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Heard from Google. "As long as the web server always blocks IPs from (say) Africa, it's not doing anything special/different for Googlebot, and so it wouldn't be considered cloaking, but geolocation instead."
"Conceptually, you could just cloak to solve this issue."
Well, that doesn't solve it. I mean, Google's saying that blocking might be cloaking -- so the only reason you wouldn't block is to avoid cloaking. To then say you could cloak to solve it, that's right back where you started.
If you mean geolocate, IE show users from different countries different things, sure, that would work. Google's not going to call that cloaking of course. That's what my whole The Long Road To The Debate Over "White Hat Cloaking" post was about.
Frankly, if you're blocking certain countries, I'd say that already comes under geolocation and so Google is wrong to say it would be cloaking (and they did say "might be" not definitely is). I get blocked all the time by US TV sites, as my Showtime's Web Site: For US Eyes Only covers. But hey, if Google wants to ban Showtime for doing that, sweet revenge.
Story: Why I Don’t Like Sphinn
"Does this mean Sphinn can't do the same for Danny Sullivan?"
Yes, it does. Personally, I haven't found the Happy Birthday posts to be that annoying. You get maybe one per week, and it did give a sense of community spirit. However, they obviously do annoy other people. The idea of maybe making it so they can happen but only be seen in the watercooler area is interesting. But I think the guideline Rob will be putting out will just be to say no, for now.
Well, the blog was temporarily closed from having new posts so Google could investigate a spam report. That's much different than it being closed because it was anti-Obama. It might be that someone who is pro-Obama is reporting a number of anti-Obama blogs this way. If so, that's an issue -- but it's still not the same as screaming censorship.
Getting people to qualify anything in SEO was always hard but lately, I was remarking to someone recently, it feels gone altogether. I've seen both SEOs and search engine representatives fail to do this. So I really enjoyed this open letter.
"I believe we’re going to have to start putting some serious data, testing, and documented experience behind what we claim as fact."
This is harder. I've seen plenty of tests done where they prove nothing, because testing often doesn't get all the variables. Still, i certainly appreciate as many real-life examples as possible.
That also builds the reputation of the people posting. Some people I don't know might post about an idea they have, say they've seen such-and-such, and I just don't find myself convinced. Others that I know well -- who have a documented history of being right, backing up statements, who might work with multiple sites and so on -- then I'm much more inclined to go "hmm, interesting."
But in short, yes, I much prefer people who write and speak saying things like "in my experience" or "i believe" or qualify things. Matt Cutts might be the master of evasion to some, but he's also the master of qualification because qualification is really, really important.
Yeah, saw that Telegraph article on Sunday. Ignored it like I usually do when the Telegraph writes anything about seach. Which makes me wonder why I read it at all. Hey, but in two weeks, I won't :)
Yep, that's me moving and leaving the Telegraph behind. Bring on the LA Times :)
Confidential? Please. You were getting it from places like Alexa, Compete and Quantcast already. And if you were paying big bucks, you were getting it from Hitwise, comScore and NetRatings. Data's been out there for years, in various degrees of accuracy -- but to say it is confidential is overreaching.
Opt-out? Absolutely should be provided, if Google's going to opt its own properties out. Stated reason for that is not to provide advanced financial guidance. That feels weak. I don't there's that much advanced financial guidance anyone will get from these numbers. I could argue that by not releasing these figures, Google potentially is disrupting the financial analysts in the wrong way, denying them yet another benchmark they might use in assessing the company's health that isn't denied for other public companies. But bottom line, other people might have their own reasons just like Google to want to opt-out -- so give it to them.
Ah, well, I'll give you a preview of my Ad Age column for Monday:
Yahoo will carry some Google ads, for searches where it thinks it would earn more with Google and for “backfill” where it has no ads at all. We’re all still waiting for exact details on how it will work, but the “Panama” system and Yahoo selling its own ads isn’t going away.
Indeed, I suspect Yahoo will purposely keep it a mystery how and when you can expect Google ads to appear on Yahoo as a further incentive for advertisers to continue doing business directly with Yahoo.
Desphinn isn't for spam. The spam button is for that. One of the reasons we brought in desphinn was because without it, some people were reporting stories they disagreed with as spam. You can disagree with a story being popular, but that doesn't mean it is spam (which is typically completely off-topic submissions not about internet marketing). I'd suggest looking at these very long past discussions about desphinn:
http://sphinn.com/story/23311
http://sphinn.com/story/27933
If you read the story, they've done special things for Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Given that Google is a California-based company with a healthy contingent of gay employees, some might think it unacceptable that they shy away from it, as well.
Story: Is Desphinning rude?
It's not so much wanting to not have the moderators work. It's just that when we have to make a judgement call, then we get others questioning it. Killing spam is one thing. But slowing a story that doesn't seem to deserve it? That's what desphinn is for, so the community can directly do that, and so it's transparent.
Odd, try this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=gay&gl=us
Let me know if you see them now. That forces a "US" display to happen, which perhaps might override some South Carolina filtering, if that's even happening.
Yes, they are official -- provided directly from Compete. Glad to have them out there so that people could dissect them more.
Just to give more of the backstory, when FriendFeed launched back in October, I asked for Sphinn to be added. Nothing happened, so I asked again in April (FriendFeed ahd nicely asked me to remind them, and I figured that was enough time for the dust to settle). I was told they were working on new features, services and mainly an API. Now it's two months later -- more services get added, and we're still not. We have nearly 20,000 register members here, tons of commenting and submitting activity, and I'd like to see my own damn activity here in my FriendFeed there. So on the squeaky wheel model, if you're with me, start squeaking that we should get added. And yep, I'll get FF (and Plurk) added to the social media profiles you can list here on Sphinn.
Heh. Dan, I know I can change the default. The point is that Firefox is setting it for me without asking, because it has a paid deal with Google. But in IE, it doesn't do that because Google fought against Microsoft saying it was all for letting consumers chose.
@stymiee: It's hard to give Microsoft crap over HP since Microsoft hasn't been the one running to the courts arguing that consumers need choice. They're not being hypocritical. it is Google that's said search choices should be made by users. They employed that to remove a default option from IE. Then they cut deals with computer makers like Dell to impose themselves as the default choice. it is two-faced at best. Microsoft cutting a deal with HP is simply playing the game Google itself established.
As for your other points, hey -- I love Firefox and use it everyday. But Google has enough money to pay Firefox heaps without also having to demand it be the default. It could instead use its wealth to help support Firefox and the idea of consumer choice that it squawks so much about in areas where it feels threated (and doesn't when it's ahead).
And Live is a good search engine. It's losing marketshare for a variety of reasons. You can count among them the fact that it is locked out of being in front of Firefox users. That's hardly the killer reason, but it contributes. Send comment HTML is disabled
@SEOIvan, I'm not saying Search 4.0 has hit now. I'm saying it's a next step that will be happening in the coming years.
"Sphinn will tell you to use their contact page to report these matters. But the last time I used it, I received no response. Besides, blogging it alerts you to these issues before they are removed to save face. If you are aware that not all front page news in Sphinn is reputable and / or trustworthy, than you are equipped with another opportunity to research things further before accepting everything you read in naivety."
The reports are not ignored and should be done. If we don't respond, that doesn't mean nothing is done. Often we take action on what gets sent without needing to do follow up.
As a regular participant in Sphinn, I'd really encourage a report having been done in addition to blogging. At the very least, it might have alerted us more rapidly to something before it hit the home page. It would also have been nice if either the spam report button or the desphinn option had been used.
The mods aren't perfect. Stuff will get past us. This looks like it has some suspicious voting, so I'll pull it. But we do offer three different ways for the community to help -- and none of those were used in this case.
Did I miss someting in the letter? I mean, they didn't say it was a particular ad that was a problem. Isn't this a standard letter they'd send to anyone that they think is generating low quality clicks?
I can appreciate the irony, but to be fair, this isn't apple to oranges.
First, that's not a "Google Checkout" box that's appear. It's Google Shopping results, like here. Just like regular Google web search, you have paid and unpaid results in shopping. Notice in that link I gave how there are no paid results.
Now that box showing up in Google's web search results that's "promoting" particular vodka sellers? That's just Google Universal Search integrating the unpaid results from shopping search. Google's not selling those products, nor are they being advertised.
If you want to consider unpaid listings as advertisements, then a general search for vodka on Google should bring up no merchants in the unpaid results at all, right? But that's not the case -- and hasn't ever been the case despite the no ads policy being in place. So what's the news now? Nothing has changed -- in fact, we've even had shopping results inserted even before Universal Search just like now.
You could argue that if Google wants to ban things in ads, they should ban the same things in editorial results. But Google's never claimed to be consistent here, when I've talked to them about it in the past. Some things they don't want ads for (some things they also by law can't take ads for), and that's it.
I suppose you could also argue that aside from Google Shopping, there's the completely separate Google Checkout payment system, and Google shouldn't allow vodka or alcohol to be sold through that system. But that might be the case already. I haven't checked there terms, but if I restrict a vodka search on shopping to just merchants that sell also through Google Checkout, I only seem to get things like books and posters.
Story: Google Says Blocking Countries Outside of the US is Against Policies