Poor Attempt at Cloaking: Exhibit #1
Generally speaking, if you are going to try to do geo-targeting via IP address, you might want to make sure something like this happens… Now this prime ranking position in Google is not only drawing the attention of Google’s spam team, but it is also keeping would-be subscribers from clicking on what appears to be a page specifically for Mountain View, California, home of “the Google”. Who knows, maybe it is a ploy to get Matt Cutts to buy DirecTV?
Why the Top Diggers are Right
I understand that there is a lot of animosity towards the so-called Digging elite. Clearly some of them are marketers bent on pushing their own materials. However, certain top-Diggers have no financial interest but, rather, are the uber-fans and social-cornerstones of the popular site. An argument could be made that the participation of even the marketers, whose own materials make up only a tiny fraction of what they Submit and Digg, is responsible in part for Digg’s success – however, we will save that argument for later. We first understand the new changes to the Digg algorithm to understand why the concerns are valid. While there is a certain black box aspect to the whole Digg promotional algorithm, Kevin Rose and others have indicated time and...
It Sucks to Have Friends in High Places
Meet Matt Cutts at WebmasterWorld. Draw attention to yourself with Matt Cutts posts. Forget to remove some of your “experiments” and “research” before the ensuing Googler traffic. See your Google traffic tank
Holiday Spam Splurge
Some of you might not remember this, but Virante runs an anti-linkspam tool called LinkSleeve which allows you to easily filter link spam from any online application (blog, forum, guestbook, wiki, etc.) The tool is very similar to Akismet (in fact, it was released on the exact same day as Akismet years ago). However, it does not require an API and uses XML-RPC rather than REST. Regardless, we experienced an interesting, headache-inducing phenomena over Christmas. While it is nearly impossible to determine if just a handful of spammers were responsible for the surge, we noticed a nearly 46% increase in link spam generated over the last 3 days. The variety of sources indicated that it was at least a handful of spammers, but it is difficult to determine if this was...
The Anatomy of a Digg Silent Bury
There has always been a shrowd of mystery surrounding the bury feature at Digg. What percentage of buries are necessary to put a story to rest? Are the different types of buries (lame, duplicate, spam) considered differently? Is there an internal bury system for Digg employees? The latest in this series of questions that needs to be brought to light is what I call the “Silent Bury”. This is a unique set of circumstances where Digg removes the story from the listings (neither in upcoming or popular), but leaves the story on the site, and accessible via direct URL or search. This method effectively destroys the chance of a story succeeding, but does not seem to rely on the traditional bury methods that would also make a story difficult to access via...
Marketing Pilgrim and Other Useful Blogs
A crucial daily exercise in this industry is reading the daily news blogs. Staying informed of the latest news is critical in staying on top of trends and pulling together an amalgamation of insight when it comes time to take action. There are several great ones out there but one in particular has inspired me to lay down my list of favorites; Marketing Pilgrim. They are running a contest over there for $500 bucks not to mention a back link just for entering. (Must have ‘link-juice’! Not to mention I like the ‘link buying’ tactic Andy is using.) The question to be answered; “Why do I read Marketing Pilgrim?†Easy enough: to stay informed. I really like what Andy Beal has to say, it resonates with me and taps into what I...
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