TechCrunch.com
Wiki edit
With all the people all around the world now getting their information online, TechCrunch has created a nice niche in the information market. The weblog, founded in June of 2005, specializes in profiling and reviewing new and existing internet products and companies making a significant commercial or cultural impact on the web. Edited by founder Michael Arrington, TechCrunch focuses on Web 2.0 companies and websites, with companion blogs and websites looking at tangentially related products and companies, such as the mobile Web 2.0 and new hardware and gear.
edit Praise/Concerns
TechCrunch is lauded by internet industry and venture capitalist insiders, but has also received its fair share of controversy in its short existence.
Many people believe that a write up in TechCrunch can be a make-or-break proposition for fledgling tech companies. A post puts a company on the forefront, exposing their flaws and successes. According to The Wall Street Journal Online [1], "For many Silicon Valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, TechCrunch has become a must read. Internet companies mentioned on the blog often report huge increases in business after they're featured. Others get unsolicited calls from venture capitalists who want to give them money."
No way has this been felt more prominently than by the recent acquisition of YouTube by Google. TechCrunch was the first to break the story, helping to secure their reputation as being at the leading edge of the technology industry.
Which leads to some of the concerns about TechCrunch. Criticism has been lodged that because of its prominence in the industry TechCrunch can favorably influence the industry and that Arrington, a shareholder and advisor to several technology companies, would want to influence those companies. Other concerns have been raised that TechCrunch could be in a position to want to write favorably (or not disclose potentially damaging information) about it's advertisers or sponsors.
TechCrunch has been proactive to combat these concerns. The website's About page discloses these potential conflicts of interest, and posts that may contain a conflict are notated as such (along with a disclosure of the potential conflict). Additionally, TechCrunch has hired a dedicated advertising salesperson to separate the business-side of their company from the reporting/blogging side.
edit TechCrunch Writers
TechCrunch is staffed by three writers.
- Founder/editor Michael Arrington grew up in California and Surrey, England. He has a law degree from Stanford University. Arrington is also the founder and a board of directors member for the technology company edgeio.
- Nick Gonzalez has been doing analysis and research writing for TechCrunch since July 2006. He's a graduate of UC Berkeley with degrees in business administration, economics, and minor in computer science. He also blogs with RunningWithFoxes.com about emerging web apps.
edit Past Writers
- Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote for TechCrunch starting in June 2006. He has since left to become lead writer and a VP at ReadWriteWeb.com.
edit TechCrunch Affiliates
The success of TechCrunch has spawned a number of spin-offs from the main blog. Here are a few:
- Localized editions -- TechCrunch is available in three localized editions. TechCrunch France, TechCrunch UK and TechCrunch Japan.
- CrunchNotes.com -- An informal blog about web 2.0, is a companion blog to TechCrunch.
- MobileCrunch.com -- A blog about the Mobile 2.0 community, the technologies, applications, services and devices making up the mobile community.
- CrunchGear.com -- A blog about the latest gizmos, gadgets and computer hardware.
- TalkCrunch.com -- Podcast about Web 2.0.
- CrunchBoard.com -- A job board for the web 2.0 and technology industry.
edit Awards and Honors
Featured on Technorati 100, Feedster 500, and CNET Top 100 Blogs.
edit Additional Information
According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal Online [2], Arrington claims the site brings in "about $120,000 in revenue a month, mostly from ads, sponsorships, an online job-posting service and the parties it holds."
edit Further Readings
Wall Street Journal: TechCrunch Site Makes Arrington A Power Broker, Nov. 3, 2006
MSNBC: The Real YouTube Scoop, Oct. 10, 2006
CNNMoney.com: Blogging for Dollars, Oct. 2, 2006
Wall Street Journal: Tech Blogs Produce New Elite To Help Track The Industry's Issues, Dec. 7, 2005
edit Contact
- Michael Arrington
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edit Languages
English, Japanese
edit Related Domains
edit External Links
- Alexa: TechCrunch.com
| 14 Nov. 2006 |  | | 
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Home Page Analysis
The Home Page Analysis helps you understand how a site's home page appears to both search engines and site visitors.
TechCrunch.com Home Page Analysis Summary
|
Titles & Headings
The title and headings on the home page tell people and search
engines what a website is about. Analyze the title & headings of the home page for free or the entire site. |
Problem |
|---|---|
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Links & Images
Relevant links to other sites are good for people and search
engines. Images on a web page should be described for visually impaired
visitors and search engines. Analyze the links & images of the home page for free or the entire site. |
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Search Engine Friendliness
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Title
The title of a web page appears in search results as the link to that page. Learn more ...
Purpose
The title of a web page appears as a clickable link in search results and bookmarks. A descriptive, compelling home page title with relevant keywords can increase the number of people visiting the site.
Search Engines
Search engines view the text of the title tag as a strong indication of what the page is about. Accurate keywords in the title tag can help the page rank better in search results.
Length
A title tag should have fewer than 70 characters, including spaces. Major search engines won't display more than that.
Content
The title tag of your home page (and any other page on your site) should not contain the site’s domain name or URL. These will appear near the title in search results, so use your 70 characters to tell people what the page is about. The title tag should not contain any HTML, because it will be displayed incorrectly or not at all.
- Good: This web page has a title tag.
- Problem: The title has fewer than three words. You may not be telling people and search engines enough about this page.
- The title of this site's home page:
- “TechCrunch”
H1 Headings
The H1 heading is an important sentence or phrase on a web page that quickly and clearly tells people and search engines what they can expect to find there. Learn more ...
Just one H1
In most cases, a web page should have just one H1 heading. Using multiple H1 headings is okay if that is a logical way to organize the page, but they should be used sparingly. That’s because search engines can view multiple H1 headings as an attempt to signal that all the content on a page is equally important, a tactic that’s seen as an attempt to game the search engine algorithms.
Purpose
Search engines look for an H1 heading to determine what a page is about. Human visitors do, too.
Content and placement
The H1 heading appears on the web page itself, unlike the page title, which people will see mostly in search results.
The H1 tag (which contains the H1 heading) is usually listed first among the other heading tags for a page. None of the major search engines, however, will penalize a site for listing H2 through H6 tags ahead of the H1 tag.
The H1 heading for a page should be different from its title. Each can target different important keywords for better SEO.
- Warning: This page has more than one H1 heading. It should have just one.
- H1 headings for this site's home page:
-
- “Got a Tip? TELL US.”
- “Thanks for the tip! We're following it up now.”
TechCrunch.com in search results
You can see below how most search engines will display this site's home page in search results. The title is used as the link to the page, and the meta description appears below the title.
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Links & Images
Sites You Link To
Outbound links tell search engines which websites you find valuable and relevant to your own site, and help your visitors find what they need…even if it’s not on your site. Learn more ...
Search engines
Including links to relevant sites is good for your website's standing with search engines. The Web is all about linking, and carefully chosen outbound links tell search engines that you understand their value to site visitors. These outbound links also help search engines classify your site in relationship to others.
Here, we identify only the outbound links on this site's home page, but outbound links add value to any important page on a website.
Site visitors
Outbound links tell people that you want to provide them with good information, even if it’s not on your own site. These links can also prompt other people to link to your site, which can boost its reputation and ranking in search results.
Here, we identify only the outbound links on this site's home page, but outbound links add value to any important page on a website.
Image Descriptions
Image descriptions - also called alt text - are the best way to describe images to search engines and to visitors using screen readers. Learn more ...
Help for visitors with impaired vision
People with impaired vision use screen readers to help them “read” websites. If you provide descriptive alt text for images on your site, people using screen readers will know what the images are about, and will get the same full understanding of your site that others do.
Good for search engine rankings
Describing images on a web page with alt text can help the page rank higher in search results if you include important and relevant keywords. Do not be tempted to stuff irrelevant keywords into alt text just so a page will rank well for those words. Search engines can recognize this ploy for what it is: an attempt to game results.
Writing image descriptions
This is what an image description looks like in HTML:
<img src="image.jpg" alt="This is the image description">
You can write image descriptions, or alt text, by writing the HTML directly into the code for a web page. If you’re using a content management system or online commerce software package, it will probably have a feature to help you quickly create alt text for your images.
Caution: While some software packages automatically generate alt text, they don't always do it well. Always check the quality of automatically generated alt text.
- Warning: Some of your images don't have descriptions.
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Robots
Your website's robots.txt file can tell search engines to ignore parts of your site. Learn more ...
Purpose
Website owners usually use robots.txt to let search engines know which pages or sections of their site shouldn't be indexed — for example, web contact forms, print versions of web pages and other content that's duplicated elsewhere on the site. Robots.txt can also be used to request that specific robots not index a site. For more information, read How To Use Robots.txt.
Be careful!
If you're going to use robots.txt, be careful not to accidentally exclude search engines from pages you want people to find. To learn more, read Don't Block Search Engine Crawlers.
Search engine robots
You'll need to know the names of specific search engine robots - or "bots" – if you’re going to exclude any or all of them from any part of your site.
- Google’s bot is called Googlebot. Google is the world’s largest search engine, and is where many people discover new websites.
- Bing’s bot is called msnbot. Bing also provides search results to people using Yahoo to search the Web. Together, Bing and Yahoo are the second largest search resource, after Google.
- Baidu’s bot is called Baiduspider. Baidu is a major search engine in China, and the number of people using it is increasing rapidly.
- AboutUs.org’s bot is called AboutUsBot. To create a Site Report, AboutUs uses crawling technology that’s similar to what search engines use.
- Good: This website’s robots.txt file is not blocking major search engines from crawling its pages. Your website can appear in any engine’s search results.
Canonical Url
This website can live at www.TechCrunch.com or TechCrunch.com. It's best for your site's visibility to live at just one URL, or web address. You'll want to create a 301 redirect to the URL you choose from the other URL. Learn more ...
Choose one or the other
Whichever of these URLs you choose, make sure your website lives ONLY at that location, which is called the canonical URL for your site.
Be careful!
If you choose www.MyWebsite.com for your site, make sure people who don't type www can get to your site, too. Create a permanent 301 redirect from MyWebsite.com to www.MyWebsite.com.
If the same web page exists at two different URLs, people can choose to link to one or the other. Links from other sites to your website are valuable — they tell search engines that your site is important to people. By splitting valuable links between two identical pages, you're diluting the power of those links to help a page rank higher in search results.
Learn more about why you should have just one home page: Read Twin Home Pages: Classic SEO Mistake
- Good: Your website resides at TechCrunch.com, and www.TechCrunch.com is permanently redirected to it.
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Web Presence
Search Engine Visibility
Check this site's prominence around the web and in major search engines.
Rank
| value for Quantcast | 2,288 |
|---|---|
| value for Compete | Not Available |
| value for Alexa | 314 |
Date Last Crawled
| value for Google | Not Available |
|---|---|
| value for Bing | Not Available |
Social Visibility
Check this site's presence on news sharing and community sites.
Social Media Visibility
| value for Digg | 0 |
|---|---|
| value for Dmoz | 7 |
| value for Google Groups | 114,000 |
| value for Yahoo Answers | 130 |
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Redirectory
Below we show domains that redirect to TechCrunch.com.
We survey every domain on the Internet ending in .com, .net, or .edu to see if any redirect to this website. Large or famous websites like Amazon.com often have many sites redirecting to them.
Domains that redirect to the home page of TechCrunch.com
A website owner can point one domain to the home page of another. Learn more ...
Capture visitors who type the wrong name
It can make a lot of sense to redirect a domain to an existing web page. For example, many people are likely to type wikipedia.com when they are really looking for wikipedia.org. Creating a redirect from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org helps these people get to the site they want.
Domains that redirect to a page within TechCrunch.com
A domain can point to any page within another website. Learn more ...
Get people to a specific web page
Creating a redirect from a simple domain name helps people find an existing web page that has a long, hard-to-remember URL. For example firefox.com redirects to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/.
We have not found any domains that redirect to pages within TechCrunch.com.
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