Healthy Blog Reviews

Yep, now you can have spam delivered in real time to your search results on Google or Twitter. This is just why we all clapped for joy when Bing and Google hooked up with Twitter for real time results, isn’t it? Oh, no? Hm. I guess we’re not the only ones. Search Engine Roundtable noted a Webmaster World forum thread complaining about the spam in real time search results. In the SER poll, 78% (as of the time of this screenshot) felt the real time results in Google are either somewhat or very spammy: However, this may just be their perceptions: it may be less that the results themselves are spam and more than they’re merely unwanted, and therefore we consider them spam (like commercial emails that we really did sign up for but really don’t want to get anymore—except we didn’t get the choice to sign up for this addition to the SERPs). Twitter, meanwhile, is doing what it can about spam on its site. The “trust and safety” unit at the company now employs 22 people, making it the largest division at the company. But it’s not just the blatant tag spam and mock-celebrity accounts they’re looking at. According to Ad Age: The dirty secret of Twitter’s war on spam? A significant amount of it emanates from clumsy marketers that just don’t know any better. So what do they flag as spam? They have automatic filters to catch accounts that follow a large number of Tweeple, unfollow them all, and then add more followers. (Follower spam.) They also have recently set up technology to filter links and check for phishing attempts. The team also handles hacking attacks and copyright/brand claims. But even legit accounts can devolve into spammy practices, like keyword-based autoreplies. The rule of thumb? “[E]ngage the people you are trying to sell stuff to. If you are creating a dialogue with people and not just touting things because you want to make a buck, you are going to have a network of people that value your input,” says the trust & safety unit director Del Harvey. She says they’re constantly working on algorithmic improvements to catch more spammers and reduce false positives—sound familiar? What do you think? Is Twitter doing enough to reduce spam—including the spam that filters into Google search results? Do you think Google’s real time results are spammy—or just unwanted?

Tags: people, real-time, says-the-trust, screenshot, Search, Social, spam, time, webmaster-world
Posted March 15, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Not since the year-long courtship between Yahoo and Microsoft have I wanted two sides to just DO IT ALREADY! What am I talking about? China and Google. For the love of my RSS stream, either pull out or make-up–this is getting old! The latest? Google is “99.9 percent” likely to shut down its Chinese search engine–and try to serve China from outside of the country. The signs that Google was on the brink of closing Google.cn, its local search service in China, came two months after it promised to stop bowing to censorship there. But while a decision could be made very soon, the company is likely to take some time to follow through with the plan as it seeks an orderly closure and takes steps to protect local employees from retaliation by the authorities, the person familiar with its position said. Meanwhile, the Chinese government is sending a message that it will in no way yield to the censorship demands of Google. In fact, it’s busy telling Google’s Chinese partners that they should start preparing for Googlegeddon –aka, life without Google. Google has a widespread network of Chinese partners that have set up their Web sites to link to Google’s Chinese-language search engine. The government’s warning was a reminder to operators that they are responsible for any content on their sites, even if it is provided by a third party like Google. Those companies could switch to services that are more accommodating to the government, like Baidu, the search engine that holds the dominant share inside China. I’ve used the analogy the unstoppable force against the immovable object before, but this battle takes it to a whole new level. Unfortunately, Google’s fighting this fight on its back foot. I don’t see China opening up a can of censorship worms, simply to accommodate an American search engine. Do you?

Tags: baidu, censorship, China, chinese, country, government, Microsoft, since-the-year
Posted March 15, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

I don’t often jump into the world of SEO advice–there are plenty of excellent blogs that do that–but when Google’s Matt Cutts confirms that 301 redirects do, in fact, lose PageRank , well, that’s worth sharing. Eric Enge gets the scoop –boy, is he gonna get a lot of backlinks from this–getting Matt Cutts to confirm something that I have suspected and cautioned clients for many years: 301′ing from an old domain to another, does result in PageRank decay. Here’s the quote: I can certainly see how there could be some loss of PageRank. I am not 100 percent sure whether the crawling and indexing team has implemented that sort of natural PageRank decay, so I will have to go and check on that specific case. (Note: in a follow on email, Matt confirmed that this is in fact the case. There is some loss of PR through a 301). So now you know. But, don’t stop there, read the rest of the interview, you may just learn some other propaganda SEO tips. ( via )

Tags: cloud-computing, cloud-hosting, crawling, fact-the-case, interview, read-the-rest, Search, seo, the-interview
Posted March 15, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Owning or managing your own business can be very stressful, and many people have so many things to think about on a daily basis that they don’t even realize they are ignoring one of the most important business processes: internet marketing. Research has shown that millions of people turn to the internet first when they [...]

Tags: Business, Don, email marketing, engine optimization techniques, internet, internet advertising, internet business owners, Internet Marketing, internet marketing companies, marketing, targeted web traffic, Web Linking, Web Marketing, Website Advertising, website directory submission
Posted March 15, 2010 by BlogPostman under Internet Marketing

There are certain things that anyone can hear and automatically say “I don’t think that’ll work very well” without doing any real research. You hear something and you have a visceral reaction that just makes you go with your gut because it makes sense. Even in those kind of no-brainer situations it helps when your “gut” is validated by a reputable source who actually did a little research. The latest case of this occurrence comes from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. As reported over at ars technica the prestigious group has done the research to help us all say that our collective gut is right on the money when it comes to paywalls for news: the idea pretty well sucks. Advertising remains the primary means of support for online news outlets, and there’s a long uphill battle facing anyone trying to forge new business models, at least according to a report produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The extensive report on the State of the Media examines numerous aspects of the media world, but emphasizes that, when it comes to online news, getting people to pay for content they otherwise value is “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons.” Ouch. Last I heard, butterflies never go back into their cocoons. Boy it would be just like some mean old news guy like Rupert Murdoch to force a butterfly to do something so unnatural. Some of the numbers that support this claim are that 81 percent of Internet users say they are fine with online ads of it keeps the content free. A surprising number of people click on these ads as well with 21 percent saying they do and the numbers going up to 39 percent when the level of someone’s Internet usage is high. On the downside, however, is the admission by these folks that they actually like ads because they “find them easy to ignore”. Ouch again. The combined effect of lower ad impact and revenue has led many news sites to look for new ways to make some money, but the Pew report is not very optimistic on the prospects for other business models. Only seven percent of Americans said they would consider paying for news content and most said they would simply look for content elsewhere if their favorite site put up a pay wall. The likelihood of hybrid offerings is increasing because the first company of any relevance that fails while trying a paywall only approach rather than the traditional free approach will get beat up pretty bad. Although the pressure for revenue is severe the downside of actually acting on all this paywall talk could be keeping folks away from it. With only 7% of Americans saying that they would pay for content is seems hard to believe that there is any room for this model moving forward. What’s your take? Please be sure to comment in our new “pay per comment” section. You’d pay for that opportunity wouldn’t you?

Tags: Business, cocoons, downside, internet, media, money, numbers, prestigious, project, Research, research-center, Rupert Murdoch, traditional
Posted March 15, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media