Entries Tagged 'Google' ↓

Attention web spammers! You now have yet another venue to muck up the SERPs….congratulations!

I just read about Google’s new knol project and although I’m sure it will be hugely successful, I can’t help but think that this is bad news.

Why? Simple. There will almost certainly be one less organic position available on Google’s first page of results for most keywords. And eventually all keywords, I have to assume, based on what I just read.

This industry is all-too-familiar with Google’s love affair with Wikipedia. And while I myself find Wikipedia useful in many ways, I don’t necessarily think they deserve the blind authority they receive in Google’s results. For example, in the screenshot below you’ll see Wikipedia listed at #3 for “vehicle insurance.”

I’m sure Geico (who is listed at #9) is thrilled! I mean, if I’m searching for vehicle insurance I’m probably looking to purchase it, which I obviously can’t do at Wikipedia. But this isn’t about that….really.

My real concern is that Google plans to stay far, far away from editing these “knols” yet they ARE going to let the authors monetize them and share the ad revenue that Google generates.

Excuse me? WHAT??

Wow. I can see it already…a whole bunch of new crap occupying the SERPs. Think about it. Anyone remember when AdSense came out? All the “MFA” sites that were built (that Google still hasn’t fully gained control of, I might add) that just seemed to flood the web. I think this will be the same deal. “Authors” will write on every imaginable topic and, whether it’s accurate or not….good or bad, Google will almost certainly rank these pages higher than they should. If you don’t believe me, please see the screenshot above!

In Google’s defense, they do a lot of things right and I’m sure this will be a nice “product” for them. BUT, I cringe at the thought of them creating such an easy-access platform for generating SPAM. Maybe I’m wrong, but I would like to hear Matt Cutts’ perspective on this.

They’re slaughtering publishers of text link ads for selling links because they affect rankings. But won’t this negatively affect rankings, too? Will Google automatically include knols on the first page just as they do Wikipedia….simply because they’re knols?

We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.

While searching for something this evening, I was hit with an odd sight on Google. The results looked like the old days with no advertisements. Of course, I wondered if Google might be having technical issues, so I did a few more queries and what I found was quite surprising.

It appears Google has decided to fold to peer pressure and pull all ads that show for popular keywords related to the link buying industry. I’ve heard the question asked at several conferences, asking why Google complains about link buying, but then turns around and lets the link buying industry advertise their service through AdWords. I can only assume this is the reason the ads are not showing now.

I ran several searches and it seems like a half ass attempt because a search for ‘buy link, sell links, buy link popularity’ show ads, but a search for ‘buy links, text link ads, buy text links’ show no ads. I think it’s pretty hilarious that they’re going to such lengths to hide the obvious fact; their algorithm is flawed and they can’t fix it.

Here are the results I searched:

Text Link Ads	Buy Link
Buy Links	Buy Text Links
Buy Link Popularity	Sell Links

Maybe they’ll pop back up, but I would bet they’re trying to portray a dominant image. I compare it to when a guy breaks up with a girl that he really likes, but he’s trying to play the ‘cool guy’ in front of all his friends. In the back of his mind he wants to whisper in her ear to come to his place later on, but in front of the public, he acts like he doesn’t need her.

Eventually, they’ll be left with an index full of AdWords and Wikipedia results.

**UPDATE**
This is a confirmed story. Straight from the horses mouth.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about Google selling links for a cheap annual price of $1,995. It was a story that I read some time ago but could not find the real owner, until today when Rustybrick sphunn what I had just sphunn and provided a link to the original story. I appreciate someone finally telling me who I could credit because I don’t like duplicating stories without giving kudos.

As I’m reading the comments on sphinn today, I see where people are saying the backlinks are not showing up. I would suggest they are not looking very hard. I researched several when I was blogging a couple of weeks ago and found the google backlinks on several of the domains. This made me want to do even more research today and I happened across even more google links that are essentially links that were bought. Oddly enough, the nofollow tag is absent on all of these. Something Google is forcing everyone to do if it is paid for in some fashion.

Now the original link farm style page was a hit and miss for finding google on their backlinks. Lucky for me, I stumbled on a gold mine of hard evidence they are nothing but hypocrites over at Google. Let me introduce the enterprise superstars!

http://www.google.com/enterprise/superstars/index.html

These people are Google customers who have paid for the Google Mini and because they paid, were recognized and highlighted. The first page is a list of the “Current Winners”. Each person from the respective company is highlighted and given a Pay for Post style write up on a Google blog. (example)

Now let us move on to the real gold, the success stories page. If there were doubts about passing juice before, this page should seal the deal with proof.

I did the daunting task of checking all 187 links on this page (umm..link farm?) and the results paint the picture:

• 171 of the domains have google.com appearing in their google backlinks.
• 10 of the domains do not have google.com in their google backlinks.
• 5 of the domains have no cache and/or no website present.
• 1 of the domains has a typo and the link does not work.

In summary, if you want a good solid backlink or even a backlink and a blog review on the google blog, then pay for the google mini and become one of their superstars.

I have put the entire list with results in this PDF called Google Link Selling if anyone wishes to check my work.

Their new motto should be, “Do As I Say, Not As I Do!”

There’s definitely no doubt that the eWar of 2007 between Google and Bloggers has taken a new turn. It appears that Google has targeted the bloggers who are part of the loud and proud company of payperpost. It sucks for the bloggers because their system offers work based on their PR and now Goog has taken that away, but I’m sure they’ll dig their way out of it. This move definitely gives the goog troops the false apparent upper hand. But the word is they’ve hit others too.

What does this mean for you? Well it’s no secret that people who use them more than likely use LinkWorth and many other money making networks, other than Google. Since Goog is trying to perform a public abortion to other ad networks and taking the bloggers with them, I figured the bloggers should go into their battle well prepared. I’ll come back towards the end of this post and give my two cents on those who wave the white flag, but first, here’s my checklist for anyone who uses any of these networks Goog is trying to bully into a slow death:

• Clean Your Tracks
  Search engines, although they have huge amounts of resources, still have to use their algo’s to spot issues. Or they rely on the brown nosers to squeal on others and report their fellow competition. That means you must do your best to clean your tracks. What does this mean? Remove all of the outbound links pointing to ad networks you are using that Google probably isn’t that fond of. Consolidate them to point to a single redirection script that resides on your site. Let that script send your affiliate code and block the bots from indexing that redirection file.

  Also, make sure you are not so flamboyant with your promotions. A lot of bloggers I come across have badges thrown across their site promoting a handful of ad networks, which just makes it very easy to spot when a human review is performed by the pesky opposing enemy. Try to move your promotions to their own page. For example, write a post about whoever you’re promoting and on your sidebar where you list affiliate links, link your sidebar to the individual pages rather than directly to the affiliate site. Even on these pages, use the redirection script mentioned above to prevent bots from following the links. Here is a redirection script and I would name the jump.php to a unique name you create, then each link sent to that file, add the rel=”nofollow” so bots will not follow. You can go even further to add the meta noindex,nofollow underneath the script.

• Disclose On Your Terms
  Disclosure is usually something you want to lean towards, but since the enemy is attacking people who do disclose, it might be best to not disclose at all. For this example, I’ll give suggestions for both ways. It is always good to let your readers know when you are giving a live spot and when you’re speaking from the heart. Most readers are smart enough to figure this out on their own, but the “know-it-all’s” who make the most noise feel it’s polluting the net when bloggers do not disclose paid vs non paid. I would like to see them be in the shoes of the common blogger that works their asses off to write clever and great selling points for advertisers, only to get bitch slapped because of someone else’s agenda. I’ve actually read some of the best blog posts from bloggers doing it for money.

  Anyhow, do what you need to do to cover your expenses and bills, but if you can do it and disclose, more power to you. But when you disclose, keep each disclosure unique from others. This eliminates patterns, which is what the enemybot looks for. For each post, make the title unique, but with the same message. For example: “Today Company X has paid me to review Product Y“; or… “A quick Review by Company X who paid for it“. The more unique you make each post, the better chance you have to make your readers trust you and keep the enemy off your ass. If you choose to disclose using an image, make it an image you pull from YOUR site, not from the ad network. I would download the image, save it to your desktop, rename it to something unique, then put it in the images folder of your host. If using the ALT tags, use keywords related to the post rather than calling it “disclosure” or the adnetwork you’re using. Make sure they don’t all use the same, as well. Otherwise, don’t use images for disclosure.

• Refuse Public Mugshots
  A lot of ad networks like to showcase who is part of their inventory. They’ll use your name, company or url to plaster all over their site in hopes of bringing in new business. In a normal happy world, this is an awesome way for both sides to get more pub. The problem is, with Goog going after anyone who participates in these networks, it just isn’t the best thing to do. If you give a testimonial, ask to be anonymous. The ad network isn’t out to wrong you, it just makes you a sitting target.

  Also make sure the ad network doesn’t reveal all of your information to any visitor that stops by. Someone pointed out the reason PPPost was popped is because their entire inventory is available to the public on their site. In their defense, they’re catering towards potential advertisers and had no idea it would be used against them. If you make it easy to spot, the self appointed net god will do what they want to penetrate the opposing side. If you are part of a network that makes everyone public knowledge without your consent, make a strong case to remove that feature or at least remove your listing.

• Host Your Affiliate Images
  Most affiliate programs will serve up affiliate banners/images from the suppliers website. The advantage to this is if images change, you’ll always have the most current version. The disadvantages would be slow load times if there is a connectivity issue, the image being removed from host and you are not told, size of image changing and I’m sure there are other little issues with it. The most important disadvantage is you’re telling the bots where you are pulling the image from. So if you are pulling an image from adnetwork.com/images/img21.jpg, they know you’re probably part of that site. It’s easy to spot it and you’re busted. The way to bypass this is to right click the image and save it to your computer. Then upload to your own site and pull the image from your own site. Don’t add the ALT tags with the network name either. Throw a good keyword that relates to your site.
• Try Acronyms Instead
  It’s probably safe to say that reading a blog that uses the name BLOGPIMP (made up name) more than 10 times, is probably part of the BLOGPIMP network. With this in mind, knowing its an easy pattern to spot, how easy can it be for G00G to add this to their algo and spot sites/blogs that mention “NAME” more than X times? I’d say very easy. Use your own acronyms to reference the network you’re talking about and maybe provide a legend somewhere visible. You can also link the acronym to your affiliate page mentioned above. There are other options like using a mouseover for the acronym and bury the answer into some javascript. Then when someone places their mouse over the acronym, a pop up window or tooltip message appears showing the affiliate name. The main goal is to not mention these ad networks in every to every other post. Here is an example tooltip script. Using #6 and placing your function call in a .js file separate of your page would be optimal. But there are many great scripts to use.
• More Bang For The Buck Over Ads That Just Suck
  2-3 years ago, everyone wanted Pagerank because it mattered in search results. If you had a PR 7 or above, you were damn near guaranteed to be the top player in your market. Things have changed, so we must also change and get over the PR thing. It’s like going to the music store and demanding a Van Halen cassette, they probably exist somewhere, but it’s so outdated and who has a cassette player!

  Do you want to attract advertisers? Then give them more bang for their buck! Don’t shove their ad over in the sidebar or foot with your blogroll or list of 10 other advertisers. Stick them in your content so your readers actually see the ads. Footer and sidebar ads pretty much suck if you want to give value to your real estate. Let’s say a huge parade was coming down your street and a street vendor asked to lease a small spot in your yard to solicit to people walking by. Would you offer them up a tiny space in the middle of your backyard? No. And they probably will not be interested. Show potential advertisers that you want people to click their link and put ads inside your content and you’ll see people will want to spend money with you. (Like our LinkInTxt product - quick plug)

• NEVER Let ‘Em See You Sweat!
  I’m amazed at all of the noise bloggers are making over this. Obviously bloggers are writers and it’s a way to speak their minds, but all you’re doing is bringing attention to yourself. The enemy’s goal is to create Google FUD (< --Great Article to Read). The craziest thing is people that are giving up thousands of dollars and waving the white flag. And for what? "Hope"? Hoping their PR comes back? And what happens if it never does? Think of all the important green (moola) thrown away for some meaningless green (PR).

  Ok, back to this point. All of these blog posts you're making on your site is letting them know you're sweating. If you're sweating, you're probably guilty. Today I came across someone that not only made a post about how they would get their PR back, but they pointed out ways to spot paid ads. My suggestion is to keep things on the happy and positive note. Don't let the enemy or potential advertisers see you sweating. You'll lose the fight and you'll lose the sale. Keep your path and act as if nothing has happened. Make necessary changes but keep them to yourself. And if you are part of a network that has a possible flaw, send that network a direct message and let them know about it. See if they have any plans to correct it. Don't give the enemy the gun to shoot you.

To sum things up, just be smart, think ahead and don’t overreact because everyone else is. Pick your poison and learn to co-exist. No one owns the internet which means no one can dictate how you monetize your website. If you have suggestions to add to our list, post them below and we’ll include them.

Isn’t it fun when people don’t practice what they preach? Google offers a link to anyone who spends at least $1,995.00. Most have seen this page before, but I read it over on Sphinn the other day and had to bring it up again.

Basically, Google will give anyone who spends a minimum of $1,995.00 per year for one of their Google Mini’s, a free customer testimonial and a link back to their site. Oddly enough, they aren’t playing fair in their rel=nofollow game they’ve been pushing on everyone else. Maybe we should start selling text links on Google for $2k per month and use the Google Mini for our own needs. I would imagine most companies would happily pay 2k per year for a solid link on Google. That’s only $166.67 per month or $38.46 per week or $5.48 per day! That’s EASY money. And for those taking notes, their links DO pass PageRank and they do appear as valid backlinks for the sites they link to. Shame, shame spammers.

**UPDATE**
I couldn’t remember where I originally read this, but as I’m making the topic public again, others are riding my wave and pointed out where it was brought up originally.

I felt the need to clarify a commonly used word of late and create a new word for what is actually happening.

Penalizing a site - this term we view as a site being dropped out of the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages). Maybe Yahoo found some keyword stuffing or Google found you participating in cloaking, but they give you a +50 penalty where you add 50 to your current position and this is where your site appears in their SERP’s. Or they completely remove you from their index or stop indexing your new content. Either way, you’re being penalized in their results, where it all counts.

Penisizing a site - this term we view as a site losing length in their “tool”bar pagerank. This refers only to Google and is experienced when they make an update to their toolbar pagerank algo and said site owner loses visual size in their PR. We don’t view this as a penalty because what should matter to all webmasters is their standing in the SERP’s. If you have been penisized, but you’re still doing well in the SERP’s, then you are just fine. Don’t worry about PageRank!

The size of your PR is not proportionate to your results. For example, when someone searches for your site/company name and you are listed on the top, all is fine. PageRank is something that Google pushed on webmasters several years ago and people use it for performance measures. All you should worry about is how well your site is bringing in the hits through your advertising campaigns and/or organic traffic through search and social networks.

For the lack of size in your tool..um..bar..PR, you might consider purchasing our new product, “PR Pump”. Once you get the PR Pump, just attach it to your toolbar and start pumpin. Results are not guaranteed and the amount of pumps will not be proportionate to your actual performance.

Click To See In Action
Possible side effects are dizziness, over-clicking, constant looking at your toolbar, less focus, diarrhea, constipation, sleepless nights, drowsiness and confusion (I’ve had mine today). If you are pumping for more than 4 hours, please call a LinkWorth Account Manager at 866.LNK.WRTH immediately. This product is made for men and women as this issue is not gender specific.

A hypothetical I feel is worth a mention. Everyone is so worried about Google and their idiotic pagerank changing, but lets look at the big picture here people. It’s all about where you’re listed in the search results. Lets say your company name is TechCrunch and you’re selling or buying text links. According to the “official confirmation” Google is cracking down on people. Right now it’s just the lowering of Pagerank and some are worried it will result in where they’re listed in the SERPs.

With that in mind, think about how many people have been hit with this change. Imagine all of these sites, Problogger, TechCrunch, John Chow, Weblogs Inc and so on then get penalized as people are worried about. Think about how horrible the search results will be for Google. They are aiming to make their search results better? If I search for a specific company name and they don’t show up in the first page, what is so great about their results? Just because they are crying about webmasters trying to make their online businesses better? I can guarantee you the search results will produce what you’re looking for at Yahoo, MSN or Ask. They don’t seem to be bullying webmasters and pulling money out of their pockets.

***UPDATE***
I forgot to leave this example. If you go to Google and search for “John Chow“, look at the results! Not quite what you’re looking for, right? How does that make results better?

The question burning in a lot of webmaster’s minds is, “What should I do now?” With us being in the position we’re in, I felt the need to give our view and suggestion to all of our customers and readers. Everyone is worried and scared about the recent hit of lowered Google PR across the board. Everyone is pointing the finger at blog networks who cross link and sites that buy and/or sell text link ads. Well here is our thoughts on the whole ordeal.

The big scare in everyone’s mind is that Google is punishing everyone for participating in the buying or selling of text ads. The problem is, people are reporting PR drops on sites that don’t even participate in the act. Maybe this is a move where they’re testing the waters to see if their “reported” information is aligning with their new algorithms, or maybe this has nothing to do with what everyone thinks it is. TechCrunch, for example, openly sells ads and even to one of our own, yet, nothing happened to them. I think if Google was really trying to make a statement, they would hit all obvious blogs that everyone reads, not just a few. Then take notice of YouTube’s home page being a PR 3, it’s a Google owned company. My suggestion would be not to buy into all the PRopaganda, but most certainly, do NOT stop what you’re doing!

There is no doubt that Google owns the largest share of search queries; however, they are NOT the only search engine. They also do NOT own your website nor can they dictate how you choose to monetize your site. Of course, they’ll tell you they’re not trying to dictate what webmasters participate in, but just look at the ripple they’re causing. I was just reading a post on Johntp.com where he’s pulling his ads from TLA and I just couldn’t help but think how ridiculous it is for anyone to throw easy money away for a complete guess. Does this guy really think anything is going to change by removing ads? All he’s doing is allowing Google to bully him around.

Google’s big issue is the selling of Pagerank, which was something that happened a few years ago. Now people buy text ads on sites related to their own. Sure, some people still go the route of buying higher PR sites, but just like technologies change, so do methodologies in link building campaigns. When we build campaigns for customers, it’s apples to apples and oranges to oranges, the days of insurance ads on programmer sites are pretty much over. But everyone can argue that people on a programming site might be interested in insurance whether they’re on an insurance site or a programmer site.

Let me give you an example, these days, most of the sites participating in buying/selling text ads are personal blogs. These personal blogs cover a little bit of everything, just like a search engine would. At any point you can go to yahoo.com and see a range of advertisers from flowers to insurance to credit reports. The same situation can apply to all sites, any one visitor can be interested in ANY type of ad on the site. I’ve found some pretty interesting sites on sites that had nothing to do with the site I was on, but I was glad to find them. But of course, to really get the eye of the visitor, a text ad about insurance when you’re on a site about insurance will more than likely have a higher CTR, so it’s the optimum choice in our methodologies.

The search reps will completely agree with this theory but tell us that we should somehow tell them it is an ad by adding a “nofollow” or link it with some other form rather than html. But then you read their guidelines and it strictly tells us not to build our sites for search engines, build it for our readers. Nofollow tags means we’re building for the search engines, not for our readers! They’re hypocrites and greedy because those ad dollars are not being put into their own pockets.

Their guidelines also tell you to acquire links from sites and directories like Yahoo, where you actually pay for the link in order to get your site appearing in their search results. Think about it, “Do it!” “Don’t do it!” “Do this!” “Don’t do this!” If they have an issue with how people are monetizing their sites, then they need to do a better job at their own product rather than trying to rip webmasters of their livelihoods. We, as in LinkWorth, would never tell a customer they cannot participate in another program because we want our customers to make as much money as they can, whether it be with us or with some other company. If Google could adopt at least a modified version of this thought, I think the internet world would be a much more peaceful place. If it came down to a fault of our own, we would fix the problem on our end instead of pissing off the same people that helped build them into what they are today.

Let me go ahead and end these words of wisdom, if you can call it that, with a few thoughts to marinate on.

1. Unless you’re listed on the first page for your keywords, why would it matter if you were spotted by Google and PR dropped? Money in your pocket is money in your pocket! Don’t give it back because you have less green in your toolbar! Just remove the toolbar and go with the flow, keep the ads, add more ads and continue writing great content on your site.

 

2. If you remove ads or stop buying linkads, do you REALLY think you will be rewarded? Keeping what you have will only help validate that you’re not going to be bullied by Google and also make you appear as you know it is your website and not Google’s site!

 

3. Do you realize that if you pull out and cancel linkads, that money will HAPPILY be diverted to others who would love to have the money? Our advertisers are going nowhere! LinkWorth’s job is to produce results and we will continue to do so with existing products, combinations of existing products and most importantly, our new products. Yes, that means we are always staying ahead of the Goo-ame by developing new products that help our advertisers and disguise them from all this other mess. Our product LinkInTxt is something only LinkWorth employees would be able to detect. So unless they change the way they rank the SERPs, our products will always produce results!

 

4. WHO DO YOU THINK IS ON YOUR SIDE WHEN IT COMES TO LINKWORTH AND GOOGLE? HONESTLY? There is no way Google knows anything about you. LinkWorth knows our customers and will do whatever is necessary to produce results. If the entire ranking system changed tomorrow, LinkWorth would figure out how the new system operates and implement a new process for our customers within a week. What can you honestly do to get a response from Google? A reinclusion request that goes unanswered for months? (Well, unless you’re BMW).

 

5. Your site is your site and you should never change anything for any reason unless it’s illegal. Google tells webmasters to not build pages for search bots, then says to change all ad links for search bots. Google also tells people to get listed in their results they should acquire links and even references Yahoo’s directory, which is buying a link, then says they’ll not count links that are paid. Ask yourself, “who has their heads on straight here?”

Ok, after all this going on I had to see what GOOG was doing (notice I link to Yahoo!). As I’m watching their stock price in amazement, Yahoo’s refreshing thing refreshes and I can’t get my print screen done fast enough, but this is what I “witnessed”:

I just couldn’t help it knowing the whole “Evil (#6)” thing and what is going on today.

Should we start a chant around the world for anyone who owns Google stock? SELL GOOG, SELL GOOG, SELL GOOG ! ! ! A public company means it’s owned by the public, somewhat. If you’re a stock holder, then show them what you think of them and sell while it’s this high and make your money!

Forget about the passive/aggressive phrasing of “Don’t Be Evil”…Google’s new mantra is “We Will Screw You.”

I’m sure you’ve read the news or worse, felt the sting yourselves. Google has gone scorched earth and dinged god-only-knows how many websites with a drop in Page Rank over the past day or two.

Rumor has it that the sites getting screwed are those that have been selling text link advertisements but the funny thing is, they’re penalizing some sites that aren’t even selling links!! How stupid is that??

It seems all those laid-back folks at the Googleplex are taking themselves quite seriously these days. What’s next? No more bringing your dog to work? No more volley-ball games during lunch? The Google chef gonna be serving up bread & water for breakfast/lunch/dinner from here on out?

Poor bastards.

Talk about biting the hands that feed you, Google. You should be ashamed of yourself. Be careful not to get too big for your britches…that stock price of yours just might drop one day soon and then who will save your ass? All the people that you screwed over?

Don’t bank on it.