Google Impostors Phishing Adwords

I have noticed several phishing attempts along with a colleague, Alex Rothaus, from some Google impostors. After contacting our Google representatives this morning, they confirmed that those emails were not authentic. If you receive ANY emails from “Google AdWords” or any a similar source, claiming a payment was not processed and asking you to click on a link to resolve the issue, do not click on that link. Just forward the email to Google help through your webmasters account if you have one.

The emails look legit, but Google will never ask you to click on a link, they will just give you instructions to go to Adwords.

Here are some screenshots from phishing emails we received this morning:

If you noticed the same, get the word out and let us know.

Happy Thursday

Gmail Ad Almost Got Me, and Subliminal Ads

Good morning fellow survivors!

As I was checking my Gmail this morning I noticed a clever little Gmail Ad that almost got me to click on it. Not because of the product offered, or because I was interested to see what was in the other site. I almost clicked on it because there are some elements that triggered some of my robotic behaviors in my computer. Here’s the ad:

Can you tell what triggered my robotic behavior? Hahahaah, no no no, it wasn’t the text saying “Someone has a crush on you..”. It was the “(1) New Message” text. You see, those ads aren’t new, and I would never automatically click on something like that elsewhere on the web. The thing is I’m in my own trusted Gmail Inbox, and I see a perfect little link saying “(1) New Message”, I automatically put my mouse cursor on top of it. I had to pause, read the rest and think for .5 seconds in order not to click.

The concept of advertisers capitalising on people’s robotic behaviors isn’t anything new, it just feels weird when you realize they almost had you. Now think of this, for everytime you realize that they just had you, there have been at least 10 or more times that they got you and you still don’t know about it.

Watch this cool short video about something similar to what I’m talking about. It’s called “Subliminal Marketing”, scary and interesting stuff…

Should you forward that email?

Happy Friday everyone!

What a crazy week this has been, and interestingly enough it has rushed by like the ones before! Wow time flies… Here’s a little something funny for you to share with your friends, or should you?

Amazon is Down

I’m sure it has happened before but I have never witnessed it, Amazon.com is down boys and girls! See the screenshot below:

Ok.. Now let’s wait to see what happened

—- EDIT at 1:06pm PST —-

According to a Reuters article, Amazon was hit by technical failure!

Link bait video of the day

Hello everyone!

A buddy at work sent me a link to this video and I thought it was hilarious enough to share it with my subscribers. It’s funnier if you used to play Mortal Kombat as a kid, and I’m assuming most people who read this blog apply to that category.

Enjoy and comment letting me know what you think

Link Strategies and Google

Over a month ago a friend sent me an email asking if his Link strategy was up to par with Google’s policies. He wanted to make sure that his site wouldn’t end up being penalized by Google.

It’s also important to determine if all the work you’re doing will actually bring you the “Link Power” you’re seeking. I often encounter business owners who still spend a lot of money and energy into builing link exchanges with other sites, and in the opinion of this humble SEO Consultant that’s the biggest waste of time! To have a relevant link exchange is one thing, but to blindly create reciprocal links from buried pages on a site about tires going back and forth to a site about candles won’t help. That’s just a ficticious example by the way.

Anyway, back to my buddy’s question… He asked if it would be ok to own 4 different websites, all using different hosting servers, then create links from three of them going to the main one. The thinking behind the different server is so they can have different IP addresses. The purpose behind that is so that it looks natural, not like you’re manipulating Google, even though that’s exactly what you’re doing.

That’s smart thinking and all, but there’s something else we need to consider, the Registrar information. If you’re buying all domain names as the same entity, then you end up having the same registrar information under your WHOIS record. Can Google look into that? You would be surprised with what they have access to! In February of 2005 Google became a registrar. What does it mean to become a registrar?

Registrars are resellers, any entity can become one and sell domains. There are different tiers of registrars. You could be a “middle man”, between the source and the client. You could even be the “middle man” between the original middle man and the client and so on. It only costs a few thousand dollars to sign up to different tiers, and for Google that’s small insignificant ash tray change. Do you think they acquired that so they could let you buy domain names from them? ——- No.

Disclosure: now we enter the area of speculation and SEO Survivor’s opinions

Google made this move so they could have greater access to domain information. That doesn’t mean that now Google has information to all domain names purchased. They would only have the information to the domain names registered under them, but now they have the edge they needed to get into the registrar databases. They may not get into the black and white information, but as registrars, they get benefits such as being able to carry out high volume of automated queries and many others. I won’t get too techincal here since there’s more information about Google as a registrar if you want.

If Google can reset the Search Engine Authority from domain names that expire, you can be sure that they can find that your domain names are owned by the same entity even if they are hosted in different servers. This remains to be tested though, so if you are currently doing this, let me know how it’s going. It could work out for a while, just keep in mind that it is a huge pain in the ass to get out of Google’s supplemental index, and that’s where you go when you do something naughty in Google’s eyes.

The best way to build links is to be active in the Social Media community, share and help others out. To have original and useful content on your site, to have an SEO friendly and user friendly site navigation. To personally contact other site owners that have relevant content to yours and offer to write something for them to post on their site and link to you, as well as other practices along those lines. Organic strategies may not produce results as fast as robotic strategies, but be sure that they are well worth the time and effort, and provide super valuable links to you. Also don’t be affraid to link to other relevant sites since you have to give if you want to receive. And remember, don’t panic if it’s organic.

I hope this helps out a bit! Stay tuned for more and don’t be affraid to comment people! Peace out…

Geek gossip

Buenas tardes everyone,

It’s another perfect day in this perfect world we live in, and what better than some good updates from the Search Engine Marketing world to make everything fit right in? I can’t think of anything better… Below is a short list of some articles that captured my attention this week, nothing from the main news stream that you already heard about from reading major news sources. This is the good stuff you don’t find out from such sources, these are things that come from “a friend of a friend”. Today I am your friend’s friend, and here are the news I bring to you:

1. imnotadoctor exposed Big Local today. As he was doing the geek’s version of the daily muscle flexing in front of the mirror, which is googling keywords your site ranks well for, he found some major spamming going on. Not only that, but they have a fishy 302 redirect in place taking visitors from the target url (www.clovers.com) to their main site (www.BigLocal.com). You should read up on that story on Search Engine Land.
2. A Twitter Search engine is out. I found http://summize.com/ this week, but I’m not sure how new it is. Pretty interesting tool, and simple concept. It basically searches through people’s tweats and serves results. Here is the search result’s page for tweats related to the seosurvivor.
3. Google’s Porn problem seems to be far from over. In the last month there have been at least two instances where Google was spotted displaying explicit porno pictures in the universal search results box. When searching for “knuckles” and “Hot Celebrities” on regular search, with the “adult filter” on, you’d get a big old explicit image right there on the top of the results. Not cool Google, not cool at all. Granted, it’s freaking hard to keep those spamming porn sites out of the way.



4. Linda Phan, from eVisibility, wrote an awesome post about helping searchers find their way with local business ads. Amongst other things, Linda talks about how advertisers don’t get charged for people clicking to expand the plusbox, clicking on the actual map, or clicking to get directions to the business location, which is nice for all adwords users out there. A good read if your business is local and you use PPC.
5. The SEM industry still rocks! Danny DeMichele wrote a post on his blog talking about some recent studies showing that the Internet Marketing Industry is far from declining, it’s actually gaining more momentum! That’s a good thing to know for all those of us who are immersed in it 24/7.

I’m stirring the brain juice and crafting some fun posts for next week. Have a great weekend and pick up your trash

Forget Online Privacy, I Want You To Find Me

It came to my mind that I may have gone a bit overboard with the multitude of social media profiles I have created. I’m writing this post to make it easier for you to add me to your network on any of the mentioned social media sites we may have in common. Plus, next time someone asks me for my profile URL to a certain site, I’ll just send them this post instead of looking up the URL

Contrary to popular belief, I do have a life outside work and the internet. Because of that, a lot of my profiles are just sitting there. I may use them sparingly, and I may not use some of them at all, but they are there should I choose to become more involved. I’m very much active within some, and you’ll find me constantly updating content and participating. Either way, hit me up so we can network, share interesting stuff and contribute to a more relevant, semantic web.

StumbleUpon: http://seosurvivor.stumbleupon.com/

Sphinn: http://sphinn.com/user/view/profile/seosurvivor

Mixx: http://www.mixx.com/users/seosurvivor

digg: http://digg.com/users/seosurvivor

del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/seosurvivor

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mrricardofigueiredo

Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/seosurvivor

Twitter: http://twitter.com/seosurvivor

Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/seosurvivor

Propeller: http://www.propeller.com/member/seosurvivor/

Google Blog (Shared Articles): seosurvivor shared items

Bumpzee: http://www.bumpzee.com/users/view/seosurvivor

MyBlogLog: seosurvivor mybloglog profile

Mahalo: http://mahalo.com/member/Seosurvivor

Sproose: http://sproose.com/user/seosurvivor

Technorati: SEO Survivor Blog page

Yelp: http://seosurvivor.yelp.com/

Digital Point: seosurvivor profile (must be logged in)

Search Engine Watch: seosurvivor profile (must be logged in)

cre8asite: seosurvivor Cre8asite profile

LifeHacker: http://lifehacker.com/commenter/seosurvivor/

Search Engine Roundtable Forum: seosurvivor profile (must be logged in)

High Rankings Forum: seosurvivor profile (must be logged in)

WebmasterWorld: seosurvivor profile (must be logged in)

reddit: seosurvivor - for some reason the direct link to my profile isn’t working, so good luck finding me there!

… there are probably a few more, but that’s all that comes to mind now. I’ll update this list if I remember other places where I can be found.

Peace and Happiness!

Discovery Channel commercial break

Good afternoon people!

Well, it’s a busy busy day as usual. Although I have no great SEO post to share right now, I thought I’d share this video with you. It definitely made me smile. Discovery Channel has some of the best shows on American TV today, and I don’t feel bad at all about endorsing them here, free of charge

As a side note, I’m a bit hesitant about the new version of Wordpress. I haven’t updated mine yet, scared of change I guess… I’ve seen some mixed reviews from people’s whose opinions I respect, so I’m feeling uneasy about it. I should probably slap it onto one of my other domains and see how it does. Any thoughts from anyone? Have a great day!

Off to the beach!

The last week proved to be challenging in many ways. Loads of work, meetings, and last minute fires to put out. Although 99% of things have been taken care of, and control hasn’t been lost, I’m glad the week is over.

Thankfully, today’s weather reminded me why I love Southern California, why I put up with the high cost of living, and why it would be so hard to move anywhere else. Because of the beach and the weather. Just in case you’re not familiar with the beaches around here, check out a photo of where I’m heading to with my daughter in about 15 minutes..

Nice right? Maybe an idea for the next blog post will come to me as I enjoy the sun today, then all I have to work on is making time to write it down

I hope you’re having a great weekend, I sure am.