I was researching for web analytics packages when I came across WebSideStory site that provided questionable content. When I disabled stylesheets on my Firefox browser I saw a collection of text and links found at the bottom of the page. I was shocked because I never thought an analytics company could resort to such technique but at the same time I was not surprised since every site that’s aware of search engine optimization and the benefits of getting pretty good ranks can bring, wants to go on top of search results.
Emphasizing on keywords such us “web analytics”, “search engine”, it’s never bad as long as it’s necessary for the page.
For the record I did not report this to Google. Instead I posted it to several bulletin boards for further scrutiny. However I never got such great number of responses. The most popular in the list edited the details of my thread and no one seemed interested in responding out of the 65 or so page views it got at the time. Not so long ago I was part of the debate on whether Colgate-Palmolive web site employed hidden links disguised in its dynamic menu. One moderator argues it does violate search engine policies and guidelines while I stuck to my argument that it did not; the site was not penalized by Google as far as I know.
The other lesser authoritative forums had replies but not with the quality I would like to read. I was even told to report to Google if WebSideStory’s SEO procedures bothers me. It does not. And I would not care to raise the issue if not because of the reputation it brings. I see a lot of lesser known brands do worse and I leave them to flirt with disaster. But this is a site that is supposed to be a role model in implementing fair and non-deceptive coding. To me this is beyond the desirable content.
With this “discovery” does it seem to show that companies don’t seem deterred by the fact that sites of more known brands like Ricoh and BMW do get banned? Is it easy to trick Google? Just because there is this thing called “reinclusion request”, you are forgiven of your sins and you’ll be back on search engine circulation. Would this be a repeating cycle or repeat offenders stand to lose their footing on search results forever?
I have applied for accounts on a couple of other SEO-related bulletin boards. Once I logged and to each of the new forums, I immediately felt I was in a new place. New layout and colors, many new nicks not familiar in the old forums, new type of topics. There were lots of merchants selling domain names, lots of people asking for Adsense tips, something that I don't usually see at my old forum.
People are warm and I got several welcome messages the moment I introduced myself. There are also opportunities for revenue earning and an unselfish way to promote newbies with blog feeds and signature linking plus the reputation tool which I haven't found in my older forums.
To me there are more stockbroking and merchandising of sites where people post domain names for sale, free startup directories asking for submissions or high PageRank pages offering a directory listing for $10 to $15 a month. I was quite surprised with the activity because I rarely saw such type of posts in my other community. Perhaps it's against the rules. Obviously, many posters at the new forums are creative entrepreneurs.
In many SEO discussions some people are asking questions about subdomains, redirections or keyword relevance. The funny thing is that in their signature links are their company web sites offering search engine marketing and optimization services. So it appears that they channel questions and seek affirmation on efforts they do to their clients into the SEO community forums. The company integrity and level of competitiveness has become questionable.
When people rely too much on what others say and rely less on their brains, that is where the madness comes. Search Engine Optimization techniques should be primarily out of common sense and secondary concerns should be more of the legal, technical and financial aspects.
That is why I'll always describe search engine marketing as more of an art; being scientific is just secondary.
People are warm and I got several welcome messages the moment I introduced myself. There are also opportunities for revenue earning and an unselfish way to promote newbies with blog feeds and signature linking plus the reputation tool which I haven't found in my older forums.
To me there are more stockbroking and merchandising of sites where people post domain names for sale, free startup directories asking for submissions or high PageRank pages offering a directory listing for $10 to $15 a month. I was quite surprised with the activity because I rarely saw such type of posts in my other community. Perhaps it's against the rules. Obviously, many posters at the new forums are creative entrepreneurs.
In many SEO discussions some people are asking questions about subdomains, redirections or keyword relevance. The funny thing is that in their signature links are their company web sites offering search engine marketing and optimization services. So it appears that they channel questions and seek affirmation on efforts they do to their clients into the SEO community forums. The company integrity and level of competitiveness has become questionable.
When people rely too much on what others say and rely less on their brains, that is where the madness comes. Search Engine Optimization techniques should be primarily out of common sense and secondary concerns should be more of the legal, technical and financial aspects.
That is why I'll always describe search engine marketing as more of an art; being scientific is just secondary.
Ever since I joined the SEO forums, I never felt quite like a star, where people recognize me, or at least my posts. I seem to be obscure, quite seemingly hesitant to voice out questions or reply to queries. But the longer I stayed, my confidence grew. And while I do not know anyone personally, save for one Eastern European woman who settled in the US and sent me very long e-mails I myself could not cope, the people in the room are nice. Somehow I knew the character of behind each avatar so I kinda adjust what type of message to post especially when a certain personality is actively engaged in a thread.
I am active in HighRankings since May of last year and so far I think I am the 15th ranked active member in terms of post volume (excluding moderators) out of 11,000 plus members. I am a newbie at Search Engine Watch Forums and an ocassional eavesdropper at Matt Cutts’s blog.
High Rankings members are quite close and often collaborate in many aspects like speaking engagements, project partnerships or simply widening the social network. Search Engine Watch Forums is quite comprehensive but as a new comer I barely know anyone except the moderators who oversee certain sections and often reply to questions. Matt Cutts’s is an “anything goes” blog where people respond to a post by asking, refuting or perhaps to have their names read or links clicked.
Recently I felt I am a star in my own little way. Search Engine Watch’s Danny Sullivan paid attention to my post about the accuracy of Google Zeitgeist and placed it in an update of the site’s daily blog. High Rankings administrator Jill Whalen (Jill) was not amused by the look of my chosen avatar: Ralph Wiggum of The Simpsons pointing a finger onto his nose. We had fun in that one thread and I was resolved to changing it to my personal photo until another moderator Bob Gladstein (qwerty) defended the avatar as a symbol of one’s honesty and innocence into asking SEO questions in the thread. And regading Matt Cutts, he blogged about the visit of his parents around and he said he is trying to show them he is not workaholic. My single sentence indeed attracted his attention and replied it may not be possible to disprove the fact that he is workaholic because his parents are also Internet-savvy and read his blogs.
That’s me, a star for a day.
I am active in HighRankings since May of last year and so far I think I am the 15th ranked active member in terms of post volume (excluding moderators) out of 11,000 plus members. I am a newbie at Search Engine Watch Forums and an ocassional eavesdropper at Matt Cutts’s blog.
High Rankings members are quite close and often collaborate in many aspects like speaking engagements, project partnerships or simply widening the social network. Search Engine Watch Forums is quite comprehensive but as a new comer I barely know anyone except the moderators who oversee certain sections and often reply to questions. Matt Cutts’s is an “anything goes” blog where people respond to a post by asking, refuting or perhaps to have their names read or links clicked.
Recently I felt I am a star in my own little way. Search Engine Watch’s Danny Sullivan paid attention to my post about the accuracy of Google Zeitgeist and placed it in an update of the site’s daily blog. High Rankings administrator Jill Whalen (Jill) was not amused by the look of my chosen avatar: Ralph Wiggum of The Simpsons pointing a finger onto his nose. We had fun in that one thread and I was resolved to changing it to my personal photo until another moderator Bob Gladstein (qwerty) defended the avatar as a symbol of one’s honesty and innocence into asking SEO questions in the thread. And regading Matt Cutts, he blogged about the visit of his parents around and he said he is trying to show them he is not workaholic. My single sentence indeed attracted his attention and replied it may not be possible to disprove the fact that he is workaholic because his parents are also Internet-savvy and read his blogs.
That’s me, a star for a day.
I posted a message at SearchEngineWatch forum about the accuracy of Google Zeitgeist especially the international version.
It was because I was just wondering how accurate the details they put there. Google Zeitgeist displays a list of most popular searches. It could mean seasonal or consistently in demand. But just like Yahoo! Buzz the rankings are pretty volatile although Google's version does not appear as such; it is updated only once.
But in an age of automated searches, spam blogs and things that take away intimacy between the web and the surfer, the least I could expect is that the accuracy of that once-a-month update will be preserved. But it wasn't.
I did not get lots of responses to that post but Danny Sullivan took care of it and posted it among the highlight blogs of the day.
Here are some of my findings:
1. Malaysia is spelt Malasia.
2. Singapore's top search is Viagra? Does this mean people using Google Singapore search are ideal target for Viagra or Cialis spammers?
3. The URL for Singapore data actually is www.google.co.za as you can see (unless they changed it already).
I e-mailed Google and I got some pretty quick responses:
I forgot to include that issue #3 so I mailed them the details. And here's the reply:
Hopefully the issue is fixed.
It was because I was just wondering how accurate the details they put there. Google Zeitgeist displays a list of most popular searches. It could mean seasonal or consistently in demand. But just like Yahoo! Buzz the rankings are pretty volatile although Google's version does not appear as such; it is updated only once.
But in an age of automated searches, spam blogs and things that take away intimacy between the web and the surfer, the least I could expect is that the accuracy of that once-a-month update will be preserved. But it wasn't.
I did not get lots of responses to that post but Danny Sullivan took care of it and posted it among the highlight blogs of the day.
Here are some of my findings:
1. Malaysia is spelt Malasia.
2. Singapore's top search is Viagra? Does this mean people using Google Singapore search are ideal target for Viagra or Cialis spammers?
3. The URL for Singapore data actually is www.google.co.za as you can see (unless they changed it already).
I e-mailed Google and I got some pretty quick responses:
Hi Elmer,
Thank you for your note. We have passed your email on to the appropriate
team. We appreciate your taking the time to write to us.
Regards,
The Google Team
Original Message Follows:
------------------------
From: Elmer W. Cagape [mailto:yada.yada@domain.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 7:29 PM
To: press@google.com
Subject: [press] Correction
Hi,
Just wanna make some corrections.
http://www.google.com/press/intl-zeitgeist.html
Malaysia was spelled Malasia...
Elmer
PS.. Can't believe Singapore people had "Viagra" as the most popular search in Feb.
I forgot to include that issue #3 so I mailed them the details. And here's the reply:
Hi Elmer,
Thank you for your reply. Please be advised that we've passed your
additional comment on to the appropriate team.
If we can assist you further, please let us know.
Regards,
The Google Team
Hopefully the issue is fixed.
This must be short.
I can’t imagine Singapore people have been putting “Viagra” as their top search keyword for the month of February. No I am not kidding but this is according to Google Zeitgeist. I can’t help but speculate:
It’s the month of Valentines Day and for a great romantic evening with loved ones, Singaporeans might need extra energy.
Could this spell a green light for spammers who now know that this specific market is what they’d like to pursue, after those unsuccessful inbox penetrations and numerous ignorance to their product offers?
More about Zeitgeist, I felt the team did their best to come up with such compilation. But I saw a couple of mistakes. Malaysia was spelt Malasia (I did report it to Google and they made a quick reply to my e-mail). The search URL for Singapore actually shows www.google.co.za.
I can’t imagine Singapore people have been putting “Viagra” as their top search keyword for the month of February. No I am not kidding but this is according to Google Zeitgeist. I can’t help but speculate:
It’s the month of Valentines Day and for a great romantic evening with loved ones, Singaporeans might need extra energy.
Could this spell a green light for spammers who now know that this specific market is what they’d like to pursue, after those unsuccessful inbox penetrations and numerous ignorance to their product offers?
More about Zeitgeist, I felt the team did their best to come up with such compilation. But I saw a couple of mistakes. Malaysia was spelt Malasia (I did report it to Google and they made a quick reply to my e-mail). The search URL for Singapore actually shows www.google.co.za.
When you optimize a page sometimes it's difficult to fully apply all SEO recommendations because of content and design constraints. That is why there is a quandary on whether search engine marketers are against designers. SEM professionals think designers build pages whose design are less friendly to search engines - remember search engines do not index an image but only its alternate value - as much as search engine marketers recommend methods that result to the missing "wow" effect of a page.
But wait, I believe this is a myth based more on common sense than further study. Yes there is a tendency that that designers and search engine optimization professionals have good chance of disagreeing but most of the time this problem is addressed.
You don't have to have a bad page to rank well. Take an example of our client La Kasbah, a Moroccan restaurant in Mid-Levels here in Hong Kong. The page was built in 2004 and was starting to appear prominently on search engine results in 2005. It's a Flash page with no other html page except the index that holds the animation. If you search for "hong kong restaurant" in Yahoo! Hong Kong it comes up at the first page, ranked 8th. When I switched to Yahoo! International (www.yahoo.com) it came up 7th. In Google it's a poor 29th.
It did not have any "black hat" technique such as inflating font sizes hidden from a visitor's site nor implementing some doorway pages and other crazy linking scheme. Perhaps it was the backlink generation that made the site popular. So it just shows that a page can get a good search engine placement without sacrificing attractive asthetics. Kasbah has managed to get nominated at the Webby Awards held in New York City. And with 972 queries for the keyword, "hong kong restaurant" is pretty competitive not to mention that Hong Kong is home to more than 10,000 dining places.
Thus, there is no cause for worry between search engine optimization staff and design crew members. If they collaborate well, desired results aren't difficult to achieve.
But wait, I believe this is a myth based more on common sense than further study. Yes there is a tendency that that designers and search engine optimization professionals have good chance of disagreeing but most of the time this problem is addressed.
You don't have to have a bad page to rank well. Take an example of our client La Kasbah, a Moroccan restaurant in Mid-Levels here in Hong Kong. The page was built in 2004 and was starting to appear prominently on search engine results in 2005. It's a Flash page with no other html page except the index that holds the animation. If you search for "hong kong restaurant" in Yahoo! Hong Kong it comes up at the first page, ranked 8th. When I switched to Yahoo! International (www.yahoo.com) it came up 7th. In Google it's a poor 29th.
It did not have any "black hat" technique such as inflating font sizes hidden from a visitor's site nor implementing some doorway pages and other crazy linking scheme. Perhaps it was the backlink generation that made the site popular. So it just shows that a page can get a good search engine placement without sacrificing attractive asthetics. Kasbah has managed to get nominated at the Webby Awards held in New York City. And with 972 queries for the keyword, "hong kong restaurant" is pretty competitive not to mention that Hong Kong is home to more than 10,000 dining places.
Thus, there is no cause for worry between search engine optimization staff and design crew members. If they collaborate well, desired results aren't difficult to achieve.
I have a colleague who used to work a company with so called "black hat" SEO practices in the Philippines. While he is aware that the practice was doomed to fail, his previous business dealings in that company was never in peril at the time.
I was a little more conservative, dropping the methods I think that are never thought would be helpful to site visitors. If you were reading a lot of threads on SEO over the Internet you will be amazed to see different tricks are advised with an equal number of naysayers refuting such tricks.
Remember the temporary disappearance of BMW web site on Google a few weeks ago? Such was an example of a site that adhered to what "experts" were saying. In the SEO world, "experts" is a very subjective term which can include Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman or any other pioneer in search engine marketing, to the dubious, secretive people who never tend to disclose their process for "fear of being copied".
And one of the more recent bans by Google involved a Philippine shopping portal MyAyala.com. For a respected name in the country to have a web site that deals with the underworld in hopes of gaining popularity quickly, this is a big embarrassment. The site has been banned for hiding multiple occurence of search phrase within the site and has tried to apply for reinclusion.
Maybe their developers are too tired or just plain stubborn to consider their mistakes, they did not fully comply with the Google Webmaster Guidelines and retained some of the hidden spam keywords. What it got may have benefited the portal as it became a feature of Matt Cutts' blog and have drawn interest from visitors of this popular blog site.
To gain popularity, one of the easiest way is to be controversial.
I was a little more conservative, dropping the methods I think that are never thought would be helpful to site visitors. If you were reading a lot of threads on SEO over the Internet you will be amazed to see different tricks are advised with an equal number of naysayers refuting such tricks.
Remember the temporary disappearance of BMW web site on Google a few weeks ago? Such was an example of a site that adhered to what "experts" were saying. In the SEO world, "experts" is a very subjective term which can include Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman or any other pioneer in search engine marketing, to the dubious, secretive people who never tend to disclose their process for "fear of being copied".
And one of the more recent bans by Google involved a Philippine shopping portal MyAyala.com. For a respected name in the country to have a web site that deals with the underworld in hopes of gaining popularity quickly, this is a big embarrassment. The site has been banned for hiding multiple occurence of search phrase within the site and has tried to apply for reinclusion.
Maybe their developers are too tired or just plain stubborn to consider their mistakes, they did not fully comply with the Google Webmaster Guidelines and retained some of the hidden spam keywords. What it got may have benefited the portal as it became a feature of Matt Cutts' blog and have drawn interest from visitors of this popular blog site.
To gain popularity, one of the easiest way is to be controversial.
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