Friends of a friend have started a new Facebook Page called “SurPRIZE Me”.

The page encourages people to set a goal and get people to pledge them if they succeed.

The pledge can be anything! Be creative!

My goal is to get this page 100 new likes and goals by the end of August.

So come on over and set up your goal. Meet new people around the world and see what your friends are willing to do for you when you’ve achieved that thing you’ve been putting off.

Here is some information:

SurPRIZE Me is a network of people rewarding one another for completing their goals.

Description
HOW IT WORKS: Read the list of goals that you see on this page. If you want to help someone accomplish their goal, pledge to do something for this person. If you want to list your goal to start getting pledges, message me.

If someone pledges for you, make sure to pledge for them. Pledges can be anything you can think of from real to virtual.

Examples of Pledges:

• “If you complete your goal, I pledge to tell all of my facebook friends about the awesome job you did”
• “If you complete your goal, I pledge to take you to the movies.”
• “If you complete your goal, I pledge to wash your car for you”
• “If you complete your goal, I pledge to give you a dollar!”

Pledges can be anything as long as they are supportive.

SurPRIZE me pledge network on Facebook

Where’s that time machine? Bing is using the meta keywords tag in its ranking algorithm again.

Kinda.

Danny Sullivan’s The Meta Keywords Tag Lives At Bing & Why Only Spammers Should Use It article offers awesome insight from Duane Forrester of MSN.

To summarize – the meta keyword tag won’t make a huge difference, but Bing may use it to identify spammers via tag stuffing.

If you’re like me, this doesn’t change a whole lot. Personally, I haven’t used the meta keywords tag in a long time; not worth the time and effort in my opinion.

However. If you’ve got some pages that have some stuffed-to-the-nines keyword tags (for whatever reason – automation, past tactics, etc), you’ll want to audit your site(s) carefully. It’s time to clean them up. They may actually be working against you now, as a signal to Bing that you endorse spammy techniques.

It’s just good practice to use meta keywords properly (if you use it at all) but this is just one more very good reason to ensure that your pages are utilizing this tag properly. No need to draw negative attention to your site.

Simply: audit your pages’ keyword tags and clean ‘em up. Get rid of them altogether or use proper and relevant keywords.

For all the years I lived in Winnipeg, and since then, I was always very cynical about the NHL returning to Winnipeg. Even after last week’s announcement that TNS&E had purchased the Thrashers.

But the challenge of selling 13,000 season tickets was CRUSHED – more than half were sold through presale and the rest sold within 17 minutes of the general sale opening.

CONGRATULATIONS Winnipeg – thank you for proving me wrong!!

Suck it Bettman.

Every group has one. In the SEO industry, there are far too many – the folks who call themselves SEOs but are neglecting the knowledge behind on major factor – Online Reputation Management.

Read the story of SEO Columbus by my SEO friend Mike Halvorsen.  If you don’t read it (though you really should), here’s the coles notes version.

Mike is an SEO. He recently moved to Columbus so on his PERSONAL blog, he created a navigational link with the anchor text “SEO Columbus”.  Apparently there’s another SEO in Columbus (Joe) who is insisting he “owns” the term and is insisting that Mike remove instances of that keyword that confuse him with Joe’s business.

Except Joe doesn’t own the trademark for SEO Columbus.  In fact, you can’t even trademark the term SEO Columbus, SEO Toronto, SEO Canada, etc.

After a bit of back and forth (mostly forth), Mike did the sensible thing – reach out to the SEO community.  The result is many, many comments by Mike’s supporters and a few attempts at rebuttle by Joe.

Here’s the thing.  Now Joe has made some enemies. Now there are comments and blog posts and even spoof sites against Joe and his company (which, by the way, is KaLor Technology, not SEO Columbus).

Joe’s got himself a biiiig online reputation management (ORM) mess.  It’s one thing when negative comments are posted organically through user review sites, but when those reviews are coming from professional and proven SEOs… well.  That’s pretty much disaster.  If Joe didn’t realize that branding with a generic phrase wasn’t wise before, he needs to realize it now and seriously consider rebranding himself to a) escape this mess and b) avoid it in the future.

I’m sure we’ll all be watching the SERPs for any movement in the top spot for “SEO Columbus“.  Despite Joe’s exact match domain and years of reputation building, I don’t think it will stand against a community of search professionals banding together for the right cause. Stay tuned.

Google made a significant shift with it’s organic search results in the past few weeks.  Now, by default, you are served results based on your geographic location.

Signed in or not, if your search query qualifies, you’ll see that on the right a map appears over the paid listings.  See my search below for office furniture:

This is pretty handy if you’re looking to shop somewhere in person and for brick and mortar businesses, this is a fantastic change.  But what if you’re an online retailer?  How can you possibly compete with this?  This is an issue and needs to be answered.  I’d love to hear how you think this problem can be solved.

With all the major search engines long abandoning the META keywords tag (except for Yahoo, but its search results are soon to be powered by Bing), there seems to be less and less of a reason to use the META keywords tag.

Do you still use it?  And by use it, I mean put effort into putting relevant keywords in the tag.

I upgraded my iPhone to OS4 the other day (without drama, thank goodness). Yesterday I noticed a new icon at the top.

I thought, cool! It’s a compass pointing north! Then I realized that, from sitting at my desk at work, it was actually pointing southeast. That was my DUH moment. I realized it’s just the indicated that GPS is on. Then the other DUH moment. My 3G doesn’t have compass abilities.

Oh OS4, you did fool me there. But it’s ok, I’m smart again!

Last month, Raven Tools launched a contest to win a year long subscription to their toolset. Second place won a six-month subscription and third through tenth won a RavenHunt t-shirt.

I came in third. I may have won the first t-shirt, but I felt like the first loser for missing out on the big prizes.

This time around the prizes are even BIGGER. First place wins:

• Apple iPad
• 1 year Pro subscription to Raven Tools
• Premium Membership to Search Engine Land
• Copy of  The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg
• Copy of Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik
• Official RavenHunt t-shirt

Here are some quick facts about the RavenHunt contest:

• RavenHunt is free for anyone and you can start playing at any time
• There are two RavenHunt clues released each day
• The object of RavenHunt is to collect the secret letters you find when you solve riddles
• On Friday, the second RavenHunt clue will include a form for you to input the unscrambled secret word (using the secret letters you found)
• You need to follow Raven’s Facebook and Twitter accounts to be updated on when clues are released

I’ve already mentioned what the first place winner is and here are the rest of the prizes.

Second Place:

• 6 month Pro subscription to Raven
• Official RavenHunt t-shirt

3rd-10th:

• Official RavenHunt t-shirt

Get out there and get playing! It’s super easy and lots of fun. RavenHunt takes you through some of the industry’s most popular blogs and posts and addresses hot issues. And, if you win a bonus prize, you get to squish Matt Cutts’ head all day long too.

It never occured to me until today how hard it is to contact Twitter support with a unique request. On the Twitter Support page, they’ve got lots of information but no help on how to contact them unless you’re reporting spam (in which case you simply tweet to @spam).

After about 10 minutes of digging, I found a link that will allow you to open a new ticket for contacting Twitter support.

Without further adieu, here is the link to open a new ticket with Twitter Support.

Funny, pointless and a waste of time – does it get better than this?

Begin! Make sure you leave your statement in the comments.

Pick the month you were born:
January … I kicked
February … I loved
March … I karate chopped
April … I licked
May … I jumped on
June … I smelled
July … I did the Macarena With
August … I had lunch with
September … I danced with
October … I sang to
November … I yelled at
December … I ran over

Pick the day (number) you were born on:
1 … a birdbath
2 … a monster
3 … a phone
4 … a fork
5 … a snowman
6 … a gangster
7 … my mobile phone
8 … my dog
9 … my best friends’ boyfriend
10 … my neighbour
11 … my science teacher
12 … a banana
13 … a fireman
14 … a stuffed animal
15 … a goat
16 … a pickle
17 … your mom
18 … a spoon
19 … a smurf
20 … a baseball bat
21 … a ninja
22 … Chuck Norris
23 … a noodle
24 … a squirrel
25 … a football player
26 … my sister
27 … my brother
28 … an iPod
29 … a surfer
30 … a homeless guy
31 … a llama

What is the last number of the year you were born:
1 … In my car
2 … On your car
3 … In a hole
4 … Under your bed
5 … Riding a Motorcycle
6 … sliding down a hill
7 … in an elevator
8 … at the dinner table
9 … In line at the bank
0 … in your bathroom

Pick the color of shirt you are wearing:
White … because I’m cool like that
Black … because that’s how I roll.
Pink … -because I’m NOT crazy.
Red … because the voices told me to.
Blue … because I’m sexy and I do what I want
Green … because I think I need some serious help.
Purple … because I’m AWESOME!
Gray … because Big Bird said to and he’s my leader.
Yellow … because someone offered me 1,000,000 dollars
Orange … because my family thinks I’m stupid anyway.
Brown … because I can.
Other … because I’m a Ninja!
None … because I can’t control myself!