Cleaning the Litterbox
Yesterday, on the Rockstars show, I mentioned that we would soon be starting some new R & D projects. One of those projects involves the Google Litterbox.
MSN Search Champs V4
Are you interested in being a search chimp?
For the first time, MSN is taking open invitations for its Search Champs program. They’ve asked those of us who have participated in the past to pass the invitation along to anyone we might think would be interested. I figured that if you are actually here reading my blog, you are worthy of consideration.
To apply, go here and complete the survey.
When you get to the box #2 that says "Code" put in my name. (I need to make sure they don’t stiff me on the big referral fees they’re supposed to pay us. 
)
Parasite SEO - The New Frontier
TLB: .info
Date Registered: April 2005
PageRank: 4
Number of pages indexed: 114
Number of Backlinks: 112
Types of Backlinks: Small business directories and some industry related sites.
TLD: Doesn’t have its own domain. It’s a subdirectory of free web hosting .com
Domain Registered: June 2000
Number of pages indexed: 23
Number of Backlinks: 700+
Types of Backlinks: Most links are embedded in a free webpage counter that has been distributed across hundreds of off-topic sites.
Question #1: Which site matches the profile of a search engine spammer?
Question #2: Which site shows up on the first page for dozens of highly competitive searches that all return several million results?
Viagra and Handjobs
Throughout the years, all search engines have taken turns denying that there is ever any hand manipulation involved when it comes to their stellar search results. At the same time, those of us who have been in the business awhile have all managed to witness what we feel are clear cut cases of hand manipulation.
Google’s Site Removal Tool Rocks
I got to say, I’m quite impressed. I thought Google would ignore Brett’s robot.txt ban long enough for him to come to his senses and figure out a better solution.
But that’s not what they did. WebmasterWorld has been completely removed from Google
SEO Friendly Affiliate Systems
While I was browsing through today’s posts at SEW, I came across a post on the topic of affiliate networks and SEO.
The basic question presented in this thread is this:
Is it possible to structure an affiliate tracking system in such a way that the links used by affiliates end up helping the merchant site rank better in organic SERPS?
The answer is
Brett Loses His Mind Part 2
Well it didn’t take long for some people to realize that BT could use some help getting all of those 2,050,000 pages out of Google.
And Danny also brings up a good point about how long it should really take for WebmasterWorld to go missing from SERPS.
If search engines are hitting that robots.txt ban repeatedly, they ought to be dropping those pages in short order, or they aren’t very good search engines.
Of course, Danny is correct. If an average mom & pop site excluded all bots, it certainly wouldn’t take 60 days for the pages to disappear. But what about a site like WebmasterWorld? Over 2 million pages of content that is served to searchers thousands of times a day. Will the engines give WebmasterWorld preferential treatment because they don’t want to lose all that valuable content?
Only time will tell. The clock is now ticking………
Brett Tabke Loses His Mind
Brett’s decided to finally deal with that nasty ingrown toenail by amputating his entire foot.
I’m certainly not going to question the problem of rogue bots crawling WebmasterWorld. I know it’s something he spends alot of time on. (I think he’s even banned me a couple of times). But banning all bots just to get rid of the rogue ones that happen to obey robots.txt?
And banning Google when you know that everyone relies on Google to find things at WebmasterWorld? The internal search function at WebmasterWorld has been a broken piece of crap for the last 5 years. How is it he is going to replace it in 60 days?
I understand wanting to test a a full robots.txt ban, but it really wouldn’t be very hard to simply cloak the robots.txt file to Google so they can continue to index the site while BT finds a search solution.
The Truth About Reciprocal Link Networks
Shortly after stage 2 of the recent Google algo update began, I received an email from a panic stricken ex-client. He woke up on a Monday morning to find all of the recent gains we had made Google were gone.
I was a bit shocked to hear this because this particular project was as "white hat" as they come. And from a keyword standpoint, it wasn’t even close to being a space that any competent SEO would consider competitive.
Back from Vegas
OK, I made it back from Vegas in one piece. I’d love to give everyone a rundown of all the great sessions, but I can’t because I only managed to make it to two of them. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any good scoop to report.
Some of the highlights:
1. Hearing that Anne Kennedy has recently become a grandmother of twins. (And in doing so, quickly earned the nickname Granny Anny. )
2. Hearing that Heather Lloyd Martin had finally come to her senses and parted ways with the largest SEO firm in the Universe! (Welcome back Heather).
3. Hearing Eytan Seidman from MSN Search admit that their first release was "quite possibly the worst search engine ever built."
4. Watching Todd pull the old "I can’t remember the name of the study off the top of my head, but I’ll gladly send it to you if you give me your email address" trick while he was moderating the organic search panel. (Misty, you should give that guy a raise!)
5. Dax making it through the entire trip without any encounters with hotel security.
Of course, there were also some lower moments like:
1. Dax getting us kicked out of the coolest club in Vegas for having shitty shoes.
2. Everything about the Sahara. (If Dana Todd ever gives you a recommendation on hotels in Vegas, don’t take it)
3. Finding out that Matt doesn’t believe I do my own graphics.
4. Promising Matt not to blog any of the cool stuff he told me.
5. Having Tedster tell me he couldn’t find my site feed. (It’s at the bottom of the page. http://www.webguerrilla.com/feed/ )
