It seems like WordPress has gone through quite a bit as well. Considering that my job is basically to stay up on technology and make sure that our partners and vendors do the same, I better get back on the program.

This morning I was looking at one of my main clients to see how traffic was doing, it’s my client so of course it’s going up I noticed they added some things under Social. SO what does this mean? At first glance it’s pretty obvious, Google is starting to give more granular information on social signals, understanding that we cannot possibly know all the difference ‘social’ sites for individual custom tagging.

Social Traffic Sources

This is a screenshot for 5 days of data. I referenced it with the normal traffic sources report using Facebook as the referrer (facebook.com and m.fb.com) but the numbers were different. The Facebook referring numbers were higher in the social report, so as much as I love to report on higher numbers, I can’t in good faith rely on the numbers from the Social section of Traffic Sources.

There are also some other features that I am missing from this section, most of all the conversion and ecommerce tags that are typically found on most of the other traffic reports. These numbers are accessible, but not in the same format. I’m a big believer in consistency, especially when it comes to something like Google Analytics who continues to quietly add new functionality.

This leads me to another discovery, again I don’t know how late to the game I am on this one either. In the Admin section of a

Google Analytics Admin Social

site profile (where you can see goals, events, profiles, etc. there is now a Social tab. This is even more cryptic. Of course I clicked on this to see what I am missing and there is a field to enter a URL. The instructions lead me to believe that you can enter in Social Media properties that belong to the client and have them tracked in GA, but if thats the case, wouldn’t this be redundant to the Social section of Traffic Sources? I should’t even be writing about this before I have done some research, but I am bored. The description is not helpful at all, well it might be, but it uses YouTube.com as the example which is why I assume it’s for tracking social sites, but do they have to be Google properties? Can I enter Twitter in here? Is there any reason I would? Of course I will try, but I really like to know why I am doing something before I do it, and with GA, if you screw up the data, well, you’ve screwed up the data and cannot get it back.

Just so you can see what I am talking about I will include another screen shot of the actual Social section, I am addicted to Snag-it today. I’m guessing that unless you already know something I don’t that you will come to the same conclusion that I have; “I am not positive what it does but I want to use it!”

Important note, by entering one or more prefixes (eg. www.youtube.com/user/myuser) you will only get social activities against those domains. So if you wish to continue seeing social activities for your primary domain please add that as well (eg. example.com).

Doesn’t this look like what I think it looks like? So where is it going to show up in the stats? I would assume it has to do with the new Social section in Traffic Sources, but I could be totally wrong. If  it turns out that I am completely off, I will still keep this post up, but I will also put up the correct information. This is more of a fact finding mission for me and could probably be solved by a trip over to the GA blog, but I started this when I assumed I knew what I was talking about and the deeper I go, the more I think I might not.

UPDATE 4/4/12 : There has been quite a bit of talk lately about Google’s latest algorithm change and how it will devalue the content farms primarily used by link spammers and link merchants. I am definitely seeing a shift in organic results for quite a few sites, but the sites that are coasting on blatant link spam are still doing  just fine. When I see mezzaninesbydesign.com drop, then I will believe that Google has finally struck a blow to the dreaded link merchants. 

Link spam is alive an well, and is still the fastest way to the top spot in the SERPs, for a while anyway. I have two clients that are dealing with competitors who are involved in aggresive link spamming campaigns. It is frustrating as hell for me, because I am not going to risk the agencys or my clients reputation by beating them at their own game. So, short of submitting ineffectual tattle-tail reports to Google (which never do anything anyway), and mapping out the link spamming companies client list to let them know they may very well see their organic traffic drop to zero in the coming months, there isn’t much I can do.

So I am going to bitch, AND, I am going to name names. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the hardcore black-hatters, in the same reason I have a lot of respect for DB Cooper. In fact, I have so much respect for some of them that when I discover their secret, I keep it. Typically I am not a snitch, in all aspects of life. I just don’t believe in it, and its a safe bet that those who aren’t living right will eventually do themselves in, but if you are directly stepping on my toes, or making my life difficult, all bets are off.

So lets begin…..

If you are reading this, then you probably already know what link spamming is. If you stumbled on this article and don’t know about SEO, link spamming is the practice of building as many links as possible, from as many domains as possible, with your target keyword in the anchor text, and flooding the search engines with these pages. Here is the definition from Google:

Web definitions

The theory, and rightfully so, is that the sheer volume of links pointing to your page using your keyword in the anchor text will cause Google to give you favorable positioning in the search engine results. This has been the foundation of Googles algorithm since the beginning, and usually it works pretty well.

Now, on to the good stuff..

Let’s pick a random keyword, how about ‘Mezzanines’. There is a fair amount of volume for this keyword and it spans several industries. I would like to get in the top 10 for this keyword, how hard is it going to be? Let’s check the competition. I am going to use Market Samurai for a quick snapshot of the competition. If you don’t use Market Samurai, you’re nuts. It is hands down the best piece of software a web marketer can have. So this is what the landscape looks like:

Click the image to enlarge

one of these things is not like the other...

For the most part, this is typical in the industrial safety supply world. Most of the companies have been around for close to the same amount of time, most got online around the same time, etc. Wikipedia is an un-movable so we forget about that, but what do we have here? Something is strange.  In the DA (domain age) column, you can see that most of the sites are about the same age, 9-12 years old. But it looks like we have a real up and comer in the #2 position, mezzaninesbydesign.com (yes that’s nofollowed). Mezzaninesbydesign.com is only 3 years old, and I know for a fact that they were not in the top spot for Mezzanines a few weeks ago, but look at em’ go! This needs some investigation.

So, what is mezzaninesbydesign.com doing SO well that they are able to just shoot up through the SERPs and pass all the old dogs? The RDD (referring domains) column shows that they don’t have nearly as many domains linking to them as most of the other sites, in fact, none of their numbers are that impressive.

Note: the screenshot of the competition is only a partial picture, if you would like to see all the site results you can check them out at http://www.noblesamurai.com/share/seo-competition/a84jtocflggkwcgk448w#historical 

The next step is to visit the website and check out what they are doing. It is clear that the site was built with search engines in mind. They really wanted to rank well for ‘Mezzanines’, but no matter what you do on-site, it’s not going propel you to the top of the SERPs when you are facing off against these other seasoned websites. Scroll down to the bottom and you can see that the site makes no bones about the fact that they are using a SEO company to get their rankings. The footer of the site says it all:

Click the image to enlarge..

A bold move by the SEO company Magnetiks Search Marketing

I don’t have one client that would ever allow me to advertise my company in their footer so this makes me question the ownership of this site, certainly looks like there is more than just a client relationship between Mezzanines by Design and Magnetik Search Marketing. At least I don’t have to hunt to find out who is working on the site.

Given that all the important numbers from Market Samurai are lower than the competitor’s sites, it’s immediately clear that this is a backlink issue. Either the few backlinks that mezzaninesbydesign.com has are coming from seriously powerful sites, or they have an abundance of links with the keyword Mezzanines in the anchor text (or both).

Natural links come over time, and almost always are to the home page and use either the company name or the URL. If your keyword is your company name, well lucky you, but that not often the case. Mezzanines by design does have their target keyword in the company name and URL, but that’s not enough to get the top spot for this keyword. So let’s look at their link inventory and see what we can see..

Let’s cruise over to www.backlinkwatch.com and look at the links pointing to the site, paying particular attention to the anchor text.

No need to look much further than this. Hundreds of links with Mezzanines as the anchor text

OK, mystery solved. It’s clearly the links. The shot above is just a small sample but it pretty much all looks the same. Lots of links that use Mezzanines in the anchor text and are not nofollowed. In fact, out of all of the links pointing to the site, only one or two are nofollowed. We now know that none of their links are natural, they are all either spammed, planted, or paid. Google doesn’t like this, I don’t like this.

What is even more interesting is the domains. If this were a natural profile, there would be plenty of domains that had something to do with industrial safety supplies, but there are none to be found here. In fact, the only consistent thing we can see with the domains (other than the lack of nofollow), is that the word India seems to appear in quite a few of them. There are real estate sites, car rental sites, tourist sites, but no sites that have anything to do with Mezzanines.

I visited almost all of the sites and after the first ten or so it was obvious what was going on. First, they are all WordPress sites, all of them. Many of the sites are using the same theme, and they are all following the same format of a few articles and then a ton of links. A quick check of the WHOIS information shows that they are all owned by the same guy.

Registrant:
Mahender Reddy chintalapally

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: JERRYDMOOREFORCIRCUITJUDGE.COM

Domain servers in listed order:
SNS159.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM
SNS160.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM

Not even trying to cover his tracks. His process is simple: Mahender Reddy chintalapally is snatching up seasoned domains as they expire, throwing a WordPress site up and placing the links on the site. He has a big network of sites that he controls and sells the links. Buying links is the quickest way to get de-indexed in Google. They are quite clear on the matter. This is how mezzaninesbydesign.com was able to race to the top. Check out their link history:

Someone sure was busy in October and July

That my friends is a link spammer profile. Again, not even trying to hide it. So, the next question is: what involvement does Magnetiks Search Marketing have with this technique? Their site is big and professional looking, they list some decent clients that I’m quite sure would not want to befall the same fate as BMW and JCPenny but who knows? Looking over the sites owned by this Indian link spammer, it’s just simple connect the dots to create a client list of people who are buying these services. I’m sure some of them know whats going on, but I’m sure some of them don’t and someone will lose their job when their marketing team see’s their organic traffic drop to zero and the CEO cant even find their website in Google when she types in the company name.

I have not contacted Magnetik Search Marketing to ask them why they would employ someone who is so brazenly breaking Google’s TOS. I’m sure they would plead ignorance, or say “we discovered this a while ago and are no longer working with mr. so-and-so”, and honestly I don’t particularly care. As I said earlier, I respect people who really put effort into working the system and do-so under the radar, but this smash and grab bullshit that $299 SEO’s engage in is very frustrating to me and when I have some free time, I will occasionally hasten their falling on their own sword.

I hate losing the top spot to spammers, but as long as I know and my client knows that this is temporary, I will sit back and watch, and wait for Google to hopefully figure out how to deal with this. If for nothing else than to see what new creative ways the true blackhatters come up with the game the system.

2011 was quite a year for search marketers, lots of drama and algorithmic changes. Google likes to keep us on our toes. 2011 was also the year that being an SEO was cool. With PPC in its final death rattle, working with organic results has once again proven to be a mans game. In the past 2 months, my inbox has seen quite a few lucrative job offers from both agencies and companies looking to bring search in-house. Yesterday I received the biggest offer I have seen in the midwest, a starting salary of $110,000 with a cushy corner office. Honestly I wish they would have contacted me a week earlier because the job sounds like a cake walk, but I’ve already sold my soul to another and I try not to go back on my word.

My decision to go back to work for someone else almost saw me whisked out of Wisconsin and re-planted in New Jersey, my decision to not go still nags at me – did I miss a great opportunity? The thought of living and working 15 minutes outside of Manhattan is really appealing, even though the conspiracy nut in me says that moving closer to NYC in 2012 is a horrible idea. The job was a gimmmee with no shortage of work and improvements on the site. The appeal was that they wanted someone who was creative overall to work on not only SEO but also usability and other channels of traffic. *sigh* the more I write about it, the more I wonder if I made the right choice by staying here.

2011 was also the year of lousy clients. Lessons learned on that front – PUT IT ALL IN WRITING! I had a friend/bro deal go horribly south because the client handed me such a pile of shit that I had to spend all the money on building them a new site. Trying to improve traffic and conversions on their current site was pointless. This of course was not part of the scope and my bad for not getting that in writing. Huge waste of time for me, and they ended up with a site they can use for years.

2011 was also the year of lousy contractors. I – being the softy that I am – hired a developer who I KNEW was going to screw me by way of his neurosis. I understand that when you flip over a rock in the online world you are bound to step in some aspergers, but this guy really threw a wrench in my plans and caused me major headache. Then he flat out stole $1000 from me from a clients deposit, which cost me the job and put me in the hole. I am going to have to pay that back, and $1000 is a pesky amount. It’s too little to warrant a kiss from a louieville slugger, but big enough that it hurts me to have to pay it back. I still havent figured out how to resolve this one, but this kid is the master at shooting himself in the foot. He shot me in both feet, several times.

2012 is going to be a better year. I find that putting in time at a 8-5 agency is really good for my mental health. I don’t mind burning the occasional midnight oil, but being able to shut down at 5 and not think about it until the next day is really good for my brain. My time at Zeon was the easiest life has been in quite some time. I left there because I couldn’t fake it anymore. My hope is that my new home doesn’t require the same facade, because I can only put on a show for about 11 months before I have to let out steam and tell people ‘the way it is’.

Maybe 2012 will be the year that I finally clean this damn site up and remove all the old posts that blew up with the auto poster. I’ve only had that on my plate for 10 months and as you can see, it never happened.

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/cash-4-gold-c87309.html

I am a former employee of Cash 4 Gold. I did not know much about the company before being hired. On my first day of being hired, I was taught the “Cash 4 Gold Scam” from beginning to end.
1. The “refiner’s pack” that is used for you to put your jewelry is “insured for UP TO 100 dollars, ” according to how much they feel your items are worth, NOT appraised at
2. We receive your “Refiner’s Pack” within 3-4 days, but we are instructed to tell you that it takes “7-10 business days, for us to receive your pack, ALTHOUGH your package has already arrived.
3.Your jewlery gets appraised by hand/magnifying glasses/
a small weight pad, and a bottle of mystery fluid, which your items are then give a value for. Not million dollar equipment or specially trained jewelry experts.
4. Although the payment (check) for your item is dated within 24 hrs of testing your jewelry, we sometimes DO NOT actually send out the check until up to 3-4 days later.
5. We claim a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee or your jewelry returned, BUT THE CATCH IS, that the guarantee is contacting us within 10 DAYS from when your check is DATED. (This begins with the time it takes for the accounts payables dept. to issue the check and also including the transit time for you to receive your check in the mail. **** NOTATE THE COMMERCIALS THAT STATE U GET YOUR CHECK IN 24 HRS.***
5. IF you are lucky you will receive your check around the “7th-10th” bus iness day, AND more then 97% of the time Customers are outraged when they lay eyes on the amount of the check. Some Customer’s even receive a check for 0.01 cents. (TRUTH) Thats including items of great value (Diamonds, Platinum/ Gold and Sterling)
6. They sometimes even receive your valuables and like them so much THAT we CLAIM to not have received the items just so the “TOP” people or even “FAVORED” people can get first dibs on your items. From which point we issued an INSURANCE CLAIM for UP TO 100 dollars. GOD FORBID your items are worth more then a 100 dollars, and when you call in to check on the status of your items, we tell you ” YOU SHOULD”VE ADDED EXTRA INSURANCE ON YOUR ITEMS.” We do not have an actual Insurance company, they use customer service reps as the claim department agents.
7. For those who receive there check within the 10 day frame, GOOD LUCK with trying to get in touch with a cust. srvc. rep before your 10 days are up. Which after your 10 days, your items are “ALREADY MELTED” or NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR RETURN.”
8. For the “LUCKY” people who do get in touch with us within the alloted time frame, we already know what you are calling about. Customers want their items returned, because there
check amount is so insultingly LOW. The first thing a Rep will ask you is “HOW MUCH WERE YOU EXPECTING TO GET BACK?” This way we can know how much to “BONUS” you.
Definition of a BONUS: We issue low checks just to have you call us back if you are smart enough to realized that you just got scammed. For the smart one’s we are paid to offer u a bonus up to 3x the original amount of your check and you accept. For ex: Sally Smith receives a check for $27.86 for a rolex watch(which we dont issue value for), a class ring, a ring with diamond chips, a pair of earrings with emeralds, as well as a few sterling silver pieces, and maybe a few items that were really of no value. Now Sally Smith calls the cust srvc dept, where she speaks to a rep who seems so concerned and will see if she can do better with the amount by speaking to a “SUPERVISOR”. We then place the caller on Mute, and speak to our neighbors or doodle on a sheet, or twiddle with our hair for about 45 seconds, while we are supposedly speaking to our supervisor about Ms. Smith’s complaint. We then come back with an offer to “BUMP UP YOUR MELT DATE or any other lies the cust srvc reps can think of, and offer you a total amount of $53.20 which is a little under double the amount of your original check. In which case if you accept, the cust srvc rep makes a 15.00 bonus off of your transaction. If the cust srvc rep offers you under triple the amount of your orig check, she makes 10.oo in bonuses.
9. If you accept the offer, the deal is done, and you are told that the call is recorded(which most of the time, the record button does not work.)Just a way to make your feel binded by a verbal contract. IF you do not accept the deal, you have to return your check, and it takes sometimes up to a month to receive your items back after we receive the check.
10. If you only want the items that we do not find of any value back, you have to pay a 10.00 shipping and handling fee to have your own items returned, which varies depending on sales for that week. IF sales are good, there is no fee, when we are slow, you must pay.
Cash 4 Gold is definitely not a trustworthy or credible company to do business with. You are almost better off taking your items to a local pawn shop or shopping around for other companies. With the economony the way it is, Cash 4 Gold seems to be a way out of financial stress for some, but in actuality becomes a stress of its own. I would advice you to think twice before sending in valuables or items inherited and of sentimental value. Its not worth it. I am not doing this as a way of Bashing their money making process but more so to warn everyone.

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Nuance voice recognition technology on the Samsung Behold

I made a post a couple days ago about my wish to have voice recognition blog posting over the phone. I wanted to be able to make posts or notes while I was walking to work, I do my best thinking at that time.  I just got a new cell phone, well new to me. Its a Samsung Behold. It’s another iphone wannabee but I like new phones, its fun to find out all the stuff they can do without reading the manual . In this case there is no manual because I traded it to for my Dash.

ANYWAY… I was messing around with it and hit the voice dial button and lo and behold, the Nuance logo appeared. Thats pretty cool. I have a real  love affair with dragon naturally speaking, although I still don’t think its ready for prime time, well either that or maybe i jess don’ talk so good.  Whatever, it was ironic and I thought it was cool. Nuance getting in bed with Samsung on phones means that what I want is not far to follow.

Hey, also, I know this is not breaking news. Not by a long shot, but its news to me and that’s all I really care about.