Whilst doing some SEO noodling I noticed that Google seems to be reporting much fewer inbound links than it usually does. Am I late to the party here or on the doorstep a day early? Has Google just devalued a (very) lot of sites out there? Google normally don’t report on sites with a crummy PR but this seems like a BIG change.

Compare 7 links ( link:eland.co.uk - Google Search ) with 2,570 links( link:eland.co.uk  - All The Web Search ). When you’ve done your comparison, could you please write it up,  let me know why this is happening, and maybe send round a pizza or something.

Dear Google,

you can improve the quality of the web for all of us by killing spam blogs. It’s quite easy to do, just search for … “wrote an interesting post today on” and “Here€™s a quick excerpt“.

Here’s almost a million pages you can take out of your database right now..  using Google,

thank you,

tom

p.s On of the things that really astonishes me about dullards who make spam blogs, is how little imagination they show. If I was creating spam blogs I’d at least mix up the words a bit to “let’s rip with a great post“… or “has written an iteresting article over here” or whatever. I’d at least use different a Wordpress theme to Kubrick.

I imagine that with even the smallest amount of thinking that went “what are the characteristics of an unoriginal spam blog” would remove at least 10% of the web in a single stroke… (And 10% of Google’s income from Adsense but they don’t need the money do they?).

Because I’ve tagged my post with the iPhone tag, ironically, this post will automatically appear on blog spam sites like BestiPhone2U.info (an iPhone blog spam site)… which uses the Kubrick Wordpress theme. You know, killing ALL sites that use the default options for Wordpress wouldn’t be a bad idea… if you use Kubrick, you’re dead in the water imaginitively anyway.

Setting the creative bar a little higher would also force spam-bloggers to be more imaginitive, which in itself is a good thing, they need the mental exercise. Whilst being spammy yet creative they might also realise the errors of their ways and do something genuinely creative instead, like solving textual input problems on the iPhone, for example.

You never know.

It’s easier than it sounds…

1. Ask for a list of clients. Most dodgy SEO companies will want to keep exactly who their clients are quiet because it’s ridiculously easy to work out what their SEO strategy is. Many use Link Farms which makes it more than easy for your competitors to report your efforts as spam and get you dumped from Google.
2. Simply ask them how much they will recompense you if and when you get blacklisted by Google. If they aren’t doing lots of naughty things this won’t bother them, if they are you can enjoy watching them squirm as they realize you are onto them.

My next article may well be titled, How To Discover If Your Competitors Are Using SEO Companies That Use Link Farms And Get Them Blacklisted By Google.

The ethics of telling tales may still have a certain stigma attached to it, but … THEY STARTED IT!….

All’s fair in love, war and SEO.

Recently I’ve been on a project that uses BaseCamp. I really don’t know what all the fuss is about surrounding BaseCamp, for me it doesn’t do anything very well at all.. and often breaks to boot, but you tend not to know this stuff until you’ve been using the tools for a while (by which time your entire project is in there).

I wonder what the The Tools Google Uses Internally are like, better or worse?

I wonder if a consumer version of Subversion, with wiki knobs on, would be better than BaseCamp….

Jot is back, the wiki tool that Google bought. It’s not bad, then neither are crutons. Go play and be mildly miffed with the stale air of disappointment.

Home (Everythingability)

p.s I notice the URLs are escaped so they can kill linky love and track what we are up to.