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Onreact, can you write a post on how to spot paid links? When I look at backlinks it is not always clear on what is paid, what is natural.
Something from off line to ponder and relate to this...
The other day I was watching an interview of the Zagat founders. They said in the interview that they often get food that they didn't order (as in "try this, you'll like it") when restaurants discover that they are in the house. They also receive service that is not the normal standard because of their fame as well.
They said something about other reviewers having the same issue. They can't get an objective feel for how service and food is when the restaurant knows who they are serving to. Not only do the revierws receive the best in food/service, but items come from outside of the menu, they aren't charged for food, and all the other lengths that restaurants go to.
It is not that the restaurant is implicitly saying "write about us" (or inversely, "don't write bad things about us"). But I think it obvious, that the goal is to influence the influencer in some fashion. If you know that they are a writer, they most likely outcome is that they will write, no? And a favorable review is worth morth than a few dollars of service/food.
Hey guys,
Can you define net neutrality for me, as you see it? I think that Google's Net Neutrality stance is bogus.
Not sure if any one is following this anymore, but interesting related post over at slash dot...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/15/1258238
Apparently some ISPs are ending access to alt.whatever usenet. While I think a lot of people don't use Usenet much anymore.. and Google pretty much co-opted usenet once they took over Dejanews... is this removal of access just a small salvo in the potential war that the 2012 video talks about?
Lol. Just saw this elsewhere. This is a pretty interesting, albeit lo-fi way to get some analytics data on your site visitors. As one of the commenters on that site notes... you might certainly choose to modify this a bit and present some "targeted" ads to your site visitors...
Hey, what about these ads?
http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/cheap_tobacco.gif
The first one, perhaps since it is promoting a place rather than a product it glides through? Second one, dynamic insertion perhaps, but still...
I'll comment, because hey... I want to be above the x comments per y sphinns factor, lol.
Seriously though, I would bet that many are like me and may comment on the actual post rather than at spinn. The great thing about being online, is you can converse with the actual poster rather than just people who liked what they said and re-posted a link to their article.
Plus... sometimes you may want to re-eval before you post, then forget about posting...
For the people that run forums, you might find this funny:
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting
Last Tuesday I was wrote a similar post about submitting stories to Sphinn and social news sites...
http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2008/04/spamming_sphinn.html
The problem will probably never go away completely. But the more people use services/sites like this, the community and/or the admins will probably get more protective and reactionary to spam, and junk that doesn't belong. Or the community will fail.
I don't quite agree with all of the points in Danny's post the other day about Twitter spam or not: http://daggle.com/080507-212128.html
I periodically see posts to Sphinn about multi level marketing tactics that are really, really spammy but the submission guidelines are not that closed off to exclude MLM issues, tactics, etc. And while I'm not a fan of MLM, "internet marketing news & discussion forums" does seem like it would include MLM. (/shiver) Again, I think that it is the community and admins that really set the stage. As Eric Lander explores over here, http://sphinn.com/story/45180, it is difficult to know just how active the community of Sphinn really is as many only read/troll through the posts...
Todd,
I'm so there with you on point 5.
"Many sites that need SEO also need design work & copywriting help in order to optimize their web presence. A good SEO needs to be able to detect non-SEO problems and communicate their urgency to the client. Without getting critical non-SEO issues addressed, the client won’t achieve optimum results."
I sell a tool that can help people along in their efforts but people who are new to search engines or who have just fired their SEO don't always understand that it's like buying a level, hammer, tape measure, etc. not a magic ranking wand. Even some SEOs don't understand this and put down tools. Doug H is one that I see all over the place, bashing tools. To me, it's like the arguements that I hear about/for/against Jason Calcanis, Shoemoney, etc. SEO is not rocket science but so many of the basics are well known to the veterans and not by the novices. So, SEO can look fake, tools can look fake, etc.
I'm sure that there are times when I've talked people out of purchases but only because they didn't see the bigger picture and had no intention of trying to do anything but run a tool or pay some one to "guarantee" them in an organic number 1 ranking with out making changes to their site, with out considering that their site may not warrant the ranking, that the chosen keywords are too competative for easy rankings, their goals are unrealistic, etc.
I'm thinking that he meant story spam. I'm on the submit pages and it would probably take me all of 10 minutes or less to add a sphinn submission option in an auto submitter. What about some type of captcha/verification where you have to add 2+2=____ just have the staff change it once in a while. I know, it's a small bit of work to change that once in a while, but if you are getting a high volume of spam, it should cut down a percentage and it's not like some of those crazy captchas where you are scratchnig your head wondering about it... or hitting the refresh button...
http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/re-captcha.gif
If you're OK with hitting the refresh button tho... and you ignore the image above, try: http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html
Story: Help! SEOs Hacked my Blog!
My 2 cents... this is -not- SEO. It may use some the processes related to SEO, but it is not seo in and of itself. It would be like some thieving group stealing hubcaps, windows, door handles, etc. from various cars, trucks, etc. and putting together a finished product. These are not "car manufacturers" but some thing else, which uses parts of an established trade/process. I know some one has a word for it... but it isn't "car manufacturers" and in the case of SEO, these are not SEO services...
Speaking about 'signal to noise ratio', maybe you'll groan a bit at this, but does Spinn have to be about articles only? Can it be discussions as well, more like the old threadwatch? I liked some of the noise there. It's similar here but you have to have an article submitted to start a discussion on a specific topic. I guess I could find any old or new page about a related topic to put the mini description in and start a conversation, but that seems a bit more noisy than needed.
Lol. Great, thanks! It's always the obvious things that aren't so obvious...
Hrm. I don't get it.
They dislike automated searches enough to take their link check option offline for months....
(still dead: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=link%3Acnn.com&go=&form=QBRE )
Blog post:
http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2007/03/28/we-are-flattered-but.aspx
Yet they can send out extra indexing/checker bots to hit your site and check for cloaking and such... seems wrong some how. There was an article awhile back, maybe it was even spunn, that said that MSN and Ask were blocked by many web masters. Anyone have a link to that?
If you stop thinking like competitors for a second... think like a potential customer. Who would you rather put your business with - a company that has to guess what it takes to be number one in Google or a Google company that may be able to get you there?
Remember that there are many companies who are paying "seos" (lowercase emphasis) good money to "optimize" their meta tags rather than work on content, over all site optimization and spider-ability, links, social networks, etc. There are companies that will get their feet wet with SEO via that CostCo/local/$25 "seo". In truth, Performics is in a great position for a lot of business - for good or evil.
Correction in my earlier post... I meant to say "sam's club"...
http://www.searchengineguide.com/scott-buresh/sams-club-wants-to-be-your-search-engine.php
Perhaps it's a matter of time before they adjust their wording based on the new realities. I might be taking this out of context but a wile back wasn't the stance 'no banners, no flash ads', etc. I'm sure bringing double click into the fold brings quite a variety advertising based on flash, banners, etc.
Remember the unconditional money back guarantee?
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/12/20/google-changes-its-mind-about-money-back-seo
Maybe other changes are in the works too. But until people kvetch, they'll stay under wraps.
Any parellels here with with Matt's take on the ISP that was intercepting web pages and adding their customer message?
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/confirmed-isp-modifies-google-home-page/
The ISP was probably doing this in the thought that it would benefit the subscriber...
Google thinks that they have a better way to display 404s... a benefit to the installer of the toolbar?
Well, yeah, it's a Google Bombing for sure... maybe not in the traditional sense where you get a page to rank for a term that is completely unrelated, but a bomb none the less.
Again, I think that they've possibly put specific keywords or URLs on a list, in order to add another filter onto some of the search results and rankings.
Go to Google and perform this search:
"miserable failure" site:whitehouse.gov
This URL may work for you:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=%22miserable+failure%22+site%3Awhitehouse.gov&btnG=Search
You'll find that Google is still relating pages to "miserable failure" that do not include the term in the HTML of the page. The first 3 pages that they list today are:
www.whitehouse.gov/ask/20031010.html
(Has the term.)
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030909-4.html (Has the term.)
www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ (Does not have the term in the HTML.)
You'll notice that if you check the cached copy of some of these pages, like:
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:MroB4JYzMekJ:www.whitehouse.gov/contact/+%22miserable+failure%22+site:whitehouse.gov&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us
There is a notice: "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: miserable failure"
So... bombing is still alive, and is even trackable as a process at Google. Whether they act on it or not is another matter. For example, tomorrow we may see that www.scientology.org no longer appears under this term or similar searches, this may be a hand edit for all intensive purposes... because Google may not be ready to throw the switch and not let sites show up for words that are not on the page.
I.E.:
dangerous cult site:www.scientology.org
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:ZR32UevcZ-YJ:www.scientology.org/+dangerous+cult+site:www.scientology.org&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
These search terms have been highlighted: dangerous
These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: cult
I tend to be in the camp that believes that the Google bomb updates are isolated in nature, possibly algorithmic - due to a keyword list that they add to some running process, but overall probably not an across the board fix.
Look at some of the sites that show up for Stoney deGeyter's "Reciprocallinksarenotdead" phrase and you'll see what I mean. There are sites that do not use the phrase but still show up such as www.renodiners.com/ , www.upnorthsports.com/, etc.
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Story: The Paid Link Farce is 3 Years Old - Get Your Act Together Google