Two Ways to Fry a Fish

Well that is an irrelevant post title, but I figured NickW would like it. :)

Online dating. Hyper competitive. Too many sites. etc etc etc. But you can still get links and traffic by approaching the topic from a different angle.

Desparate Dating is a good example of that.

The site might be absolutely offensive to a ton of people, but that site will likely get links from BOTH people who like it AND people who hate it. The site is equally unique and offensive, which is something that is oh-so-easy to link at.

One well known search engineer in the past also recommended creating a grammar nazi site that went around fixing everyone's borken grammar and linking back to the home site.

The Butler Dies

Diller Sacks the Butler:

Jeeves is out of a job.

IAC/InterActiveCorp. (IACI:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) is dropping the butler who doubles as the mascot of its recently acquired Ask Jeeves online search business.

The New York-based online empire, which acquired Ask Jeeves for $1.9 billion in July, plans to rebrand the Web site as Ask.com, CEO Barry Diller said Wednesday at an investment conference.

The article also mentions China next year. If they are smart they will talk to Shak before then, assuming they know what they want to do ;)

Ye Old Domain Names

Jim Boykin likes old sites.

And created two tools for looking up site age. I think Jim is still working on the tool naming front. Getting better though, the first tool only took an 18 word link to describe ;)

And if you want to register new domain names, this is a cool tool.

And while at Web Professor, I realize text in images is evil on the usability front, but I may sometime want to try this out. Although I already have tons of other usability issues that should be way way way better than they are on this site.

Free Secure Wifi?

Maybe. GoogleNet, coming soon...

Not sure if it will be secure enough to withstand the scud missles, though...

Changes at Yahoo! Search SERPs

over the weekend big changes at Yahoo!, according to Marcia

Robert Charlton added in:

I generally haven't watched Yahoo closely, but since the update in late July, where many inside pages dropped like rocks, I've been following some selected niche searches. My thought at the time was that there was some sort of "filtering" in place (and I'm probably using the word inaccurately), much like there was after Google's infamous Florida update.

What seemed to affect some searches and some sites didn't seem to affect others... there was talk of over-optimization penalties... and results just didn't feel right. After Florida, I felt that Google would have to fix it, and eventually they did. I've felt that about Yahoo since the July update, but it hasn't happened yet.

The Yahoo serps are Florida-like in one respect that I haven't seen discussed... nonsense exclusion strings in the search query seem to return to search to an approximation of pre-July normalcy. Add -asdf to a search a bunch of times and you'll see what I mean.

some sample Yahoo! searches:

What have you noticed different at the big Y! ? Whats with the -blah? Why do the ads not show up when you do an advanced search?

Big Media Sites Learning About SEO?

It will be interesting to see what happens to search business models as more people realize some links are paid, while some sites rank due to algorithm manipulation, and others are there due to spyware.

As more and more big players get into the SEO field doing things like

  • focusing on a niche

  • creating unique ideas and products
  • being the first with the news
  • finding ways to make people want to talk about you (as Peter D mentioned here)

will become increasingly important.

Of course some of the big players suffer from their size. Due to it's past walled garden approach AOL has become so irrelevant that they may only account for a few perecent of Google's profits, and yet companies like the New York Times are hiding away more and more of their content.

I recently spoke with one journalist who after about an hour of chatting said that he thought SEO sounded more interesting than journalism. I will be interviewing a former journalist who is an SEO guru soon.

Myriad Search / Free Authority Finder Launched

Authority Finder is another free search tool created by my friend Mike.

I wanted to create a tool which cross compared the search results from the major search engines to find the most authoritative results for a query (hence the name authority finder).

After a bit of thinking about it I realized with a few tweaks the tool could also double as a meta search engine and sorta like a share of voice tool (although an incomplete share of voice tool as it does not factor in paid listings and there are a ton of variables that go into who searches for what where).

A beta of the tool exists at Myriad Search.com.

Currently Myriad works with the Yahoo! & Google APIs. It queries MSN's search RSS feeds, but will be shifted over to their API sometime today or tomorrow at the latest.

I do not believe Ask has an API. I have sent mutliple emails to Ask to see if it was ok to include their search in the tool and they have not yet responded. Most of the stuff on their TOS talked about commercial use, and this tool is totally free. If they are unhappy with the tool querying Ask I will quickly remove Ask from it.

I have not yet released the source code since I will be changing out the MSN piece today and I still am somewhat uncertain as to whether or not Ask will care, although I am hoping they think it is ok. If not they can email me at seobook@gmail.com.

In the tools section I posted more in depth information about the features of Authority Finder.

Please let me know what you think.

Hate Site Reappears?

For a while SEO Consultants hosted pages related to Traffic Power and 1P.com.

Out of nowhere (perhaps even magically) a degenerate hate site about Edward Lewis appeared. That hate site, which has a design that looks an awful lot like Traffic Power Sucks.com, disappeared around the same time that SEO Consultants dropped their Traffic Power coverage.

That hate site recently reappeared.

I can only guess as to why the Edward Lewis hate site reappeared, but if I had to guess why, it would be one of the following (although these are just guesses):

I wonder if the fake SEO forums will be reappearing as well soon? If so, I hope the server logs are protected. Especially when some of the old ones still show referal data from other sites.

Interesting to note this post, which was mentioned on SEO Consultants, is still live. I hope Edward sues.

Traffic Power Lawsuit Update

Initially when I was sued by Traffic Power I partnered up with the fine folks at Traffic Power Sucks and helped share their lawyer fees.

Some of my friends donated far more than I could have ever imagined, and said they wanted me to buy the best lawyer I could find. A friend of mine in the SEO space who is legally well connected recommended I go with Ariel Stern from Jones Vargas.

Ariel had the case moved from state court to federal district court. The case number in federal court is CV-S-05-1109-RLH-LRL, and the website is located at www.nvd.uscourts.gov. I believe interested parties can follow the case developments using the Pacer service, but will need an account to log in.

The legal support calls and emails back and forth are flowing nicely and all is well on that front. Some bits of the case are sorta like a holding pattern though. As I learn more I will share it, although there are some bits I have been told not to share until some time passes.

Thanks to everyone who donated.

Disabled AdWords to be Deleted & Some Google Banned Websites to be Notified

When Google changed the AdWords system they left disabled keywords in AdWords accounts. If you did not re enable them Google will be deleting them next week.

Google is notifying some banned sites about why they were banned:

Google is trying out a pilot program to alert site owners when we're removing their site for violating our guidelines.

Many people have complained about the lack of communication between search engines and webmasters. I think the Google is smart enough to realize that if they can automate better webmaster relations that means more good PR and a larger marketshare for them. Of course, automating stuff can sometimes backfire too. Surely some search marketers are going to be beta testing the new system.

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