Well I am pleased to say that I have finally left TalkTalk Broadband and I definitely won’t be going back to them anytime soon. I could have got my broadband for free with them but I’d rather pay for something and get a good service that I can rely on.

Talking to TalkTalk support has been a waste of time and money and the people I have got to speak to either don’t know what they are doing, don’t understand their own systems or simply don’t care. Even yesterday when I called them to say my broadband wasn’t working they couldn’t tell me whether or not I was still connected to them  and suggested I report it as a fault.

It turns out I had been disconnected and BT hadn’t emailed PlusNet to tell them my migration had gone through. Entering my new login details to my router got me connected straight away.

The first thing I noticed is the speed. Although I have still to get an increase of my connection from 1Mb to 8Mb the whole internet just seems to have come back to life. Surfing the internet is so much faster with PlusNet even at these low speeds and I can’t wait to see the further improvements when I’m on 8Mb.

I chose PlusNet over others as I noticed they had topped the customer satisfaction charts at uSwitch with 92% and they didn’t tie you into any long term contracts. Who wants to be stuck into 18 month contract with anyone?

Any company who is also prepared to do a no cost 30 day trial have to be confident of their own services too and that was the point that finally clinched the deal. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

If you’re fed up with your broadband provider then check out PlusNet for yourself. They do up to 8Mb connections from only £9.99 a month. Although there are free deals around, the saying “You get what you pay for” springs to mind.

Okay this is my second attempt at switching broadband provider. I’ll be leaving TalkTalk broadband hopefully and good riddance to them!

I’ve signed up with Plus.net who for the same price as I was paying before will give me an up to 8MB connection albeit with some download restrictions. They limit you to 4GB during peak hours and 50GB during off peak hours. There is no way I’d go over any of those so its no problem for me.

What I particularly liked about Plus.net is that not only do they offer a no charge 30 day trial where you can cancel your service and pay nothing if you’re not happy, they don’t tie you into long term contracts too. That’s ideal for me as hopefully Sky Broadband will have their 16MB service running in my area in November/December this year so it is going to be pretty easy to move provider if I want to.

Anyway, I’ve got an email confirmation that Plus.net will be able to supply my broadband and I should be live with them within 5-10 days. I’ll just be glad to see the back of TalkTalk to be honest. Anyone thinking of joining up with TalkTalk broadband or any of their other services check out TalkTalk Hell first before committing yourself to something you’ll be stuck with for a long time.

Well I eventually got through to TalkTalk today and got to explain my problem and that I still hadn’t got my MAC code.

To my surprise the guy on the phone confirmed I had ordered it more than 28 days ago and said “I’ll get you a MAC code within the hour and call you back”.

Well, you can’t argue with a statement like that but I did wonder whether I would ever get the call back. I’m pleased to say a couple of hours later he did ring and I’m now in possession of the elusive MAC code. Whether it works remains to be seen but I will be positive and take them at their word and use it later today.

It just goes to show that they can generate MAC codes easily enough if they want to.

I’ve been trying to leave TalkTalk broadband since the 11th May 2006. The first MAC code I was given I was told was invalid and after chasing them again and again and again I still don’t have a new MAC code. They tell me it takes them 28 days to generate a code (Why so long?) but the last recorded request I made for this is 25th July 2006. It’s now the 29th August 2006 and I still don’t have it.

So I thought today I would ring them again and find out what is happening. I called them 5 times this morning and each time I got cut off before I could get an answer. Bearing in mind this is a telecommunications company, you’d think their systems would be good enough for this not to happen. Getting cut off once maybe, but 5 times in a row?

I’m still no further forward!

Studies show that web users will only read the top 15 search results for any given query. That means millions of websites gather dust, never to be seen—and what’s the point of creating that content if you’re not read?

Thus evolved the science of search engine optimization, which includes key word counts, editing metatags, link management. Webmasters can spend weeks, even months, fine-tuning these elements—but like any product, it needs a test drive. That’s what search engine spider simulators are for.

Search engine spider simulators, also known as search engine robot simulators, allow you to see the page as other web crawlers do. “Robots” is an industry term that describes how Google, et. al scour the Internet for new pages. They’re like electronic detectives, with each given a particular task. Some bots are designed to follow every link, downloading as many pages as possible for a particular index or query. Others are programmed to look out for new content.

Both these bots play a huge role in whether or not your website ends up in the top 15…or languishes at the bottom.

For example, does the bot pick up on your links? Javascript errors can also cause the bot to miss out on important links, and we all know how important inbound links are in search engine ranking.

Does it index every page of your site? It’s highly possible that a programming glitch causes the bot to skip a large portion of your content. There goes all your efforts to increase keywords or optimize titles and crossheads!

It’s also possible that the bots are basing your ranking on old versions of your website, unable to recognize the changes you have made. You might as well have not done anything at all.

You may have also made the mistake of accidentally blocking a bot from checking a section of your site. While it is important to restrict website users’ access to sensitive information—for example, those reserved for a company’s internal networks; the personal information of members who have signed up for a newsletter; or premium pages that you’d rather reserve for paying subscribers—the bot should be given free rein, if only to improve your chances of getting a higher ranking. If not, that’s just like throwing the bot with the bathwater.

It would be impossible to pick up these errors without actually recreating how the bots review your site. You can do this by using a robot simulator. Using the same processes and strategies of different search engines, these simulators will “read” your site and inform you of which pages are skipped, which links are ignored, and which errors it encounters. You can also review the robot.txt files, which will enable you to spot any problems and correct them before you submit them to real search engines.

You’ll be surprised at how many things you’ll find out about web robots, and how the bells and whistles many webmasters include on the site do nothing to improve search engine ranking. For example, search engine robots generally do not see flash based content, content that is made through javascript like javascript menus, as well as content displayed as an image. You’ll also be able to monitor how the bots will follow your hyperlinks, very crucial if you’re running a big website with sprawling content.

We’ve recently launched a search engine robot simulator in the SEO Tools section on XML-Sitemaps.com so if you want to see how robots see your site give it a try.  Our robot checks all links on your pages and will tell you if any links are restricted by your robots.txt file and also the use of the nofollow tag.