Online marketing
Analysis of the use of online technologies in marketing. Related subjects include:
- Structured search, especially as it relates to e-commerce
- (in DBMS2) Web/clickstream analytics
Google seems to have rehabilitated us
As previously noted, we were de-indexed by Google, due to the injection of a whole lot of spammy hidden links. We’re back now, after about two weeks, even on the blog (this one) where there was no official de-indexing notice and hence no way to apply for re-consideration. And thus we once again have high rankings for search terms such as Netezza, DATAllegro, Clarabridge, and Attivio.
We’re designing a new blog theme — the current one is just an emergency stopgap — that will (among myriad more important virtues) be more SEO-friendly. I’ll be curious to see whether that makes much actual difference from a search ranking standpoint.
| Categories: Google, Search engine optimization (SEO), Spam and antispam | 1 Comment |
Drive-by Google de-listing
As previously noted, we got hit with some hidden text, probably by SQL injection, and that lead to a Google de-listing. Of the three blogs affected by the attack, I got a de-indexing notice for one (DBMS2); another was de-listed without a notice (Text Technologies); and a third seems to have waltzed through still indexed (Software Memories). I also received a de-indexing notice for another site I have nothing to do with and indeed had never heard of before. Go figure …
We’ve now upgraded to WordPress 2.5, which should close the vulnerability. (Thank you Melissa Bradshaw!) Fearing our old, buggy theme would degrade further, we upgraded to a new one, Biru, designed by Bob. There are some teething-pain stability issues, but if they don’t cause a reversion in the next day, I’ll apply to Google for re-inclusion. (Uh, does anybody have some boundaries around how long that’s likely to take?)
All these hours of aggravation because some criminal wanted a bit of SEO advantage …
| Categories: Google, Search engine optimization (SEO), Spam and antispam | 1 Comment |
Over 80 percent of blog posts are probably spam
Doug Caverly highlights a Matt Mullenweg quote indicating that about 1/4 of all the blogs ever on WordPress.com were spam (aka splogs). Now, that’s probably a higher fraction than for the blogoverse overall, because:
- WordPress.com provides costless hosting; using your own domain costs money.
- Besides being free, WordPress.com hosting may provide a little “google juice”, which is the whole SEO point of spam blogging.
But there’s one more factor. Splogs have much higher posting frequency than real ones. 10-20+ posts per day is not uncommon, and 50-100+ is not unheard of. That’s 5-10X the post frequency of even the more active human-written blogs. So let’s assume:
- 10% of all blogs are spam.
- 10% of all blogs are actively written by humans.
- 80% of all blogs belong to humans, but are updated very infrequently if at all.
In that case, over 80% (and indeed probably over 90%) of all blog posts are made by machines rather than by human beings.
| Categories: Blogosphere, Search engine optimization (SEO), Social software and online media, Spam and antispam | Leave a Comment |
Anatomy of spam blogs
A post that gives you a clear sense of how gobbledydook is automatically generated (from another knowledgeable black-hat SEO who can’t be bothered to get his permalink structure sensible 😉 )
Automation secrets of black hat SEO
XMCP writes one of the better black hat SEO blogs. In a post last November, he laid out a ton of advice about automating black hat SEO. Personally, I don’t approve of doing black hat SEO. Still, it’s an intellectually interesting subject. What’s more, black hat SEOs create a large fraction of all websites, and certainly of all blog comments, links, and so on. So it’s interesting to track them.
Most interesting to me and probably to most readers here is the part that shows where black hat SEOs get their content: Read more
| Categories: Search engine optimization (SEO), Spam and antispam | 2 Comments |
An interesting Matt Cutts interview from December
Stephen Spencer has a great interview with Matt Cutts of Google, from last month’s Pubcon. Almost all of it is SEO-related. But it also contains a few tidbits that may be interesting even if one doesn’t care about SEO, such as:
- Google now indexes up to 1/2 a megabyte per page, up from the old 101K limit.
- Google needs to do a fair amount of image recognition, but they’re going fairly plain-vanilla. For Flash they use an Adobe-supplied SDK. For detecting hidden text (e.g., white-on-white) they use what Matt characterizes as pretty simple heuristics.
- As I noted recently, Google seems to have a lot of heuristics for identifying particular types of pages. In this interview, the example was that a page that would otherwise seem spammy because it consisted only of links would be fine if it were serving as a true site map or archive.
SEO highlights included: Read more
| Categories: Google, Search engine optimization (SEO), Search engines | Leave a Comment |
A very fast splogger
The first post ever on Strategic Messaging went up at 2:49 am. Within four hours, I had my first splog trackbacks, all from the same site. The strategicmessaging.com domain itself had just repropagated through DNS hours earlier, and had no incoming links other than Whois and the like.
Pretty impressive spamming. Not that it did him any good, of course, except insofar as he was stealing a bit of my content …
I’m getting mailbombed again
Shortly after my first reference to Shoemoney’s DMOZ issues — who did you think I meant with “shoe in his mouth“? — I got mailbombed big time. Things calmed down after a month or so, although I did change web hosting companies in the fallout.
Starting Christmas Eve — which coincidentally was shortly after a forum mention of various Shoemoney flaps, and of the first attack — I got hit again. And there was another wave right after Christmas. A fair amount of email was lost forever, possibly both professional and personal. My blogs also were down for a while, as were other sites on the same server. (And if you sent me any email over that time period, please resend it.)
It seems that I should move my email/MX record to a different service than hosts my websites, perhaps one that has invested in technology to efficiently deflect DDOS attacks. (Or perhaps I should move one domain with it, if a traditional hosting deal seems best.) Does anybody have any recommendations of such services? Read more
Thoughts from an overview of technology marketing
As part of the Monash Advantage program, I published a proprietary Monash Letter about online marketing … and another one … and some further stuff so proprietary I’m not even putting out teasers about it. Now I’ve taken the next step, and written another Letter with a complete overview of software-centric marketing strategy and tactics (lead generation aside). That’s proprietary too, and only available in full if you have access to the secure Monash Advantage website, but here are some semi-random highlights for public consumption. Read more
| Categories: Online marketing | 1 Comment |
Windows Live search is rather different from MSN
Until the middle of this year, I got negligible search engine traffic from either MSN or Yahoo, or indeed any other search engine except Google. We’re literally talking a 90-95% share for Google, on each of my three main blogs, most months.
But in November, the Windows Live share was 19% on DBMS2, 29% on Text Technologies, and 41% on the Monash Report. And those aren’t blips; in each case there was steady August-November monthly growth. But on the other hand, early December month-to-date figures are all back down. Weird. Read more