Archive for February, 2010

• Duplicate Content, And Blog Spammers

  Around half the people I talk to, about Search Engine Optimisation, are terrified of duplicate content on their own websites. But 80% or more of the spam that I see, is massively duplicated. Why do real site owners, with valuable content but multiple paths to it, fear duplicate penalties from Google, but spammers who endlessly [...]

  February 28th, 2010

• Google’s Disaster Relief for Chile

  Corporate Social Responsibility - How to donate for Chilean earthquake relief. If you’re in the USA, resources to find out about those affected and a way to donate. I’ve put up the app for finding people in the sidebar, for a few days.
  Well done to Google’s socially minded developers for getting this up so quickly. [...]

  February 27th, 2010

• Google Hates Me, I’m Being Penalised. Or Not.

  Great story from a Google staffer about how his site started to disappear from rankings. I’ve seen clients lose *huge* chunks of traffic for very similar reasons. Sometimes the reason you don’t show isn’t for the obvious search engine optimisation reasons or that you’ve lost Google’s love. Sometimes there’s a simple technological explanation…

  February 25th, 2010

• Google Product Search, Ciao, Foundem and the right to make a buck in search results

  The Telegraph gives some details about the cases being brought against Google in Europe, about product search results. Who’s complaining, and about what, makes for some interesting speculation.
  Let’s have a look at what Google Product Search is, and does, first… so we’ve got some context.
  Google Product Search
  It’s free. Anyone can sign up, and feed products. [...]

  February 24th, 2010

• Social Network results in Google Search Results

  Personalised Search - how personal is it? Well, Bill Slawski, author of the SEO by the Sea blog, is someone for whom I’ve a lot of respect. So he’s in my social network. And when I went looking for recent articles on the uses of Google’s Website Optimiser for SEO purposes, look what I found:

  You [...]

  February 22nd, 2010

• Search Engine Spam Reduction Through The DMCA

  Google will act to remove web pages that rank highly, that use copyrighted material without permission. One of the more popular tactics for a beginner Search Engine Optimiser, is to copy material that already ranks well. Apart from the ethical dimensions of copying someone elses’ work, there’s this:

  The technique of copying already well ranking content [...]

  February 17th, 2010

• Search Engine Optimisation - Site Submission Solicitations

  The incubator that we work in, has a bunch of small businesses, with varying degrees of proficiency with the web. Every so often, we run a seminar for them on building web presence. One of the questions that is likely to come up at the end, will be about search engine submission. Our neighbouring businesses [...]

  February 16th, 2010

• Buzz spam - it’s started

  Yay! You knew it would happen…

  February 15th, 2010

• Google Buzz, Mac, Chrome, Apple Mail and iPad

  Like many Internet Marketeers that I know, I’m delighted to use a MacBook for the majority of my desktop and mobile usage. One of my problem areas for using Google’s technology stack is that Safari isn’t fully supported - not to the extent that FireFox and nominally Chrome are. One example being that Gears on [...]

  February 15th, 2010

• Discussion Forums and Customer Service

  The rise of free and open source software has seen a substantial increase in the number of discussion forums that provide technical support to users. It is such a standard part of the landscape, that when you start a new technical project, one of the first things to do is to find the places where [...]

  February 9th, 2010