Success?

Many years ago a made a New Year's Resolution to stop making New Year's Resolutions because they were naff. Last year, just before New Year, I made the determination to do something with this blog. Last year I posted 42 times. This is the 45th post this month. More in a month than in last year.

• Eric Marcoullier
• Graywolf
• rustybrick
• cre8pc Kim
• Dugdale
• Lisa Barone
• BHartzer
• AbleReach
• Bill Slawski
• Bradley Horowitz
• Jill Whalen ... well, nearly.

MyBlogLog lets me chart how successful I've been. One way to do that is go star gazing. The bullet list above namedrops the SEM stars I've been able to screen capture on ARHG.

If you're starting a blog, if you're moving up a gear with your blog or if you want to make changes to your blog then really do consider MyBlogLog!

Next month should be good too. I'll be speaking at eWorld, Technology For Marketing and Search Engine Strategies London. There are a handful of e-Consultancy roundtables lined up too. All-in-all; there will be much to blog about.

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MyBlogLog Battles - MyBlogSlog?

Erk. Two heavy hitters are in the process of duking it out. Over at his blog Jeremy Zawodny takes a pop at Andy Beal for 'spamming' MyBlogLog.


I don't blame Zawodny for making the comment. I can see why Andy is furious though.

Why has Jeremy made this claim? He's a loyal Yahoo and a savvy guy. He's seen another savvy marketer use MyBlogLog's features to broadcast a commercial message. This is likely to be something that Eric Marcoullier and his team may not have intended their system to be used for.

Is it spam? It is an image that doesn't look like Marking Pilgrim. This is true. Is the chance to win a Zune representative of Marking Pilgrim? Gosh. I guess that's for Andy Beal to decide. He's certainly not the only savvy marketer to change their MyBlogLog picture.


SEO by the Sea isn't spamming. Bill Slawski is easily smart enough to know that that beautiful picture is going to attract more attention on MyBlogLog than all the other SEO blogs out there. Bill's still playing by the rules.

As a tangent I have to admit how SEO By the Sea has blasted on to my radar. I found it via Search Engine Land, commented at the time that I didn't read it - now I certainly do. Bill Slawski writes to an audience of intelligent optimisers. Too many SEO blogs write to an audience of rookie webmasters learning about SEM.

What we have here, with Beal and Zawodny, is a clash of netiquette. The manners expected from MyBlogLog users aren't yet clear. We don't yet have the ground rules.

You might say that you don't want to look at a Zune competition graphic on MyBlogLog but - c'mon - I don't want to look at the ugly mugs throughout most of MyBlogLog! My ugly mug included! Haha. On the other hand, imagine if every other community image on MBL was a commercial lure?

The debate (despite Andy's anger and Jeremy's annoyance) is good. We're having the conversation. We're thrashing out the ground rules in a new area. That's always needed.

I have to say that I'm impressed with MyBlogLog. This blog sat in "parked" for over a year. I've been active in the social media scene with this blog for just a month, am making progress and much of this is due to MyBlogLog. MyBlogLog drives a significant chunk of ARHG's traffic right now. Further to this you can see just how quickly and how well Eric and co respond to the blogosphere. Despite Yahoo making them a bit richer I can see that MBL senior management are still here for us. They're still hands on.

Eric will need to be hands on for a while longer. This won't be the only MyBlogSlog we see this year.

(The I support nofollow campaign reaches day 5 with 1 'heroic' supporter.)

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Googlers quitting Matt Cutts' team?

Two weeks a go I was sent a press release from an SEM agency claiming to have poached some of Matt Cutts' team. I've watched Google News, the PR hubs and other blogs - no one else has mentioned it.

---

[company] reinforces its International Search Marketing Division With The Appointment Of Leading Consultants From Google’s SQE team

15th January 2007: Online marketing company [company] has announced a number of strategic appointments to strengthen its search engine optimisation team, with several members of the Matt Cutts search quality Evaluators (SQE) team leaving Google to join the company. The new consultants will drive [company's] international operations, responsible for maximising its search engine optimisation services.

[first name] [surname], CEO of [company] said:

“I am very pleased to announce these appointments. Their expertise in search engine optimisation on an international level will enable [company] to provide highly effective, measurable campaigns on a global scale. We develop solutions for our clients within very short timescales. With their experience in search quality evaluation our new team will ensure that quality controls continue to be a priority for [company].”

This announcement follows [company's ]recent ... [snippy].

[first name] added:

“As multilinguists with hands-on experience in countries across Europe the new team will also provide the cultural knowledge essential for successful International online marketing campaigns.”

---

The email headers confirm that it was sent by [company]. So, any thoughts? A bluffing PR? Linkbait?


(The I support nofollow campaign reaches day 4 with a mighty 1 supporter.)

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Is SEO Rocket Science? Kevin Lee brings the diatribe to LinkedIn

Over at LinkedIn Kevin Lee has re-stated his Is SEO Rocket Science? What do you think? [log in needed] debate. That was 11 hours ago - at the time of this posting.

He already has six bullish replies. I'm an idiot for adding fuel to the flames. I'm more interested in his use of the SEMPO brand though-out all of this. I'm not interested in the flamebait. Don't people remember the Usenet days?

He'd made sure SEMPO are mentioned in his LinkedIn badge ID.

Is the debate harming the industry's reputation?

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Social Media - taking causalities

I don't need to point out that there's a lot of interest in social media and linkbaiting right now. That's a good thing. However, we're going to see many social media sites close down this year.

There are people who think social media is new. It's not. Over at work our RSS feed has been in place since 2003. It's common to find a blog in its fifth year. Despite all the interest and enthusiasm some of the original social media sites are struggling and some even dying.

The social media field is getting tough. Spam is on the increase and some of the older sites are shutting down. Maple is closing down. Maple has been a bookmark manager since 2005. It was one of the first to integrate with Firefox extensions. Taggle is closing down too. SocialBookmarking.org is a state of disrepair.

It's worth noting that Taggle.de and Maple.nu were multilingual. Social Media is strong at the core right now - but only in English. It's the Asian languages which are vying for second place. Mainland European languages are punching below their weight.

Spam is a problem too. Digg's battles with its algorithm and users are infamous. Spend a minute reviewing the drivel that comes into del.icio.us and you could loose heart. Over at Linkatopia, Robert Giordano is looking for moderators to help Design215 fight the spammers. Linkatopia say they're one of the first to fight back against the spammers. They are. It's a tricky battle though - will they get any moderators? I certainly don't have time to help. What about false positives? Imagine if you social bookmark network started to delete your bookmarks?

Adam Loving at Lookmarks notes the problem too. Lookmarks had a good year. The site made people's lists. As a result Lookmarks is on spammers' lists too. He's left to weed out the trash himself. He's put on a brave face but it must be a soul destroying task.

The social bookmarking sites face a problem that the traditional hierarchical directory sites do not have. Directories like Best of the Web don't need people to work, they need websites and the incentive of PageRank to bring in customers. Social bookmarking sites don't have customers, they have users and will struggle without them. One website can be submitted to many different directories but it is unlikely that one user will submit to very many social bookmarking sites.

Simply put - more and more social bookmarking sites will close. Small directories can continue on forever. Small social bookmarking sites won't.


(The I support nofollow campaign reaches day 2 with a mighty 1 supporter.)

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I support nofollow!

I'm just going to come right out and say this: I support nofollow.

I support the optional enhancement to the web. If you don't like it - don't use it. If someone links to you, but nofollows the link - you'll just have to accept that they didn't want to 'vote' for you.

This isn't a popular view among the SEO community right now. Graywolf's diatribe against nofollow [follow allowed - my choice] is proving popular. I'm prepared to be unpopular on this one. :) Do read Graywolf's post if you have time and the comments on it. Matt Cutts' and Jeremy Zawodny's comments, in particular, are worth your time.

I support nofollow

• Andrew Girdwood

Support nofollow too? Drop me a comment and I'll add your name to the supporters list.

(This blog was kicked out of the long grass less than a month a go. Readership is tiny. A lack of fellow nofollow supporters is as indicative of the low readership as much as it is of lack of nofollow support.)

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M Google and W Google

Would Google ever drop the 'www' from their lead URLs?

They might.

We already have m.gmail.com for gmail on the mobile. However, for Google Reader there's www.google.com/reader/m. There's a little inconsistency there. (Google Reader, btw, uses labels rather than tags)

We should see Google moving over the m. sub-domain for mobile. Check out this jobs page from Google UK.



An interesting quirk is the w.google.co.uk/jobs address. On Google UK you can view the same page.



Over at Google US if you try swapping out the .co.uk with .com then you'll trigger a redirect.

Could we see m.google for all mobile content on Google and w.google for web content on Google? Maybe.

By the way, if you are interested in at job at Google UK then you'll be pleased to know that their Belgrave House offices are spacious and comfortable. They're just around the corner from Victoria Station and the tube. If you're keen on mobile search then Belgrave House is the place to be too.

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Linkbaiting takes a hit with the fall of the Googlebomb

A certain Matt Cutts (I have a good feeling about him - I sense he'll go far in Google) over at Webmaster Central Blog has inscribed an epitaph to the Googlebomb.

Ryan Moulton and Kendra Carattini (I suspect we'll be seeing their names again) used some of their 20% time time to improve Google's algorithm, making it more robust to Googlebombing.

It seems that we're more likely to see results talking about the googlebomb rather than the googlebomb itself. I can see how this will work on the historic googlebombs but surely this will be trickier on any new attempt? It also looks as if the algorithm looks for related content to the Googlebomb attempt. The editorial opinion patent is coming into play here. This is a patent application which describes how an editorial opinion could influence the SERPs. This tweak looks like a practical use of the idea.

This will effect linkbaiting and widget promotion too. It's pretty easy to make sure that a widget has some search benefit too - just include an HTML element as well as the standard JavaScript. The catch now is that that HTML element will be the same all over the web. A wide number of blogs linking to your target site with the same anchor text due to your clever use of a widget will have a similar footprint as a googlebomb. The main difference in this example is that the Googlebomb links will tend to be contextual whereas the widget won't be.

Linkbaiting often has a similar footprint to a Googlebomb. If I titled a post Lisa Barone is Bruce Clay and published a cunning dossier of photoshopped evidence, if the linkbait works, then a host of search blogs would be linking to me with the Lisa Barone is Bruce Clay shocker anchor text but this new algorithm tweak may thwart me. Blogs writing about my sly linkbait attempt would win, especially if Google saw them as a favoured source.

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Spot the difference: Google Video and Yahoo Video

It used to be easy to explain the whopping difference between Google Video and Yahoo Video.

• Google Video let you search through videos hosted by Google
• Yahoo Video let you search the web for videos

Google's changed that. A look ahead at Google Video and YouTube and Salar Kamangar has announced that Google's users can now use Google Video to find YouTube videos. The videos remain on YouTube and that's where the user watches them.

The intent is to expand this so that you can use Google Video to search for videos anywhere on the web.

This is what Yahoo Video does already.

Yahoo Video makes use of RSS Enclosures as a way to put across all that extra video information which Yahoo! Slurp can't cope with. It's not Yahoo who sets up the RSS feed with enclosures but the webmaster of the site with the video content.

That tends to be the catch. Most webmasters aren't dab hands at RSS enclosures (though it's pretty easy) and most don't bother.


It's doubtful whether Google will push webmasters towards RSS enclosures in the way Yahoo did but if enough webmasters use them - then so will Google.

Video technology is coming on in leaps and bounds. Podzinger is already capable of looking inside podcasts and videos and turning speech into text. There's even a YouTube tab on Podzinger.

Google will be pushing video this year. They've already made one AdSense announcement for video.

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Reddit gets a fashionable baby sister

One of my favourite social news sites Reddit is due to get another fashion conscious sister. Stylefinder.com will be born on the 8th of March. That's the same day as Glamour relaunches. Glamour is the elder sister at the mighty age of 5.

Wondering about those family relations? We have this genealogy because Condé Nast bought Reddit back in October last year. I suspect many techie SEOers will never have heard of Condé Nast. They own a truck load of magazines. They own Wired. I suspect all techie SEOers will have heard of Wired.

I think Reddit have done well. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian told Michael Arrington that as far back as 2005 they had raised $100k. Condé Nast clearly keeps the web firmly in mind when planning expansions and marketing activity. Nikki Preston from Mad.co.uk noted;

The campaign includes placing advertisements on bus panels servicing Manchester and London, ensuring that the brand is well covered by Google’s and Yahoo!’s search engines, putting advertisements in Glamour, and emailing its existing database of 500,0000 readers.

So Stylefinder.com and Condé Nast are thinking PPC at least and are hopefully in the position to launch an organic search friendly site. Judging by the name (and this is a complete guess) Stylefinder does have that "social search" vibe to it. Find something interesting on the online magazine - and show your friends.

Even if Stylefinder are social search/social media naive Reddit are still safely part of a web savvy family. Digg is still fishing around for concrete support, probably a buyer, while the speculation that their bubble will burst seems to ebb and flow through the world of blogger speculation.

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Google's Marketshare compared to Yahoo, MSN and eBay

I like Compete. The traffic gauge shows signs of promise. It just needs more data. Their blog is in my Google Reader and it reminds me of Hitwise's. A good model to follow.

I sometimes look at Netcraft's topsites to see what the market is doing. I remember how gmail caused the https://mail.google.com domain to rocket up through the ranks. Look how much traffic eBay.de gets. Okay. The figures may be a little awkward. This traffic is collected by the Netcraft Toolbar and Netcraft's Toolbar URL appears in the top 50.



This pie chart looks at the top 50. Netcraft records the top 100.

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Yahoo's R&D expenditure up by 46%

How much money do you think Yahoo has spent on Panama? Figures from their Full Year figures for 2006 [PDF link] show a 46% increase in the money spent on Product Development.

In 2005 Yahoo! spent $569,527 on Product Development and $833,147 on it in 2006. That's not all Panama but still a dramatic increase.

Surprisingly costs of running the company are up too. The dreaded "General and administrative" costs rose from a "mere" $341,073 to $528,798. Another big rise. It's little wonder that Yahoo! is putting a lot of faith (and need) on the restructure around Susan Decker. They need to get those costs down.

I'm no Wall Street expert but I would say that Yahoo!'s figures are better than expected. Cash flow is down. Net Income is down. Neither is down by as much as some people thought. Revenue is up.

The figures don't really give us a clue to what Yahoo! paid for MyBlogLog. The deal is likely to show in Q1 for 2007. We can see that Yahoo! paid $112 for a land purchase though. Those will be funky offices.

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Wikipedia and nofollow - the outcry, why?

I'm not surprised at the number of SEOers who are deeply annoyed at Wikipedia adding "nofollow" to its links. Why would it bother anyone? Lots of SEOers are stating that they're not wiki spammers and they're annoyed. They're not wiki spammers so why are they annoyed?

1. The principle of thing
2. They might be affected later
3. They dislike the "nofollow" concept and oppose its use

I'm reminded of the anti-speed camera popular opinion here in the UK. "I never speed" is a common claim, "But why should the police get money from speed cameras? It's just a way to earn money." Drivers hate speed cameras - even those who don't speed. My pet theory - and it applies to wikipedia - is that even safe drivers subconsciously acknolwedge that sometimes they might speed. They might get caught. That would even more "unfair" as they're generally a safe driver. They can't reason with or explain that to a speed camera and therefore they hate speed cameras.

SEOers who don't spam wikipedia may sometimes benefit from a link in wikipedia. Now they can't. They can't debate or reason with the code. Therefore these SEOers dislike the "nofollow" policy.

I'm indifferent. Wikipedia still has a place in any online marketing campaign. If you work with big names and big brands you need to make sure that their wiki page does not have any inaccuracies in it.

I'm also a cynic (my default nature). Is there a connection between Wikiseek and the nofollow rules. This quick little diagram attempts to see if there is a connecting line.


Wales said that Google's algorithm couldn't out perform human decisions. I wonder if wikipedia's human decision has helped or hindered Google?

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Sirrah, I disagree

I'm glad that Brandt Dainow of Think Metrics has published a study of click through data over at iMedia Connection. Most SEO agencies will not, cannot, do this. Think Metrics is analytics rather than SEO.

The data is fun to look at. I don't agree with the conclusion;

"1st Position Isn't Worth It".

It's no secret that 1st position is rarely the best for ROI. That's not news. What about volume? The first position is often best for volume.

Dainow's figures also lead him to conclude;

"There is no relationship between the position of an advertisement in the Google Ad listings and the chance of that ad being clicked on."

I guess this is a study of AdWords which appear on the first page. There's certainly a big difference in clicks between page 1 and page 3. No secret here either. In fact, just to repeat, there can often be a difference in the number of clicks you get at position 1 than you do at, say, 8.

Of course, you don't have to believe me. You can drop your bids to position 8 and see what happens.

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Horrendous code errors on Halifax Online

I logged into my main bank account for the weekly chore of bill paying. It broke. It broke through no code reason - they simply got the URLs to the account pages wrong. Badly wrong. Embarrassingly wrong.


See that? It's a rookie HTML error. It's just lazy coding. It's not just the credit card effected but all my accounts with them.

I just don't understand how a bank could make a howler like this. What about testing? They should have tested any changes for days. They would have paid big bucks for the change and for the test. Different departments would have been involved.

I phoned in to report the error. I had to let the woman go through her list of questions even though I could see what the error is. No one else had mentioned it to them - although, as she pointed out, the tip offs could have gone to different operators.

File this one under; What not to do in an online banking operation.

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Yahoo Weather Report - following the trend

The helpful Priyank Garg has filed a Weather Report over at YSearchBlog. If you Yahoo Search you'll find 51 Priyank Garg results for YSearchBlog posts.

This update came on Friday. Friday, again? My first impulse was that Yahoo was waiting until Fridays in order to spread the feedback flood over the weekend and to Monday. Then I thought it was simply that Yahoo would work the week to ensure the update was ready to go and announce it on Friday. There's also less searching over the weekend.

But do Yahoo's Weather Reports show a Friday bias? Only very slightly and only if you account the new Slurp announcement (Yahoo did, calling it a weather report).


Google continues to tweak its SERPS too. The Air Force careers page which I pointed out was ranking 7th for [credit card] is... um... up to 5th!

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Security alert at Flickr

Yahoo! have the best security of the big three. When was the last time you heard of a Yahoo! security issue?

There's an alert on Flickr right now.



It's a simple phishing scam. It's worth Flickr taking this extra effort because so many of Flickr's users aren't web savvy. They don't need to be web savvy because Flickr is so easy to use.



Microsoft's adCenter Labs are fantastic. It just took me three seconds to dig up some supporting evidence about Flickr's demographics.

How many web sites have that natural alert space built in? My bank has had to adapt their log in page so that it contains a reminder about security. Even then the message is below the log in box and I've no reason to look below the log in box. Flickr's security alert is right where I look.

Yahoo's Security Seal is an absolutely cracking idea too. At a glance you can tell if there's something fishy with the log in page. It's such a simple but effective device.

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Buying Yahoo

Would anyone buy Yahoo? There are a lot of good reasons to do so:

• Great brand
• Huge traffic
• A fat pipeline of products
• Overhauling technology - expected to close the gap with Google
• Overhauling company structure - expected to produce a quicker, leaner, meaner company
• Shares low now compared to their all time highs

An Associated Press article on Forbes caught my attention and discussed this very idea.

William Blair analyst Troy Mastin reckons Yahoo is a good target for the cash rich buyout firms (and buyout firms, in the States, are cash rich right now).

There's a catch. Although Yahoo is a good target it is an unlikely target due to its size. Yahoo has a market cap of nearly $40 billion so if you add a mere 20% premium to that then you'd need $48 billion to buy the internet giant. That would be a record breaking buy out.

Mastin also worries that any departure which resulted in the stock incentive to staff being rescinded would trigger a staff exodus. Eh? That's happened already.

I like to float the idea of Microsoft buying Yahoo. It does put a theoretical challenger to Google up for an interesting twist. The truth is that that's very unlikely.

Remember how Yahoo looked when it was young? $48 billion for ...

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Will Google's cost per acquisition kill affiliate sites?

I'm watching with great interest AOL bid $900m for Tradedoubler. The update is that TradeDoubler's largest share holder, Alecta, has said the offer is too low. Google News currently has over 100 stories on the bid.

It seems that affiliates have had a bumpy ride of late. Up. Down. Up. Down. Much of this is due to two things:

1. Google
2. Merchants not understanding that affiliates need careful management

At times it must look as if Google dislikes affiliates. The search engine doesn't like "duplicate text". In effect, Google doesn't want to match nine of the top ten search results to affiliate sites who then channel users back to the other site in the top then. The Quality Score system does seem to be most harsh on affiliates in Paid Search too (and affiliates have those tiny margins to work with). Again, I don't think this is anything to do with Google disliking the concept. Google is just trying to reduce the quantity of poor quality sites.

When (sorry; if) Google rolls out a cost-per-acquisition model (this is a topic I've not talked to Google about and can therefore safely blog about it - and I must stress that) then that might change.

Would you go to a third party when Google could manage your performance based advertising?

Well. Maybe! AOL and Alecta certainly seems to think so. After all, right now the only way Google has of inserting content on publisher sites is through AdSense and that's limited. The likes of TradeDoubler offer far more sophisticated content options. There are product feeds to enjoy. There are even search engine fronts to put on your site. Further more, with affiliate marketing it is the publisher - who knows his site best - which is responsible for matching the best banner for his content.

The deal has other merits for AOL. AOL bought Advertising.com back in 2004. I've certainly seen Advertising.com appear as a merchant on TradeDoubler in the past. There is interest in tapping into all those page impressions affiliates generate. If AOL owned both companies - and if they worked together - the super affiliates could be converted into media publishers or even visa versa.

Then there's the video battle. Ask Google and Advertising.com who has the largest network of video publishers and you'll get a different answer from each. There's a battle to be fought there. It's certainly possible to distribute video through TradeDoubler's network. Video on a cost per acquisition model would be interesting... but video has a further twist; cost per play. The cost per click or cost per impression model is weak because there's no way of telling if the user really did anything. A cost per play model which defines play as "getting to the end" or "watching at least 50%" of the video would be one where the merchant knew for certain that they had audience engagement. Suddenly TradeDoubler's large network of sites is a worthwhile prize.

The news is not the best for everyone. Deal Group Media's shares, which had begun to rise from their all time low of 2p, seem to have begun to drop again. Deal Group Media's DGM Affiliates has a large network of publishers too. Who knows. If AOL is unsuccessful in their attempts to grab TradeDoubler perhaps DGM/Fuel will be in line next?



JC, over at AnotherJunction, will likely have some thoughts on this too.

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World of Search on Flickr (update)

The first World of Search on Flickr did very well. This is thanks to Andy Beal who not only picked the post up, but called it for the sly linkbait it was :) Did the post generate a lot of links? Eh. Well. No. But! It did move this only-recently-kick-started blog up a peg on the awareness ladder.

A number of SEOers have been added to the list. Here's who's new:

• Kim Krause Berg, cre8pc


• Scott Clarke, Site Creations


• Lara Kulpa, Anubis Marketing


• Rae Hoffman, Sugarrae


• Dave Dugdale


• Natala Menezes, Google


• Nathan Holman, Vizion Interactive


• Markus Urban, AU Interactive


• Camron Deen


• Tony Spencer


• Tamar Weinberg

Google Analytics, which I like a lot, proves that some SEOrs visited the site. I use the "Network Location" option (In Visitor Segment Performance) to see if any one "big and interesting" visited. I say "big" because you need to be more on the M side of the SME in order to have a network name for yourself. SEO consultants tend not to need a whole network of computers.

I can see that I had a visitor from Bruce Clay LLC. That doesn't necessarily mean it was Lisa Barone but that's not a silly guess. Also - and how cool is this - a visitor from Apple too. Here's the full list:

• Microsoft Corp


• Reprise Media LLC


• Kinetic Results


• Apple Computer


• i-level Ltd


• Bruce Clay LLC


• Yahoo Europe Operations

The screen shot is added as evidence. How come the Google Analytics list just shows these visitors and no one else? That's because the filter option supports the | or character.

Apple will probably leave "Apple Computer" footprints on the web for a while despite their re-name to "Apple Inc".

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Next Blog »

Since I moved the blog over to Google's Custom Domains I've had to accept Blogger's navbar across the top. I can't complain. Anyone can plainly see that I'm no design guru!

The Next Blog » interests me. It takes people off the site. It's like an old webring button. BlogSpot readers should be able to skip from blog to blog. Well. That's the theory. There's a lot of crap in there.

I decided to count how many Next Blog » clicks it would take me to visit 100 English language blogs. It took 241 clicks.

Here's a break down of a lazy Sunday hour.
There where three types of failure:

• Taken to a spam or porn blog
• Redirected off to a non-blog
• Taken to a blog missing the navbar

Foreign language blogs did not interest me but if Blogger wishes to include them then I don't suppose they strictly count as a failure.



It's certainly possible for Google to check that a blog has the navbar before including it in the Next Blog ». Humble webrings do this. Google Analytics does this.

Of the spam and redirects out of the system there were two culprits who kept on coming up. Of the 32 redirects 15 went to JokesNJunk.com and 16 went to LookUpLive. JokesNJunk can still be found in Google. If you search for LookUpLive on Google there is just a diatribe of complaints about them.

I don't think Blogger should just look at taking out the spam. I think Blogger should enhance the button. I would be happy to fill in a little preferences poll and then enjoy a Next Blog » akin to StumbleUpon. In fact, since I surf with Google's personalised search then shouldn't Google already be able to to direct me to random but interesting blog.

Until that day the Next Blog » is simply incentive for people to spam the system.

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JotSpot getting closer to relaunch?

I'm one of the many people who are now hovering around JotSpot in anticipation that it'll open its doors to the public again. Google bought the wiki-plus company and I'm keen to try it out.

Last night, the JotBlog updated to say that all current JotSpots would be updating to v2.9 automatically in the next two weeks. Sadly, this isn't the Google update. This is the last update before they move over to Google's servers. Once that's done then, I assume, the doors will open.

This was a good acquisition by Google. I think Yahoo Groups is significantly better than Google Groups on all aspects of "community". Google Groups is good enough as a mailing list but I want more. I want a way to store, sort and display information online. The wiki way is exactly what I need.

I've some experience of WetPaint where friends and I keep a wiki for a monthly RPG I play in and I've found that it works well. It's just I don't like the AdSense all over the place. I know the AdSense must make some money for WetPaint because they've just finished a funding round and totted up about $4 million. I do like the update summary emails from WetPaint though.

It's ironic that Google's AdSense on WetPaint puts me off to the point that I'm looking forward to a rival wiki from Google opening up. Google are making money from WetPaint and WetPaint are pushing me towards JotSpot. I suspect JotSpot will be like Blogger. You can have AdSense if you want. You can leave the AdSense if you want.

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Google Images - faster than you think

Many people do not realise just how quickly Google's Image search updates. A good test of speed was the iphone. All the mock-ups and leaks on what it could look like turned out to be entirely wrong. If we can find some accurate images of the iphone on Google Images then we know that Google Images grabbed them since Macworld this week.


Not bad, huh? Google's done it. Crawled, indexed and updated in less than a week.

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Google News Archives at the bottom of SERPs

This is filed in the "new to me" category. I assume it's not new to the vibrant SEO forum community which I find all to easy to ignore. Oops.



This is triggered when your search query includes a past date. It's interesting to note that Google notes whether a subscription is required or not. That's not something that you tend to see in Google News onebox. Why not? Probably because there are enough subscription free stories for news articles by the time a story is large enough to make the onebox.

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Safari for Windows

If Mac released Safari for Windows and it became popular then how many web sites would suddenly need a re-design? How many would need to tweak their CSS and XHTML? More than a few, I would say. Mass re-designs would shake up SERPs.

ZDNet are running a poll on the issue and although it is early days yet (early days favour the Windows masses due to mathematical distribution curves) the idea of Safari for Windows clearly has a lot of support. Mind you, Mac have just announced the iPhone and everyone loves Mac just now. It's the fashion. Mock Mac? No. Not me. You must have been thinking of someone else.

If we do have a three-way field in the browser race; Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari (or a four-way if I'm kind enough to remember Opera (and at least one Organic Search Manager at work is a fan)) then we're likely to see more web sites employ user-agent detection scripts.

User-agent detection is always risky. Google (Yahoo and Live Search) need to be sure that the web site they are seeing is the same web site that everyone else is seeing. If user-agent detection is place than there is doubt. Sometimes some features simply do not work on other browsers and an alternative presentation is necessary. At that point you are showing a different version of the web site to different user-agents.

In fact, ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley has dug up some obscure suggestion that Mozilla is expecting Mac to bring Safari to Windows. Could they? Yes. Would they? That's harder to answer.

This is not a problem which the search engines would struggle to serve. Googlebot already visits sites pretending to be Internet Explorer in order to try and catch cloakers out. That's one of the reasons why user-agent cloaking is scoffed at.

If the web was viewed by a competitive range of browsers and user-agent detection became commonplace then the search engines would have to respond by spoofing their own user-agent more often.

All this comes at a time when the SEO community are discussing whether Google is/whether Google could parse CSS. Google is. Google can. It strikes me as madness to suggest that Google could not cope with CSS. Of course Google can cope with mere CSS! Of course! It's just text. It's simply the case that (and we're back to the distribution curves) that CSS checking has not been worth Google's effort. For all the benefits that CSS spidering would bring the cost would be too great. It's a numbers game.

CSS continues to grow in popularity, so hidden or conditionally visible text becomes more and more common, and it is therefore not a surprise to find that Google is taking stock of things. It could well be the case that Google concludes this look at CSS and decides it is still not worth the effort. This would not be unheard of. In 2004 a test Googlebot was seen scooping up .js files. We didn't see this bot back in a hurry.

Google can cope with JavaScript too. For heavens sake, spammers can defeat captchas, of course Google can cope with JavaScript and CSS. Finding a way through captchas is worth the spammer's while. Picking through JavaScript may not be worth Google's while.

... unless, that is, alternative browsers like Safari become more popular and JavaScript based user-agent detection becomes the norm.

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