Archived posts from the 'Fun' Category

SEOs home alone - Google’s nightmare

Being a single parent of three monsters at the moment brings me newish insights. I now deeply understand the pain of father Google dealing with us, and what doing the chores all day long means to Matt’s gang in building 43, Dublin, and whereever. What a nightmare of a household.

If you don’t suffer from an offspring plague you won’t believe what sneaky and highly intelligent monsters having too much time on their tiny greedy hands will do to gain control over their environment. Outsmarting daddy is not a hobby, it’s their mission, and everything in perfect order is attackable. Each of them tries to get as much attention as possible, and if nothing helps, negative attention is fine too. There’s no such thing as bad traffic, err … mindfulness.

Every rule is breakable, and there’s no way to argue seriously with a cute 5 yo gal burying her 3 yo brother in the mud whilst honestly telling me that she has nothing to do with the dirty laundry because she never would touch anything hanging on the clothesline. Then my little son speaks out telling me that’s all her fault, so she promises to do it never, never, never again in her whole life and even afterwards. In such a situation I’ve not that much options: I archive my son’s paid links report, accept her reconsideration request but throttle her rankings for a while, recrawl and remove the unpurified stuff from the … Oups … I clear the scene with a pat on her muddy fingers, forgive all blackhatted kids involved in the scandal and just do the laundry again, writing a note to myself to improve the laundry algo in a way that muddy monsters can’t touch laundered bed sheets again.

Anything not on the explicit don’ts list goes, so while I’m still stuffing the washer with muddy bed sheets I hear a weird row in the living room. Running upstairs I spot my 10 yo son and his friend playing soccer with a ball I had to fish out of a heap of broken crockery and uprooted indoor plants to confiscate it just two hours ago. Yelling that’s against our well known rules and why the heck is that […] ball in the game again I get stopped immediately by the boys. First, they just played soccer and the recent catastrophe was the result of a strictly forbidden basketball joust. I’ve to admit that I said they must not play basketball in the house. Second, it’s my fault when I don’t hide the key to the closet where I locked the confiscated ball away. Ok, enough is enough. I banned my son’s friend and grounded himself for a week, took away the ball, and ran to the backyard to rescue two bitterly crying muddy dwarfs from the shed’s roof. Later on, while two little monsters play games in the bath tub which I really don’t want to watch too closely currently, I read a thread titled “Daddy is soooo unfair” in the house arrest forum where my son and his buddy tell the world that they didn’t do anything wrong, just sheer whitehatted stuff, but I stole their toy and banned them from the playground. Sigh.

I’m exhausted. I’m supposed to deliver a script to merge a few feeds giving fresh contents, a crawlability review, and whatnot tonight, but I just wonder what else will happen when I leave the monsters alone in their beds after supper and story hour, provided I get them into their beds without a medium-size flame war. Now I understand why another daddy supplemented the family with a mom.



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Buying cheap viagra algorithmically

Since Google can’t manage to clean up [Buy cheap viagra] let’s do it ourselves. Go seek a somewhat trusted search blog mentioning “buy cheap viagra” somewhere in the archives and link to the post with a slightly diversified anchor text like “how to buy cheap viagra online“. Matt deserves a #1 spot by the way so spread many links …

Then when Matt is annoyed enough and Google has kicked out the unrelated stuff from this search hopefully my viagra spam will rank as deserved again ;)

Update a few hours later: Matt ranks #1 for [buy cheap viagra algorithmically]:
Matt Cutts's first spot for [buy cheap viagra algorithmically]
His ranking for [buy cheap viagra] fell about 10 positions to #17 but for [buy cheap viagra online] he’s still on the first SERP, now at position #10 (#3 yesterday). Interesting. It seems that Google’s newish turbo-blog-indexing influences the rankings of pages linked from blog posts relatively short dated but not exactly long lasting.

Related posts:
Negative SEO At Work: Buying Cheap Viagra From Google’s Very Own Matt Cutts - Unless You Prefer Reddit? Or Topix? by Fantomaster
Trust + keywords + link = Good ranking (or: How Matt Cutts got ranked for “Buy Cheap Viagra”) by Wiep



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Why eBay and Wikipedia rule Google’s SERPs

It’s hard to find an obscure search query like [artificial link] which doesn’t deliver eBay spam or a Wikipedia stub within the first few results at Google. Although both Wikipedia and eBay are large sites, the Web is huge, so two that different sites shouldn’t dominate the SERPs for that many topics. Hence it’s safe to say that many nicely ranked search results at Googledia, pulled from eBaydia, are plain artificial positioned non-results.

Curious why my beloved search engine fails so badly, I borrowed a Google-savvy spy from GHN and sent him to Mountain View to uncover the eBaydia ranking secrets. He came back with lots of pay-dirt scraped from DVDs in the safe of building 43. Before I sold Google’s ranking algo to Ask (the price Yahoo! and MSN offered was laughable), I figured out why Googledia prefers eBaydia from comments in the source code. Here is the unbelievable story of a miserable failure:

When Yahoo! launched Mindset, Larry Page and Sergey Brin threw chairs out of anger because Google wasn’t able to accomplish such a simple task. The engineers, eager to fulfill their founder’s wishes asap, tried to integrate mindset-functionality without changing Google’s fascinating simple search interface (that means without a shopping/research slider). Personalized search still lived in the labs, but provided a somewhat suitable API (mega beta): scanSearchersBrainForContext([search query]). Not knowing that this function of personalized search polls a nano-bugging-device (pre alpha) which Google had not yet released nor implemented into any searcher’s brain at this time, they made use of that piece of experimental code to evaluate the search query’s context. Since the method always returned “false”, though they had to deliver results quickly, they made up some return values to test their algo tweaks:

/* debug - praying S&L don't throw more chairs */
if (scanSearchersBrainForContext($searchQuery) === false) then {
$contextShopping = “%ebay%”;
$contextResearch = “%wikipedia%”;
$context = both($contextShopping, $contextResearch);
}
else {[pretty complex algo])

This worked fine and found its way into the ranking algo under time pressure. The result is that with each and every search query where a page from eBay and/or Wikipedia is in the raw result set, those get a ranking boost. Sergey was happy because eBay is generally listed on page #1, and Larry likes the Wikipedia results on the first SERP. Tell me why the heck should the engineers comment out these made up return values? No engineer on this planet likes flying chairs, especially not in his office.

PS: Some SEOs push Wikipedia stubs too.



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Who is responsible for the paid link mess?

Look at this graph showing the number of [buy link] searches since 2004:

Interestingly this search term starts out in September or October 2004, and shows a quite stable trend until the recent paid links debate started.

Who or what caused SEOs to massively buy links since 2004?

  • The Playboy interview with Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin just before Google was about to go public?
  • Google’s IPO?
  • Rumors that Google ran out of index space and therefore might restrict the number of doorway pages in the search index?
  • Nick Wilson preparing the launch of Threadwatch?
  • AdWords and Overture no longer running gambling ads?
  • The Internet Advancement scandal?
  • Google’s shortage of beer at the SES Google dance?
  • A couple UK based SEOs invented bought organic rankings?

Seriously, buying links for rankings was an established practice way before 2004. If you know the answer, or if you’ve a somewhat plausible theory, leave it in the comments. I’m really curious. Thanks.



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Letting friends know you read their stuff

With various social tools and gadgets there are tons of opportunities to publically or privately show that you follow your friends. I can digg my friends’ articles, or bookmark them at delicious, I can link to their posts via sharing in Google Reader, or after reading their posts in my preferred feed reader, I can click the link too just to push my red crab image to the top of their MBL and BUMPzee widgets.

All that comes with common hassles. I want to use these social gadgets and services without jumps thru unintended hoops, that is I consider all the above mentioned methods to tell friends that I still love them diverting those services from their intended use. Also, not every friend of mine makes use of all these geeky tools, so I need to digg posts of A., to delicious articles by B., to share posts of C., and to visit the blogs of D., E. and F. just to show that I’ve read their stuff in my feed reader.

I can’t do that, at least not in a reliable manner, especially not when I’m swamped and just try to catch up after 12 or more hours of dealing with legacy applications or other painful tasks like meetings with wannabe-geeks (unexperienced controllers or chiefs of whichever-useless-service-center) respectively anti-geeks (know-it-all but utterly-clueless and dangerous-to-the-company’s-safety IT managers). Doh!

So when I’m not able to send my friends a twitter-great-job-message or IM, and don’t have the time to link to their stuff, should I feel bad? Probably. Penalties are well deserved. Actually, the consequence is that nice guys like Nick Wilson @Metaversed unfriend me (among other well-meaning followers) at Twitter coz “I didn’t provide useful input for a while”, not knowing that I follow them with interest, read their posts and all that, but just can’t contribute at the moment because their actual field of interest doesn’t match my time schedule respectively my todays-hot-topic-list, nor my current centre of gravity, so to say. That does not mean I’m not interested in whatever they do and output, I just can’t process it ATM but I know that’ll change at some point in the future. Hey, geeks usually hop from today’s hot thing to tomorrow’s hot thing, and flashbacks are rather natural, so why expect continuousness?

Bugger, I wrote four paragraphs and didn’t come to the point expectable from the post’s title. And I bored you dear readers with lots of title bait recently. Sorry, but I did enjoy it. Ok, here’s the message:

Everybody monitors referrer stats. Don’t say you don’t do it because that’s first a lie and second a natural thing to do. That applies to ego searches too by the way. So why don’t we make use of referrer spoofing to send a signal to our friends? It’s that easy. Just add the referrer-spoofing widget to your PrefBar, enter your URL, and surf on. Well, technically that’s referrer spamming, so if you wear a tinfoil hat use a non-indexable server like example.com. I’m currently surfing with the HTTP_REFERER “http://www.example.com/gofuckyourself” but I’m going to change that to this blog’s URL. Funny folks visiting my blog provide bogus referrers like “http://spamteam.google.com/” and “http://corp.google.com:8080/webspam/watchlist.py”, so why the fuck shouldn’t I use my actual address? This will tell my friends that I still love them. And real geeks shouldn’t expect unforged referrer stats, since many nice guys surf without spamming the server logs with a referrer.

What do you think?



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Google nofollow’s itself

Awesome. Nofollow-insane at its best. Check the source of Google’s Webmaster Blog. In HEAD you’ll find an insane meta tag:
<meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW” />

Well, that’s one of many examples. Read the support forums. Another case of Google nofollow’ing herself: Google fun

Matt thought that all teams understood the syntax and semantics of rel-nofollow. It seems to me that’s not the case. I really can’t blame Googlers applying rel-nofollow or even nofollow/noindex meta tags to everything they get a hand on. It is not understandable. It’s not useable. It’s misleading. It’s confusing. It should get buried asap.

Hat tip to John (JLH’s post).

Update 1: A friendly Googler just told me that a Blogger glitch (pertaining only Google blogs) inserted the crawler-unfriendly meta element, it should be solved soon. I thought this bug was fixed months ago ... if page.isPrivate == true by mistake then insert “<meta content=’NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW’ name=’ROBOTS’ />” … (made up)

Update 2: The ‘noindex,nofollow’ robots meta tag is gone now, and the Webmaster Central Blog got a neat new logo:
Google Webmaster Central Blog - Offic'ial news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index (I’d add ALT and TITLE text: alt="Google Webmaster Central Blog - Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index" title="Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index")



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Brittany-Spear-Nude-mesothelioma-ringtones

John Brittany Spear, blogging nude about mesothelioma and ringtones all day long, asked me to introduce the GoogleWhack Brittany-Spear-Nude-mesothelioma-ringtones.

Well, that gets me somewhat nervous, coz Brittany Spear sounds more like a pretty handsome gal. Anybody got a nude pic to download? Actually, I can’t imagine a blog titled John “Brittany Spear” talking about mesothelioma ringtones. By the way, I know what a ringtone is, but how the heck can a cell phone sound like a tumor? Is there a place to download free mesothelioma ringtones for my mobile phone? Or is that a laywer’s trick to get me sick on Brittany Spear, whoever that may be, and however she may look undressed? Not that I dislike nude Brittanies, in fact I do love a naked Brittany for breakfast, but I’m not sure I’d download a nudist suffering from mesothelioma at an all for free ringtone site.

Also, what will the allmighty Google think about my keyword stuffing when it comes to ringtones related to mesothelioma discussed by a nude Brittany Spear selling PR8 links for as low as $299.00? Is that fun or spam? Go figure …

Actually, I deserve the pain caused by exposure to asbestos fibres, particulary those of crocidolite, the fibres of which are thin and straight and penetrate to the deep layers of the lung.



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AdSense asks me "Are You Gay?", but why?

John emailed me this screenshot:
Are you gay?

I wondered why the heck AdSense considers a post on Google’s new URL removal tool gay in nature. Warning! These links (Google search results) are not safe at work:

0.08% gay: “fell in love
0.11% gay: “neat
0.05% gay: “terminator
0.02% gay: “competitors
0.04% gay: “user
14.7% gay: “friendly
56.4% gay: “tool

Who can help me to figure out the remaining 28.6% gayness? I mean when putting two ads asking “Are you gay” above and below the post, Ol’ AdSense should be at least 100.0% certain that this question will not offend me. Actually, I’m not offended. I’m just curious to learn more about a possible coming out.



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Priceless SEO Advice

Just stumbled upon: If you are too stupid to use a computer you might try giving SEO advice. Best business plan ever, for idots ;)

My favourite:

Q: Why are SEO Consultants too expensive for webmasters?
A: I personally used a firm that did a 250,000 site submissions for my site, it worked great.

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The Top-5 Methods to Attract Search Engine Spiders

Full sized image copyrighted © by Leech Design 2000Folks on the boards and in news groups waste man years speculating on the best bait to entrap search engine spiders.

Stop posting, listen to the ultimate advice and boost your search engine traffic to the sky within a few months. Here are the five best methods to get a Web site crawled and indexed quickly:

5 Laying out milk and cookies attracts the Googlebot sisters.
4 Creating a Google Sitemap supports the Googlebot sisters.
3 Providing RSS feeds and adding them to MyYahoo decoys Slurp.
2 Placing bold dollar signs ‘$$‘ nearby the copyright or trademark notice drives the MSN bot crazy.
1 Spreading deep inbound links all over the Internet encourages all spiders to deep and frequent crawling and fast indexing as well.

Listen, there is only one single method that counts: #1. Forget everything you’ve heard about search engine indexing. Concentrate all your efforts on publishing fresh content and acquiring related inbound links to your content pages instead.

Link out to valuable pages within the body text and ask for a backlink. Keep your outbound links up, even if you don’t get a link back. Add a page to each content page and use it to trade links on the content page’s topic. Don’t bother with home page link exchanges.

Ignore tricky ‘backdoor’ advice. There is no such thing as a backdoor to a search engine’s index. Open your front door widely for the engines by actively developing deep inbound links. Once you’re indexed and ranked fairly, fine tune your search engine spider support. Best of luck.

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