Cloaking and Blackhat SEO tools

Unfortunate to see a thread discussing cloaking at SEW closed.
Seems that some people thought to throw passionate personal morality into the discussion, rather than learn more about a technique that remains esoteric, and requires further understanding.
I don’t use cloaking - I have neither the experience nor technical knowledge to - but I would have [...]

Why links are important for Google

Someone asked at SEW whether links were really important for Google. I’ll repost my reply below:

Is the “Links Industry” aided and abetted by certain SEOs taking us for a ride?
In many cases any question on G ranking elicits the knee-jerk answer of “more links/anchor text” with no suggestion that on-page factors may be woefully inadequate.

Google [...]

Why the gbrowser is coming

Google are going to develop to their own browser. This is not a possibility - this is a necessity. The question is simply: when?
Why am I so certain of this? Simple.
According to Google’s financial report for Q1 2005, Google had revenues of over $1.2 billion.
97% of this is generated by its AdWords advertising program.
Of these [...]

AdSense: visitors can choose ads on page

I’d not seen the above feature before - in an AdSense leaderboard on one of my finance news sites, the ads includes an invitation for the surfer to choose a different set of ads.
Not sure how effective that can be - ideally, as a publisher, the casual surfer wants to get where they want to [...]

I’m switching from Firefox to Internet Explorer

I moved to Firefox because of the security issues.
Running a business computer, there are files on this harddrive I would rather other people not have access to. Or my online accounts. I need to ensure by business PC is secure and reliably secure.
I gave up on Internet Explorer after it executed a virus it found [...]

Bob Massa on SEO’s greatest weakness

When asked What do you say are our Search Engine Marketing industry BIGGEST growing pains? at the SearchEngineWatch forums, there were a number of different replies.
Some tried to lever the discussion towards an ethics debate, and my personal suggestion was that the worst growing pain was yet to come, and that was coporate business levering [...]

Yahoo! search is crap

Apparently, anyway.
I’ve already raised my concerns in public at SEW because this site - www.platinax.co.uk - doesn’t apparently exist on Yahoo! search, even after six months.
As I wrote there:

Last month, slurp came in and grabbed about 2 MB of bandwidth, compared to Google’s 2 GB. The site does not appear in Yahoo! for it’s own [...]

Consumer-centered marketing

Seth Godin lists what every good marketer should know - and I’m pleasantly surprised to see such a consumer-focused approach.
Perhaps it would be naive to think otherwise - after all, Seth Godin is the champion of Permission Marketing, but somehow the interests of the consumer all too often seem steam-rollered by the corporate mindset that [...]

Bob Massa and Danny Sullivan discuss Webposition and SearchKing penalties

There are some interesting comments on the Webposition and Searchking penalties discussed on the Search Engine Watch forums in this thread: Webposition.com de-indexed.
For a start, the issue of Free Speech with regards to Google comes up. Of course, the general reasoning is that Google cannot be forced to air other people’s views and opinions via [...]

Google’s declining relevancy

Google couldn’t even rank its own main domain first for a search of its own unique brand name yesterday.
It made for a short discussion at Search Engine Watch, and Barry Schwartz has a screenshot - though he misses out the fact that Desktop search held positions 1 and 3, simply according to having both a [...]

Google’s dominance and proxy web accelerator

I asked in the Platinax forums a few days ago about Google’s current dominance in search.
The response so far - it’s unavoidable, and possible even necessary.
Certainly that’s true to a point - Google have gotten where they are through sheer innovation and focus on delivering best relevancy - or certainly had until recently.
Regardless of current [...]

Death of the car salesman?

(aka: How the internet could reveolutionise buying a car)
Car salesmen
Of all the types of salesmen in the world, the car salesman is probably the most universally reviled.
In an industry of high-priced consumer goods with a relatively low product turnover, commission-based aggressive marketing has become a norm.
Whatever the car salesman is telling you is pivoted [...]

Pointers on moving an internet business home from home

Moving to Scotland had been an idea for a while, but when the actual move came it was all done at very short notice. And I put my business at risk through improper planning of it.
We had been renting in Hull, and looking to rent in Scotland while we looked for that final property we’d [...]