Emails are the main method that my link builders use in order to build new links. It’s how we started doing things, and it continues to work for us. While there are other methods that we’ve tried, emails seem to work the best for us. That could be because for a lot of the industries […]
Finding tickets for your favorite concert or sporting event can be hard enough, but if your search starts with Google, chances are good that your first challenge will be getting around the veritable spamfest that ticket affiliates and second-tier ticket resellers have created. A reader contacted us last week to point out what’s going on. […]
A blog post from cloud security company Zscaler suggests that some Google searches recently returned results with 90% malicious links, and the spammers are using Google Trends to do it. The example used in the post is a search for [tri energy], a phrase that was the hottest search on Google Trends on Friday, April […]
Saying that web site hacking and other forms of abuse is on the rise, Google has announced plans to step up the notifications it sends to webmasters when the company finds these problems. Beginning this month, Google will use the Message Center area in Google Webmaster Tools to notify site owners about Spammy or abused […]
CNet News reports that spammers and scammers are exploiting Google Doodles. As you can imagine, there are many people who click on the Google Doodle from the Google home page. Clicking on the logo will trigger a search result in Google. If you look at Google Hot Trends for yesterday, you will see that the […]
Make no mistake. I think real time search is indeed one of the most exciting developments that’s happened in the search space in years. But I also think search engines are acting a bit like cats getting a sniff of catnip. They’re high on real time search and acting kind of crazy. This week, Google […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Search In Pictures: Google México Party, One Republic @ Google & Pineapple 5K In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people […]
Google has tweaked its guidelines for local businesses that use the Google Maps Local Business Center. The new guidelines are listed on Google’s Business Listing Quality Guidelines page. On Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz shows both the old and new guidelines, while on his blog, Mike Blumenthal charts the differences between the two versions. According […]
Facebook has been in an ongoing fight against spam and yesterday announced a significant victory in court. The company said it had obtained an eye-popping $711 million judgment against Spam King Sanford Wallace who had had posted unwanted messages on Facebook users’ Walls. Wallace, who is reportedly bankrupt may also face time in the big […]
Local businesses typically use search marketing to achieve two main objectives: getting customer calls and walk-ins. They do this by publishing their address and phone number in search engines and local directories so that an interested customer can take action one way or another – by walking into a restaurant or calling a plumber for […]
After last week’s “Does SEO = Spam” debate erupted, I had a number of follow-up emails where I explained privately more about why SEO has such a bad reputation in some quarters, as well as what SEO is and isn’t, from my perspective. I wanted to share some of that below. Bad Advice Sucks: From […]
The Google Webmaster Central blog has a post on “dealing” with low quality backlinks. In that post, Google basically explains that incoming links is “just one of many” ranking factors. That being the case, Google says if you have bad quality incoming links, “don’t fret” it and focus on things you can control, like your […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Levinson Leaves Google’s Board Of Directors, Stays On Apple’s Arthur Levinson, a member of Google’s board of directors since 2004, has resigned from that position effectively immediately. Google’s announcement doesn’t give […]
At the end of next month, September 30, Google will expand the current “developer preview” of Google Wave to roughly 100,000 consumer users. According to Google, “included in this group of early testers will be some of the businesses using Google Apps.” In anticipation of this wider release, Danny and I got some time with Lars Rasmussen […]
I will be living blogging Yahoo’s product call, so please check back here for frequent updates. 2:00pm: Title of the introductory slide is “Connecting You To What Matters Most”. 2:04pm: Still waiting to begin, not sure what the delay is. 2:06pm: The conference room manager said she is still trying to find the presenter, if […]
The Google Local Business Center has added a way to link directly to your Google Maps coupons and has added a verification process for those who use the bulk upload process. Mike Blumenthal noticed the new link to coupon feature the other day. You can link directly to a specific coupon or to all your […]
The web’s first (and some might still argue only) “killer app,” email, was invented roughly 35 years ago. And everyone seems to have ideas on how to bring it into the 21st Century. Google Wave is aiming to be an email replacement of sorts: a real-time, social communication and collaboration platform. Yahoo, for its part, […]
What is it? Google’s answer to Twitter? Email and IM replacement? Personal communications and collaboration platform? These were questions and characterizations that emerged as Google announced Wave at the company’s May developer event in San Francisco. (Here’s a bit more context from my related post at the press conference.) It’s a shapeshifter, a new species […]
Microsoft has announced the addition of Bing searches to its Hotmail email service. It works via Hotmail’s quick add feature and lets users search the web via Bing while composing an email, then put content found via Bing into the outgoing message. To be clear, this isn’t a new feature. The feature debuted late last […]
Since their infancy, social news sites have been trying to stay one step ahead of social media users trying to artificially promote content to their front page. Digg.com has been the center focus for spamming and gaming in social media because a front-page promoted story equates to thousands of visitors and hundreds, or even thousands […]
Here’s a new one on me. I just got an email telling me that I’ve won nearly $1 million from a “drawing” randomly selected from those searching on Google. Suffice to say, it’s a scam. I can assure you that Google’s done no drawing like this. Add the spam to those about missing fortunes in […]
Earlier this month, I covered various ways people are spamming Twitter in my Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article. Since then, I’ve been diligently reporting some of the more annoying spam I see. Despite this, none of the reported accounts have been closed. So, it’s time for a public spam report — and some education […]
You could be the next “Will It Blend” but if nobody knows about you, then it doesn’t matter how creative and awesomely original you are. One of the most important factors in social media is the promotion of your content, and this often leads to annoyance. There are many annoying social media habits, but perhaps […]
If you use Twitter regularly, you probably know spam is a growing problem — particularly with Twitter’s search engine and the way it surfaces trending topics. Danny Sullivan described how spammers are targeting hot keywords in his Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article 10 days ago. Since Twitter hasn’t addressed the problem yet, the folks […]
And so real-time search begets real-time spam. We knew this would happen, but it’s annoying and becoming a growing problem. Question is, will Twitter do anything about it, beginning with removing its “Trends” feature?I got an up close & personal look at how bad Twitter “trend spam” has become when this week, our SMX Advanced […]
I’m in the Google Wave press conference, following a dizzying keynote — dizzying, at least, after a night of little sleep. As he did yesterday Google co-founder Sergey Brin joined the discussion and similarly apologized for arriving late. Danny live blogged the keynote earlier this morning. He jokingly compared Wave to Lotus Notes. In some […]
Google is removing one of the most common excuses for not using Gmail: “It’s such a pain in the (beep) to switch!” The company announced a new tool that simplifies the process of importing emails and contacts from other providers, including bigger competitors like Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. All new Gmail users have access to […]
AOL recently soft-launched Love.com, which it advertises as a collection of “topic blogs” that “provide a central view into what the world is loving now.” But it’s really an SEO play. Give the site any subdomain under the sun, and Love.com will make a new site on-the-fly with content scraped from news sites, blogs, YouTube […]
When using social news sites for search marketing, you are inevitably going to run into annoying people. Some, in fact, may be actively trying to undermine your credibility, to further their own agenda. You need to watch out for these troglodytes, and respond appropriately to maintain your own credibility. Here are the 10 worst kinds […]
Google has allowed the community to edit Maps listings for some time. That capability has not been generally abused although there have been some persistent issues with mapspam. Today Barry posted at SEO Roundtable that anyone could go in and request that a business listing be permanently removed because the location was, allegedly, permanently closed: […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google has a detailed blog post named Open redirect URLs: Is your site being abused? The post goes through the issues with having “open” redirects on your site. Open redirects can lead to spammers abusing your site and ultimately hurting your rankings in Google or other search engines. The post goes through the various methods […]
The Live Search Blog announced the addition of email alerts for Live Search News. Live Search had RSS results for a while, but did not have a way to subscribe to news alerts via email. Live Search now gives you the ability to get these alerts via email either once a day, twice a day […]
Google’s Matt Cutts posted a twenty minute video summarizing two presentations he gave last year. The video goes over what he considers to be virtual “blight,” or when a site or community becomes stale with spam. In addition, Matt shows us how to put on a “blackhat” and think like a spammer. The video is […]
A lawsuit over a Yelp.com review has been settled, but the larger issue of how business owners, customers, and review sites will co-exist online remains wide open. CNET is reporting that a San Francisco chiropractor and his disgruntled patient have settled their differences over a negative review that the patient posted on Yelp. Dr. Steven […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
The Gmail team has been busy over the last few days. They have added emoticons to mail messages, created a new labs project for canned responses and updated their mobile client for J2ME-supported phones and Blackberry devices.
Below is live coverage from day two of the 2008 Search Marketing Expo East conference.
Google Maps spam has been a major issue for a long time but it seems Google has taken a step to fight back. Mike Blumenthal reported that Google has added an official document named Local Business Center Guidelines. These guidelines are similar to the webmaster guidelines for web search and now also even includes a […]
According to a new report from The Pew Internet & American Life Project, daily use of search engines is growing and starting to approach email usage levels. New research conducted by telephone among 2,251 US adults, age 18 and older, found that 49 percent of internet users use a search engine on a typical day, […]