I have however started using Chrome more regularly. Typically I will use it when I want to view a site that I have an account on as if I were an un-authenticated user.  Why? You might be surprised at how many sites you thought you have follow links from that really are nofollowed when the site can’t tell who you are (ie basically how Google will see your link).

I also stuck to Firefox because of the plug-ins that I like to use.

That has made a little switch lately. I have found some great Chrome extensions that will make it a more useful tool for me. Of course I can take credit and say that I found all of these extensions myself.  That would be a lie. I found several of these extensions via a great post on Chrome extensions.  17 Google Chrome Extensions for Web Designers and Developers is a post that lays out (you guessed it) 17 great Chrome extensions that are perfect for what I need.

I’m still not a Chrome-only user, but I have already started using it at least once a day. We’ll see if it becomes a bigger part of my browsing day!

For those of you who do not know what a directory scraper is, I’d say in my most basic terms, a directory scraper is a “search engine” that looks to be returning real search results.  However, behind the scenes they are actually just searching a major search engine, Google for example, and then presenting the results as their own.  Most typically these sites monetize their sites by embedding PPC ads in the displayed page.

I’ve not really seen any major SEO advantage to being listed in these sites. Typically a user has to search to see your results. Since search engine spiders do not submit random search terms to these sites, the odds of getting a backlink from a site like this are slim.

Take for example my SEO business. In the past I’ve played with ranking it for “Richmond SEO firm”. You can search Google for that term and see the rankings. Now look at the results of searching a directory scraper site for Richmond SEO firm.  At the time of this writing the results were identical.

Personally, I use Google for nearly all of my non-work searching.  I would not have even found the site I linked to if not for doing some backlink analysis for a client.

I guess then that my main conclusion is that these types of directory scrapers have marginal SEO value at best for link building. Probably not worth the effort to pursue, but maybe a fun way to test things.

All of these profiles have been set up under several different profile names. Originally, I started using “bullmoose” as my profile name (long story!). After a very short time though I noticed that “bullmoose” was taken on all of the new sites before I even started to sign up. Hmmmm, what to do? Well, use my name right? Wrong! My name is obviously more popular than I thought it was.  Turns out “Kent Allen” is taken on nearly every website that allows user signup.

So, I needed something unique and identifiable.  So, I just reversed the spelling of bullmoose to come up with “esoomllub”. I’ve used it as a username on many sites since I came up with it. More recently though I’ve had a need to start using my given name.  And since I am typically a first adopter of new social media sites (even those that have failed), I can often get my name now.

So what’s the point?

Well… over the last 10 years I have accumulated a series of profiles with different usernames. I don’t think there is a good solution to syncing the names. So, I’ve finally put together a spreadsheet of social media sites that I have accounts on so that I can stay sync’d with myself (no split personality here!).

Things I did not even realize or remember until I starting pulling together my list:

• Esoomllub is the most popular username I have used. I can remember using it on Yahoo way back in the day (only to forget the password and lose the email account I had it set up under.  Thus, username lost! However I do use it on My Blog Log (now a Yahoo service).  I have set up a series of websites there that have their own “profile” page, including a page for my SEO company .
• I set up a series of profiles for less than admirable social media  spamming purposes before realizing I did not really like being in to spamming of any type.
• My latest signup was on Friendster.  I’m not sure how much I like the service, but you can check out my Friendster profile to see how it looks.
• Do you take advantage of having a Google profile? You might want to give it a look. Here is mine.
• If you’re not a Knol user, give it a try. Even I have a Knol profile.

I’m sure my situation is no different than others.  You sign up for sites over time, user some of them a lot, use different usernames, and even lose track of some.

I just participated in an auction there (you can surely find my username there to find out which auction). Found a domain that was listed as a PR2 (really a PR1 — although it could have been PR2 when the auction started).  Not an expired domain, but a real domain that someone owned. After a little research of the domain, I placed a bid at the minimum bid amount ($50). At that point I thought I would see my bid show up. Wrong.

On Flippa, your bid has to be accepted.  I can dig that I guess (dig with one ‘g’ not two). Ok, so I can just wait for the seller to accept it (I mean, he did set the min bid at $50 right?).  Wrong.

Evidently on Flippa there is no notification of the auction creator that there has been a bid.  At least that is the opinion I formed. Well, either the seller did not like my bid and chose to ignore it instead of just rejecting it, or he had no idea that a bid was placed.  The auction expired — no acceptance or rejection of my bid — no communication at all. Gee, this site must be well traffic’d!

To be fair and to not sound like a newb, I realize that there may have been a reserve price in mind by the seller.  That’s cool.  Take the 30 seconds to reject my bid then.  Oh… there is the rub.  It did get rejected, today.  2 days after the auction ended.

Sour grapes… no.  It’s a weasily little PR1 (not PR2) domain in a generally non money making niche. I will surely buy far more valuable domains this month.

It’s just a little disappointing to see what was one of the better website/domain auction places (SitePoint) replace their forum based site with what I thought would be a great site, only to see a general lack of traffic on it (at least based on looking at the lack of bids on the site).  Oh well, I guess it’s back to eBay to find great website auction deal! (sarcasm).

I’ve been getting steady Twitter follow notifications since I really got in to Twitter as more than just a passing glimpse about a month ago. Many of these notifications are from legit Twitter users. However, Twitter spammers are absolutely horrible about hiding their spamminess.  Following are my top signs that a Twitter follow notification is from a spammer:

1. They are following more than a thousand Twitterers but are followed by very few. Very few is relative.  I’ve seen some followed by under 10.  If someone follows thousands of Twitterers, they are bound to get a bunch of autofollows, so having even a hundred followers could still mean spammer.
2. After reviewing their profile and deciding to follow, you get an auto DM that say “thanks” for following them and (here is the key) it contains an affiliate link to some “Make Money Online” scheme site.
3. Upon reviewing their profile, you see that that they have less than 5 updates.  The updates they do have are a couple words long.
4. Upon reviewing their profile, you see that all of their updates are the same thing.  For example… hey, follow my link (because I am not smart enough to realize that you know what an affiliate link looks like), and you will receive: a) great wealth, b) hot chicks, c) a great body, or d) great wealth, hot chicks, and a great body.
5. Their profile link is an affiliate link.  Good god people! Do people really click on tinyurl profile links? Are you that crazy?
6. Their profile bio and/or Twitter name imply that they are an SEO, and they have less than a page of updates spread out over the last year. Ok, I can accept that you may have been skeptical of Twitter with regards to SEO.  But if you are not on board now, I’d say you are a spammer or an incompetent SEO.
7. While not a 100% guarantee, if they have a picture of a hot chick, preferably barely clothed, I’ll lay money that they are a spammer everytime. It’s amazing to me how many hot chicks there are on social media sites, and how they love to post their scantily clad profile pics. Awesome!

So now that I get to the end of this list, I guess you are probably wondering what I consider a Twitter spammer. In my mind, someone who is only on Twitter to get you to follow a link of theirs that will make them money is a spammer. I personally don’t care if you are using Twitter for SEO or just to spread the word about sites you want when you post a link.  But if all you do is post links to your crap without offering anything of value in return, that screams spammer to me. You are best not even following me if that is what you want me to do, because I will never (no never) follow your links.

If you have good links and you actually communicate with me on Twitter, I will likely follow your links that intrigue me.

• Google
• Yahoo
• Live

Technical interpretations abound, including:

• SEOmoz
• Search Engine Land
• Yoast (with a Wordpress plugin already)

The SEOmoz and Search Engine Land articles do an excellent job of talking about the canonical URL tag.  The immediate thoughts that come to my mind are:

1. Will the engines later use these tags for some other purpose, like they did when the switched the intention of nofollow from generally indicating a level of distrust to force feeding the idea of nofollowing paid links.
2. Will they shadier SEO’s work on a way to use canonical URL tags to their advantage? On this, I can say with certainty they are already postulating.

Do you think they will succeed?

Well, last night it was announced that USA Swimming was giving Phelps a three month ban.  Additionally, Kellogg is pulling their endoresment deal. Are these actions fair?  Similar to my stance on legalization of marijuana, I’m not really interested in discussing that. People will form their own opinions — and I don’t really care to waste time on an argument where neither side will yield and feels that they are absolutely right.

So what the heck am I here to talk about?

Actually, I am really here to wonder out loud… how long before these Internet photo outings will become so overplayed that the general public views them briefly and then moves on as if nothing happened? I mean really, how long before we become so de-sensitized to this stuff that we just give a “oh, is that so” reaction?

It seems that everyday another high school or college kid has a scandalous photo posted on MySpace, FaceBook, Flickr, or a personal blog; a pro athlete has a photo posted with a drink in one hand and a hot chick on each arm; a teacher somewhere has a photo posted somewhere while doing something amoral like having a beer (gosh forbid); or some moron puts together a video of themselves acting like a fool for 15 minutes of fame

The viewing public, after pausing The Jerry Springer Show on that there Tivo machine, acts outraged that this kind of thing can happen in America — somehow America is plunging in to an ever apocalyptic spiral to hell. Oh, then Bubba presses play on that there Tivo machine and gets back to their own version reality.

Every night on my local news I hear breaking news of people getting killed by a estranged spouse. Teens get murdered at 3 in the morning on a street corner (there are no motives and the mom can’t understand why someone would do that to their precious son — don’t get me started on that). And my point? After these reports, the talking heads move on to the next story with no indication of impact over what they just said. We have become de-sensitized to those stories because they happen every day in every city, and we’ve seen the dead bodies on the street for years now.

It is only a matter of time before we just turn the page after each public Internet photo outing. Please, I hope this happens tomorrow.

I realize this post may be of no interest to most, if any, of you. However, I am using it as kind of my own de.licio.us bookmark — a place that I come to often, and can modify as needed. Here goes:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Mixx
• MySpace
• Digg
• OpenSocial
• Not social media, but important to me: Wordpress API

Telephone Problems

We are having issues with the phone lines in our house. Not really issues, it is more like our phone lines are possessed. Having some knowledge of the phone companies policies, I know that if you plug a phone in to the NID (the little box that your phone service runs through, typically on the side of your house) and it works, the phone company will charge you dearly to fix the problem. Upon determining that the issue is in the internal wiring we called Verizon to check on their services. The CSR was polite, told us about their rates (somewhere in the vicinity of $1.4 million to diagnose our problem, and another $32.15 to fix it — I kid, but only slightly), and then quite unsolicited mentioned to my wife that pretty much any independent contractor could do the work at a much more reasonable rate. That is not the customer service of which I speak (that is still to come).

Then I started calling independents listed in the phonebook (since no local contractor either have a website or can do SEO good enough to beat out the lead gen sites or the scrapers). After leaving about 6 messages I finally got a callback. Nice gentleman. Questioned me about the problem, gave me a couple hints, and then told me that his business was not in to residential phone line repairs, rather they were typically in to new builds. Then unsolicited, he mentions that there are a few companies that do offer this service, and proceeds to give me insight as to which he would go with and why, while mentioning the quirks about them. It was a very positive conversation… one which ended with him saying that if the companies he referred were not able to meet my needs that I should call him back for more options.

This guy had no obligation to be this pro-active. As a matter of fact, he was one of only 2 people to call me back out of the 7 or so that I ended up leaving messages at.

I’m not exactly a power Twitterer, but I do okay.  So, there must have been some unique attributes of my profile that appeal.  Now, if I can only figure it out so that I can increase my friend base!   You can find and friend me on Twitter as esoomllub.