As our site grows every day we want to share some information with you on the way we are operating the project. We call this section «Business Blog» as it is similar to doing a log book where data is recorded in a chronological order. «Blogging» is gaining popularity with more and more people picking up the habit of publishing their experiences and thoughts on the Internet. Our Blog covers various topics — from TOEFL, TOEIC, MBA, GMAT, ESL/EFL test preperation to cultural traditions and current political events.
There will also be some Internet marketing terminology and if you have any questions regarding the information simply let us know.

The Business Blog is written by Torsten Daerr and edited by Alan Townend.

2003 — August 18
As every morning for the last couple of weeks I started the day by checking our site’s access stats and was pleasantly surprised that we have been added to Usingenglish.com — a very resourceful place for learners of English. They also run an online diary which they call «Weblog» and it’s a good way to exchange experiences.

When I was just comfortably seated coffee mug in hand the phone rang and it turned out to be our first English training client after the summer break. Interestingly enough two of his aunts live in England — one in the town of Crewe and the other on the West coast. (the British one)
Next Monday we’ll give him a TOEIC mini test to gauge his level.

Alan has written his 131st test on flying and when you read it carefully you can detect the subtle humour only a sophisticated British person possesses. (a word with 5 «s»)

Mr Gromov reminded me that it’s probably about time to add a «partners» section where we introduce sites we are collaborating with and as usual he is right…

2003 — August 17
The upcoming weeks promise to be interesting ones: We expect a visit to our site by Sergey Brin’s bots. You don’t know who Sergey Brin is? Well, go to any major search engine and type in his name and see what comes up.

And what exactly is a bot? You got that right, it’s short for «robot» and it means that within the next week all of our pages are likely to get indexed by Google because Slava (who happens to be a fellow country man of Mr Brin’s) has created virtual directories. Now, all our URL’s are very Google friendly ;-)

We’ve noticed that it’s better to create a word list for each story Alan has written instead of or in addition to re-writing entire sentences. The trick is to find the right balance between too much and too little context. Phrasal verbs can have hundreds of different meanings and you have to look at the sentence the verb occurs in.

2003 — August 16
Today Clark Zhang, a young webmaster from London, told us that our website has finally got listed at DMOZ which is very important for our marketing efforts as the Open Directory Project is the largest Web Directory. DMOZ.org is not a search engine such as Google but a directory that is actually organized and maintained by people. Being listed at DMOZ will increase our Google PageRank which means more people will find our site and what we have to offer.

We've started to add vocabulary explanations to the Phrasal Verb stories as this will make it easier for our readers to understand the phrases. Instead of separate words or word combinations we are re-writing entire sentences to keep within context and show the meaning of each sentence.

I've finished reading «The Analyst» by John Katzenbach — a book with a lot of food for thought. The author raises such questions as what exactly is a decision? Do we really always have a choice about a situation? And do events happen by accident or is there a cause for everything in life?

I've noticed that no matter how extensive a writer's vocabulary might be — they still have a certain set of favourite words. One of John Katzenbach's preferred words is «modest». He uses it in a great number of combinations and contexts. He also likes phrases such as «a thing or two» or «in a moment or two». There are more words he favours but you should find them out yourselves…

2003 — August 15
The computer virus «W32» or «Lovsan» is out there roaming the internet and causing some disturbances. We had to remove the nasty little bug and install the Windows security patch that Microsoft is offering for download on their website. Now things should run smoothly again.

Yesterday we had 440 visitors and we sent out the first of the two August newsletters to over 300 readers from 84 countries. At this point 4 people subscribe to the newsletter each day and we receive very positive feedback on Alan’s articles.

Today we noticed that Google hasn’t indexed many of our pages and we think this is due to the fact that our «Google PageRank» is still 0 because we submitted the site only a couple of weeks ago. A second factor that slows down the indexing process is probably that our pages are dynamic and they contain the combination «id» in their «URL’s» — something that Google doesn’t like at all. So, we’ll replace «id» or we’ll even create so called «virtual directories». As a result all our URL’s will be very «Google-friendly». Google is the search engine we are concentrating our efforts on as it attracts the biggest portion of web users. As of now our site is ranking fairly well with the search phrases «english test», «free english tests» and «english tests online».

Now we are an official affiliate of Babylon Ltd and our visitors can download a free trial version of the Babylon Pro. I have been using this tool since 1998 and can’t imagine working without it. It serves as spell checker, dictionary, online encyclopedia and has a lot more functions.

Alan finally has sent us his photo and we’ll put it online soon…