Linkbait and Switch

Linkbait: Content developed for the purpose of attracting a large number of inbound links for SEO purposes. Bait & Switch: (from wikipedia) a form of fraud in which the fraudster lures in customers by advertising a good at an unprofitably low price, then reveals to potential customers that the advertised good is not available but that a substitute good is. One of the most common questions asked of SEO’s is how to get lots of high quality, 1-way inbound links without paying for them. This used to be a nightmare for search engine optimizers, as it ruled out probably the vast majority of link-acquiring methods (reciprocals, 3-ways, directories, text link advertisements, etc.) There is, however, a very effective method which is employed quite frequently to...

Google: A Spammer’s Best Friend

I rarely discuss email spam on this blog. It is off-topic and already too often confused with search engine spam. Nevertheless, as an avid Google user (they pay my bills, I pay theirs), I believe that their search technologies wrongfully empower email spammers in ways that are easily circumvented. I have listed below how Google is a spammer’s best friend. (1) Masking Spammer’s URLs Google’s URL redirection method allows for spammers to easily mask their urls to appear as if they are from Google. For example, the url below appears to be hosted on Google, although it redirects back to TheGoogleCache http://www.google.com/%75%72%6C?q=%68%74%74%70://%74%68%65%67%6F%6F%67%6C%65%63%61%63%68%65.%63%6F%6D Spammers are already using this to mask...

Google Responsible for Own Server Clog

As has been the case for over a year now, Google has a severe issue with duplicate caching. Google has yet to fully understand that www.domainname.com is identical to domainname.com and will readily index both. Google will also index a /index.html and a / version of the same page. And, if the web.domainname.com subdomain is available, it will cache it as well. I personally have cleaned up sites with 3-6x caches of each page in google, resulting in 100,000+ duplicates being cached. If Google would fix this one problem, it would clear up a huge amount of space.

A Modest Proposal

After reading about Google’s “full servers” I believe a truce is in order between blackhat search engine optimizers and Google. The grounds of the truce are fairly simple. I and other complying search engine optimizers will remove 1 page of content for 10 cents. The system would be fairly simple and entire transactions could be completed through Google Adsense. A publisher id in the meta description plus a noindex, nocache, nofollow tag would result in a removal. I believe the members of Syndk8 alone could free up 1 of Google’s massive servers.

Digg Marketing Competition

Well, I guess it already pissed off the folks at Digg.com, since the digg-a-minute story got buried in under 10 minutes. Nevertheless, the competition must go on. Web marketing 2.0 is the name of the game. Create legitimate, well-crafted stories, get them to the front page of digg without violating the Terms of Service, and you win. Its that simple. The challenge runs through the entire month of June.