SEO Daily News

How to Protect Your Online Business

2020-08-30T00:16:00.000-07:00

In today’s era of digital business, it’s extremely important to consider security. Your website and online transaction systems could be at risk without security protection. There are several ways in which you could risk damage and potentially lose a lot of money because of cyber threats.

You need to know about what kinds of threats are circulating and some warning signs that you might be able to check for in order to see whether you’re at risk, and then you need to figure out who can fix it for you and what kind of security measures you need to take in order to stay protected from these threats.

Viruses

For PC users, viruses still present a lot of threats to the average user. PC viruses might even target you as a business owner and your website, as the monetisation of online businesses is an easy target for a lot of viruses designed by malicious developers.

If you notice something funny on your website such as unwanted advertisements that are there without your permission, or if there is extra text on your website that you did not place there, you could have a virus on your computer or on your website. This can get dangerous, as viruses can often cause the deterioration of website performance and slow it down either for you or everyone.

Hackers

Hackers pose a serious threat to all kinds of small businesses. While a lot of hackers normally target large corporations and big online companies, these larger organisations usually have excellent security. Some hackers might settle on a smaller business with lower security and target it instead.

This is why you need to be protected. Your website, especially if it hosts an avenue for electronic transactions, could be targeted by hackers who are looking to steal less money for less work. Some hackers prefer to siphon from a business slowly, taking only tiny amounts of money at a time. You should make sure you keep track of all your transactions and pay close attention to even the smallest deviations in balance amounts and other important accounting information.

Get Protection

One of the best preventative measures in this scenario is to get protection, particularly cyber protection. Websites with low security are at risk of viruses and hackers, so it’s better to be prepared than to be sorry.

Where can you find cyber protection? There are a few places you can find online, and you can always search the Internet for a trustworthy company that can protect your website from outside threats. Or you can go with a well-known company such as Hack Rescue that can offer the services you need to keep your website secure and monitored at all times.

So how does it work? The company of your choice will analyse your website and check for any existing threats. Once they’ve located ways to improve and protect your website, they’ll fix it for you. Then they’ll probably implement a monitoring service to ensure nothing sudden happens and that your business stays safe permanently.

Health Concerns

Common Computer Issues That You Should Know About

2020-08-08T01:57:00.004-07:00

Computers are widely used in houses and offices today, as mobile and computing devices have become extremely popular over the past couple of decades. Today, almost everybody has a desktop or a laptop in their homes. People use computers for a variety of reasons, as there’s really no shortage of things that you can do with a computer. However, one thing that you should know is that computers are generally quite fragile. The most common issues that might arise in a computer can be divided into two broad categories: hardware- and software-related issues. If your computer is suffering from a hardware issue, that might mean that a hardware component is causing trouble.

On the other hand, if it’s a software-related issue, that indicates that a specific program or operating system is causing issues. Software is required to operate the hardware. If you are an avid computer user, you should know about the most common issues that can arise in your PC, and how to repair them. Even though there are many companies that offer computer repair, here are just some of the issues that can arise in your computer:

Failing to Start Up

One of the most common issues that you might encounter is when your computer fails to start up. If you press the power button and a black screen comes up, even though all of the lights are on, it probably means that there’s an issue with your RAM. When your PC shuts down, the computer stores all quick-access information pertaining to the boot-up on the RAM. If your PC fails to read the RAM, all you will see is a black screen. The best option will be to get the RAM replaced.

Computer Viruses and Spyware

Most people generally browse the web without any regard for the safety of their computer. Many malicious websites often download virus and spyware programs to your computer as soon as you log on to the site. The download takes place in the background, so you won’t even get a prompt. When it comes to removing computer virus and spyware, you will probably require professional assistance. Call in a professional expert to highlight the issue and then remove the problem. Many advanced computer viruses often limit your ability to install an antivirus program. If you have important data on your computer, it might have to be deleted in order to avoid the virus from spreading.

Either way, computer virus and spyware removal is not an easy job. If the registry and the hard drive clusters get infected, you will have no option but to format the whole hard drive. This means that all of the data on your computer will be deleted in the process. Call in a professional to first assess the problem and then determine whether any data can be saved. These are just some of the most common computer issues that you should know about.

Panda, Fresher Results, Spelling Top Google’s January 2012 Search Updates

2012-02-08T03:35:00.000-08:00

Panda, Fresher Results, Spelling Top Google’s January 2012 Search Updates: A minor update to Google’s Panda update was released in January. This was just one of 14 other search changes Google announced. Others included fresher results, improvements to autocomplete, better spelling corrections, and auto-disabling Instant.

Google also made note of a couple other significant algorithmic updates: the launch of Search Plus Your World, which brought “social” results into Google’s search results, and the page layout algorithm, which targets ad-heavy websites.

Google also reminded website owners that Google reserves the right to change how your title appears in Google’s search result pages – which is hardly a new practice. As Google explained:

"We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the title tag if the webmaster specified one. But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is the reason we show an alternative title.

Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title specified by the webmaster in the HTML. For example, a title using simply the word "Home" is not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website’s pages, sometimes exactly duplicating it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives."

Here’s a rundown of the other noteworthy changes to Google search in January:

Panda

Google’s Panda update (a.k.a., Google’s “high quality sites” algorithm) received a “minor” update in January. It doesn’t seem as though Google has changed anything about what Panda was created to target algorithmically.

However, what may be more noteworthy is that Panda updates, which generally occurred roughly every 4-8 weeks last year and were believed to be manually updated, are becoming “more integrated” with Google’s indexing and ranking systems.

With the launch of Panda last year, traffic for several websites vanished as it, and its various iterations, were released – and there have been few stories of recovery. Let us know if you’ve noticed a major downturn in your traffic in recent weeks.

We have covered Panda extensively in the past year. If you think you’ve been hit by this latest update, here are some articles that may help:

Fresher Results

Google launched its freshness update in November. This update was aimed at providing more relevant results for searches that involve timely information, such as recent events, hot topics, recurring events, or topics where information is updated frequently.

In the past month, Google has made some minor updates and adjustments. Google has also made “several improvements” to how it determines the date of a document, which means you’ll want to make sure your website includes timely content. News, blogs, events, and Google+ are some areas that could help your keep your site appearing "fresh" to Google.

Google Instant

Google Instant offers the ability to see results as you type, but what if your computer isn’t fast enough? Google will now detect your computer’s speed and shut Instant off automatically.

In Google's search settings, you now have three options for Google Instant predictions:

Only when your computer is fast enough.
Always show Instant results.
Never show Instant results.

Previously Google has disabled Instant for people with a slow Internet connection.

Autocomplete & Spelling

Google improved its infrastructure for handling spelling corrections in autocomplete last month. Now, Google says it is delivering autocomplete suggestions more quickly. Additionally, for small spelling errors Google has made autocomplete more consistent with Google search.

There were two other changes related to spelling corrections. When there are spelling errors, Google will now tell you that it’s showing a search results page for the corrected version of that query (e.g., “cheetah” vs. “cheettah"). Google also says it has improved spelling corrections for “a number of rare queries.”

Image Search

One significant change to Google Images is that pictures with “high-quality" landing pages will now rank higher in Image results. This follows from last month, when Google announced that it had improved how it analyzes landing page signals, and the size of images became a ranking signal in Image Search.

Google has also updated how scrolling works, meaning the navigation on the sides will no longer stay in place when you scroll through images.

News Results

Google has made a couple of adjustments to news results. An improved news algorithm is designed to better respond to real-time trends and decide which queries should return news articles in search results. Google also has “made an adjustment” to how news results are blended in universal search.

Languages

Google will now generate related searches by auto-detecting the language of the query (e.g., a user typing a query in French might see French query refinements, even if the language is set to English). One other language update: Google users in Saudi Arabia can now choose to search in English.

Previous Search Changes

In December, Google made several changes, including an updating algorithm for picking relevant sitelinks, better detection of rich snippets, better spam detection for image search, and faster mobile browsing. The full list can be found on Google’s Inside Search blog.

Real People, Real SEO – Welcome to MySEOCommunity

2012-02-08T03:20:00.000-08:00

Real People, Real SEO – Welcome to MySEOCommunity:

Nestled deep in the World Wide Web is a place where Internet Marketers converge to share the stories, news, and memos pertinent to their industry. The content is user-submitted, but unlike other Digg clones, the community has very little control over what makes it to the front page.

Only after the article is poured over by a very qualified team can it even be seen on the site. Moderators scour each new article and rank its content for quality, usability, ease of reading, and value. Then, it is put through the WuzzRank filter, and voila, you have MySEOCommunity.

What in Tarnation is WuzzRank?

In their own words: “The WuzzRank is a special rank that measures the popularity of a particular page or article on the various Social Medias and it uses a logarithmic scale from 0-10. The word Wuzz comes from the words Web + Buzz. The WuzzRank is the PageRank equivalent for Social Media Reputation.”

In plain English, it is a specific algorithm to rate an article from 1-10 based on how popular they are on social media outlets. The real question is why is this important?Simply put, the reasons why WuzzRank is a genius way to rank submitted content is twofold.

First, it takes the power out of the hands of the users and moderators, and puts it back in the hands of the masses. Unlike Digg and Reddit, whose communities are famous for having a “formula” and a group of power users that can influence the ranking system greatly, MySEOCommunity has little control of how the stories rank. This means that the truly popular content will rein supreme.

Second, MySEOCommunity is filled with Internet Marketers, and moderators approve articles about the Internet Marketing world. In a small way, you get to see the validity of the articles you are reading even before you read them. For example, lets say you wanted to read an article about how to best optimize your social media outlets for better readership.

If WuzzRank is a measure of the social indicators for an article, logic would determine that the person who was able to achieve a better score has a better-optimized account, more followers, and has built better relationships to syndicate and promote his or her article. Doesn’t that sound exactly what you wanted to learn? You can qualify articles of a certain type without reading a single word.

Simply put, MySEOCommunity is a collaborative effort of Internet Marketers to deliver useful information about Internet Marketing. It is a collection of experts, doing what they do best, how can you not love it?

Is This Community Serious?

Full disclosure; I am a moderator, team member, and contributor to MySEOCommunity. However, to assume that just because I am a part of the team gives me any special treatment is patently absurd.

For example, take a look at this Skype conversation between Gerald Weber, one of the people behind MySEOCommunity and myself:

You read that correctly, one of my own articles was rejected! Granted, I fully admit that it was a mediocre article, and something I spat out an hour behind the deadline, but thats the beauty of MySEOCommunity. The author of the article is hidden, and each article is moderated on its own merit. If a Moderator writes a bad article, they get the same treatment as everyone else.

This allows for a level of interaction and immersion that is completely impossible on similar sites. For example, the power users of Digg and Twitter can be found with a simple search, and there are plenty of examples of companies paying these people to help vote their content; this is completely impossible on MySEOCommunity, because WuzzRank levels the playing field.

I can join in on the conversion, post my articles to the site, and interact in the comment threads as much as I want, because unless I somehow learn to control ALL social media, I’m no different than other users. Granted, there are some of our users that have more social clout than others, but unless they work their ass off to promote their own article, they’re in the same boat as the rest of us!

Take a look at the Team over on the MySEOCommunity website. You’ll see Ann Smarty, creator of My Blog Guest; Gerald Weber, creator of SEM-Group.net; Ana Hoffman of Traffic Generation Café; Julie Joyce of Link Fish Media; Hesham Zebida of Thesisawesome.com fame, and many more.

The more you find out about the team, the more you realize that the people that work to make this site possible are down in the same SEO trenches you are. Find me a professional SEO that has never heard of SEM-Group’s blog contests, the Thesis WordPress Theme, Traffic Generation Cafe, My Blog Guest, and Soshable. If you can, you have also found a poorly read SEO. Combine all of this experience with the fact that we can all freely engage and compete just like the rest of the users with no advantage; and you create an environment where the people that live and breathe SEO are able to compete over SEO! You’ll have a hard time finding a more dedicated group of community leaders.

Speaking of blogging contests. . .

The Mad SEO Scientist Blogging Contest:

To kick off the launch of MySEOCommunity, of course there is a blogging contest!

Don’t be mistaken by that caricature, this blogging contest is the real deal. Remember that awesome team described before? They will be judging the blog posts on usefulness, value, and overall greatness; and the winner will be given $1000 dollars.

That’s nothing to scoff at, and all you need to do is write an interesting blog post, put up a promotional post on your own blog pointing to the sponsors, (the people who make the cash prize possible) and promoting it socially.

There’s no catch, no risk, and no gimmicks. The playing field is completely level, and if any number of our Team gets involved in the contest, you have the opportunity to test yourself against the best in the business.

So get to MySEOCommunity now, enter the contest, and get involved in the discussion threads on each article. The excitement is infectious, trust me on that, and I hope to see you there!

Google Personalized Search: We Know Where You Live…

2012-02-08T03:18:00.000-08:00

Google Personalized Search: We Know Where You Live…:

When Google launched Local Search, it introduced personalization, the art of guessing where you are and what you wanted to find, and presenting search results to suit. Since its debut in 2009, the local map feature has been ever-present, highlighting locations that are in the geographical area indicated by your IP address, or, if you dare provide it, by your recorded location.

People were already uneasy about Google’s data-collecting activities. As early as December 2008, the New York Times highlighted concerns that personal privacy might be the trade-off for convenience in retrieving information from the web. Google conceded that it collected a wide range of data, but that it “did not threaten anyone’s privacy.” Skeptics from all corners reserved judgement, and the debate continued, unabated.

The following year, when challenged during an interview for CNBC’s “Inside the Mind of Google”, CEO Eric Schmidt fanned the flames with his now infamous riposte, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Schmidt’s seemingly casual comment revealed a gross underestimation of the weight of public opinion on the matter.

In a later interview with the Wall Street Journal, Schmidt seemed to suggest that what the public wants above all is convenience, and for Google to tell you what you should be doing, minute by minute. He was quick to blame a growing “anti-Google” lobby for encouraging extreme reaction to the company’s initiatives.

Internet privacy watchdogs have been on red alert ever since. Everybody from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in, landing some telling counterpunches.

The EFF cited a dangerously cavalier attitude as the cause of Google’s failure to understand “basic lessons about privacy.” Twisting the knife, it also reminded Schmidt of his 2005 spat with CNET, which used Google search to reveal an uncomfortable amount of his personal data.

For years, academics of all persuasions have researched, dissected and analyzed the issue; it will not surprise you to learn that few of them agree.

In 2010, the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University concluded that “internet technology [is] leaving privacy regulation far behind,” and advocated regulatory restraint. Conversely, and less than a year earlier, the UC Davis Law Review identified a culture of “online fear” among policymakers, and contended that surrendering to concerns over Internet privacy will limit the potential of the web severely.

It’s tempting, but unfair, to paint Google as the sole villain of the piece, purely on account of its dominant share of U.S. searches; others, notably AOL, have breached individual privacy on a grand scale before now. Yet, Google can be its own worst enemy, often contriving a crisis where none need exist and handing its opponents a smoking gun.

In November 2010, the Federal Communications Commission investigated Google after learning that cars used to record images for the company’s Street View project had been collecting personal information from wireless networks owned by consumers. Google never revealed the extent of the data, collected accidentally, but accepted that the company had “failed badly.”

At the end of 2010, the Federal Trade Commission put the finishing touches to its proposed framework for Internet businesses. The FTC’s primary recommendation, that online organizations implement a “do not track” mechanism to ring-fence individual privacy, found instant favor with the civil liberties lobby. Almost as quickly, the advertising industry trumpeted self-regulation as the universal panacea.

Don’t expect it to end there. The annual market for local advertising is about $140 billion, with an increasing online element. Google intends to have its share one way or another; as Schmidt puts it, “You get a billion people doing something, there’s lots of ways to make money.” Scary, right?

When faced with the choice, do you opt for convenience or privacy? Public outrage makes good headlines, but the evidence suggests that most people are talking the talk, not walking the walk. Rapid growth in mobile search usage shows an increasing number of people that don’t mind revealing their location and their search habits – excellent news for Google and its competitors, but still a major concern for the general public.

This post was contributed by Ryan Gould. Ryan is the Marketing Development Manager for The SEO Agency. Check out their latest posts on their SEO blog.

4 Ways a Cheap Hosting Company Will Destroy Your Online Business

2012-02-08T03:17:00.000-08:00

4 Ways a Cheap Hosting Company Will Destroy Your Online Business:

All the offsite link building and onsite SEO in the world can’t protect your website and online business from the dangers of a cheap hosting company. In fact, great offsite link building and onsite SEO can be ruined by the actions (or lack thereof) of a cheap hosting company. Don’t put your website at risk just to save a few dollars each month! Here are four ways a cheap hosting company could potentially destroy your website and online business:

1. Downed servers = lost content

Most cheap hosting companies are not going to backup your website. Frankly, you probably aren’t paying them enough to bother. Chances are it’s even spelled out (in very, very fine print) in your contract with them that they will not backup the content of your website. If something happens to their servers and your website loses pages of content there is nothing you can do about it. You might lose all of your onsite SEO and have to start at square one.

I actually had this happen to a client of mine, and they were considering pursuing legal actions against the hosting company. As much as it pained me to say it, I told them they would probably lose the suit (since the contract never said the hosting company would backup their site) and they would have to pay huge legal fees in the process. It wasn’t worth the misery, and rebuilding the lost pages was actually the less complicated option.

A good hosting company will always backup your website and be able to reset your website to the last backup should something go awry. This means you might only lose minutes of work as opposed to days or weeks of onsite changes.

2. Your website is open to attacks

Cheap hosting companies often lack the security of more expensive, US-based companies, leaving your site open to attacks and hackers. Do you really want to risk getting locked out of your own website? A good hosting company is going to protect your website and data with a strong network firewall that not only keeps hackers out, but alerts the hosting company when anyone tries to break into your site.

3. Little to no customer support

That same client that lost pages of content when their hosting company’s servers went down spent days trying to get in contact with the hosting company. The sent dozens of emails to every email address they could find and tried calling the customer service number at all hours of the day (the hosting company was based in India) but to no avail. It took four days for someone at the hosting company to get back to my client, and basically all they were told was to sit tight. You can imagine how well that went over. Since their entire business was web-based, if their site was down so was their business.

A good hosting company is never going to put their customers through the ringer like that. When a site owner is having issues, a reputable hosting company is going to get back to them in a reasonable amount of time and do everything they can to fix the issue on their end.

4. Downed servers = no revenue

I can understand a website owner that is trying to save money, especially in these tough economic times, but your website is your source of revenue—isn’t it worth the $200 a good US-based hosting company will charge you? Say your website brings in $10,000 a month in revenue; are you willing to risk that $10,000 just so you can save $150 by using a cheaper hosting company? How much is your online business worth to you? There are just some corners that you should never cut with your website and your hosting company is at the top of the list.

I know it might be tempting to pay some random overseas hosting company $20 a month to host your website, but don’t be penny wise pound foolish with your website! The potential for ruin is too great a risk just to save a couple hundred dollars.

Sharing a search story

2012-02-08T03:15:00.000-08:00

Sharing a search story:

I’ve been reading a lot of the coverage of the Search plus Your World launch and I wanted to share my story and then clarify something.

I love to stay up until early in the morning playing Werewolf. In early December I went to a journalism conference called “News Foo Camp” in Phoenix and played a lot of Werewolf. When I got back, for some reason I searched for [werewolf] — maybe I was thinking about making a custom deck of werewolf cards. Because I was dogfood-testing Search plus Your World, this is what I saw:

In the top row of pictures, you’ll see a bunch of people playing werewolf, including a picture of me as the werewolf in the top-left image. Doing a generic search like [werewolf] or [photos] and getting back a picture of you or your friends is a pure, magic moment.

Let me tell you how it happened. I have Brian “Fitz” Fitzpatrick in a circle on Google+, because he’s in charge of Google’s Data Liberation Front and he’s an all-round awesome guy to boot. Fitz published an album of 25 Werewolf photos shortly after the conference. Okay, but I’m only in one of the 25 pictures; how did Google return the picture of me first? It turns out that Brian had tagged me in that single photo.

Once you know the trick, it might not seem like magic anymore. In fact, this is the “things just work” experience that everyone in the tech industry strives for. But when I searched for [werewolf] and got back a recent picture of me playing werewolf, it did seem like magic right then. I suspect as more people take Search plus Your World out for a test drive, they’ll quickly experience similar magical “Aha!” moments like I did.

I was reading some of the comments on tech blogs, and I wanted to clarify something: Search plus Your World does surface public content from the open web, not just content from Google+. For example, look back up to the top-right image from my screenshot above. That’s actually a werewolf photo that Gina Trapani took and it’s hosted on Flickr, not Google.

Here’s another example. If you follow the excellent and erudite Jennifer 8 Lee and search for [general tso’s chicken], Google can surface this high-quality thread from Quora:

By the way, that’s a fantastic thread for Google to highlight, since Lee literally wrote the book about General Tso’s Chicken. It’s exactly the sort of “just works” user experience you’d want.

It’s not hard to find content shared on other sites. For a search [grand unified theory of snack food], Paul Buchheit shared a link on FriendFeed, and Google can highlight that:

Or if I search for [connectbot], here’s a link that Brad Fitzpatrick shared on Live Journal:

(Yes, we do have both a Brian Fitzpatrick and a Brad Fitzpatrick at Google. People sometimes mix them up, but they’re different.)

I hope that helps to make my point. Search plus Your World builds on the social search that we launched in 2009, and can surface public content from sites across from the web, such as Quora, FriendFeed, LiveJournal, Twitter, and WordPress.

The team should be finishing the rollout of Search plus Your World in the next day or so, and I hope you enjoy it. Remember, to see the new results, you’ll need to be signed in with a Google account and search on google.com. Give this new feature a whirl: once you see how much better personal search can be, I don’t think you’ll want to give it up.

Live Blogging for Publicity and Brand Building

2011-11-11T06:23:00.000-08:00

Live Blogging for Publicity and Brand Building:

Whether you blog professionally or just for a bit of fun everyone would love to have more attention for their blog. And by harnessing the power of live blogging you can tap into a growing trend while cementing your status in the blogging community.

What is Live Blogging?

Live blogging does exactly what it says on the tin: blogging about up to the minute news and events as they happen.

In its simplest form this may involve tweeting about a breaking news story. A more sophisticated version would be publishing blog posts from major events, commenting on what’s happening and potentially including photos, videos and more.

Why Should You Blog Live?

It’s simple really: real life events are limited in a way that the internet is not. Venue capacity, ticket prices and logistics are all barriers to attendance. By live blogging you give non-attendees access to the event, breaking down those barriers and feeding their hunger for the inside scoop.

How Do I Live Blog Successfully?

Part of the trick to garnering attention for live blogging is to be at the hottest events. They might be exclusive (sold out events), expensive or just so compelling that lots of people out there want to know more.

Investigate the big events in your niche, find out what’s hot, check out what’s got Twitter buzzing and find a way to be there.

Found an event and got access? Great, now you need to be able to blog on the fly.

Make sure you have the kit you need – tablet, notebook, laptop, whatever works for you. Find out if there will be wifi at the event and/or consider buying yourself a mobile dongle so if the venue lets you down you’re still good to blog.

Now practice your typing. You need to be able to type fast so you can take notes on what’s being said, without losing the flow of what’s happening. If you can’t already, learn to touch type, it’s the most useful skill you can have for great live blogging.

Decide what your blogging style is going to be, will you just give a straight account of what’s happening? Will you include photos and videos to give a flavour of the event? Are you going to comment on what’s happening?

Base your choice on what the event is, who will be attending and above all who you’re trying to attract.

Put together a plan of action for the day – pin point the key times when you’ll be able to upload your blog posts. If you are going for a measured commentary as opposed to a live stream you’ll need downtime to gather your thoughts.

Find the key promotional opportunities. Will attendees be tweeting? Can you butter up the organiser for a link to your live blogging activities? It’s no good shouting in a vacuum, figure out how to get on the bandwagon before it leaves the station.

Live blogging can be a great way to get exposure, but like all successful promotional strategies it takes planning and hard work. The more you put in, the more you’ll get out.

Salty Droid Interview

2011-09-13T05:09:00.001-07:00

Salty Droid Interview:

Have you ever seen a naked robot? If not, you can at least hear one, as the Salty Droid tells all in a 59 minute interview. Droids do not talk longer than an hour. ;)

Topics discussed include get rich quick, get poor quick, marketing, community building, .info domain names (s'rsly?), the wrath of robots, and a few surprises.

Download the MP3 here

Like reading more than listening? Transcription below.

An Interview of the Salty Droid

Interviewer:

Today we're going to interview not a person, so much as a robot, or maybe a person behind a robot. Who is the Salty Droid?

Jason Jones:

Is that the first question, "Who is the Salty Droid?"

Interviewer:

Yes.

Jason Jones:

All right. Well, the answer is, Jason Jones.

Interviewer:

Jason Jones. OK. Why did you decide to create a robot for your website or what was the idea behind that?

Jason Jones:

Well, I like robots first of all, because everyone likes robots. I was just using that as my online persona, and then the whole Salty Droid project developed underneath it. The robot just came out of nowhere, out of the blue.

Interviewer:

When you are writing or talking or compiling, everything you do is the Salty Droid? Do you view that as an extension of yourself? Or do you view that as something that separates yourself from what you're doing? Or how do you think of it that way?

Jason Jones:

I think of it definitely as separate. I try to keep it completely depersonalized or keep a layer in between it and me, because the robot is really angry and aggressive, but those aren't healthy emotions to take on personally. The robot is the character and the blog is the project. And it's more than just me. It's more than one person. There's a whole community there. I'm just one piece of it. I definitely don't think of myself as that, as the robot.

Interviewer:

That leads to two questions. One, you built a community around this, but then, two, you said that it's not good to have the anger and negative emotions. Do you view the community as being full of negative emotions?

How can you create a community that revolves around a character that has stuff you wouldn't describe as good? Can you build a community that is separate from the traits of the founder of it?

Jason Jones:

Well, the hyper-aggression and the bad attitude are mostly communiqué. And I think most of the people in the community. All the legit people in the community are really caring, good people, who get that the aggression is a joke.

The targets of the aggression the things that are going on that we're pointing to are really serious things that people need to stand up and say something about. It takes an aggressive tone that I don't think anyone really tries to personify the robot's charms.

Interviewer:

One of the things that's an issue online is it's really easy to point to what's bad or what's wrong. It's really easy to be cynical. But do you think there is enough good resources for people to find what will help them and what's good with the site mainly being focused on staying away from what's bad? Or can you focus on one too much or if you did both would it cause problems?

Jason Jones:

Yeah. I think mixing them up would be a terrible idea because of the specific thing I'm talking about. I'm totally sure that I don't know what is the good side of making quick money online.

Interviewer:

Right.

Jason Jones:

How can you find the right help to do that, because that is not a real thing. You can't make quick money online. It's really hard to make money online. That is the reality of the situation. As far as how people get help in accentuating the positives. I really don't see, what are the positives?

Interviewer:

From that perspective I think you hit on one of the things, is that a lot of the people have the mindset. Like, I got an email today, where the person said that they want to make something. They've been buying all these network-marketing things and they want to be able to make money really quick and easy without needing a PhD.

I've had other people say that they'd be willing to pay me a portion of the profits for whatever I taught them but nothing upfront. There's even been a person, he's offered me to pay me. They wanted me to rank someone else's page lower, a competitor. And offered to pay me after the fact.

[laughter]

Interviewer:

The big thing there is there's a lot of mindset where people try to take whatever they can get and take. And the thing is a lot of them end up running into a roadblock by the view of the need fast, easy, cheap, free or placebo cost, but need it to be automated and make a lot.

Do you think the big problem is the vultures or the mindset of people?

Jason Jones: The vultures. No, it is the vultures. It's not people's mindset and people's weakness and people's vulnerability, and people's desire to have a life that's different from the life that they have. That is just how humans are.

And there's certain ways you can capitalize that that are seedy and not very respectable, but then you can prey on it. You can become a predator. And that's a fallback excuse that people use is trying to characterize the victims like that, so that it feels less painful to think about.

That they are also exploiting this idea of like, "Hey, let's make the world a better place." That is exploited just as much as this greed tactic. It exploits good people, greedy people. Anyone who has human weaknesses is exploitable.

Interviewer:

What are the emotions you would say are most commonly preyed upon the "get rich" people?

Jason Jones:

In the "get rich" thing, greed is a part of it. For instance, I listened to a huge batch of boiler room calls. OK. I won't mention anything specific about, but 100 hours. And it's overwhelming. I heard a few calls where it was greed and it is this stereotype person of this chaser who wants to believe the impossible.

I don't think that's the majority. I'm not sure how big of the portion that represents, but it's not that significant. It's people who are afraid, people who want a brighter tomorrow, people who things are falling apart for and who are at a moment in their life where they are particularly vulnerable.
And it's not the same people over and over. People get ground out and pushed out and in comes a new batch. They're always looking for this new batch of vulnerable people.

Interviewer:

This is maybe a bit abstract or wide-reaching, but in the same way the monetary system is setup as being debt-based. To where if you have an income inequality and some people have savings, there's got to be some other people that are in debt or living right close to the edge.

Do you think how we structure our political and economic system, feeds into the people being vulnerable and desperate? Or do you think no matter how it was structured people would always be that way no matter what?

Jason Jones:

No. I think part of what's making people vulnerable is they're thinking that they don't have enough. And this constant buy-buy culture and the credit, lending. And it's not just personal. Everything is based off on debt. Debt is our currency.

People's weaknesses and personalities develop inside of that. It's a microcosm, the scammy end of the spectrum what I'm writing about. It's done very basely down at the bottom, but it's a reflection of exactly how things go all the way to the top. It's in the political structure. It's in the financial system. We're structured like this.

Interviewer:

Some of the patterns of the stuff you particularly don't like, is preying on people's emotions. Some of the stuff you do on your blog comes down to sleuthing and what Dereby called "investigative journalism", in a world where there is almost none.
How do you get so much of the data? Is this building the community help pull on to that stuff in for you? Or are you really technically savvy? How are able to dig so much stuff up?

Jason Jones:

Yeah. That's a human groundwork. It's a beat work. It just takes time. I started writing it and people started coming. And the more people come, the more people come. And then I keep quiet about who I'm talking to and I keep my sources confidential.

You'll see in the writing style I never say, "So and so says", or "This anonymous source." I never mention ever where anything is coming from. I just do it and if you read long enough you just have to come to rely on the fact that there is stuff going on behind the scenes that I'm not going to talk about. People don't want to talk about it, because it's a really cagey, dark situation. And people have their own interests and they don't want to.

But it started happening almost immediately. People started to come talk to me and I just talked to them. Keep it going. At this point I have this never-ending stream of information that just comes at me and only a tiny, tiny percentage of it ends up on the blog.

Interviewer:

You did a lot of interesting graphics stuff. Did you find that hard to do? How were you able to tie in the image and audio? Let's say you put up a five-minute video or a three-minute video and you make all you custom graphics, how much work goes into that?
[laughter]

Jason Jones:

A lot.

Interviewer:

It looks like it. Because I do the basic videos of like, "Here's the screenshot of this, and here's how it works." I make a three or a five-minute thing and I always screw-up in the middle. Then I get ticked off with myself, and start cursing on myself. I can imagine how hard it is to sequence all that together.
Have you gotten more efficient with that over time? Or what did you use? Was it just a lot of hard practice till you get used to doing it?

Jason Jones:

Yeah. It was just practice, because the first time I had no idea. I had a reason, a motivation to do it. I just would do it. But that big epic video they were talking about Jeff Foster and Andy Jenkins. They were talking about the Syndicate and telling me to go fuck myself. That video took 36 hours, probably.

Interviewer:

Wow.

Jason Jones:

It was just a long time.

Interviewer:

What takes more time? Is it cutting up the audio, or creating the graphics? Or figuring out what pieces you're going to use?

Jason Jones:

Yeah. Everything goes wrong, and the audio formats don't match. You just have to get a few parts in. You restart, because you feel like your idea was idiotic.

Interviewer:

Have you thought about making videos about some of the stuff you do? There's one site I subscribe to. Financial advice where the guy is totally low-key, he's always questioning himself. His website's called iTulip." And he makes these amazing graphs comparing different asset classes over time.

Sometimes he's like, "Yeah, I did this pretty quick," but he's taking a long time for most of it. Have you thought about some of the stuff you do, like creating tutorials on how to do some of this?

Jason Jones:

No, definitely not. Because one, that reach was the thing I'm talking about. And I don't want to do anything even close to that. Just to keep the line totally clear. Two, I have a hard time explaining the things that I'm doing to people who aren't me. It's hard. I know a lot of different little tricks. I don't know. You've got to figure out your own. Figure out your own little tricks.

Interviewer:

With the stuff you're doing, if the site gets more popular, if you ever decide to do so many years down the road, so many months, so many years. At some point do you think you're eventually going to lose passion for the project? or do you see yourself doing for years to come?

Jason Jones:

I don't know. I like it right now. No. I see myself doing it for a while, because no one's doing it. If I stop doing it, then what? It's something different is gone. I don't want that to happen.
I'm a fan of the site. I like it. I love the site.

Interviewer:

What's the hardest part with running it? Is it doing the stuff yourself? Dealing with how other people interact with it? Or dealing with what people do away from it? Or what's the hardest parts with it? You were struggling with like stuff like people taking down social media accounts.

Jason Jones:

Yeah. That's the hardest part, because that's disappointing. When I first started, I expected that this project would have the support of the Internet community. Because it's the Internet community, that's creating the distribution system for this vicious scam. And people don't like it. It's not popular. Things that these people do aren't popular with the normal people you want using your websites.

I thought people would be behind me. Plus, that's how it's supposed to be. In America, there's this like illusion that you can say whatever you want. And it's all just like Wild West speech around here. But it's not like that at all. The Internet companies don't support you. It's way more work than it should've been just to keep the site existing.

That's not fun work to try to keep it up. That doesn't do anything for the cause. It doesn't help anyone. It's not helping me. It's a waste of time, and it's totally unnecessary. I'm obviously not going to lose. They're not going to be able to get rid of me, so it's a waste of their time.

I think that's the most disappointing part, getting banned from all these different social networks, getting banned from hosting sites, having to resort to...

Part of the trap is that you go onto YouTube, and you think it's an open forum where there's multiple voices. If people are getting scammed, they're going to be making YouTube videos, just like these scammers are making YouTube videos. And those two will weigh each other out, but that's not it. If someone wants to take your content down more than you want to keep it up, it's pretty hard to keep it up.

Interviewer:

You mentioned something about that being an illusion. Well, you mentioned part of it being technical stuff related to that, but you also mentioned it being an illusion. Do you see that as a pattern that's always been that way in society across all cultures? Do you see the Internet making that better or worse? How do you feel about that?

Jason Jones:

Well, this particular thing that's dangerous about the Internet is that there's a perception, more so than ever before, that dissent is available. When you could only distribute through the paper, you knew it wasn't open. It was incredibly limited by whatever the publication medium was. You could think about that as you were looking.

But now you get the idea from everything in the media and from most of the stuff on the Internet, that the Internet is the voice of the little guy. But then when you go and look, you find out, "No, the little guy gets silenced still, and his voice is not there"

But now there's holding out that his voice is there, and he's just not saying anything. So, he must be happy about it. He must not have just got his credit card maxed out and had his wife leave him. And suddenly drinking a fifth of Scotch a day.
It's not that those comments never pop up. It's that whenever someone gets that boldness, they get slapped right back down. And they're not in a position to fight back. I'm speaking about it in my own personal experience from this scam area , but it's obviously like that across the Web, too.

You want to talk about gas frack explosions in your back yard, like you can bet there's dozens of people who put up things. Then some company's hack lawyer came along and demanded they take them down. They didn't know their rights, and they can't afford to be availed to seek any counsel on those rights. It's just easier to take it down. Should not be like that.

Interviewer:

There's also the extreme of false complaints and sites like Ripoff Report that have been called a variety of things. I don't even know what words I could use without availing myself to a lawsuit. [laughter]

Jason Jones:

I'll say it, extortion racket. That's what people accuse them of, of running an extortion racket, because it looks a lot like that.

Interviewer:

How does the consumer separate out? You think people are falsely confident that they have a full spectrum; how can they become more aware of stuff they should trust versus stuff they shouldn't?

Jason Jones:

That is a good question. I don't know. Knowing who to trust is a hard thing to do, especially on the Internet, because of how many different channels and how many different voices there are. Because right now, at the moment, as we speak, things are running wildly out of control.

Interviewer:

Things are running wildly out of control, what does that mean?

Jason Jones:

If you don't know, if you're not sophisticated on the Internet, it's dangerous. It's dangerous to spend money on the Internet. It's dangerous to put your credit card on the Internet. Yeah, it's hard to tell.

You can't go to Ripoff Report and trust what's there, when you know that sometimes the complaints are false. And that no one's editing them, and the person in charge isn't at the wheel. Or is running a corporate advocacy program where he's taking the side of people who are known scammers. The Internet is turning things seedy.

Interviewer:

Yeah. Part of that is that the Internet naturally has network effects built into a lot of different things, like the first person in the search result's going to get the bulk of the clicks. The leading search engine's going to get the bulk of the search traffic. And you see that with systems like....

I'm talking to you on Skype now, and it's got tons of users. Isn't it, though just how businesses run? A lot of businesses start off pure, and then grow. They get larger. Get dysfunctional through their size. Then they just have to keep making the numbers?

Jason Jones:

Yes. That's clearly what's happening.

Interviewer:

It's not really just a web-only phenomenon.

Jason Jones:

Oh, no!

Interviewer:

It's just that on the web you feel you're getting more diversity when maybe you're not. So one thing on the web...

Jason Jones:

That's the big difference I'm pointing to on the web, is that there needs to be a disclaimer, so that people have the idea. But that won't work either, so there's just no way.

Interviewer:

Yeah. I think the key is building good internal filters for who to trust, but anyone who's new has a hard time with that. It's almost like you have to get struck down once or twice somewhere to...

Jason Jones:

Exactly. It's hard when you come right on. The sites that I trust, and the things I trust on the Internet are the ones where I can smell the person behind it. Once it gets out the point where it's so big you're not sure what you're looking at reported, like Huffington Post. It's like at first, it was a thing. Then at the end, it's just this big goulash. Then it's like, "I'm not going to look at this anymore. I can't relate to it."

Interviewer:

Right. You think that it's having the character and a voice of an individual or a small group of individuals that you've learned over time is valuable. The more depersonalized it becomes, the more mushed, the less you can trust it.
I had an interesting thing along that lines, when Google recently did an update called the Panda update, and a lot of larger sites from big brands got a big boost. But then, a lot of the independent sites actually end up getting crushed out that didn't have the brand. It sounds like the relevancy algos are going in the exact opposite direction of what you're saying is best for the web?

Jason Jones:

Towards the bigger? No. That is bad, right? That's the old-school way. That's the thing that is so not working. Let's not put that on the Internet and do it again, where it's even easier to scale up to an irrational size, become unreasonably big and useless in all of your ways.

Interviewer:

Have you seen my weight scale that posts to Twitter, is that what you're saying? No.
[laughter]

Interviewer:

Let's see.

Jason Jones:

Although I used to like Google more, before I started reading your blog. Because then I saw them more as a heroic force, and then the way you talk about it. Yeah, I can see how so many of their tactics are little guy squeezing, which is really not what I want to see happen on the Internet.

Interviewer:

It seems that offline, there's growing income inequality. And maybe technology only speeds that up as well.

Jason Jones:

No. That's reflective of the offline world, too. Everything is way too big. Big groups are the worst, most unreliable. It's one of our worst human inventions, forming giant groups. And the bigger the group is, the stupider it is. Yet our whole economy is about building out the biggest possible things.
I'm not an expert on this, so I don't know why I'm running my mouth about it.

Interviewer:

There's a book I read called "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History." I will admit that the reading was deep and beyond my level when I first started. But it was interesting, so I stuck with it. And one of the things he said is that it seems that we've always sacrificed variety in favor of homogenation to increase yield, as a general piece of capitalism.

Online, some people will come, to your blog and say, "F*ck you, you stupid robot!" or stuff like you would never see people do in person. Where they're really enraged. Do you deal with a lot of that? Or do you think people view you in that way? Or how do you get the humor angle across without turning people off?

Jason Jones:

Well, the blog is supposed to be complicated, so it's not easy to understand. When you first get there, it's not supposed to be totally clear what's happening. Because I like it like that. Part of the message, like this looks like it's coming, this looks bad. When you just first glance at it, you're like, "Oh, this! I'm not sure this guy should be doing this, Geez! Does he have to go that far?"

But then you stay for a while, and then it's really easy to figure out. I don't think it's just like a mystery to anyone. But the trolls, that is rage. The site doesn't really get that many trolls in a traditional Internet sense, where it's like someone who's just popping in and they're just trying to get a rise out of a group. And then they thrive off of that. There is some of that, obviously.

But much more what happens on the blog is people who come to try to defend their own financial interests without disclosing that. And because this transparency and jokes, especially affect their day-to-day numbers, they have some massive overreactions. I get that in public and in private every day.

Also, people who have an idea about something that they think is possible, and it's not possible. Then they start to figure out that it's not possible. Then they want to lash out at someone about that. A lot of times, that ends up being my robot, which is a good thing to lash out at, actually.

Interviewer:

What do you mean by that, that they find out something? What are you saying, are you saying like making money quickly, or having some system?

Jason Jones:

Well, the specific stories I'm writing about, it follows a much more cult-like pattern, where they're trying to disrupt your normal way of thinking. They're explicitly doing that. And they're filling you with this other thing, which is convenient for them. Which ends in giving them your money and most of your time and part of your life for a while. Then they just dump you out at the end. When you're in that process, it's like a very deep, dangerous process to mess with people's personalities like that.

When you wake up out of that and you see, "Oh, I've been kind of semi-delusional here. I've been lying to my family. I've been being aggressive to my friends." "This is affecting my life," and just, "This is not as advertised," it's hard to face up to that. Lashing out at the Salty Droid is often...

And I also get, along with the death threats, I also do get a lot of apologies.

Interviewer:
Do you have any way of gauging how much you help people at all? Do you get thank-you emails every day? Or do people tell you that they were in a like crappy spot, and then they came across your stuff, and it changed their way of thinking?

Jason Jones:

Yes. I get those always, all the time. And it's much more in private than on the thing in public.

Interviewer:

Yeah, because I would imagine people might feel a bit embarrassed to admit that they were getting ripped off or something.

Jason Jones:

Yeah. A lot of the stories I hear are so personally tragic, and they contain so much just like horror that people don't...
Talking about them more is painful, and people definitely are uncomfortable talking about it in public. I'm sorry, what was your question?

Interviewer:

Well, continuing from where you were, is that largely what drives you to keep going with the site?

Jason Jones:

Yeah. Definitely. Without that, it would be too hard, because there's not a lot.
Sometimes I wonder why I'm doing it, but families especially like in the James Ray situation. Well, all of the situations. For every outrageously stupid comment, threat, or whatever that I see or get, I get 10 from the other side.

Interviewer:

You mentioned a group called The Syndicate.

Jason Jones:

The Syndicate.

Interviewer:

What is that? Do you think there's five or 10 or 20 or 50 different groups that are aligned similarly to what you mention? And you just honed in on one group? Or do you think that one has more reach than the others? Or why so much focus on this one group? You also mentioned that it seemed like some of this stuff weaves together. Can you describe how that is? Am I making any sense or not?

Jason Jones:

Yeah. You're right. It's that I focus on The Syndicate. But the idea is that this white-collar fraud that's going down in all different formats, not just the Internet, in all different transmission methods, they're using these cartels. The cartel system is one of the key features in lots of different scams that you can look up.

You get close enough and you look close at it, a key feature is cartels, false testimonial, keeping people out of the market. Having an in-group and an out-group, and a secondary tier, lieutenants. If you look close, the organizational structure is there to see across all different forms of people.
But I just focus in on The Syndicate because that's where I started. I like to say things that I have public, that I have proof of that I can put out there. That's just hard to come by.
I want to finish that story. The Syndicate is a big. They did big-time damage. They're on these audios that I have all over the website. Like just talking openly about violating the laws, and there's 1000s and 1000s of individual stories of how these people have wrecked lives and taken millions of dollars. And I'm going to keep on it until something changes.

Interviewer:

Why would they record those calls? Or how would those calls end up recorded then? Like we're recording this one.

Jason Jones:

Yeah, they record. They like to. They're narcissists. They like to hear the sound of their own voice, and they record their calls. They record all kinds of things they should not be recording. Even after I get some of those recordings, they keep on doing it, because they don't learn any lessons.
Like the last one I released, which was that boiler room call. The boiler rooms, they record their calls, because that's what boiler rooms do.

Interviewer:

Do you sometimes feel like a man trying to hold back the Sahara Desert in a way, because this stuff's everywhere? Or do you think if you make a big enough difference in one area, people will carry on and help in other areas? Like it spreads out in circles?

Jason Jones:

I don't know. That's what I want to think about when I'm in a drum circle. I don't know how realistic that is. I hope that's how it is. I hope there's all these magical, beautiful butterflies being born, because of what I'm doing.

Interviewer:

Part of media has always been if you go to other forms of media, stuff spreads out, and then it reconsolidates. Like there's a bunch of people experimenting. And then ultimately, a lot of that comes down to social signals. Like people trust what they think other people trust.

You did a good job marketing your site, especially on a very small budget. What were keys to getting well-known exposure, spreading your ideas?

Jason Jones:

I don't know. I try not to think very much about that. Because if you're going to start a blog, and if you want to start a real blog. Not the way people I talk about, talk about starting a blog. But if you have something to talk about and you want to start a blog, then you start it. People aren't going to comment first. And you want people to read your writing. They're not, so then how do you stay motivated to keep writing? It seems like a trap.

The key is to focus on the thing that you are writing about, and have that be the thing that you care about. Because the thing that was clear immediately is that it didn't matter how big of an audience I had. If it was zero or 1000, 10,000, it didn't matter.
From the very first word, sound I made on the Internet, the people who I was talking about, they heard. That's it. You have to focus on the audience or the thing that you're talking about, and the Internet can allow you to interact with them.
If you stay focused on building a quality thing and caring about the thing that you're actually writing about. And being a responsible advocate for that thing in whatever form it is, obviously not my crazy format, but that's the important thing.
How you end up like getting popular. Now I'm popular, but I really don't know. You tell me how that happened. I don't know.

Interviewer:

Did you make the number one most popular robot? Or, number two most popular robot online behind GoogleBot? Get you a little plaque made up?
Three years down the road, you decide you have a great idea, or you think you could really help people. It's not big, bureaucratic, dysfunctional, large company, but you eventually want to start doing something where you think you help people. But it's going to be more of a money-making enterprise, rather than something that you're just doing for free.

Do you think the marketing lessons you learned from building the Salty Droid help you, more than any of the bad karma from people hating Salty Droid? Some of the people who you've exposed hate that obviously. And whatever you do going forward, there's going to be some connection, right, between them? In terms of people will try to connect them up?

Jason Jones:

Between this project and my next project, you mean?

Interviewer:

Yeah, I'm not saying that you're going to go from Salty Droid to SaltyMillionaire.com. What I'm saying is like whatever you do next, the web has a way of tying people or things together. Are you worried about that at all? Or do you never really plan on trying to make much money online, just do what you're interested in mostly?

Jason Jones:

Well, I don't believe that you can make money online, number one. And no one's ever been able to convince me by showing anyone who's doing it.

Interviewer:

Well, we'll do a sidebar after this.

Jason Jones:

First of all, it's like an art project in my opinion. Once I'm done with it, hopefully it'll still be up. It'll be there forever, and that's one of the cool things about the Web. I'm really proud of it. I don't plan to be haunted by it in my future endeavors, although I really don't want to stop doing it.

I don't have some aversion to making money from it. I don't think it's evil to make money off of the Internet. And I'm kind of getting close now. Now I have a big audience, and if I wanted to try to do something non-exploitative, I have some ideas that I think could work. And I'm definitely not against turning it into something.
It'll be weird now if I make money online, because my primary message is that you can't make money online. But it is like that. It's like, "Yeah!" If I end up making some money doing this it's because I built up a mass audience.
But that's almost impossible, so much that you should not be thinking about that. If that's one of the specs in your business plan, "Build up mass audience," then forget it. That's not a realistic goal.

Interviewer:

Unless you can keep the cost structure low while you're doing it, and you're having fun doing it. If you're having fun doing it and you don't have too high of a cost structure, then you can stumble into a business that way, because you've already built up all this leverage already.
I think what harms a lot of people is they say, "Hey, I got online yesterday. I need to make a bunch of money tomorrow." It's just like a new person to the stock market that's probably going to get served and lose all their money.

But if you keep a cost structure low and do what you're interested in, it helps. You mentioned how it attracts people that are similar. And you build a community around it. That's how I started. When my blog came out, or when I first made my blog, it was a default web template. Three months in, I could afford to buy a $99 logo.

Jason Jones:

Yeah. Well, that's the way to do it. And I'm not saying that. Obviously, some people have success, too. But it's not going to be instant, and it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be any of those things. And then, you don't know exactly why you're successful. Maybe you think you know, but I don't believe that you can know.

Stuff is too complicated to be extrapolating out such specific details, and there's so much chaos that surrounds you and the things that you do. Trying to predict things like that or plan for them, you've got to have some core value that you're about and focus on that. Then you can hope that it gets really successful and big. But maybe you're being useful in the interim period if that doesn't happen, or if that takes a long time.

Interviewer:

A friend of mine, a close one,, I always tell him, "Hey, do something you're passionate about." They're like, "I don't want to do something I'm passionate about. I just want to make money." And then it's like, "Hey, have you been working at all on that?" and they're like, "Nah." I'm like, "That's because you're not passionate about it."

Jason Jones:

Sure. Although that advice about being passionate about it, I guess that's good when you're trying to pick something to try for yourself, but most people are kind of like slaves and they're forced to, and there's not that much you can do about it. I want to do something I'm passionate about.

Interviewer:

Why did you choose a .info extension? Outside of Germany, there's like three legitimate .info sites in the world. Salty Droid being one of them. What made you choose this?

Jason Jones:

Yes! Because Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss registered all our domain names.

Interviewer:

They registered all your domain names?

Jason Jones:

Yes. There's a post about it, it's called Deiss and Belcher's Big Mistake. I was flashing my teeth at them about it, but I really didn't care. Because it was just stupid, I just got .info. And it's worked out just fine.

Interviewer:

Yeah. Have you ever made any posts that you'd later regret? For example, you saw someone doing something that was kind of shitty, crappy? And later you saw like them do something decent. And then like, "Maybe I went overboard on that." Or do you think that by the time you collect enough, that you're pretty certain that someone is what you think they are by the time you write it?

Jason Jones:

Exactly. Like at the first, there at the very beginning, I was just winging it a little bit. But then I was just poking small holes at people anyway, so I don't regret any of that. Once I got going, I don't talk about someone until I know their position inside of the system. And I have to have heard someone telling me a story that's just like, "Ugh!"

Otherwise, I would never speak to someone like the robot speaks. I'm doing that on purpose, and I'm careful. Hopefully I never make that mistake.
Like someone will tell me about someone, and I'll watch them for six months before. Because you can't go off, that is a responsibility I have. You cannot do what I'm doing to just an average citizen. I wouldn't accept this kind of behavior in a different situation.

Interviewer:

You think in some way ignorance is bliss? Do you think you would feel better if you didn't know all this stuff? Or do you think you feel better knowing that maybe you helped some people?

Jason Jones:

Ignorance is bliss if you're ignorant and you remain ignorant of all things, so that you can't tell. If it wasn't this, it would be something else. There's bull crap going on all around, so there's plenty of reason to be depressed. I don't find this particularly depressing, because everything's depressing. Tsunamis are depressing, too. If you're reading about the world, there's lots of stuff that needs to be better. That's just the perpetual state of everything.

Interviewer:

You're not going to know how you're going to become successful? When were the points when you thought that what you were doing was some little side thing, to where you really believed in it? Were there steps where you said, "OK, this was?" Do you look back where you say, "These are the five things that really made 80 percent of the difference?" Or do you think it's just going to bat every day? Or how would you describe it?

Jason Jones:

I could tell from the very beginning, which I didn't know before I started doing this, but was was really clear right from the start. That what I was doing, was agitating the bad guys. It doesn't matter if I'm popular or not, this is agitating the bad guys, and that's helping. Like the way I'm doing it, I'm doing it in a particular way. And it's helping.

I also could tell right from early on that this is helping victims. This gives victims a zone to think about what's happened and like gives a chance for reasonableness to leak back in.
The people who are involved, the parties to the thing that you're talking about on the Internet, this is true. From my experience so far, no matter how small you are compared to the thing that you're talking about. If you're going to complain about YouTube's policies, then the people at YouTube are probably not going to hear that. But there's not very many settings where if you say something about someone on the Internet, they're not going to hear it.
That's powerful by itself. It doesn't matter if no one else reads it, you can talk. If you see something you don't like, some problems, you can talk about that thing. People who are involved in that thing, you can talk to them, so that isn't dependent on getting a big audience.

Interviewer:

Do you think that's because people realize how things can snowball? And they want to see what's going on and try to minimize it early?

Jason Jones:

Yeah, because people are like narcissists. Like you send someone something and say, "I wrote this about you," they're going to go read it. Only people who have massive information overload where they're getting so much in that they can't process it, which is how all the gurus pretend like they are. But once I started to get popular, I could tell, "What lies!"

It's hard to know when you first get to the Internet, but it's not that. I'm popular. I'm not overwhelmed. I can keep up. I read all my emails. If you sent me an email, then I have read it. And I think almost everyone is like that. And if you've said something about me on the Internet, I saw it, because that's just how it works. There's not that many people talking. Like I mentioned that James Ray's PR guy, who's also the PR guy for Goldman Sachs. I forget his name now, Mark Fabiani.

Interviewer:

All-around good guy, obviously.

Jason Jones:

Yes. And he came. I know he saw it, because people can't not come see their own thing. That's really powerful, right there. That was the "Aha!" moment. Right as it started going, I could just tell right away. Like, "Oh, my gosh! They hate this so much!" That makes it worth doing it.

Interviewer:

Did you actually send the people emails, like, "Hey, I wrote this about you?" When you first launched, were you doing that?

Jason Jones:

Yeah, right. At first, yes.

Interviewer:

OK, That was key to getting it to spread right there, because you were going to write...

Jason Jones:

Not really. Because I only did that right at first, after that, I could tell. Well, because I thought I needed to do that. The way the web works now, you don't need to do that. I never do it now, like I say something about it.

Interviewer:

I don't think that the web changed so much as your website's authority and reach changed.

Jason Jones:

No, because this way predates that. It goes way before you ever came to my website. If you look, the video's taken down now. But there's this video of Perry Belcher complaining about me. He calls me an "asteroid asshole" from the stage at this Austin Internet marketers event. And that was like 10 days into it.

It's not because I was important at that time. No one knew me. And the tone I was taking made it seem like no one will ever listen to him either, because you can't talk like that. Everyone knows you can't talk like that.

Interviewer:

Do you think that there's...?

Jason Jones:

He was complaining in front of the marks in the room, just like he was that disturbed that he would say something about it from the stage just a few days into it. The web is powerful for talking directly to people. If you have something to say to someone other than Barack Obama, put it up on the web, and they will see it.

Interviewer:

Why is Barack Obama so much harder to reach than W.?

Jason Jones:

Well, because...
[laughter]

Interviewer:

I don't know if you realized it, but a lot of what you're mentioning is actually just a lot of marketing concepts. You're talking about do something you're interested in. Find people that are relevant. Find people that are kind of egotistical, not saying that you have to feed in and kiss people's asses. But feed into knowing who will respond and how they'll take it.

Then you also mentioned something else. Like, "You're not supposed to do this. You're not supposed to do that. Most people wouldn't do that." A lot of times a lot of rules and concepts of rules are set up to keep existing market leaders in their place and prevent others from disrupting them. That's a lot of the point of how Eric Schmidt famously, "The lobbyists write the legislation,"

When you talk about all that stuff you're doing, when I hear you I'm like, "OK, this is a marketing step. Be relevant. Be interested. Know your market. Connect with them, have a point of differentiation." Do you see how a lot of this stuff you mentioned? You didn't mention it using particularly marketing words, but it almost sounds like a marketing plan?

Jason Jones:

No. Blogging is like a marketing thing. I'm not denying that. I don't put out art on every post, because I'm just so passionate about art. It's because that's an effective way to communicate. I am trying to do a good job of being an effective communicator. I am trying to build my audience. I'm not saying that's not one of my goals, or that that's not important or fun.

I hope I'm a good marketer. Although they say that to me in the comments all the time as like an insult.

Interviewer:

You're just a marketer.

Jason Jones:

I'm a marketer. Oh, that's great. This is great marketing, bud.

Interviewer:

Well, I think that it's hilarious, because a lot of bloggers do that with SEO, too. Like if I write something, they, "Oh, more SEO bullsh*t!" And then like a couple years later, after the same guy said all SEOs are a scam, he'll say, "Oh, yeah, that was one of my link-bait efforts."
[laughter]

Jason Jones:

Right.

Interviewer:

It's like, "You transparent jackass! Why would anyone trust you now?" Like that, "Hey, I was full of sh*t a couple years ago, but you can trust me now."

Jason Jones:

"Remember when I was a liar? Those days are in the past."

Interviewer:

"Well, I think they're in the past, but I wouldn't bet on it." Or, "I'd like to bet against my own." Pete Rose style.

Jason Jones:

I hedge!

Interviewer:

Goldman Sachs, "We're sort of long this..." Define "sort of" and "long". In English or French?

No!

If you had to start over from scratch today, what are things that you would avoid doing that you did?

Jason Jones:

I would not use Twitter.

Interviewer:

Not use Twitter?

Jason Jones: Because it started on Twitter. It started as like a Twitter character, and then I put a lot of effort into this Twitter character. And I thought Twitter was a really cool way. That dynamic I'm describing, it's particularly real in social media. If social media platforms were actually there for open debate, like I could go onto Twitter and talk to Perry Belcher. Not only could he hear it but he had the sense that everyone else heard me.

That made the things I was saying, even if at first I had five followers, but it doesn't matter. It's still in search, and people could still hear me talking to him. That seemed really powerful.

And I spent a lot of time building that thing, and then they take it away. They can take it right out from underneath you. They don't have to tell you why. You don't have any rights to the things you're creating. I hadn't backed it up or anything, so it's like that whole period is just gone. They just took it. And they never said a word to me about it.
I'm careful about that now, and not just Twitter, either. If you're building something controversial, do not build it on the cloud, or else you can lose it.

Interviewer:

OK. It seems like there's almost two marketing things in there. One, it's important to have autonomy and control of what you're doing, right?

Jason Jones:

Yes, definitely.

Interviewer:

And then the other would be you can maybe get a bit of attention with those, but it's not worth putting too much effort in the social networks. Because it's better to be a big fish in a small pond, or to build your own pond, rather than swim in an ocean where the current...

Jason Jones: If I was going to build something new now that wasn't like...
The Salty Droid is a special exception.

I don't think people are getting booted off of Twitter left and right. But if you're trying, if it's some form of dissent, then you're just wasting your time building it out on someone else's platform where they're probably going to take it away.

Interviewer:

And what about that other thing, about like the big fish in a small pond? Do you think that it matters? It's better to be really relevant and focused and niche than to be on something bigger and just be one of many? Or how important is it to have some level of differentiation? Like a focus on building your own thing? Do you think that you ran your own blog was really important relative to being a participant in some forum?

Jason Jones:

Yeah. Ultimately, I regret spending all this time where I was building something for someone else. Like I was building Twitter's site out. I was adding something to Twitter, but they don't care about me. I'm not looking back, why?
And I worried that once my Twitter account got banned, because I was using that primarily as the main part of my voice. The blog posts were actually much shorter back then, because I spent so much time working on Twitter. Once I was gone, I thought, "Well, now, you know, that's going to really hurt my popularity. Most of my clicks came from Twitter, and like I wonder if this is the end of it."
But I could tell, within a few days it's like, "No, now I'm over here, and this is the place to hear me now. Over here on my place, and now this is where people are coming. Maybe this is what I should've been doing the whole time.
And then if Twitter wouldn't have banned me, I would actually be less popular, because I'd have spent more time. I would've stayed there, because I was having fun, because real-time baiting is fun. And that ultimately is like is a waste. It's not anywhere near as powerful as holding the keys to the thing yourself.
When you can see the back-end, I can watch, too. What happened to the clicks, and where they come from, and where they go. I just control. I get so much more information if I'm holding the keys, so...

Interviewer:

How do you use Twitter?

Jason Jones:

It is an afterthought. If you're spending more than half of your time on Twitter, that seems to me like a waste, any of them.

Interviewer:

Have you ever thought about creating the ultimate guide to online baiting? Not "debating", but "baiting?"

Jason Jones:

No, I could. That is something I have expertise on. No. Because what I'm doing, not to be immodest but it's for professionals. You have to be careful talking like that. If you're good enough at baiting, you can destroy someone. That's not very nice. You should keep that mostly to yourself.

Interviewer:

Do you ever find yourself reading comments on YouTube or anything, like to perfect your craft?

Jason Jones: To pick up like gibberishy bits? [laughter]

Jason Jones: No. YouTube comments suck. Most people are really bad at baiting. You've got to be...

Interviewer: Yeah. Well, your mom!

Jason Jones: Oh! You destroyed me. [laughter]

---

Thanks Salty.

Google Appends Prior Search Query

2011-09-13T05:09:00.000-07:00

Google Appends Prior Search Query:

Smart SEOs have been preaching brand for years and years now (& so has Google if you read between the lines).

For some time Google has appended prior search queries in AdWords. In some cases they also show ads for related search queries, append your location to the search query for localization, spell-correct search results based on common search trends, and (as the Vince update showed) they can also use search query chains & brand related searches as a signal.

As far back as 2008 Google sugested previous query refinements for organic search, but they haven't been very prevalent thusfar IMHO.

While researching another article, I was searching for some browsers to see how search engines were advertising on various keywords, and after searching for Firefox I later searched for SEO & saw the following:

This is yet another way brand familiarity can boost rankings. Not only are you likely to score higher on generic search queries (due to the Vince & Panda updates), but having a well-known brand also makes Google more likely to recommend your brand as a keyword to suggest in Google Instant, makes people more likely to +1 your site, and it now also can impact the related organic search results further if people search for that brand shortly before searching for broader industry keywords.

Buying Google AdWords Ads on Brand Keywords?

2011-09-13T05:08:00.001-07:00

Buying Google AdWords Ads on Brand Keywords?:

Is Paid Search Incremental or Cannibalistic?

Earlier this month Google referenced a "study" they did which showed that 89% of AdWords ad clicks were incremental (meaning that they were clicks that the website would not have received if they relied on organic search results alone).

As part of that "study" they stated that "indirect navigation to the advertiser site is not considered." Why did they chose to exclude that segment of traffic? Because they advertiser would have got almost all of it anyway. They never really defined what indirect navigation is though, so you are left to guess as to what qualifies as being part of that segment.

The "study" also stated:

A low value of incremental ad clicks may occur when the paid and organic results are both similar and in close proximity to each other on the search results page. This increases the likelihood of a user clicking on an organic result as opposed to a paid result. Close proximity occurs when the ranking of the organic result is high, placing it near the paid results. Organic results triggered by branded search terms tend to have a higher ranking on average and this may lead to a low IAC value.

So which keywords should you advertise on? And which keywords are buying the milk when you already have the cow for free? According to Google:

A low IAC value does not necessarily suggest a pause in search advertising is in order. In fact, for many advertisers with a low IAC, it is still profitable to invest in search advertising. To evaluate the economic benefits of search advertising, an advertiser must run a calculation incorporating their individual IAC, conversion rates, and conversion revenue. The below equation can help determine whether search advertising is worthwhile on a case by case basis.

Is an Experiment Required?

Google later suggests that a more rigorous test would include a split test experiment that compares a control group against an ad group with paid search ads held back. They then suggest that "many advertisers are adverse to conducting such experiments due to the setup costs involved and the potential revenue impact from having a hold-out group."

What I don't buy *at all* is the suggestion that such studies need to be rigorous & expensive. On the organic search front, Google Webmaster Tools already offers organic search CTR stats by ranking position & ranked page:

And since Google is heavily promoting adoption of the +1 button, they also offer A/B split data for how that button impacts search performance.

If Google provides this data for free for organic search then why (other than protecting their own revenues) do they suggest this data is hard to attain for paid search? If Google respected their advertisers & wanted the advertisers to advertise based on complete data they would make this data available automatically, like they do with the +1 button data.

No "Study" Required

Here is my big problem I have with Google suggesting that I need a quantitative study to know if I should buy my own branded keywords:

I know I am going to get almost all the clicks anyhow (Google removed "indirect navigation" from their study for a reason, and 3rd party studies have shown how directly cannibalistic these ads are)
the whole point of building a brand is increased affinity with users & not needing to pay for incremental distribution driven by brand demand. To spend money to build brand only to have to keep rebuying the existing brand equity is quite a futile exercise.
in the bid auction Google sets arbitrary pricing floors at the keyword level to squeeze advertisers (almost nobody is bidding on "seo book" but if I do Google will want $2 or $3 per click)
even if I go through said "quantitative study" I end up needing to re-test it every so often as Google arbitrarily juices the ad prices to increase their revenues
when Google offers the enhanced long sitelinks they are doing so because they think the search query is primarily navigational, yet they still put ads above the organic search results, which IMHO is pretty dirty
and the dirtiest bit of it all (that smells the worst) is that competing against you in the ad auction is not only arbitrary pricing floors, but also Google itself, which buys keywords against your brand (using their own monopoly money)

Larger Sitelinks Drive Down Competition

Google recently expanded sitelinks in the organic search results to make them take up a huge portion of the above-the-fold screen real estate, driving down attempted organic search brand arbitrage & negative reputation issues.

Driving Down the Search Results

Using features like Google Instant, a Google+ promotional bar & longer AdWords ad copy, Google has been aggressively pushing down the search result set so fewer listings appear above the fold.

Each month there is another test of some new feature that pushes the organic search results downward.

Zero Moment of Burning Ad Budget

Google promotes a concept called "the zero moment of truth" suggesting that you need to advertise just about anywhere late in the conversion cycle to "be there" and reinforce your messaging.

However, with enhanced organic sitelinks, the brand owns so much of the search real estate that it will lose limited traffic to competitors if it doesn't buy AdWords on its branded keywords. Further, given the ability to block certain sitelinks & edit the page title & meta description you should be able to control the copy on your branded organic listing to make it look and feel like the ad copy you would use in AdWords.

There are some nuanced exceptions though, as brands are not always well aligned with how people search...

When You Should Buy Your Brand Keywords

Short Term Specials & Promotions

If you have an event coming up that you need to promote for a short duration of time then running AdWords ads is a great way to instantly get exposure for that campaign.

Certain Misspellings

In the past if you misspelled keywords Google would put the spell correction right at the top of the page. More recently they have decided to put it below the AdWords ads. So on this type of ad (where Amazon already ranks #1, but has the organic search results pushed down by the ad & then a spell suggestion) I think that ad is burning money.

In other cases, like where you don't rank high in the organic search results, buying AdWords ads on common misspellings is a much smarter idea. For instance, I think this is a smart ad buy by Agoda.

However, in the longrun, if I ran Agoda, I would point a few misspelled links at my website to boost my rankings for common misspellings.

One way to reach misspellings and longertailed searches for your brand is to use an embedded match, where you bid on agoda and then use -[agoda] as a negative keyword.

Brand is Shared By Multiple Companies

Mercedes Benz is burning a bit of their ad budget by advertising where they are irrelevant.

Certainly it makes sense for them to buy exposure for the branded keywords, but in the above examples they should put -kingston as a negative keyword.

When Google Runs Negative Ads

In some cases Google ads promote negative messaging. For instance, while using Gmail I saw an ad suggesting that I should "uninstall McAfee" in a computer that did not even have it.

Buying branded ads in those cases would likely make sense, if for no other reason to compete with & block out risky negative ads that could go viral. Whether Google should even allow such ads is another question for debate.

Big Money Markets Full of Spam

Google was recently clipped by the DOJ for a half-BILLION Dollars for running illicit ads promoting Canadian pharmacies. The DOJ went so far as highlighting that Larry Page knew what was going on & intentionally allowed these ads to run:

Mr. Neronha said those efforts amounted to "window-dressing," allowing Google to continue earning revenues from the allegedly illicit ad sales even as it professed to be taking action against them. Google employees helped undercover Justice Department agents in the sting operation evade controls designed to stop companies from advertising illegally, he said.

"Suffice it to say that this is not two or three rogue employees at the customer service level doing this on their own," Mr. Neronha said in an interview. "This was a corporate decision to engage in this conduct."

After the above instance, Google is perhaps going to be "guilty until proven innocent" where they are running sketchy ads.

In the short run it is likely appropriate to still run branded keyword ads while the issue is getting sorted out, but if you see anything like the following on your branded search results it probably makes sense to fight it on the public relations front in the background while opening the wallet to protect the brand publicly.

And since most major pharmaceutical corporations are routinely fined for running illegal ads, I don't understand why these pharma corps don't have a black hat SEO (or 3) on staff to help manage the search results.

If Google wants brand then give it to them in spades. ;)

Passive Online Income vs Sustainable Online Income

2011-09-13T05:08:00.000-07:00

Passive Online Income vs Sustainable Online Income:

Is there such a thing as "passive" income? Generally no. A person can cash out existing brand equity and exposure, but if they cash out too aggressively and/or do not reinvest enough then they are ultimately cashing out their market position and will eventually fade.

Does Google Make "Passive" Income?

Online there are some network effects that are hard to beat. MySpace had them over Facebook & only lost due to years of systematic incompetence & mismanagement. And even Google has to claw and fight for every percent of search marketshare.

A person could say "well Google makes passive income" and I would counter that with "not really."

So far this month Google has made about a dozen search interface changes or tests & the underlying relevancy algorithms have likely had at least 3x or 4x as much change.

Keeping Google's Marketshare Costs Big Money

The propaganda Google spreads include statements like: "users keep coming back to Google even though they have a choice of a search engine every time they open a browser"

While Google maintains that their monopolist marketshare is due to user appreciation of superior technology, a ton of their exposure is paid for. I was helping a friend set up a new laptop and the amount of Google added to the machine made me feel like Google is the new Norton or Symantec.

If you use the Internet Explorer browser to access the web it comes with a Google Toolbar.

That toolbar defaults to enhanced features enabled.

Google also pays for Chrome to be installed in the laptop.

If you are curious enough to click on the pinned Chrome logo then when it opens they try to set it as your default browser.

If you do use Chrome regularly you see Chrome store ads bundled right int he browser.

Even if you don't use Chrome or the Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer then whenever you use Google they suggest setting it to your home page.

And even if you don't change your homepage, Google paid to be the default search box on Toshiba's default start page!

If you manage to somehow avoid all the above Google payola then they wait for browser plugins to have security issues & then do a bundled cross-promotion there. And look where they tell you to search from

If your default search provider isn't Google when you install Chrome they use an option screen to help you change it, with Google being the first choice

Either Google is fibbing when they state how much of their existing marketshare is due to superior quality service, or they are hedging a risk of losing marketshare to Bing by buying placement everywhere they can. And to me this really highlights one of the big issues with truly "passive" online income. In spite of Google's success (& the great network effects they enjoy), even Google feels the need to spend hundreds of millions of Dollars a year buying exposure for their own browser, buying default search provider exposure in 3rd party browsers, and ensuring new computers are filled with promotional Google crapware.

This sort of cross promotion is everywhere, from ads on Youtube promoting Chrome

to Gmail ads highlighting featured Youtube videos

and Google+ games having Chrome ads integrated as special items in the game

right on through to Google buying display ads promoting display ads.

Facebook realizes how powerful this cross-integration is & thus buys ads on Youtube as well.

But if you want to leave Google's ecosystem it takes a lot of effort, as Google is willing to advertise the Google alternative aggressively wherever they can.

Google recently extended their ecosystem of cross-referencing further by automatically adding Google Related to Google Chrome & the Google Toolbar, which recommends Google content within the browser no matter where you are on the web.

Google's bundling not only follows users around the web & personalizes ads, but it also bakes right into the core of their relevancy algorithms. Eric Schmidt stated "the internet would be better if we knew you were a real person rather than a dog or a fake person. Some people are just evil and we should be able to ID them and rank them downward."

Either you sign up for a Google Profile or you suffer the consequences! Forbes published (then quickly pulled) an alarming article titled “Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Dies.” Wired followed up spreading a similar message & a new Google trusted stores rating system for merchants was also spotted.

With so many attempts at lock-in there is no surprise that some other browsers which have partnered with Google are considering moving on.

This is not to say that Bing doesn't do marketing as well. They just are not as slick about it.

Policing Advertisers Costs Billions

In addition to evolving their core relevancy algorithm, Google has to police advertisers who are willing to be deceptive, market counterfeit goods & use the lowest common denominator. When Google is too loose that can cost them a pretty penny: they just paid a $500 million fine to the US government for ads from Canadian pharmacies. The DOJ claimed Mr. Page knew what was going on:

Mr. Neronha said those efforts amounted to "window-dressing," allowing Google to continue earning revenues from the allegedly illicit ad sales even as it professed to be taking action against them. Google employees helped undercover Justice Department agents in the sting operation evade controls designed to stop companies from advertising illegally, he said.

"Suffice it to say that this is not two or three rogue employees at the customer service level doing this on their own," Mr. Neronha said in an interview. "This was a corporate decision to engage in this conduct."

Likewise, it costs Google a lot of money to deal with lawsuits that arise due to their business practices & lack of respect for copyright with photos, books & videos. They eventually had to develop an expensive video footprinting technology to adopt DRM features on Youtube.

And building the partnerships Google has to run Youtube isn't easy. They pay something like a half-cent per video view & if you create a site with a "no soup for you" message (like the above Google page) for markets where the finances do not work out then you are violating their search guidelines by cloaking, whereas Google overly-promotes YouTube in the search results and is free to count ad views as video views (once again, against Google's guidelines).

New Niche? New Lawsuits

Eric Schmidt highlighted how the lobbyists write the laws & then Google went out and hired over a dozen lobbyist firms. Anything that disintermediates search costs Google a cut of revenues.

While Groupon is still unproven as a business model, Google was willing to spend $6 billion to buy it in order to avoid the risk of missing out on a new form of local ads.

Mobile search now represents 12% of the search market. To look in their dominant search position onto the new devices Google:

build a new operating system to give away for free
paid carriers a revenue share (in addition to giving it away)
likely violated Oracle patents (that will likely cost them in the B's)
had other patent issues which required Google to spend $12.5 billion buying Motorola (that is nearly 1/3 of the cash Google has built up through their IPO & saved profits in the 10-year history of the company)

Sneaky ISPs Redirecting Search Traffic

What is worse for Google, is in spite their default status, their huge ad budget, and being large enough to be sued regularly, even all that isn't enough to keep all the traffic they pay for, as there is widespread hijacking of search traffic by ISP providers.

Google Isn't Passive, but ___ Is

Google may have bit off more than they could chew & are certainly doing anything but being passive. But maybe some other companies that make great money are doing so passively. Offline that is certainly true in many instances, but online passive companies tend to disappear.

Look at all the work Yahoo! has done with their news box & their sports vertical, yet when you back out the cash on the books & the foreign investments the company isn't valued at much above $0. AOL has also cratered. In spite of their huge traffic streams they are not growing with the market due to search bypassing them & niche players picking them apart one vertical at a time. Running a portal profitably & sustainably is anything but passive.

Even deep into the long tail at the other end of the equation the profits may be every bit as scarce. Demand Media's accounting techniques show that they were far better at growing revenues than growing profits & the company may never be profitable.

The Limits of "Search"

Google & Bing keep eating more of the value chain through content scraping & a more interactive search experience that include new ad formats, like coupons & product ads with pictures.

In addition, search companies are challenging the boundaries of search by creating vertical media & ad networks that compete against a wide array of publisher websites.

The Huffington Post

Autonomy / Fast Search

Groupon

BankRate

MapQuest + TomTom

The Yellow Pages

Dell / HP

That "Shady" Competitor

When Google talks about "protecting users" one of the case studies / angles they push is the health angle:

The paid post at the top happens to be about brain tumors, which is a really serious subject. If you are searching for information about brain cancer or radiosurgery, you probably don’t want a company buying links in an attempt to show up higher in search engines. Other paid posts might not be as starkly life-or-death, but they can still pollute the ecology of the web.

While Google was using the life-or-death approach to policing link buying outside of their AdWords ad network, Google was knowingly selling search ads to Canadian "pharmacies" providing illicit drugs in the US. The official settlement document lists how Google insiders knew work-arounds to the automated systems & were working directly on managing the ad accounts associated with the illegal activities. Google had done so for over a half-decade & only changed their approach *after* they knew a sting operation was underway.

For those scoring at home, this has been Google's approach to the health vertical:

3rd parties buying links that *could* influence search results for important health topics = morally reprehensible
Google selling links *within* the search results for important health topics to criminal organizations = totally reasonable

Given the above investigation, it is not surprising that they shut down their health records initiative. They had already spent all their credibility.

Google may protect you from some third parties, but Google can not protect you from Google. :D

Not only can Google hardcode the algorithms toward promoting certain websites (while editorially discriminating against other webmasters for doing the exact same thing), but Google also actively invests in the publishing ecosystem, which pits them directly against anyone who doesn't receive their largesse.

Webmasters are told that having networks of similar websites is spammy. And yet, Google invests is a company that owns about 7 copies of the exact same business model in the exact same niche as a roll up.

As we saw with BeatThatQuote, Google owned-and-operated websites get penalized for a shorter duration of time for the same offense that other websites get penalized for longer periods of time for. It was only through *repeated* exposure of the absurdity on SEO blogs that Google decided to treat their own property like they treat a typical webmaster.

You can also do nothing wrong, but have your model undermined by looking too similar to a company that is exploiting Google's relevancy weaknesses & forces Google to apply retribution. A lot of small ecommerce sites were purged in the content farm update. What is so sad about that is that if not for accounting games & selling stock as a business model a lot of the biggest "success" stories in the content farm might not even exist.

While the above section focuses on Google, it could be about any competing business that touches the web...a bank which uses bogus accounting driving smaller banks out of business, a company that receives no bid government contracts associated with bribes & uses those "profits" to price dump in related fields, an ISP redirecting your traffic, etc. No matter how clean a business model looks at a glace, there is some gray area where businesses meet & exceed the numbers quarter after quarter.

Look, for example, at the sorts of links NetZero puts in some of their customer emails

And those links point at the illegal "fake news" styled $1 trials (with endless unstoppable recurring billing).

Look closely at any mainstream media site & you will run into those ads.

Are Passive Revenues Impossible?

It really comes down to how you define passive.

If your site doesn't evolve & isn't aggressively marketed then eventually a search engine or another competitor will pick away at your advantages until you are soon found ranking #2 then #3 then #7 then #20 then invisible. Or you might get clipped by an algorithm all at once in a sudden stop torch job that makes your site essentially invisible, or it may be a slow & painful debt by a thousand cuts.

This is one of the reasons I generally prefer to have a site with a 30% or 50% profit margin over one with a 90% or 95% profit margin. Sure high margins are great while they last, but if you don't reinvest enough over time an algorithm or a competitor will eventually torch some of those high margin projects.

When it comes to online income, passive and reliable are not synonyms.

If you saved the margins you made while they were there then you are lucky, whereas if you adjust your lifestyle to that level of income & don't save anything then dark times have appeared.

It turns out having passive frugal spending habits & active savings habits are crucial if your lifestyle relies on "passive" income. ;)

Google Eats Their Organic Search Results

2011-09-13T05:07:00.000-07:00

Google Eats Their Organic Search Results:

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." - William Gibson

Not only do they monetize via AdWords, but Google has 6 listings in the "organic" search results.

Any Google search engineer care to have a public debate as to the legitimacy of that search result set?

If an SEO gets half of the search results (for anything other than his own brand) he is an overt spammer. If Google eats half of the search results with duplicating nepotism across their own house "brands" then it is legitimate.

Making the above even worse, smaller niche brands are regularly disappeared from Google's index. Google has the ability to redirect search intent to one that is easier to monetize & more along a path they approve of. I was searching for a post John Andrews (webmaster of johnon.com) wrote about Google censorship & what did Google do? They used their power over the dictionary to change the words I searched for on the fly & then promoted their ebooks offering yet again.

Note that listings 1 & 2 promote the exact same book. Google just lists the content they scraped into multiple categories that deserve to be showcased multiple times. How many ways did Google screw up the above search result?

they auto-corrected the search query to an unwanted alternate search
in spite of auto-correction, they still allowed their other verticals to be inserted in the results inline right near the top (when rare longtail searches are auto-corrected, one would expect them to be more adverse to embedding such an aggressive self-promotion in the search results)
they associate content hosted by them as being about their brand simply because they host it (even though that piece of content has no relation to them outside of them scraping it)
they list it not once but twice, right at the top of the results (even though it is duplicate content available elsewhere & both pages are the same on Google, with the exception of one promoting a recent version of the book & the other page promoting a decade older version of the exact same book)

As a publisher you are *required* to keep spending more money on deeper editorial to avoid being labeled as spam or tripping some arbitrary "algorithmic" threshold. And as you do so, Google is humping you from the backside to ensure your profit margins stay low, scraping whatever they can within the limits of the law & operating the types of websites that would be considered spam if anyone else ran them. Once regulatory pressures or public opinion catch on to Google's parasitic behavior, they buy a brand & leverage its content to legitimize their (often) illegitimate enterprise. :)

Oh, and how about a quote from the Censored Screams book: "censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but, unlike charity, it should end there.‎"

SEO Checklist For Social Media Marketer's

2011-01-13T00:57:00.000-08:00

Normally in the SEO world, links are like money in that the larger the bill (more authority), the more powerful it is. So for a long time, most SEOs blew off links from social sites like Twitter and Facebook since they didn't have much direct SEO value because the links are almost always nofollowed [learn more about nofollow]. Now that we know that Google and Bing use Twitter and Facebook to influence regular search results, it's time to start thinking about how the person in charge of Social Media can start to think like an SEO as well.

Keyword Research

The best place to start is with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You can start by inputting a couple keywords you think searchers will be looking for to find your content. Then the tool will show you estimated (e.s.t.i.m.a.t.e.d.) monthly traffic numbers for those keywords plus others that it thinks are similar. The keywords you choose will come into play as you craft your tweets and Facebook updates, plus when you look at the Title tag and meta description (discussed more below). We ran a test to determine which would get a page to rank faster, lots of tweets, or lots of direct inbound links to a page. As of right now (about a month later) the Tweeted version ranks #1 for "ending hunger sierra leone" while the regular linked to version is lost in the shuffle. Although we still have more analysis to do, and more tests to run, this is a pretty big indication that tweets can influence rankings (possibly) more than links!

Social Segments For Tracking

Before you even get started on your campaign it's important to have your tracking all set up. You probably already have a specific way you're tracking URLs (more on that below) but what about setting up an easy way to see all "Social" traffic at one time. About how to Segment Social Traffic in Google Analytics it will walk you through the steps of setting this up.

URL Shorteners

When determining which URL shortener to use remember that you want a shortener that will do a 301 redirect from the short URL to yours. That way you can keep as much of that link juice flowing to your own site as possible. Also, be sure to use one that gives you some analytics about clicks and such, like bit.ly.

Content Easily Linkable

As a master in getting your content shared on the social networks, have you also thought about ways to build direct links to your content as well? I know for me personally, we saw a spike in social sharing once we (finally) added sharing buttons for Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon. But what about adding widgets and embeds to help build links to your page/site.

Canonicalize

SEOs use to make sure that the search engines only see one URL for a specific page. For social sharing this is something to think about when you're setting up the tracking for your social shares. Whether you use Google Analytics tracking, or get tweets from an RSS feed, you're going to have URL tracking variables appended to the URL.

Rel=Canonical Tag

Using the rel=canonical tag you'd point this at the URL without the tracking coded added to the end. Using the example above,

if your tagged URL is:

http://seobiginners.blogspot.com/2011/01/create-content-link-bait-seo-tips.html

Then the rel=canonical looks like this:

link rel="canonical" href="http://seobiginners.blogspot.com/"

301 Redirect

Many SEOs will claim that this is the "proper" way to do it, and most likely is. Unfortunately it's not always the easiest to implement especially if you're in charge of Social Media and don't have quick access to the dev team.

Page Load Time

Can your site handle the load if the campaign goes viral? Obviously you're going to make sure that the site won't buckle under the pressure of all the awesome social traffic you're sending it's way, but what if it slows it down? You could have an infographic that takes a long time to load, or unnecessary JavaScript slowing you down.

Title Tags - Use Keywords

Remember earlier in the checklist you did a little research to see which keywords would be most beneficial to use? Now it's time to put them into play! It's too easy to use fancy shmancy titles in your social content because it's a bit catchier than a typical "optimized" title. But there are a few things to remember: 1. The Title tag is thought to be the highest on-page ranking factor and having your keywords toward the beginning of the title is best. 2. If your social efforts can help get a page ranking in Google, that title tag is going to show up in the results and

Description Meta

The meta description isn't going to help with getting a page's rankings but in the social world it's often times the text that is automatically pulled into a social site. The best example is Facebook. When you add a link to your Facebook wall, it automatically pulls the title tag, meta description and let's you choose an image. Think of the meta description as a way to entice users to click on your link whether the user is searching on Google or checking out a page you shared on Facebook

Create Content Link Bait - SEO Tips

2011-01-06T22:25:00.000-08:00

Why Is It Go Viral?

The main reason that the articles go viral because they offer something of value to a large proportion of the population. It's usually something that people feel they can not be without, and with how social media works, all links to automatically share content that spreads like a virus, hence the name "viral".

Two Common Types Of Link Bait Post

Some items are so good that attract the reader's attention immediately. An example of an article is a list of posts. These are the steps that are easy to read, and generally to provide solutions to problems, or because things are necessary. Examples of the list of post titles are the "Top 10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins" or "5 ways to increase RSS subscribers. Purpose of these news articles is to attract attention, which is the need of these things. When they come The article is divided into a list of easy to wear.

Make Your Articles Stand Out

When I first guest post on ProBlogger, I would write an article that I knew to be referenced in the future. I wrote about styles of blogs, and I made sure to create an in depth article. Thus, the messages link bait should not be list items or controversial articles. They may simply be articles covering a topic in depth, and as another blogger can refer in his own observations in the future. You can see all the time among bloggers and site owners who link to Wikipedia articles. In order to post stand, you should write a detailed post, and covers the most important criteria for the subject. Break the sub-article and the reference lists, and other materials, wherever you want. The most important part of the resignation of the original. If you write me-too-mail, you probably will not get answers, not to mention the incoming links.

To Use His Influence While Remaining Original

Let me emphasize that. Get out of your way to be original. Once I created the banners for free some of my regular readers to show my appreciation for their loyalty. It took only five hours of my time designing these ads, but I knew they would appreciate the effort over a long period. I did not intend to get inbound links of the motion were an unexpected bonus. These articles really different to my attention, and easily turn me into a normal player. The person who prepared an article is not lazy, and it took a bit 'to make a valuable resource for someone else. They do a quick post just to have a link to the bait. And if their goal was to get your bait, they did it right, taking the time to do valuable.

Make An Effort Style

When I talk about style, I'm not saying go out and make sure your socks match. When I talk about style, I'm talking about how you present your articles. * Do you want to break them pictures of what you wrote? * You are using the tags H1, H2 and H3? * Want to change the color of the header tags look different than the text of this article? * Do you have a video or audio seem to keep up with the Jetsons? * Does the style of your social media accounts to look at your blog? * Are you a casual list of this kind to make your point? There are several ways to go about creating style for your brand. The lesson here is: do not be lazy. If you take your blog seriously, it presents a unique way, while they can simultaneously perform maintenance, your readers can expect.

The Competitions Are Not Just For Traffic

Have you ever held a contest on your blog? They are usually used to attract traffic because everyone who enters the contest to promote it. But disputes also generate a lot of incoming links through this promotion. Take for example a competitive position of the user. You'll probably have many links to various articles in this competition, rather than one at the competition itself. Each poster invited to actively promote their article on as many sites as possible and social media sites and blogs that they own or with partners.

The Art Of Link Baiting

Editorial content is easy to link bait. It is an art form, but any blogger can do it if they just apply science and avoid laziness. Make sure you're not being selfish by searching only the links. Instead, work hard to create a valuable resource that others can not resist.

What advice can you share your experience with writing a successful link bait content?

Google Tools! For SEO Helps…!!!

2010-12-30T22:46:00.000-08:00

We all love SEO tools because they can make our lives so much easier. Members of SEOmoz know this better than most with the array of tools that SEOmoz has. However we always want more as there are always some tasks that can be automated or made quick by using a tool instead. Google actually provides tools that can assist with SEO tasks; some of them you may know about, others may be new to you. Either way, I wanted to give you a run down of ways you can use Google to help with SEO tasks.

Just as a quick side note, Google actually has an SEO guide (PDF link) which is pretty good as both an introduction and a reminder of the basic principles of SEO and how Google works. It amazes me how many SEOs don't read into the technical side of Google and how everything works behind the scenes. This guide helps to cover some of this.

So what tools does Google give you...

1. Follow Finder

This tool helps you to find people on Twitter who are similar or related to the person you search for. You just enter the profile name of someone and the tool will return a list of people also on Twitter.

Practical Use - Very handy if you are just getting into a new market and want to find out who the key influencers are as well as who is active in that community on Twitter. This can lead to the potential of outreach and building relationships with these people. The tool does seem quite accurate given the results that it returned for a search on Rand's profile:

2. Google Sets

I've been using this for quite a while now and even though it is very simple, it is quite useful. You input a keyword and the tool will return a list of keywords which are similar to the one you started with. Here is an example of what results I was given on a search for "BMW":

Practical Use - I use this a lot when I am just starting a project and need to get a feel for all the different related keywords that could be related to the client. It's almost like a brainstorming tool and can certainly help if you are stuck or have brain freeze!

3. Google Alerts + Google Reader + iGoogle = Win!

So this one is a combination of tools. You can use this combination for a number of purposes, but the idea is that you can get these tools to work together then feed the output into an easy to consume format.

Practical Use - I have two main uses of these tools. The first is like an improvised reputation management dashboard. I do this via the following steps -

Setup a Google Alert for my keywords, eg "Paddy Moogan" OR "Patrick Moogan"
Add this Google Alert to Google Reader - you could stop at this point but it can look much better!
Take the RSS feed from Google Reader and add it to your iGoogle interface

So when I login to iGoogle, I have a small widget which will contain any mentioned of the variations of my name. You can then mark them as read and only see new results in your feed which makes things much more efficient. Fortunately today there are no mentions of me. :P

4. Latest Results

Not many people think of this as an SEO tool but it can be used in a few different ways. The way it works is very simple, just input your keyword and click on Latest from the left hand menu:

Practical Use - I sometimes use this combined with a site: search to see how a website is being cached by Google. If you enter a very large website with lots of link juice, then you can pretty much see live re-caching of the pages on that website, just like this example using the BBC website:

Another use is to use a similar approach to my previous task of monitoring Google Alerts for mentions of your brand. You could run a search for your brand, then leave the latest results running in a different tab / browser whilst you do other work. Then just come back every so often and see if there are any relevant results to you.

5. Google Suggest

Again, this isn't really thought of as an SEO tool but it should be! I actually blogged about this quite a while ago and gave a few instances where this may be useful. In partiuclar when you have to do some very quick keyword analysis and give an answer to a client. There is some debate as to where these results come from, but to me it seems to be a combination of search volume and on-site factors as well as social mentions. So it's still a valid source to look at when trying to come up with additional keywords - in particular long tail keywords.

Practical Use - Fortunately there are tools out there which make using Google Suggest as a tool a lot easier, one of which is this tool from Rob Millard which makes use of the Google Suggest API.

6. Google Insights

I don't use this as much as I should really. I don't think the data is 100% perfect but when doing comparisons, it can often come in handy.

Practical Use - Make comparisons between similar search terms to see which one you could be targeting and see which ones have become more popular in recent times. I also use it to try and see what search terms are rising pretty fast. If you are lucky enough to see one that is related to your industry, you can sometimes ride the wave by publishing a news article or piece of content around that term. This works especially well if you are included in Google News too. Here is an example of what I've found at the time of writing:

7. Google Webmaster Tools

This one kind of goes without saying! There is a wealth of information inside Webmaster Tools and Google are releasing more features all the time.

Practical Use - I love using Webmaster Tools when doing technical site audits. Google gives you information on crawl errors and what they have found in terms of on-site issues which you can then try and fix to improve your site.

8. Google Trends

Trends is a little different to Insights which I mentioned above. One of the extra features that Trends gives you is the ability to see the "Also Visited" and "Also Searched For" information. We can see the following results when I searched for www.seomoz.org which seem fairly accurate:

Practical Use - This is a very useful one for doing research around a market that you don't know too well, for example at the start of an SEO project. It can also give you some ideas for sites to get links from, because these are very relevant sites. You can also use these sites to do backlink checks for finding more links that you may not have previously seen.

9. Wonder Wheel

Another useful tool from Google is the Wonder Wheel which was introduced quite a while ago. It's very good for finding related keywords, almost like Google Sets or Google Suggest which were outlined above.

Practical Use - Where the Wonder Wheel really helps is when it comes to showing clients and non SEO people a way to visualise keywords that are related to each other. It works very quickly and you can easily get into the long tail of search terms. Here is an example if you were working in an industry that sold garden sheds, after just three clicks I've got some long tail keyword ideas and can see what the competition is like for each one by looking at the search results to the right:

10. Image Swirl

I've cheated with this one a little bit - it hasn't really got any SEO use from what I've seen so far. But it is so cool to use! It shows you images that are very similar to each other and the interface is very slick and smooth. Its almost like the Wonder Wheel but for images:

A screenshot here can't really do it justice so just go and have a play :)

11. Google Zeitgeist

Thanks to Justin for pointing this one out to me. This is almost like a combination between Trends and Insights but looks so much better! The link above is to a summary of 2010 and the billions of searches on Google during the year. You can click on various world events and see a visual representation of which were most popular and in what parts of the world. Just check this out:

As I said this one is quite new to me so I'm yet to find an SEO use, but it sure looks great and has tons of data for you to look at.

Well there you have it, eleven tools given to us by Google. Go have a play and let me know in the comments if you have any others or different uses for the tools above.

Yahoo To Close Old Product Lines

2010-12-20T01:36:00.000-08:00

A Yahoo billboard in Times Square, New York - A Yahoo billboard in Times Square, New York | 2009 Getty Images

Yahoo to close the old product lines

A small piece of Internet history, long overshadowed by giant Google is about to disappear into the sunset.

Yahoo (YHOO-Q16.38-0, 13 -, 78%) to quickly extinguish Altavista, fast search engine, which is popular in 1990, means-ends, and many other products it contains.

The information contained in the social networking site popular Twitter, MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier, an online community of bloggers that Yahoo bought in January 2007, and the sum is more than $ 10 million (U.S.). MyBlogLog is a Yahoo-off products, including personal photo screen webcast and Mr. Marcoullier Yahoo posted online.

The news comes a day after Yahoo announced that its employees began a new round in a series of layoffs that have occurred over the past two years. It plans to cut about 600 jobs, or 4 percent of its workforce.

______

Cuts

Some products Yahoo Inc. plans to phase out, according to presentation slides leaking today.

AltaVista

Now-obsolete search engine, a popular day before coverage of Google was cemented. Yahoo acquired when it bought Overture Services Inc., the parent company in 2004 1630000000 dollar (United States) is a cash and shares.

Delicious

A site that helps users organize their favorite sites. del.icio.us Inc. was acquired by Yahoo in December 2005. At that time it had about 300,000 users.

Buzz Yahoo!

A new aggregation site where users can post links to news articles, and prioritize what seems most visible on the page by recommending specific links.

MyBlogLog

Founded by Eric Marcoullier who leaked slide on Twitter Yahoo Thursday. Bloggers social networking site was bought by Yahoo in January 2007 for a reported amount of over $ 10,000,000 (U.S.)

AlltheWeb

Another also-ran in the Google dominates the search engine owned by Yahoo buying Overture in 2004, also owned by AltaVista.

Yahoo! favorites

Another service, organize favorite sites bookmarked links to the user.

More Info

Fastest Growing Search Engine

2010-12-20T01:24:00.000-08:00

Although the slow start and a number of industry experts forecast that Bing might not be able to make a significant impact on the market share of Google Bing finally seems to realize, at least in the U.S. market, where it won almost 11% market.

These new Bing made the search engine the fastest growing in America with a massive increase of 22% from July to August in the number of people using the search engine. Microsoft engine continued to search for new features pioneers who generated a large amount of media coverage, and finally proposes some users away from Google.

Although Google has been trying many new features have little to do with the evolution of research and the few people who were released, and the efforts by Bing. However, despite the impressive progress made by Microsoft, Google is still king of Internet search with a market share of 65% worldwide.

The next step for a good news for users of web Bing, United Kingdom - which tends to personalize the search based on research that users of different countries use different search engines. Bing many features and marketing budgets have increased in the creation of a U.S. service impressive, but at the expense of leaving the UK with less innovation Bing has become famous. This may explain why Google has a much larger share of 90% of the UK market.

It's an interesting development of a SEO point of view and something that the industry will keep a watchful eye on the future, when Microsoft starts to clear his views on the UK market.

Meanwhile, Google has recently unveiled its "Fast Flip service allows users to read quickly and effectively in an online news magazine format page changes. He also announced a plan to micro-transcation its service Online news, the company is unlikely to let Microsoft keep all of the innovation itself.

However, if Bing can continue to attract users and up to its promise to provide a national search, we saw the first serious competitor to Google's throne forever.

SEO Tips - The Difference Between A Like And A Link

2010-12-18T00:35:00.000-08:00

Always remember that any search engine algorithm is nothing more than a giant bean counting machine. Indeed the nature of any algorithm is to attach numeric values to real life functions so as to calculate a real life result. Hence we have Google. Google places a huge percentage of its ranking result value on inbound links to a website. And for the longest time Google placed no ranking value on links which blocked search engine travel by using a “no follow” code.

Enter into this equation social network websites with their generalized likes and dislikes system. If 100 million people all “like” World Cup Football on Facebook, surely websites promoting matches should rank highly in searches. This is the basis of factoring social network data into search results.

Twitter and Facebook preferences are set up as No Follow links, sort of links to nowhere. But obviously the demographic value of these “likes” must be counted. Google and Bing are both now ‘said’ to be placing a small countable value on No Follow links.

The implications for SEO are enormous. This sets a baseline value for any link. Where, in the past a link was specifically lowered in value to its proportionate share of overall ranking power, now (if this is correct) every link is worth a little something. Take a look at your site changes over the last six months. You may discover that sheer volume of links seems to have supplanted quality. The revaluing of No Follows may be the cause.

For More

SEO Tips - The Most Popular Organic SEO Columns

2010-12-18T00:12:00.000-08:00

We’re fortunate enough to have some of the most brilliant minds and SEO practitioners writing for us here at Search Engine Land, and as I’ve run through the data on our most read stories, I’ve been consistently reminded just how amazing our talent pool is in this industry. The quality of our contributors’ advice, their keen insights and depth of experiences are so well respected across the industry and across the globe, that they deserve another look as we close out the year, and look forward to an even more productive 2011.

Look for more stories and features by these authors and new contributors alike in the coming year, as we’re refocusing our efforts on driving even higher quality content for the search industry.

Methodology note: I’d previously set an arbitrary minimum of 1,000 pageviews to make these ‘best of lists’, but in 100% Organic, arguably one of our most popular columns overall, our writers consistently blew that away, so I decided just to take the Top 20 from the year to date. If you have the time, I highly recommend going back through the archives for more great stories like these.

For More

Microsoft Upgrade To Bing Search Engine

2010-12-18T00:07:00.000-08:00

From maps to movies, mobile to travel, Microsoft's search engine just got a major facelift.

At an event in San Francisco, the software giant announced a wealth of upgrades and improvements to its search engine Bing, Microsoft's answer to Google's popular search tool. The cornucopia of updates touches on a variety of different areas, from local enhancements to Facebook integration to changes to the mapping functionality.

Most of these upgrades and feature enhancements will be available today or later this month, reported industry blog Search Engine Land.

The features being unveiled include:

Facebook integration: Bing is bringing “like” data into core search across all queries. Search results will now show which links on the search engine results page have been “liked” by a person’s Facebook friends. This feature will show what a person’s friends “liked” on the main results page and will be different for each user.

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Improved mapping features: Bing Maps will add mpas of venues such as shopping malls and museums, transit directions, and more.

Check-in function: Share your current location with friends and family via Facebook, foursquare or Windows Live Activity Stream.

Bing Vision: Bring an object into the [camera] viewfinder, hold it still and Bing will detect text and present a highlighter tool to select words for a search. If the object has a barcode, Bing will instantly return product results. Search for a nearby business listing by pointing your camera at a landmark.

Microsoft has been struggling to make the well-reviewed Bing search engine more popular with users, Dow Jones reported. Launched in June 2009, Bing had 11.8% of the search market in November, up from 11.5% in October, a spokesman at data tracker comScore told the newswire. But Google had nearly two thirds of the market while Microsoft partner Yahoo had 16.4%.

Satya Nadella, who runs engineering at the Microsoft's Online Services Division, said Bing has grown for 19-consecutive months and now has 90 million users, Dow Jones said.

For all the details, see Search Engine Land.

Yahoo To Use Bing Search Engine In New Deal

2010-12-14T03:10:00.000-08:00

Microsoft and Yahoo have finally finalised a deal that could go a long way into helping Bing achieve a foothold in the browser market. The deal has been ongoing for around 6 months now, but this week both parties have finally agreed to the terms which will see Bing powering Yahoo’s search for the next ten years in exchange for Yahoo! Selling advertising.

In a joint statement yesterday, the companies explained their belief that their deal would lead to increased competition in search: “Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value, and more innovation.”

However, Yahoo will still remain Bing-less for the time being, as regardless of the deal between the two companies, it still has to be checked about by both the US department of Justice and the European Union to make sure no anti-competition laws are being broken.

However, it seems likely that such a deal will go ahead.

Bing and Yahoo combined will account for nearly 10% of all worldwide search if the partnership goes ahead, according to the latest figures for worldwide search engine usage. Meanwhile Google accounts for around 85% of worldwide usage – still a huge figure.

The statement concluded: “Yahoo! and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010.”

Source

Google, Yahoo, and Bing, the masters of SEO

2010-12-14T03:07:00.000-08:00

Most webmaster IT development types are well aware that results from Yahoo search are now delivered by Microsoft’s Bing. Many have gone so far as to rename the collaboration Microhoo. What many internet marketers may not realize is Yahoo and Bing are still competitors. Yahoo only makes money when people use their engine to search and then click on an ad. They keep 88% of all revenues generated on their site. Yahoo also no longer carries the expense of maintaining data centres around the globe. It is a most profitable arrangement. Still, if people stop coming to Yahoo there will be no profits and soon be no Yahoo. This raises the thought that even search engines need search engine marketing.

Much in the way a television station announces upcoming programmes, Yahoo lists their own features and cross promotes them with interlinking. They go to great lengths to write search engine friendly dynamic content for all of their inner pages. In short, Yahoo employs major search engine optimisation. Yahoo engages in dynamic link building and on page optimisation so as to increase their position in search engine results and across the internet. For as much as the major search engines deride SEO, the truth is they invented the process and are the masters of the SEO universe.

The other day, Google ran another one of their engaging and entertaining doodles. The Flintstones were honoured for their 50 years of full colour service to humanity. The depiction was quite brilliant and gave one a lift every time Google was used. Similar success has been met by Google with hundreds of these little drawings. Other than doodles Google remains its white background, “nothin’ to see here folks,” search engine self. The Yahoo homepage serves as a portal for sports, mail, weather and a hundred other favourite pursuits. Bing falls somewhere in between with some beautiful high end photography and a few promotions listed on their page. All three of the major search engines have unique marketing approaches so as to hopefully gain market share. Whether they print a doodle or a picture of an astronaut or a listing of football results, they are all optimising their pages so as to draw a result… just like we do.

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Google And Bing Away From The Search Engine Algorithm

2010-12-14T02:56:00.000-08:00

Both Google and Bing are racing the clock to incorporate social network input into their search results. What they may not realize is that those results may become irrelevant before they can complete the adjustment. For at least a dozen years the expression “Content is king” ruled the internet. The premise being that the formulas by which the best websites relevant to a topic were chosen used a heavy weighting based upon the amount of and quality of words on a page. Suddenly we are to disregard this factor and focus on a new one. That factor is context. Now context is supposed to be King. This is not so much for search results as it is for advertising. Social network sites have made SEO agencies keenly aware that the objective is to sell products, not merely rank high for keywords.

A case in point is our recent study of clicks for the term, word document recovery. We work hard to rank for major keywords such as recover deleted files and data recovery. But it turns out that the customers most ready to buy software are specifically looking for lost Microsoft Word Docs. Consumer preferences as shown on social networking sites make this type of data easy to spot. Sites like Facebook don’t need an algorithm to make this determination and can deliver results strictly from their in house pool of paid advertisers. If one can deliver sales simply by buying targeted ads without the time delay of SEO for organic search, SERPs become unnecessary.

All of this should make SEO companies working to deliver high rankings on free natural search, incredibly nervous. Yahoo has wisely segued away from search, drifting further into the portal business. Facebook is pushing hard to make your Facebook home page your computer’s homepage. Google and Bing had better come up with a hybrid solution fast or they will be left behind.

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Google Adjusts Algorithm To Exclude Black Hat SEO

2010-12-14T02:51:00.000-08:00

Google adjusts contextual portions of algorithm to exclude Black Hat SEO

In our “Just so long as you spell my name right,” department we reported that a few days ago Google closed a major Black Hat SEO loophole. It seems that quite a few scam websites had taken to encouraging complaints about their products. Many websites selling fraudulent and low quality goods actually did so purposefully so as to generate link bait publicity which resulted in thousands of news stories being written. These in turn resulted in links to the site which Google, not taking the links in context, then used to give credence and power to the site. This in turn resulted in more fraudulent sales and so on.

It would appear that the adage, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” was ringing true and paying off handsomely. Google execs and techs upon reading about this quirk, quickly got to work and adjusted the contextual recognition of their algorithm so as to reflect a preponderance of negative publicity and red flag such websites.

We have at times been engaged to help honest website owners counter bad publicity unfairly placed on the net by jealous competitors. It comes as a twist and a surprise that much of that negative commentary may have actually helped bolster those same sites. All of this points out that SEO is in many ways a massive public relations endeavor. If one can just start the little snowball rolling down the hill, great things might happen.

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