month
• Chemistry.com - $49.99 a month
• Date.com - $24.95 a month
• Matchmaker.com - $24.95 a month
• American Singles - $29.99 a month
• Perfect Match - $59.95 a month
• FriendPad.com – 100% Free

As you can tell, there are a significant amount of top dating sites.  All of which charge you money to really use their site in the end.  These are the people that I am up against.  Feel free to check them out and let me know what I might be missing within our free dating site FriendPad.com.

How to increase Google Page Rank?

Lately, I have been playing around with the black magic Google page ranking search engine optimization on our free online dating site FriendPad.com.  For anyone who goes the dark road of search engine optimization on their web site, please beware that there is nothing quick about it.  It could take months or years to truly pay off so be patient and keep at it.  I wanted to take some time to go through the items that I have learned along the way and share with you what I have done to bring our site up into the first page of the SERPs, or in long format Search Engine Result Pages.

Title Tags
The title of your site is incredibly important to not only the users coming to your site, but also the search engines.  Google does index your title tags so its important to keep them very descriptive, keyword rich and specific to the content on the page that your on.  You should consider keyword placement here but keep the title to 5 words or so and make sure the keywords relate to the content on the page.  You also have to keep in mind that the title is the actual link that your users will click on to get to your site.  So make it compelling so that your users will actually click on it.

Meta Tags
This is not as important as it use to be, however there is still reason to make sure you have meta tags for each page.  Since Meta tags are hidden to the user, when the Internet was just taking shape people would use these tags to shove tons and insignificant keywords into them so that they ranked well in the search engines.  I remember a time in the mid 90s that I could get a number one position on keywords completely unrelated to the pages content.  Google and other search engines have taken these actions and devalued the importance of these meta tags.  However, Google still uses them in the description of the search results to give the user more information about what this page may be about but the days are gone to where you will be given a lift in search rank due to your meta tags.  

Web Site Content
As they always say in the web world, Content is King.  This could not be any more true with Google.  Without good keyword rich content, your chances of getting into the search results of Google is almost impossible.  When users search the web, they do so by typing in keywords.  Those keywords need to show up on your web page in order for your web page to be returned in the SERPs.  It’s really that simple.  Good keyword rich content is key and the more the merrier.    Also, original content rather that buying content that has already been used is also important.  Google is able to figure out if the content on your web site is original or if it has been funneled from some other source.  Create the content yourself and you will rank higher as a subject matter expert.

Keyword Placement
Keywords are very important as mentioned above.  You want to be concious of keyword placement as you write your content.  If the topic is about chocolate and you are selling chocolate, make sure you mention chocolate in your article.   You can’t stop there though.  Consider this:   When users type a search term in Google, do they normally type chocolate?  Probably not.  They will type things like Chocolate Gifts, or Chocolate recipes or maybe even local chocolate stores.  You may have heard these type of keywords being refered to as Long Tail Keywords.  Long tail because they contain three, four or maybe 5 or more keywords in the search string.  These keywords are almost more important than the word chocolate because they become more specific and more relevant to your content, which in turn increases your chances of the user clicking on your web site in the SERPs.  You have to remember that just because you fall in the number one position in the SERPs does not mean that your users will click on your site.  The results need to be relevant to what the user is searching for and that is what Google has worked so hard to maintain is high quality relevant results.  They will penalize you if they find out you are shooving keywords in places that they have no business being in. So don’t shove Britney Spears in your web site content when you are selling chocolate.  Chances are, Britney Spears has no business being in your content.

Links
Google changed the way search is done when they introduced their linking and ranking algorithm.  Web sites are mainly ranked by the linking that is placed to and from your web site.   Each link is viewed as some level of vote for your legitimacy in the Internet neighborhoods, so to speak.  You see Google views your web site as participating in one of thousands of neighborhoods on the Internet.  Your status in your neighborhood is determined by how many people think your content is important.  They cast their vote by linking to your web site.  It’s also important to note that links from other web sites in your same neighborhood is more important than links from other neighborhoods.  So taking our chocolate example once again, the neighborhood would be Chocolate related web sites.   If you received a link from a major chocolate retailer, that had a high page rank, that link vote would bring you more status in the neighborhood than a link from let’s say my blog.    Because the higher status web site in your web site neighborhood linked to you, they essentially boosted your status in the neighborhood and in reality gives your Google page ranka boost.  My link to your web site would not boost your page rank as much because I am not an authority in your web site neighborhood of chocolate.  Quite a concept eh?

Also, it’s very important when other web sites link to you, that they actually create links that have anchor text that is also relevant to your web sites content.  So when linking, you would much rather have a link that stated free dating service, which is highly descriptive of the site behind the link, rather than a link that says go here.  Google captures this anchor text which helps them associate you with a given community. 

Be Patient
Page rank does not happen over night and don’t expect it to.  You will be setting yourself up for a disappointment if you think you can achieve great page rank across the board in a short period of time.  Google has an algorithm that time to break into.  Just as you see in the real world, it takes time to build trust and that’s exactly what Google has set out to do.  Build trust with you as a webmaster.  If you don’t break their trust, but rather build up the trust by creating good regular keyword rich content and furthermroe have others vote on your content by linking to it, then you will soon enjoy page rank like your neighborhood webmasters have done already.

I gotta run, but I will try to add additional information as I have time to this post.  Take care and have a good day.

Blocking Countries By IP Address

I have come to the realization that I need to start blocking more countries from reaching my dating site FriendPad.com.  If you would like to check out the company that I am using to Block by IP Address, click the link Block by IP Address.  I have been canceled by Google twice now and I am coming to the conclusion that it’s one of a very short list of reasons.  Google is never going to fess up to the reason why they canceled my Adsense account, so I am left to my crystal ball.  Here is my list according to priority of the possibilities:

1. Reason #1: Google Adsense does not like the traffic coming from poverty stricken countries.  Believe it or not, I have traffic coming from almost every country in our wonderful planet earth!  That’s a good and bad thing as I am finding out. Good as I like to see traffic hitting our site and bad because there are some bad people in some of these far reaching countries.
2. Reason #2: A competitor of mine went to town on clicking on my ads so that I would get kicked out of the Google Adsense program.  This is unlikely, but is still possible.  No one likes to see more competitors pop up and when they do that’s a good way to cut their funds to grow the site.
3. Reason #3: Google doesn’t like my mug photo shot on FriendPad.com.  This is also very unlikely because I am such a stud.  <— TOTALLY KIDDING !

So my plan is to start ratching down the countries that are allowed to even come close to my site.  I already am blocking a list of them simply out of the fact that they are causing trouble on the site.  I am now adding to that list with the following list of problematic countries.  Please let me know if I missed something here:

AFGHANISTAN
ANGOLA
BANGLADESH
BURKINA FASO
BURUNDI
CAMBODIA
CAPE VERDE
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
CHAD
COMOROS
DJIBOUTI
EQUATORIAL GUINEA
ERITREA
ETHIOPIA
GAMBIA
GUINEA
GUINEA-BISSAU
HAITI
KIRIBATI
LIBERIA
MADAGASCAR
MALAWI
MALDIVES
MALI
MAURITANIA
MOZAMBIQUE
MYANMAR
NEPAL
NIGER
SAMOA
SENEGAL
SIERRA LEONE
SOLOMON ISLANDS
SOMALIA
SUDAN
UGANDA
VANUATU
YEMEN
ZAMBIA