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Google's WebSpam team are certainly succeeding at confusing SEOs, but they are failing miserably at rewarding webmasters who are genuinely trying to fix their past transgressions.

Sadly Google are also helping to create an increasing volume of tin-hat theories while at the same time attacking those who research patents looking for insights into how Google's algo works. A little schizophrenic perhaps?

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I go to /offers/ and they list "Your Favourite Brands".  No idea where they pull this shit from, but apparently I have 13 favourite brands. All are US brands, absolutely none of which I've ever visited or interacted with. The fact that I live on the other side of the planet doesn't seem relevant.  I hope none of these brands are paying per action…

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bangkok florist – Google Search

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After a few hours of looking at 2 columns here, with little in the way of consistent break-points, I'm really missing a single column flow of information.

I'm not sure who this was tested on, but for me personally it just doesn't work.

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I can see this sort of application improving development cycles. A really interesting application from Mozilla.  Still Alpha, but if it blends a number of new web techs very well:

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Mozilla Labs : TowTruck
A service for your website that makes it surprisingly easy to collaborate in real-time.

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Usability checklist | Userium | Catch common usability problems before user testing.
Userium – Usability Checklist – Simple, research based, usability checklist, which can be used to catch common usability issues on websites before doing user testing. By fixing obvious usability problems you get more meaningful feedback from users.

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Negative SEO vs. MattCutts.com – Martin MacDonald
my opionions on: Negative SEO vs. MattCutts.com post updated May 14, 2013

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What moron decides to hijack keys which are needed to scroll the page?  Even if this is a test it's bloody moronic.

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Twitter / CygnusSEO: Will 2013 be the year negative …
Instantly connect to what’s most important to you. Follow your friends, experts, favorite celebrities, and breaking news.

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At least we know now that starting a new site is the way to go.  Or maybe just go black altogether…

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Exposed: How online fraudsters dive deep into IATA processes to secure payments
The classic Nigerian bank account email scam is as old as the internet itself and pretty much remains about as sophisticated as your average Saturday night reality TV show.

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If you want to do NSEO don't bother with link blasts.  Just hire some Indian SEO to do what they think is a real campaign for about 18-24 months.  If the target is a new site it will work even better.  Virtually guaranteed to wipe out the target site if they cant build their own authority.

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Twitter / seosteve: @google @mattcutts …
Instantly connect to what’s most important to you. Follow your friends, experts, favorite celebrities, and breaking news.

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Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Interesting Penguin info – blog comment spam to be hit hard by Penguin 2.0?
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https://www.google.ie/search?q=mcdermott+pool+cue&hl=en&source=lnt&tbs=ctr:countryIE&cr=countryIE&sa=X&ei=EqWOUZ71CpOB7Qbo2YDYDA&ved=0CBYQpwUoAQ&biw=1440&bih=799 – #1 and #2 both spam

https://www.google.co.th/#q=mcdermott+pool+cue&hl=en&source=lnt&tbs=ctr:countryTH&cr=countryTH&sa=X&ei=o6WOUb_COMmw7AaD0YGoDQ&ved=0CBQQpwUoAQ&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.46340616,d.ZGU&fp=df01afe18861cc9e&biw=1440&bih=799 – all 10 results are spam from same spammer, using 2 domains

http://www.google.co.uk/#q=mcdermott+pool+cue&hl=en&source=lnt&tbs=ctr:countryUK%7CcountryGB&cr=countryUK%7CcountryGB&sa=X&ei=5qWOUZOLA4iu7AbFxYC4Ag&ved=0CBUQpwUoAQ&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.46340616,d.ZG4&fp=3bd076e9ccc6ec86&biw=1440&bih=799 = #4 and #5 are spam

I've never seen so much spam in Google.  All using subs.  Worst results I've seen in yonks.

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* single and multisite set ups
* custom plugin development for things like bookings, events etc.
* multilingual setups using WPML
* payments integration
* api integrations
* frontend js development

Happy to work with experienced freelancers or agencies who can work to deadlines.

Anyone have any suggestions?

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Domain name change leads to 20% drop at HomeAdvisor
Switch from ServiceMagic.com to HomeAdvisor.com leads to organic search traffic drop. IAC underestimated the challenge from switching its ServiceMagic business to a new domain name, the company dis…

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"We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it's in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don't find any problems, we'll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn't appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take.

It's about as useless a message as they could send.  Transparent with webmasters my arse…

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You can see that it's not even in the correct product category under Amazon's site:

www.amazon.com › … › Car Electronics › Car Audio › Satellite Radio‎

That's a really shitty user experience, and Google needs to sort out domains pushing so much authority that they can rank for anything with junk content.

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ARCHOS TV connect – Google Search
Google Instant is off due to connection speed. Press Enter to search. Press Enter to search. +You · Search · Images · Maps · Play · YouTube · News · Gmail · Drive · Calendar · More · Translate · Mobil…

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We’ve significantly improved our webmaster messages over time and we’ll continue to look at ways to make the messages more concrete and actionable.

Q.) If someone gets a notice, can they go back to Google via a reconsideration request and ask for more advice about what’s wrong, especially to get something specific?

If someone gets a notice about webspam that means that they have a manual webspam action. If the message is unclear and the webmaster wants more advice, we recommend asking questions in our webmaster SEO forum. After the issue is resolved, webmasters can file a reconsideration request.

After a webmaster files a reconsideration request, we do provide information about how the request was processed, e.g. if the request was granted or whether more work still needs to be done. We don’t have the resources to have a one-on-one conversation with every single webmaster, but we do reply to some reconsideration requests with more information and advice.

Q.) If people can’t expect to get specific advice, what should they do? What should someone like the BBC or Mozilla do to find that needle-in-a-haystack?

I think this is covered in [advice] about going to the webmaster forum

Source: http://searchengineland.com/qa-with-google-matt-cutts-on-manual-penalty-157167

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What's stopping me hiring these same agencies to "promote" my competitor?  It will take time to accomplish (Penguin definitely looks for long term abuse), but there's ZERO [difference] between me doing to my own site and me doing it to yours.  *Google's algo cannot distinguish the "who", ergo NSEO will be entirely possible if they continue with Penguin*."

The reason Penguin struck the bullseye last time was that people weren't busy promoting their competitors.  That's all changed now, and Google will have to come up with some alternative to algorithmic penalties based on link profiles if NSEO isn't to become a huge problem.

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More detail here, and quite a nice little tool for identifying potential algo hits:

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The Delegator® AlgoSleuth Tool
With the Delegator® AlgoSleuth Tool you can plot your website’s organic traffic against Google’s major Algorithm updates and see what was won or lost.

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Form Analytics, Web Form Optimization | Formisimo
Formisimo is an advanced form analytics tool that measures user interaction with web forms. Increase conversion rates and improve user experience.

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So after filling your password on 3DS they give you this.  Did they take the payment?  Did they save the booking?  A really bad Ux fail there.

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Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Truly horrible payment error handling by +Etihad Airways .
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Reshared post from +AJ Kohn

Why You Need To Understand Google's Obsession With Time To Long Click

The internal metric Google uses to determine search success is time to long click. Understanding this metric is important for search marketers in assessing changes to the search landscape and developing better optimization strategies.

#seo   #search   #google  

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Time To Long Click
Time to long click puts many search changes into perspective and gives sites renewed reason to link out and think of search as a multi-site experience.

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Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Well worth the read:
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Data visualization: Be understood
My eMetrics Summit SF presentation. Includes data visualization tips, correlation analysis and a goat.

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Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: This is a nice deck on data visualisation
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“How does Google deal with disavow requests and what’s the difference between that action and manual link penalties?” At the moment, nothing is being done with the disavow data and it’s unlikely to happen soon.

http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/ex-google-employee-brighton-seo/

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Ask the Ex-Googlers Anything Panel: BrightonSEO 2013
In this first session of the brilliant Brighton SEO, we were lucky enough to get the opportunity to hear some ex-Google employees answer questions posed by

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NameJet
For domaining or for your business needs, get the best aftermarket domain names for sale today! NameJet provides premium and expiring domain names through domain auctions and backorder services.

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Dumb SEO Questions 27. – Can I buy a domain that used to have spam on it and still rank?

Dumb SEO Questions 27. – Disavow tool a placebo or not?

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Reshared post from +Christopher Semturs

This is from my point of view one of the most important launches in regard to your digital identity – define what happens to your account after you are gone.

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Plan your digital afterlife with Inactive Account Manager – Data Liberation
Not many of us like thinking about death — especially our own. But making plans for what happens after you’re gone is really important for the people you leave behind. So today, we’re launching a new feature that makes it easy to tell Google what you want done with your digital assets when you …

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http://goo.gl/mod/NfgE

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Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: And here's my second question for the next Webmaster Central Office Hours Ha…
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If you think it's a good question please consider up-voting it.

http://goo.gl/mod/v2mF

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This answer is one of the worst cop-outs ever. Are you really suggesting that everyone now needs to do due diligence on purchases that may cost as low as $8?

Can I buy a domain that used to have spam on it and still rank?

Secondary market is huge, and there's no way to request webmaster tools messages from top brokers as domains resolve to their sales sites.  You should go out and learn how big this market is.

In fact, over time I think you'll realise that this will be one of the biggest failures from your team.  You should hang your head in shame.

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Reshared post from +Unmask Parasites

A very popular WordPress plugin, Social Media Widget, fell to the dark side.

Its recent update contained a code to inject "payday spam" links into web pages.

It's not clear whether it was done intentionally by the developer, or their account was compromised and hackers "updated" the plugin in the repository. Nonetheless, the plugin has been removed from the official repository. It is highly recommended that you remove this plugin completely from your server if you have already updated it to version 4.

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WordPress Plugin Social Media Widget Hiding Spam – Remove it now
If you are using the Social Media Widget plugin (social-media-widget), make sure to remove it immediately from your website. We discovered it is being used to i

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Reshared post from +Christopher Semturs

Today we are announcing an enhancement for hreflang annotations:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html
Very happy to see this enhancement going live, it addresses most of the questions we got from webmasters.

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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing “x-default hreflang” for international landing pages
Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 2:00 AM. Webmaster Level: All. The homepages of multinational and multilingual websites are sometimes configured to point visitors to localized pages, either via redirects or by changing the content to reflect the user’s language. Today we’ll introduce a new …

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[EDIT: link corrected]

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View Discussion
Be heard. Vote on questions and submit your own.

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Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Here's my question for today's Webmaster Central Hangout. 
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I hope you can answer this question:

* A client wants to use a domain which was affected by Penguin.  This was registered after previous owner allowed it to expire.
* They want to start a new website, with good content that focuses on the user not SEO.
* They want to disavow all links to this domain (conservatively into the 10's of thousands of spammy links) so that these wont count against them.

If they disavow everything can they assume that the domain will start with a fresh history?  If not is there some other way to get the history reset.  
Does the domain expiry/drop make any difference in their case?

They don't want to invest in creating a new site/brand only to discover that Google is penalising the prior owner's actions.  I don't know what to confidently tell them. 

I know you've answered many questions related to Penguin, but there doesn't seem to be any definitive response to this scenario from Google.

Not sure when your next hangout is, and happy to ask this there if preferable.

Thanks

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Kinda feel Google lied about the impact of Penguin, and should have been open with site owners affected. Most could have rebuilt a better site over the past year rather than try to recover their sites.

I suspect the total recovery % to date is single- or low double-digit numbers.  

Worst part is that the same tactics can still be used by new sites and they wont be touched.  All the wrong messages Google….

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Pi’s Epic Journey – LIFE OF PI on Digital HD | Watch Full Movie Online or Download Now
Enter the majestic world of Life of Pi and discover how this visual wonder came to life…

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Using Google accounts to sign up for services is handy, but why would Quora need to “Manage my contacts” for this function?

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2013 Qualaroo. Nudge™ is a registered trademark of Qualaroo, Inc …
2013 Qualaroo. Nudge™ is a registered trademark of Qualaroo, Inc. All rights reserved. support@qualaroo.com. Small Business Plan. Starting at $79/month. Target 30000 visitors per month. Create unlimit…

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Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: I would love to use Qualaroo, but their pricing is crazy
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