We have just posted a long awaited update to Macintosh Explorer bringing the application to version 5.0. This new update adds support for Quicklook, improves support for Snow Leopard, and fixes many minor bugs and issues with the previous version.

Macintosh Explorer 5.0 is a free update for all registered users.

We have just released a new update to Sitemap Automator, the easiest way to get your website listed in all major search engines.

This update will now show you any broken links on your website and where they can be found on your site. Just double click a broken link and Sitemap Automator will take you to the page that contains that link.

Broken links can negatively effect both your search engine rankings and your website visitor’s experience. Ensuring all your links work correctly is the starting point of a professional website.

This update is free for registered 2.x users.

iWeb SEO Tool the free search engine optimization tool for iWeb based sites, has been updated to version 1.9 and adds the two most request features.

It will now work properly with iWeb blogs that use commenting and with iDisk Syncing enabled. Loading a website from your iDisk will also work much faster than before.

This update is of course free and can be download from the iWeb SEO Tool download page.

We have a few important updates currently being beta tested. First and foremost, Macintosh Explorer, our file browser for Mac OS X has some new features including a new tabbed interface, support for Quick Look on Leopard and a few more enhancements.

We also have an update to iWeb SEO Tool which improves on some long standing issues. You can now properly use iWeb SEO Tool when you have MobileMe syncing enabled. You can also now optimize blog pages for search engines.

You can download both beta versions from;

http://www.trybeta.com/

Just create a free beta testers account at the above site and you will see both products listed. Try them out and please submit your feedback and any problems you encounter so we can fix them ASAP.

We are very excited to announce the first beta of MailShoot, a powerful newsletter and subscription management software. MailShoot will let you instantly create an online subscription form for your website, no programming skills necessary, where your visitors can subscribe to your newsletter. It even works with iWeb websites hosted on MobileMe.

From there, you can quickly and easily keep your visitors up to date with periodic email updates keeping them coming back to your website.

We have released the first beta version on Trybeta. Users who submit valuable feedback will get a free license when the final version is released. Just sign up as a beta tester to Trybeta below;

http://www.trybeta.com

We look forward to hearing your feedback.

Domainer 1.9.6 has just been released with important fixes for importing domains from CSV files and syncing domain expiration dates with iCal.

Domainer is the fully featured domain management tool for Mac OS X. Providing the ability to track and manage domain details and important SEO stats for an unlimited number of websites.

Domainer comes with a free trial and costs just $39.95 USD for the full version.

We are extremely proud to introduce WebDesign 3.0, a major update to our web authoring and html editing software for Mac OS X. In development for a few years now, WebDesign 3.0 includes many new features including a redesigned user interface, over 20 professionally designed website templates, live side-by-side website previews and much more.

This release of WebDesign is the biggest yet. We focused all of our attention on making it easy for beginners to design their first website while giving power users the features they need to create and edit their existing sites. By providing website templates, users now have a starting point to base their websites off of so they can get their site up as quickly as possible. The live side-by-side web page previews show you exactly what your website will look like as you build it.

We wanted to create a tool that provided a great transition between a web builder like iWeb or RapidWeaver to an HTML editor that didn’t require you to be a coding expert. All the essential tools are now available to you to create that professional, fast loading website.

Check out the free, fully featured trial version and get your website up and running today.

One of the things that many webmaster don’t realize is how vulnerable their website becomes when they start using social networking scripts such as forums and blogs to help build communities around their website. Although it is a very good idea to integrate these scripts on your site, when doing so you can potentially give your visitors access to sensitive parts of your website that they would normally not have

Since many blogs and forums are open source, malicious users have full access to the source code and can find vulnerabilities or take advantage of how a system works in order to gain access to protected pages on your site, spam your site, or use your site to help get your visitors to their site.

Google Webmaster Tools has always been a great way to find out if your website has been hacked by looking at the outgoing links or most common keywords. Now, Google Webmaster Tools can notify you on your dashboard if your website has been compromised. It can tell you;

1. New versions of your installed blogs, forums and other software
2. Spammy or abused user-generated content
3. Abused forum pages or egregious amounts of comment spam
4. Suspected hacking

This is very important to keep track of because if your site has been hacked Google will either remove your website completely from their search index or warn users every time they click your site in their search results. This can dramatically affect your reputation and prevent users from visiting your site.

A Google Webmaster Tools account is free to set up. You should submit your XML Sitemap file in order to get your website listed in Google and help Google’s crawler access the important pages on your website.

WebCrusher 1.7 has just been released and brings a number of new features and enhancements. Firstly this update will optimize iWeb built sites much faster than before because it can intelligently determine which files are modified and which aren’t (since iWeb always updates all pages when you export a site, this is actually not an easy thing to do).

It also improves publishing speed when uploading to your FTP or MobileMe server. In addition it fixes problems with PNG files not being optimized which makes it a recommended update for all users. This update is free for all registered users.

Late last year Google announced that the speed of a website will play a factor in how it ranks in their search results. They have started an initiative to speed up the web and offer many tips and tricks for speeding up a website’s load time. Fortunately WebCrusher can do many of the recommended speed optimizations for you automatically.

If you have created your XML Sitemap file and submitted it Google Webmaster Tools, you will also see the new Page Speed tests Google has implemented for your site. You should login to your Google Webmaster Tools account and see how your website performs relative to other sites in your industry.

Now its not only important to have your website load quickly for your visitors, but it’s also important for your search engine rankings too.

A question that often comes up is why a website is not yet in search engines, or if it has been added to search engines, why isn’t it showing up for the keywords I want it to. These questions can be answered by looking at the data provided by Google Webmaster Tools. By creating an XML Sitemap file and submitting it to Google Webmaster Tools, you can quickly and easily learn the answers to this questions.

This article over at SEO Chat walks you through these questions in Google Webmaster Tools and helps you answer these important SEO questions.

Some of the questions covered by the article include;

• Why hasn’t Google indexed my website yet?
• Does my site appear relevant to Google for my targeted terms or niche?
• Why am I not getting clicks from Google?
• Has my website been hacked?
• Does my website load fast compared to other websites?

Pay special attention to the last question, how fast your website loads. This will become an important search engine ranking factor in early 2010. This has been confirmed by many sources already, that is why Google provides a site speed analysis test in their Google Webmaster Tools.

Of course, you can already be ahead of the game with WebCrusher, which will instantly speed up your website so it loads as fast as possible in all web browsers.