Sebastian’s Pamphlets

All categories with canonical definitions. Don’t refer to Google’s guidelines for a definition of ‘canonical’.

Categories (show posts):
1. .HTACCESS
   Geeks can’t live without redirecting, sanitizing, canonicalizing and whatnot with Apache4Blackberry’s .htaccess.
   .htaccess  (.htaccess overview)  12 posts.
2. 404GRABBER
   Unemployes your 404 page.
   404grabber  (404grabber overview)  4 posts.
3. ADSENSE
   Displays paid links by Google on my son’s MP3 blog and a few other places.
   AdSense  (AdSense overview)  3 posts.
4. ADWORDS
   Google’s paid links auction.
   AdWords  (AdWords overview)  1 posts.
5. AJAX
   A cool technology to enhance Web pages. If you create AJAXed sites OTOH you get the sack.
   AJAX  (AJAX overview)  3 posts.
6. ANALYTICS
   Ego food stats are the Webmaster’s crack pipe. Reading the right stats from the right POV with the right goals is known as Web analytics.
   Analytics  (Analytics overview)  4 posts.
7. ANCHOR TEXT
   The linked text, also known as topical link juice. A must have in a honest spammer’s toolbox.
   Anchor Text  (Anchor Text overview)  8 posts.
8. BLOGGER
   Person who blogs. A word with seven letters. … end of list. (Can’t remember the name of Google’s blogging software …)
   Blogger  (Blogger overview)  7 posts.
9. BLOGGING
   Writing overcomplicated stuff related to this blog in particular and feeding my ego in other ways. Bitching, err blogging is required for attention whores, link whores, traffic whores …
   Blogging  (Blogging overview)  32 posts.
10. CLOAKING
    Selective delivering of suitable content to everyone.
    Cloaking  (Cloaking overview)  25 posts.
11. COPY+PASTE-PENALTIES
    If you copy textual contents to paste them somewhere on the Web the search engines bash you hard. If you copy a piece of code to paste it into another program you ask for the sack, whether you modify it or not.
    Copy+Paste-Penalties  (Copy+Paste-Penalties overview)  4 posts.
12. COPYRIGHTS
    My output is copyrighted automatically for 70 years. Then my son rewrites it and sells it for another 70 years. Actually it’s 75 years, but I need 5 years to output something worth copyrighting and I always launch early.
    Copyrights  (Copyrights overview)  2 posts.
13. CRAP
    Anything above zero on my crap-o-meter or triggering my bullshit detector’s siren.
    Crap  (Crap overview)  56 posts.
14. CRAWLER DIRECTIVES
    Telling search engine crawlers how they have to behave. Not all crawler directives are standardized in the REP (robots exclusion protocol). Crap like rel-nofollow for example is defined as the Web’s plague.
    Crawler Directives  (Crawler Directives overview)  26 posts.
15. CTR
    Click Through Rate. Measures clicks on ads, SERPs, pornographic thumbnails, and whatnot.
    CTR  (CTR overview)  2 posts.
16. DUPLICATE CONTENT
    My aunt has twins and a daughter. Guess which 33% of Peter, Paul and Mary count as duplicated content.
    Duplicate Content  (Duplicate Content overview)  11 posts.
17. E-COMMERCE
    Selling the letter “E” on the ‘net. Most instances of “E” dealers are well known for overpromising and underdelivering, if delivering goods is part of the business process at all.
    E-Commerce  (E-Commerce overview)  9 posts.
18. EGO FOOD
    Folks who praise me or give me the opportunity to praise myself feed my ego properly.
    Ego Food  (Ego Food overview)  9 posts.
19. EROL
    Pommies selling a neat shopping cart.
    Erol  (Erol overview)  7 posts.
20. FOLKS
    There are two categories of folks. For definitions please refer to ego food respectively crap/trolling/spam.
    Folks  (Folks overview)  10 posts.
21. FUN
    Everything not requiring hard work.
    Fun  (Fun overview)  25 posts.
22. GOOGLE
    A software shop in Mountain View providing the world with free services, not so free paid links, and relevant search results.
    Google  (Google overview)  129 posts.
23. HOTLINKING
    Unscrupulous hijacking of foreign resources. Also known as bandwidth theft. A suitable method to slow down your worst enemy’s Web sites.
    Hotlinking  (Hotlinking overview)  2 posts.
24. IIS
    For a definition please refer to crap.
    IIS  (IIS overview)  2 posts.
25. INTERNET MARKETING
    Making fast bucks on the Interweb until caught for all sorts of shady sales techniques the incarnate devil wouldn’t be evil enough to think of.
    Internet Marketing  (Internet Marketing overview)  19 posts.
26. JAVASCRIPT REDIRECTS
    A sneaky method to show x-rated ads to children.
    JavaScript Redirects  (JavaScript Redirects overview)  10 posts.
27. LANGUAGES
    Used to communicate with computers. Popular languages are Cobol, Assembler, RPG, Fortran, Algol, SmallTalk and PL/I.
    Languages  (Languages overview)  2 posts.
28. LINK BUILDING
    Mass inserting of promotional links onto unattended Web sites. There’s a manual variant too.
    Link Building  (Link Building overview)  19 posts.
29. MICROFORMATS
    If you don’t build Web sites for search engines you really don’t need that.
    Microformats  (Microformats overview)  14 posts.
30. MSN
    MSN operates a tiny search engine called LiveSearch in Redmond. I can’t find their SERPs in my logs, hence I think they’ve just indexed the M$ campus so far, although their crawler is somewhat busy requesting compelling contents from my servers.
    MSN  (MSN overview)  14 posts.
31. NETSCAPE
    They had a browser, a directory, and whatnot. Not sure what they deal with today.
    Netscape  (Netscape overview)  1 posts.
32. NOFOLLOW
    The Internet’s plague. If you see such a beast, don’t click it, it’s infective. Most nofollows out themselves with a dotted rectangle in firebrick. Invented by Google’s search quality team, but not properly communicated to other departments, not to speak of other search engines and Webmasters. For more information please refer to crap.
    Nofollow  (Nofollow overview)  28 posts.
33. PAID LINKS
    Paid links are the backbone of the Internet. Google’s mission is to replace hard coded paid links with JavaScript ads. They shanghaied Vint Cerf already to accomplish that, and if they manage to bribe Tim Berners-Lee they will succeed. Unless Al Gore invents the World Wide Web.
    Paid Links  (Paid Links overview)  22 posts.
34. PLAGIARISM
    Copyrights multiplied by minus one.
    Plagiarism  (Plagiarism overview)  5 posts.
35. POWNCE
    A tool to distribute commercials, selfish myths, rumors, and fabrications. All of them votable at Digg.
    Pownce  (Pownce overview)  1 posts.
36. PROGRESS EASYASK
    A neat piece of software.
    Progress EasyAsk  (Progress EasyAsk overview)  1 posts.
37. RECIPROCAL LINKS
    A classic sixty-nine in cyberspace. Learn more at risky linkage.
    Reciprocal Links  (Reciprocal Links overview)  8 posts.
38. RECOMMENDATIONS
    Things you really should try buy coz they pay my bills.
    Recommendations  (Recommendations overview)  11 posts.
39. REDIRECTS
    Forwarding requests on the Interweb. Some sorts of redirects are used to hijack foreign contents (302), fake toolbar PageRank (301), fool visitors (JavaScript/Meta refresh), or to irritate (300, 303, 305, 307) respectively upset search engines.
    Redirects  (Redirects overview)  16 posts.
40. RISKY LINKAGE
    Every link crawlable by Google and not on their explicit list of allowed link patterns is risky. Currently this list has just one item, that is number 68: you do me and I owe you one. The other 69 link variants known to man are on the don’ts list, hence risky.
    Risky Linkage  (Risky Linkage overview)  25 posts.
41. ROBOTS META TAGS
    Page specific “get the fuck outta here”.
    Robots Meta Tags  (Robots Meta Tags overview)  14 posts.
42. ROBOTS.TXT
    Side-wide “get the fuck outta here”.
    robots.txt  (robots.txt overview)  26 posts.
43. SEARCH QUALITY
    High quality searchers type in my URIs for navigational queries. Clever. Low quality searchers rely on a search engine’s capability to retrieve my sales pitches from a multi billion page database. Suckers.
    Search Quality  (Search Quality overview)  34 posts.
44. SEO
    Optimizing search engines. Since the engines aren’t keen on 3rd party optimization, most SEOs write greasemonkey scripts to optimize their SERPs. Also known as bullshit.
    SEO  (SEO overview)  122 posts.
45. SITE-SEARCH
    Annoying visitors with custom search engines which rattle, cough and claim to be buzzy but don’t deliver due to the incompleteness of their underlying search indices.
    Site-Search  (Site-Search overview)  2 posts.
46. SOCIAL WEB
    Spiderman and spiderwoman doing it on the web. Usually spiderwoman is a bald and bearded fake.
    Social Web  (Social Web overview)  15 posts.
47. SPAM
    Sites Positioned Above Me. Anything from the desk of Sebastian Foss. I email you and you don’t sign up for my get-rich-in-a-nanosecond thingy because I guessed a hapless email addy and you turned catchall off. Selfish voting using multiple accounts.
    Spam  (Spam overview)  22 posts.
48. SPAM REPORT
    Asking Matt to mark machine generated Web contents with an unavailable_after tag pointing to the stone age.
    Spam Report  (Spam Report overview)  7 posts.
49. SPOOFING
    In spiderwoman’s toolbox. See social Web.
    Spoofing  (Spoofing overview)  3 posts.
50. SYRIA
    You might be curious why the heck a geek stops posting pamphlets on Web development, search, and whatnot in favor of supporting the revolution in a remote country in the middle east. Well, here’s the story: I do care.
    Syria  (Syria overview)  1 posts.
51. TECHNORATI
    A hairy monster sitting in the middle of the spider web it has spun in the blogosphere, eating pings.
    Technorati  (Technorati overview)  4 posts.
52. TESTING
    (Next) generation of Web contents the search engines may or may not list on their SERPs.
    Testing  (Testing overview)  8 posts.
53. TOOLS
    Both spiderman as well as spiderwoman have a tool. See social Web.
    Tools  (Tools overview)  9 posts.
54. TRANSLATIONS
    To post on Webmaster hangouts you need to translate some terms. For example “DMOZ clone” becomes “niche directory”, “displaying AdSense above the fold” becomes “adding value for users”, “smut gallery” becomes “photo album” and everything else considered fishy on your Web site turns into a “green widget”.
    Translations  (Translations overview)  2 posts.
55. TROLLING
    Outlawed assclowns posting shitloads of crap in newsgroups, blog comments and forums. Everybody is allowed to kill trolls, but feeding trolls is strictly forbidden.
    Trolling  (Trolling overview)  2 posts.
56. TWITTER
    When it’s not out of service, at least partly, that’s a neat place to point your RSS feeds to.
    Twitter  (Twitter overview)  11 posts.
57. UNCATEGORIZED
    Most posts I’ve imported from Blogger landed here. Tagging old posts is on the to-do list.
    Uncategorized  (Uncategorized overview)  87 posts.
58. URI SHORTENING
    A sure fire way to kill traffic, search engine rankings, and revenues on the long haul. Invented by TinyURL, made popular by Twitter, short URIs (falsely known as shortened URLs) are often abused for traffic theft and other evil Internet marketing purposes (for example bypassing filters that are supposed to prevent minors from viewing hardcore porn and other adult content).
    URI shortening  (URI shortening overview)  6 posts.
59. URL REMOVAL
    The process of deleting URIs in a search index before the spam filters catch them.
    URL removal  (URL removal overview)  6 posts.
60. USABILITY
    Figuring out sure-fire methods to steer the user’s mouse pointer above the ads and trick her/him into clicking. There’s a shortcut called popup window, where the sponsor’s landing page overlays the page without user actions.
    Usability  (Usability overview)  11 posts.
61. WEB DEVELOPMENT
    Web developers version 1.0 write scripts to manage self-produced or bought respectively borrowed Web contents. Web developers version 2.0 steal the contents from their users and add nifty round corners to the output.
    Web development  (Web development overview)  45 posts.
62. WEBMASTER CENTRAL
    A cool Webmaster hangout where you can submit your tanked sites to have Googlers and forum regulars check them and tell you which optimization techniques you’ve to dump to get unbanned respectively unpenalized. Don’t lie there, and don’t widgetize your posts (see translations).
    Webmaster Central  (Webmaster Central overview)  28 posts.
63. WEBSPAM
    Showing unique and compelling contents provided by Google AdSense above the fold is Webspam and gains your site the much sought after MFA award. Of course you can enhance your Webspam by launching every paragraph of scraped or machine generated content on a gazillion of AdSense laden pages, that lowers your CTR but gains you more clicks overall. Search engines have huge departments supporting Webspam. For example Matt Cutts heads Google’s Webspam support division with its HQ in building 43 at the Googleplex in Mountain View, along with Webspam departments in Dublin, Zurich, Beijing and whereever to handle Webspam in foreign languages.
    Webspam  (Webspam overview)  16 posts.
64. X-ROBOTS-TAG
    Web object specific “get the fuck outta here”.
    X-Robots-Tag  (X-Robots-Tag overview)  14 posts.
65. XML-SITEMAPS
    A protocol invented by Google to mass submit Webspam to search engines. Provides settings like “priority” to tell the search engines where and how fast the Webspam should rank for its desired money terms. Google indexes and ranks such mass submissions within a few days. Other search engines support the sitemaps protocol half-hearted.
    XML-Sitemaps  (XML-Sitemaps overview)  16 posts.
66. YAHOO
    A links list based in Sunnyvale selling smut links for a tiny annual fee of 600 bucks without guaranteeing the listing. Ok, for uninteresting crap the fee is 300 bucks only and you get a free email account on top of that. If they would not throw nofollow crap on piped feeds I’d mention that they deal with search too.
    Yahoo  (Yahoo overview)  20 posts.

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