Archive for January 25th, 2007

January
25

Undetectable? We All Know What That Means

I had heard about a new “undetectable” linking strategy by the directory V7N, and just saw Matt Cutt’s take on it.

Pretty hillarious. Especially about the SEO Spammer later in the post. That is classic.

The main issue here, when a company or anyone makes a claim that something is “undetectable” or “bulletproof” that is when you know it will fail.

You can believe Matt’s team is hell bent on figuring out the new system of V7N. What is it with people making claims like this publicly?

It is a bad idea. Stop it already.

Posted in Google | No Comments »

January
25

AdSense “Exclusion Cap” Removed

Finally, a move that we have been DYING for Google to make for some time they have finally delivered! Here is the issue, you run AdSense on your site, but you notice that your competitors or worse, some spammers show up as ads. You don’t want that, so you exclude them. Problem, eventually you hit the cap and couldn’t add any more.

That just majorly sucked.

But that has changed. Here is the news straight from Google:

Today, we’d like to let you know about a recent change: you can now exclude an unlimited number of sites. We hope you’ll use the Site Exclusion tool to improve your ROI and refine your targeting across the network. And, as always, we’d like to remind you that excluding a site (or a section of a site) from one of your campaigns will prevent your ad from showing on all of the pages of that site (or section). Therefore, to ensure you don’t miss out on any potential customers, we suggest that you review a site carefully before deciding to exclude it from your campaign.

Today is a good day indeed, lots of great stuff happening, and it seems it is only going to keep getting better!

Posted in Google | No Comments »

January
25

Yahoo! Quality Score Coming

I have been getting nailed with emails from my contacts over the last week regarding the launch on February 5th of their new system that they are really excited about.

Yahoo! will launch its new search marketing ranking model in the U.S. on Monday, February 5. With the new ranking model, all Yahoo! search marketing ads in the U.S. will be ranked by quality in addition to keyword bid price. As a result, Yahoo! will be able to provide a more relevant search experience to users, more valuable customer leads to advertisers, and additional opportunities to its distribution partners.

The quality of an ad will be determined by its historical performance in the new system and its expected performance relative to other ads displayed at the same time. Ads of higher quality will generally receive better placement on the results page.

Currently the placement of advertisements on Yahoo! depends upon bid price, essentially, whoever bids the most gets the top spot. Google AdWords has used a complex methodology that takes the click through rate of the ad (quality) and other factors to determine who ranks #1. With this quality score, the advertisers will be able to know the score of their ads in this new system code named “Panama”. They would also be able to see an average position as well as approximate clicks for the advertisements.

Posted in Yahoo | No Comments »

January
25

Yahoo! Fixes “Undocumented Feature”

As a software tester, I would get frustrated with the developers when I would show them an obvious bug in the product and they would respond, “Oh, well that is an undocumented feature.” In other words, they screwed up, they know it, but they don’t feel like fixing it.

Lately, I have felt that Yahoo! Search is full of “undocumented features” especially in the Titles that are displayed.

Down at Webmaster World in Vegas this past November a good webmaster was labeled a “spammer” and a “cloaker” by the site review panel when it was a bug in the Yahoo! SERPs.

The issue is that Yahoo! was displaying the Title in all lowercase letters instead of how it appears in the Title. Since the Title was different in the SERPs than on the page, the panel labeled her a Spammer. I spoke to her afterwards and she was really upset over the label. I don’t blame her.

Tim Mayer (VP of Marketing at Yahoo!) said that the problem was that Yahoo! was pulling anchor text and that if the anchor text was in lowercase, it would show that way. I like Tim and have great respect for him and I am sure this looked like the case on many of the results that would show. However, in the tests that I did, it wasn’t the anchor text at all, it was just a display bug – plain and simple.

Regardless, what is Yahoo! doing using anchor text for the Title in the first place? That is a question that was never answered.

I guess it is business as usual and one more “undocumented feature” that suddenly works correctly. Just please don’t use the “working as designed” line when I get the “blue screen of death.”

Posted in Yahoo | No Comments »

January
25

“What Are You, A Dumb Ass?”

I am sorry, but when I saw this story the only people I could think of was Beavis and Butthead. You know those two idiots who would do the commentary during the videos on MTV back in the 90s. Yeah. THOSE guys.

I remember an episode when they were watching Jeopardy and Butthead says towards the screen, “You Dumbass” at the precise moment Alec Trebec corrects the contestant, “Remember to answer in the form of a question.” To which Butthead responds, “What are you, a dumbass?”

Classic. Even if it is classic idiotness, which is exactly what Microsoft is these days.

Are they serious? Have they gotten this stupid? Apparently so.

The summary is basically this: Microsoft felt there were some inaccuracies in some posts on Wikipedia that had to do with OpenSource. Microsoft felt those articles were written by people with strong ties with IBM or by IBM directly. Microsoft claims that they tried to go through and get the articles changed, but when they weren’t, they offered a Blogger cash to change them.

That is funny, damn funny if you ask me. I mean, this is as close to a “Godfather” payout as you will get in the search world, but the way that Microsoft went about it was as if they wanted to get caught. You can liken it to performing a drug buy in front of the police station.

Not a good move.

While the writer is claiming no money changed hands, I don’t buy it. They can tell the press whatever they want – and the writer is down in Australia.

Now, if you think I am calling Microsoft “dumb asses” for trying to edit the Wiki, you are wrong. They are dumb asses because they got caught.

How do I know this? Simple. I know personally a greatly respected white hat SEO who is a complete Spammer. Yet he/she is smart enough to cover their tracks so they can’t be detected. You mean to tell me with all of the resources and money that Microsoft has they couldn’t have kept this quiet?

I know many of you right now are editing sections of the Wikipedia for your own gain, or the gain of the products you market. Did you get caught? Of course not.

Maybe you can send your resume to Bill and tell him with your help, he can get his edge back, because he has definitely lost it. If I can quote David Lee Roth of Van Halen, “Big Bad Bill is Sweet William Now.”

You can read the complete article here.

Posted in MSN | No Comments »