Jeremy Zawodny Says No to Link Condoms
I recently received an email letting me know that blogging superstar Jeremy Zawodny has decided to sell text links on his blog. If you have no idea who Jeremy is, you might be wondering why I’d waste the time to write about it. After all, he certainly isn’t the first blogger to decide to monetize his site with paid text links. And you are right. If Jeremy was just another blogger selling links, I wouldn’t have ever mentioned it. But Jeremy isn’t just another blogger. He is an extremely prominent blogger who also happens to work for Yahoo Search.
Linking Absurdity
This site should be on everyone’s blogroll.
sem | antics: Link Building, as Defined by Joseph Heller
User Registration Issues
I’ve received a couple of emails from people saying they tried to register so they could comment, but they never received their password. Apparently I have some WordPress bugs to work out. So for now, I’ve turned off the registration function.
The Truth About Click Fraud
Over the past year, there have been literally hundreds of articles and blog posts written about the topic of click fraud. I’m at the point that I actually get the urge to vomit every time I see a new one. I don’t think I’ve ever read so much about a topic and yet learned so little.
If you happen to be one of the 17 people on the web who haven’t yet read about click fraud, I’ll save you the pain. Here’s all you need to know:
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