Hey, Phil here.

I was browsing the MSN website the other day and came across this link: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/02/5567082-google-sucker-punches-online-retail-bully?gt1=43001. Essentially, a business was intentionally upsetting its customers with poor customer service (threatening lives, swearing at them) so that these customers would blog about and write poor reviews for the company. As we know in the SEO world, any reference is a good reference, so as a result, the company shot to the top of the rankings. Not until I read this article did I even think that bad reviews would help increase a website's rankings, but it makes sense. Thankfully, Google caught on and changed the algorithm to penalize poor reviews.

On the web dev front, I've been trying to make a mission of reading every article in .NET magazine. It's such a great source for all things web-related from SEO, to devving, to graphic design. The smallest blurb could provide a great info and inspiration. There was an article regarding implementing transitions in CSS3 to allow for a more robust user experience, using the ":target" pseudo-class. Now, I'm currently working on a website that had pretty long list of FAQs. where the questions are at the top, and when you click on them, you are directed to the answer to the question on the same page. I thought I'd try this technique out, but didn't get it to work like in the article. What ended up happening though was an accidental user experience enhancement! You can see it here: http://seattlend.com/faq. When users click on a question, not only are they redirected to the answer, but it's highlighted so that the user doesn't have rescan the page for what they were inquiring about. This was all achieved with some simple CSS! Here's the code:

<style type="text/css">
     li.question:target { color: #679e43; }    
</style>
...
<ul>
     <li><a href="#visit">What can I expect...</a></li>
     <li><a href="#insurance">Will my medical insurance plan cover...</a></li>
     ...
</ul>
<ul>
     <li class="question" id="visit">What can I expect...</li>
     <li class="answer">Your first...</li>
     <li class="question" id="insurance">Will my medical insurance plan cover...</li>
     <li class="answer">Most major medical...</li>
</ul>

To reemphasize, a user clicks on "What can I expect" then the page jumps directly to the same question but with a different text color, and the answer below it. What do you guys think? As a user, do you appreciate this? I was completely floored at how much difference having the question highlighted made for me -- I was more engaged and more likely to read the answer. That just me though, I'm amused by the simplest things :-) What do you think? Take care and until next time...