Google really doesn't listen!

A friend of mine who manages a BIG PPC account with Google told me the other day (over a beer) that when he sends an enquiry to Google about some random account management issue, if he telephones, there will be a 30% chance  they will actually pick up the phone. It takes on average 5 different conversations to resolve the problem.

So thats  about 15 ‘no contact’ calls to fix an issue.

If he emails, he gets a response between 3 and 12 days. These responses are generally generic, so he usually has to email back and query Google’s response between 2 and 4 times,  which takes another 3 to 12 days to get a reply on per query.

So thats at least 15 days for a useful answer.

BUT… if Google have an outstanding invoice with my buddy, they chase every day and often twice a day. When he responds to the Googler chasing the money, 4 out of 5 times he doesn’t get a reply from his contact. So the other month, he was put on final reminder!

Conslusion: Google have  really bad customer service. But we know that of course.  

BTW – Bing do care and believe it or not they do have attentive and helpful customer service staff, I just hope they win more market share!

Were talking about Glenn Beck, who Wikipedia describes as

Beck has become a well-known and polarizing public figure, whose provocative views have afforded him media recognition and popularity, along with controversy and criticism. To his supporters, he is a conservative champion, defending traditional American values from progressivism, while to his detractors he is notorious for conspiracy theories and incendiary rhetoric.

He airs the Glen Beck show on Fox TV. It’s a commercial channel and it needs advertising to warrant the show to be shown. No advertisers equals no show.

No show means he can’t disseminate his vitriol as effectively.

So this group stopbeck.com have been lobbying advertisers to NOT associate their brand with this guy and its working! As of the last month, no sponsors have been associated with the UK show and if you look at the list of current advertisers versus ones who have walked away, you can see there is a ratio of about 1:2

It tells me that brands are more sensitive than ever before to how easily negative perception can escalate. Once they could have relied in people not talking amongst themselves, but with the Internet that has all changed. This IMHO is a great manifestation of markets becoming conversations

Fail? - no, just another way to pimp for marketeers

Ive read that YouTube is now spreading the auto-captioning tool across all YouTube videos.  So this adds captions (like you see on translated movies) to the video.

One interesting point is Google is using the assembled data and algo’s from its directory enquiries and mobile applications services to get the accuracy rate up.

Google are making a big thing of accessibility.  However the bit I find most interesting is how they now analyse a video, extract words have time stamps for those words and so can now use their word based algos to index the videos and include more relevant videos within their blended search results.

So now welcome to a whole new world of spam as marketeers  manipulate video to get into the hottest search results.

Google’s post on auto captioning

The Reg talking about it’s spread into all videos on YouTube

Hmm, thats interesting Teddie

I was on a speaking gig the other night and the title of the talk was ‘Search is Dead, Long Live Search‘. So I was up with:
Ciarán Norris – Head of Social Marketing & Director, Invention at MindShare (social media)
Teddie Cowell – SEO Director, Guava (SEO agency)
William Tunstall-Pedoe – CEO & Founder, True Knowledge
Alan Patrick – Consultant,Broadsight
CHAIR: Jon Myers – Head of Search / Associate Director, MediaVest

I've got something important to say!

My big theme was around how Caffeine ( yes that one again ) is going to change the landscape where spamming is going to get tougher and tougher. Along with that will come the split out between:

- Boring commercial brand owned stuff that users don’t particularly want to look (you pay for prominence via PPC)

- Interesting stuff written by individuals about those boring brands, where they help makes sense of what is the best consumer wise. (you have to have something interesting to say & be on the consumer side as a brand)

For anyone not familiar with the BIG idea, it comes from a site called cluetrain.com where they say ‘markets are conversations’. Think of amazon and its reviews, then think ‘web wide’ where forums and ‘real conversations’ happen and imagine Google filtering the results so you get those ‘conversations’.

An interesting screen grab:

Its that red box!

So from trying a few searches, the multi links are still generally at the bottom of the page, but assuming users like this stuff, you will see that block rising and you will see stuff like this crowd out the ranking where the ‘brand sites’ used to live.

If you think its my imagination, check this post on the google glog talking about this new kind of forum block.

On the general theme of the commercial index being eroded by informational listings, check this: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=casino

(screengrab below)

It's the red box again!

To wrap up:

Here is my message from the Chinwag night. “If you are a boring brand, or not that clever with ‘social engineering’ I.e. creating a footprint so Google thinks your site is important to their users – then you will pay dearly through PPC. ”

And lest you forget, Google is a public company and so is only interested in sustainable maximisation of profits.

By the way, I do think there is a BIG future for SEO with Google, but it will take a very different route than the hack/spam route we hear so much about. And honestly I’m only beginning to really figure it out.

Infamy at last

I did a very time consuming powerpoint presentation for wordcamp UK on seo for wordpress, where I went through all the best plugins I have used over the years for SEO.

I’m glad to say it’s been picked up by an SEO guy in Malaysia who give my PPT some praise – so thanks for the respect Ruhan

The post with my PPT on SEO for wordpress

Price Comparison RIP

Andy Beal tells us that Google is getting into the finance business by offering mortgage quotes….

It appears that LendingTree, a leading online mortgage quote provider, has taken umbrage with the company, Mortech, that provides some of the power behind LendingTree’s service. As a result, Google gets to play as well.

“LendingTree recently learned that Google imminently plans to launch a loan aggregation service in late August or early September of this year that would compete with LendingTree,” the complaint says. “Lending Tree has also learned that Mortech intends to make its pricing engine services available for use with Google’s new service and will send information related to mortgage loan offers to be displayed to consumer on Google’s Web site.”

This is MASSIVE news…for some time I have been saying its only a matter of time before Google point their technology at other profitable areas where search technology can be used to great effect…Price comparison. This  is made for Google and they obviously feel finance is a good place to begin.

So if you have a business that aggregates information where you have a slice of commission for a sale generated, then watch out.

—

Google release data to tell us that ad positions don’t affect conversion. So its a case of prominence giving more volume and your landing pages giving the extra performance. My take away: take more care over your landing pages.

—

The definitive SEO checklist. It’s a massive SEO compendium created by  Seomoz. They say:

The following ranking factors were rated by our panel of 72 SEO experts. Their feedback is aggregated and averaged into the percentage scores below. For each, we’ve calculated the degree to which the experts felt this factor was important for achieving high rankings as well as the degree of variance in opinion, estimated using the standard deviation of the contributors’ answers. Thus, factors that are high in importance and low in contention are those where experts agree the most that the factor is critical to rankings.

—

I thought this comscore data might interest you…Its the global and international share of search. Global = everything. International = Everything except the US. And yes the big G is the gorilla.

Compare sites fast

Clarence was talking to me about its SEO uses and having given this the weekend to think about it amongst doing the usual weekend stuff, I think I have an opinion…

It’s fine as a general quick look at the results, but for hard core SEO, typically you would want to use a rank checker. And when using that kind of tool, you would probably track Google / .Com / Co.uk / Bing / Yahoo.
By using this kind of tool, you get historical data an in tabular form, so you can get it onto a spread sheet.

So in conclusion, fun tool that I intend to carry on using as an on the fly comparison tool. My only big question is how they plan to make money out of this!?

All eyes in the UK will still be on Google

Nice! Ive been published in Computer Weekly ! the only downer is that 350 words just does not do the subject justice, so I thought I’d a little more to it.

My main assertion is that in the UK, the Microsoft/Yahoo deal probably won’t matter all that much…Ive speculated that were looking at 18 month before any real action.

The article on BingHoo is here : Opinion: Will the Microsoft Yahoo deal change your online marketing?

On the PPC side, I’m fortunate to work with a really clever PPC guy (Kemley Sellars) and last week we had been discussing how this will affect him.

His view is that Microsoft have lifted their game as far as making it easier for PPC managers to upload accounts and manage them. Its now almost a simple porting across and if you ask nicely … they will even build the account for you. Of course you could say its desperation but then I prefer to thing it’s helpfulness.

But share is declining and traffic talks. So its a small side show until something bigger rolls in.

On SEO it’s a case of a spammed and an Algo that just is not as mature as Google’s (this tool will give you some idea: http://www.blackdog.ie/google-bing/ ) And with the Yahoo deal an arms race has escalated with the prospect of a commercially viable amount of traffic in the US (about 21% market share on BingHoo) to go and spam to get ranked and thus make revenue from.  And yes spamming is cold hard big money making.

So of course Bing is going to have to up its game, but can it? Remember there is a stream of patents churning from the big Tec companies and Google is a major source of patentable technology (Bill Slawski’s SEO by the sea have a ton of stuff on Google Patents) So for every innovation that gets nailed by a patent is obviously a technology competitor won’t get to use unless they pay a massive price.

My feeling is that Microsoft will not be able to catch Google on search software. Same on Hardware to power this massive infrastructure – Google is genius ! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform and if they can run a server for 30% less than anyone else, that means more servers and lower running costs.

More servers means >  more computational resource for their data infrastructure >  for the right money > and that means a more sophisticated algo, to get you better search results.

And then there is a sense of mission and shared identity within Google and Microsoft. I have had the pleasure of meeting a number of Googlers and Microsoft people and whilst they are all very nice, the Googlers stand out as having a real shared sense of mission. Theirs is “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Everys single one of them I had met seemed to have this enshrined in their makeup as a mission. Microsoft? I don’t know what it is. Do you? Try a search and see of you can find anything here

So weaker technology, probably less effective hardware and a lack of a clear virtuous mission spells a road to failure.

Well worth 5 minutes of your time:

thanks Fi for the vid

Happy social media employee!

Yes, I know there is a massive recession underway – so who on earth is hiring !?, but randomly I’ve been peripherally involved in helping a friend hire a new staffer to handle a social media role.

The main idea is to become a part of a community and from within, promote certain services. A problem is how to filter applicants, so you get it right 1st time. My experience is that its not qualifications, it’s time spent online, the innate nature of the person and their ability to ‘socialise’ very well online in a structured way.

Also for marketing,  since social media is about influence not buzz, its critical to find candidates who are natural influencers.

So I wrote this email to help out:

Questions you should ask

- Have you got a blog? or do you guest blog or write on any site? yes? whats the URL?
This shows that they like to give their opinions and share them online. It also shows they have some initiative, since it takes effort to set  up and run a blog. the popularity of their work obviously shows they can make themselves prominent online and that they like being at the centre of attention.

- Have you ever done any affiliate marketing i.e. got your own affiliate site?
If you don’t know what affiliate is see here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing.
Its not that likely they have done any, but if they have thats great. it shows genuine initiative and commercial awareness, which is important since ultimately they are an extension of your sales function. Its not terribly important whether its been a big success, just that they learnt from this and can apply their knowledge to the business.

- Do you understand SEO?
Trick question, since very few people do…and its a great opportunity for people to dig themselves into a hole.
If they do understand the principles, it will help your online marketing by another 30% or more.
People who do know it will talk about sites they have done and search rankings they have achieved. The more commercial and commonly used the phrase and the higher ranking the better.  So ‘car insurance’ is better than ‘under 18 car insurance kent’.
For a 101 guide to seo see here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-1-page

- Do you hang out on forums? which ones? and how long have you been there? and how many posts have you done on these forums?
More is more…so more time spent, more forums and more posts  is all good. This shows the person can embed themselves within communities and become trusted. Building trust is core to all this social stuff.

- How many friends do you have on facebook? what groups are you a member of?
On facebook over 120 friends is good – 600 is very good and above is really working the system. This just show how much of an online socializer the person is. Lots of friends means they can build contacts easily.

- How many connections do you have on linkedin?
Same as facebook.

- Do you use twitter?
If they have over 600 followers then good, but great if the person has fewer following than followers. i.e. more follow this persons updates, then he or she follows. If they bang on about how awesome twitter is, then bad, since there is not a great deal of utility for marketing in twitter (yes it’s true!).

- What other social networking communities are you a member of?
In SEO there is sphinn which I do some stuff with. Do they hang out on any specialised communities and if they do, how prominent are they? more is more here.

- What is your ‘handle’
People usually have a handle like anddroid or whatever when hanging out on the forums. Type it into google and see how many times the handle comes up. If 1000′s of times then good.

What do I mean by that? Well years ago when reputable companies were spamming anyone they could with ‘helpful marketing messages’, Seth Godin wrote permission marketing, a book that helped me understand that if you are lucky enough to have an individual give you permission for you to communicate with them, then DON’T ABUSE IT! And back in 1999 there was a lot of email abuse…

Today he has moved with the times and written Tribes, a book about how anyone can start a movement and gather a tribe about them. This is so reflective of how the Internet can allow people to gather together and how leaders can emerge from nowhere, despite disparate geographical location.

More Seth Godin videos

It was a 2 hour thing sponsored by we are social, an agency in social media. 50 of us gathered in 4 groups of about 12 and were set a task related to accountability in social media i.e. analytics and how campaigns can demonstrate their ROI.

Great fun, but very little on how to define ‘commercial intent’. I do plan to attend more of these, since I did learn a lot about how ‘foggy’ social media marketing is.

You want to buy some software. Who do you believe?

THIS?

A 1 star rating and 220 reviewers saying how they are disgusted with how intuit have finally made enemies of them.

I have used TurboTax for many years, but not any more.

Turbo is clunky and inelegant, but up to 2007 you could use it to do several returns. The 2008 version does not permit you to do that. Plus, Intuit has become more and more insistently intrusive.
This is a good year to try a competitor’s product.

Intuit has been edging closer and closer to the edge of the cliff for years with the way they treat their customers… and now they’ve gone over the edge with the higher price and the hidden terms about a limit to one return. There was already a huge price increase last year when e-file suddenly cost a lot more money. The year before that, they forced me to use Deluxe because the feature set of the basic version was downgraded.

the offending product on Amazon

OR THIS:

http://turbotax.intuit.com/

This whole story demonstrates why:
a. User feedback is critcal for making good buying decisions

b. The internet is one giant conversation

c. greedy corporates who don’t get a + b and peddle substandard services and products deserve what they get in this age of the ‘conversation’

Linkbuilding

Luckily I get loads of spammy requests for link exchanges. Why lucky? because one of the big sites I look after is that prominent, its a magnet for link builders.? 

And we got that way by having a great site, with content that is genuinely useful and then mixed it in with some ‘robust’, but sustainable linkbuilding practices.? 

Anyhow this useful and comprehensive article echoes my views on linkbuilding…

http://www.saadkamal.com/featured/link-building-a-complete-walkthrough/

So for my UFO entertainment fix I have subscribed to Acebryan7ox.

Today I find he has been removed from youtube… and he is not the only one apparently

• acebryan,
• nightfallproject,
• rodneykingman,
• teabowbraine,
• realeducation,
• vormeggio,
• mayorofcydae,
• wildtonic
• heartofdrakn
• NafrikaKorps

These are only a portion of the 20 or so big names taken offline. And I must say how disappointed I am about this. I always figured youtube was a place where you could trust for allowing account holder to more or less do their thing (except for obscenity and copyright infringement)

Of course being part of Google (an evil company BTW) its going to be impossible to get straight answers. I do hope someone get an alternative site going so there is a counterpoint and a solid base from which ‘alternative’ views can be interacted with.

Bad, bad, bad

Its a huge area and of course very competitive, but in my experience if its a subject you understand well and you can really add value to the user, then you will find it easier to get links and so rank

One of the sites I work on http://betting.betfair.com has adopted this approach and has done really well as an?  ‘affiliate’?  and its performs a place where there is a lot of ?£?£ – so its extremely competitive.

The other interesting disconnect is between sites that get tons of traffic and those that commercialize the traffic.

for traffic, typically you get a fan of a subject who starts a blog and it goes from there – or you get a company how produces content for puts out a website and because they know how to write, it gets traction a good example of this would be www.anorak.co.uk

Affiliates though typically don’t know how to write and end up just playing the SEO game, which is fine, but not really sustainable since users are more sophisticated now than of old and see these sites for what they are : crap.?  An example of this is casinochoice.co.uk (do you really believe them?)

And of course search engines look at this kind of site as
a. not good for the user
b. taking money they could have in PPC

In respect to reading material… For SEO, I’ve always talked about Aaron Walls SEO book and of course SEOMoz

But the real trick with affiliate is to align your knowledge of a subject with something where there is plenty of money i.e. gambling – and be useful to the user and go hard on seo.

In respect to doing legwork on affiliate, its worth going though a few networks to get a feel for what right for you

http://www.reviewcentre.com/products129.html

And interestingly when you look at the numbers, revenue to you is typically 5% of user spend – except for gambling and money, but of course money is rather out of favor right now…

So in conclusion: affiliate is tough, but easy if you add value and help users to make a decision that is ultimately positive for them i.e. the best gambling company, the best TV and so on. If I were to show you the the best affiliate of all (in my opinion) – it would be www.moneysavingexpert.com and in gambling I think my (employers) site is good www.betting.betfair.com – study and learn!

The SEO moz article for your interest

I’m currently working on an international SEO project with 5 different countries, amongst them is a Chinese team. And before my time with the Chinese, I guess I had no real appreciation of how industrious they really are relative to everyone else I’m dealing with.

Once the budget had been decided upon, they got to work gathering a content team together in a matter of a few weeks they were writing good stuff. Finding a link building business was easy – and away we go… no messing about, no procrastination. Once they committed, they went for it. So in all I have been deeply impressed by the Chinese.

And in a broader context with the global financial crisis, I can only assume China will only come out stronger economically and that will translate into an even more powerful online presence and a bigger online market to go for.

So if you’re wondering about SEO for the next 10 years, maybe its time to learn Chinese and start studying baidu.com

Random thoguht: I wonder if there is a parallel universe in China where the big SEO’ers hang out as they do here…

I’ve been on a cool trip to San Jose SES where i got to meet some really cool people and meet some suppliers I now plan to work with.

Below are a few pictures from the trip!

[flickr]set:72157606972365819[/flickr]

Go to a random page, paste this line of code into you browser address bar and begin to hack, copy , paste and delete stuff on the web page. (THIS DOES NOT HACK A REMOTE SITE, JUST THE ONE IN YOUR BROWSER)

It works on internet explorer and firefox
javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0
google before:

google after

have fun!

Lifehacker as ever has a great post on backing up your google docs, email, notes calendar. As more and more of my digital life is in the custody o the big G, I have felt the need to get backed up, just in case.

I have always redirected my mail, so i have a local copy on my PC and also on my backup drive. Its a simple idea. Just set up a forwarder on your domain i.e. nick at nickgarner.co.uk and forward a copy to Googlemail. easy.

http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/back-up-your-google-apps-data-281635.php

and for google notebook, there is an export option in tools thats sends data to google docs and from there you can locally back it up, alternatively, you can take out a step, by saving the notebook as a html page, and then save the page locally.

How can you tell a real SEO?

1. Real SEOs ?€¦ Don?€™t wear hats in public
2. Real SEOs ?€¦ Hate doing PPC
3. Real SEOs ?€¦ Go to conferences to drink
4. Real SEOs ?€¦ Don?€™t care about algorithm updates
5. Real SEOs ?€¦ Have two or more search related T-shirts
6. Real SEOs ?€¦ Don?€™t go to the forums
7. Real SEOs ?€¦ Don?€™t care about rankings
8. Real SEOs ?€¦ Have seen Danny Sullivan drunk
9. Real SEOs ?€¦ Do SEO more than they write about it
10. Real SEOs ?€¦ Don?€™t give a damn about PageRank
11. Real SEOs ?€¦ Are Geeks (even if they don?€™t think so)
12. Real SEOs ?€¦ Have Tamar on at least 2 friends?€™ lists
13. Real SEOs ?€¦ Became an SEO by accident
14. Real SEOs ?€¦ Don?€™t even try to explain what they do anymore
15. Real SEOs ?€¦ Have the URL to the leaked SEO Sex Tape

Oh so true.

from the about us page:

As some of you already know, Kim and I are taking on a little challenge this Summer?€¦

We have entered the Mongol Rally (see www.mongolrally.com for details) .. a charity rally which takes place each Summer. The challenge is to drive a car with an engine no bigger than 1ltr from Hyde Park, London to Ulaan Bator,
Mongolia (i?€™ve included a map for those of you who aren?€™t quite sure where that is). Thats a 1/3rd of the way around the world, about 10,000 miles, with 7 mountain ranges and 3 deserts along the way (oh and there isn?€™t much
in the way of roads after poland).

We have been kindly donated a 1998 Nissan Micra, 998 cc.. its a beast! and are entered in the rally (team name – micragolia) and underway with preparations (any one able to teach us how to change a tyre?).

We are doing the rally to raise funds for 2 charities – Mercy Corps, and Hopes and Homes for Children. (info about the two charities is at the bottom of this page)

In way of an entry requirement we need to raise a minimum of ?£1000 for charity before we set off on July 21st.

Please Please sponsor us!!!!!!!!!

You can sponsor us online at our just giving pages..

Mercy corps – www.justgiving.com/micragolia

Hope and Homes for children – www.justgiving.com/micragolia2

Additionally, if any of you are involved with business or companies who may be interested in sponsoring our team please get in touch with us, in return we can offer advertising space on our car, website publicity and (if we get round to organising it) team kit. Please contact us via the email ad.. team@micragolia.com

PLEASE SPONSOR US! Its a crazy challenge.. and a really worthwhile cause.

Thank you!
Nettie Kelly & Kim Wetherall

?€œMercy Corps supports rural communities to meet their economic and social needs, helping individuals, families and communities to become more self-sufficient, diversified in their production, and better linked to local, regional and national markets?€

?€œHope and Homes for Children work in countries including Romania, Ukraine, Kosovo, Belarus and Moldova/Transdnistria, focusing on closing down the state institutions and removing children from the terrible conditions in these centres. The children are reunited with siblings, and where possible placed with their biological families. Other children are relocated to small family homes, which provide them with a loving, stimulating environment enabling them to reach their full potential. ?€œ

Anyway, the thing he did’nt make TOTALLY CLEAR is the importance of installing Xampp on C:\xampp

For some reason if you put Xampp in C:/Program Files/xampp?  – Movable type will just not work… it something to do with the .cgi files not being able to find xampp when there is a space in the file name.

So remember  ? ? ? ?  C:\xampp

“Total power used by servers represented about 0.6% of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2005.

When cooling and auxiliary infrastructure are included, that number grows to 1.2%, an amount comparable to that for color televisions. The total power demand in 2005 (including associated infrastructure) is equivalent (in capacity terms) to about five 1000 MW power plants for the U.S. and 14 such plants for the world.

The total electricity bill for operating those servers and associated infrastructure in 2005 was about $2.7 B and $7.2 B for the U.S. and the world, respectively.”

what does a 1000 mw station look like ?

check it out here ref: http://www.gxed.com/en/achieve-hd.asp

Generating personal recommendations as well as referrals for brand names, products and services

?€œI believe you, I trust you, I?€™ll do it?€

?€œMarkets are conversations?€ www.cluetrain.com

?€˜Word of mouth?€™ / ?€˜viral?€™ / ?€˜referral?€™ / ?€˜we don?€™t know where they came from?€™,?  marketing is the result of individuals evangelising about your product or service.

?€œMarkets are conversations?€. Because we like to share a good thing, we spread ideas through our personal networks. We talk. We are markets.

A ?€˜down and out?€™ suggesting to you: ?€˜Try Chanel perfume, Mate?€™ might have less weight than Nicole Kidman saying the same thing?€¦ Who gives the message, matters.

Where ever humans communicate, there is an opportunity to spread a good message.
?€˜I believe you, I?€™ll do it?€™. Anything or anyone who is trusted, is part of this word of mouth process. Humans, web sites, search engines.

For more and more businesses, the internet is where opinions and trust are largely formed.

So you have to get this right.

so i’ve got to work out a workaround – either by customising the menu so it doesn’t show the offending pages or by doing something interesting with robots.txt

anyway on the theme of robots.txt here are a few from famous wordpress blogs

Mattcutts.com
User-agent: *
Allow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /files/

seoegghead.com (note the satan bit / hiding the contact page)
User-agent: *
Disallow: /blog/seo/automatically-highlighting-internal-links-p51.html
Disallow: /blog/seo/msn-search-p5.html
Disallow: /blog/wp-content/
Disallow: /contact-the-egghead.php
User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /blog/seo/msn-search-p5.html
Disallow: /*?cat=
Disallow: /blog/wp-content/
Disallow: /contact-the-egghead.php
User-agent: msnbot
Disallow: /blog/seo/using-referers-http_referer-to-increase-conversions-and-perceived-relevance-p9.html
Disallow: /blog/wp-content/
Disallow: /contact-the-egghead.php
User-agent: slurp
Disallow: /blog/seo/yahoo-hostings-lack-of-htaccess-support-p8.html
Disallow: /blog/wp-content/
Disallow: /contact-the-egghead.php
User-agent: satan
Disallow: /

wordpress.org
User-agent: *
Disallow: /search

scobleizer.com
User-agent: IRLbot
Crawl-delay: 3600

User-agent: *
Disallow:

davidnaylor.co.uk/
doesnt actually use them !
which is interesting… ( i’ll email him and ask why )

Check it out, its very useful?  – it even has a viagra ad there !

The clever part of this was that Jaimie (one of the authors) had been broadcasting the fact that he was releasing the book about 4 months before launch from his site http://www.seoegghead.com and he offered to give a free copy of the book to SEO bloggers if they would return the favour and write about the book and maybe give a link or 2.

What Jaimie understands is that with SEO, link building and buzz building, are the binding ingredients in connecting a well optimised site to search engines.

If you don’t know, search engines see links as a vote of confidence in a site. The more good sites link, the more confidence – the higher the rankings. Thats a simplified version but basically correct.

So he sends these books out at about $10 USD a piece and for maybe a $1000 worth of freebies to bloggers like me, he gets our links, insight and hopefully for him, recommendation.

He knows with enough good buzz from SEO’ers, his book will reach into the core web dev community who are perfect for this book.

In my professional life I can see a growing recognition that if you can harness the love of a product or company or service and help those evangilists spread their message about you, that message will travel right into the people who you most want to have as customers.

So when www.seoblackhat.com had a post about climate change, it resonated with me.

The summary:

The science says that planets : Pluto, Venus, Jupiter, Triton are all heating up… and obviously if all 5 ( including earth ) are warming up, then there is only one reason … the sun

anyway, I’m not going to translate on this – just go and read for yourself:

http://seoblackhat.com/

Background: hes re organising his site and working out how to monetise it properly, so he asked about meta tags and keyword ideas.

“the meta tagging stuff is dependent on your keyword strategy i.e. what is a broad target i.e. celebrity gossip and so on.

I think the game is more traffic, to then get advertisers on board. advertisers are often unable to really analyse the traffic, until they have advertised. So bigger numbers are better on the whole for hooking them initially

Usually there is a ‘try it and see’ process with advertisiers, where you will have a musical chairs effect for a while (whilst they are paying for the pleasure) and then it settles down on a per advertiser basis.

So like I say, more traffic and make it look like converting traffic to a big spread of potential advertisers – they will judge the advertising potential by the tone of the content, not by the keywords your site is ranked for.

Keywords & subsequent referrals from the seach engines are a strong filter for the type of user you will get…and can’t really?  analyse at this depth initially.
And once you get a good stable of advertisers, make sure you do our best to find a balance between making the ads useful and keeping your traffic.

Its all smoke and mirrors and a bit of tight rope walking!”

For more on road pricing see here

And to go to the e petitions go here? 

I think road pricing falls into the same category as:

• Congestion charging in chelsea (london)
• Speed cameras not being a cash machine for the police
  

Sadly here inthe UK , things are getting worse in terms of housing costs and over regulation from the government….maybe its australia for me !