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Google Spam Report Public Calling

On April 29, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis

Recently Matt Cutts has announced on his blog that Google will now be letting companies report other websites that might be taking spammy approaches and clearly violating the Google webmaster guidelines! Is Google running out of abilities to track all black hat techniques?
If someone comes across another website performing any spammy or black [...]

Recently Matt Cutts has announced on his blog that Google will now be letting companies report other websites that might be taking spammy approaches and clearly violating the Google webmaster guidelines! Is Google running out of abilities to track all black hat techniques?

If someone comes across another website performing any spammy or black hat SEO techniques such as cloaking, hidden text, misleading words or deceptive redirects you can now submit the websites information to the following link:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport

Am I the only one that sees a variety of problems from this? Trying to create silent police officers in the search engine optimization industry is an appetite for disaster while the potential for rather large quarrels is amazing. This leads me to believe that the spam in the search engines is really starting to reach an unprecedented amount which justifies how important it really is to market your business online through marketing and not SEO recipes. Who is on the other end making the decision whether the website being reported is actually violating any spam rules? What happens when competitors get vindictive and start to report websites that clearly are not doing anything wrong?

I think Google has the right idea on trying to clean up websites that are just littering the search engines with useless information simply to manipulate search rankings but as soon as you open the doors to the SEO community and allow people play police officers it is only a matter of time before people abuse the heck out of a tool like this. I think something like this is very important though. There are too many businesses out there that really just infiltrate the search engines with complete rubbish that just clutters up everything for the websites that really trying to market and brand themselves the right way online. You see some of the freelance websites where businesses want 500 articles written. What on earth is that going to do for you? How about you write a few really good targeted articles and get them visible on some of your leading industry websites or forums. That will go much further than just trying to dump them all into the search engines hopping that your rankings will all of a sudden shoot through the roof. News flash, search engines are evolving and changing and that approach is seriously not that far away from being a very unimportant attempt in marketing a business or a website online.

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Things Not Do With Your SEO Program

On April 25, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis

Your SEO program does truly require a patient person that understands not only the value, but understands that it is an effort that builds and grows over time. If your company is in an industry that is very competitive and already saturated you might have to wait a little while before you start to get [...]

Your SEO program does truly require a patient person that understands not only the value, but understands that it is an effort that builds and grows over time. If your company is in an industry that is very competitive and already saturated you might have to wait a little while before you start to get noticed as an authority figure.

In my opinion these are some of the important things you should NEVER do with your SEO program:

1. Don’t Get Frantic: When people get frantic stupid things occur. You get impatient and jump on the first email blast you get promising you the world and you spend money that could be allocated elsewhere and get almost no value in your purchase. Plus you could get your website unindexed from purchasing one of those spammy “marketing” techniques for your website as they usually involve links on very low powered resources.

2. Don’t Quadruple Your Link Building: Pumping out four times as much link building efforts thinking it is going to speed things up is not the answer either. Often times it won’t help you from a link building stand point and might trigger a red flag on the side of the search engines. You always want your SEO efforts to look and feel natural. Once you start to stray from that natural approach the search engines start to question your efforts. This is where things can go wrong for you.

3. Don’t Hire More Than One SEO Company: Going behind the back of your SEO provider and hiring another to speed things up is a disaster waiting to happen. This will end up in certain implosion so stray away from taking this approach. Put your trust into one provider.

4. Don’t Lean Towards Black Hat: At some point you might want to lean towards the black hat area. This almost always will results in total long term failure as well. Be patient and do it the right way. Once things start to work how they should you will be happy you waited.

Patience and quality for any search engine optimization campaign is key to a successful long term marketing approach. Don’t stray and be patient. Your efforts will kick in and work you just have to sit tight and bring in traffic to your website in other ways.

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Bing Gets Serious About Link Building

On February 25, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis

I think one of the best things I have ever heard a webmaster blog from a major search engine say is to build your website like a brand. Bing’s exact words state: “Develop your site as a business brand and be consistent about that branding in your content”
To many people out there get all [...]

I think one of the best things I have ever heard a webmaster blog from a major search engine say is to build your website like a brand. Bing’s exact words state: “Develop your site as a business brand and be consistent about that branding in your content”

To many people out there get all antsy to have their internet marketing look like a recipe. If it looks like a recipe it is a recipe for disaster. Bing’s official webmaster blog states that it is very important and vital to treat your website like a brand. How would a brand build its image? If you take that step you will build your business the right way rather than just go after rankings. Rankings are important but they are not the only and final goal you should be worried about for your internet marketing campaign. Building business is the most important aspect to your SEO campaign. Bing also recommends taking an approach that really utilizes a robust social marketing element into your daily routine. Link building is very vital to the success of a website but unfortunately it is important to do it in a way that allows your business to grow and not just your rankings. Bing also refers to going “unnatural” in the search engines which states that an unnatural approach is one that blatantly attempts to manipulate the system in order to achieve higher rankings.

Bing’s exact words go as follows:
” So what does it mean to go unnatural? It means you’re trying to fake out the search engines, to try to earn a higher ranking that the quality of your site’s content dictates as natural through manipulation of search engine ranking algorithms.”

Bing hasn’t been the first search engine to come out with this type of best practice’s guide. Google has been doing it for years now just not many people want to follow it. When the top two search engines in the world layout a best practices guide on how you should conduct your search engine optimization efforts it is time to listen.

Please take a look at the Bing Webmaster Post that talks about link building and SEM, it is a great read:
http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/webmaster/archive/2009/11/20/link-building-for-smart-webmasters-no-dummies-here-sem-101.aspx

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Google Now Shows Haiti Relief Message on Home Page Before Fade

On January 15, 2010, In SEO, by rustybrick

Everyone knows about the horrible events that happened in Haiti this week. The world has come together to help out, and that includes Google. A few days ago, Google placed a link on their home page, giving people information on how they can help out. The link said, “Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake.” If clicked on, it took them google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/ with more information on how to help out.

But a day ago, that link was not included in the pre-fade portion of Google. By that I mean, Google’s home page shows the search box, logo and search buttons by default and then fades in the navigation links. Prior, Google faded in the information about the Haiti relief efforts but today, Google is showing this information on first load, prior to the rest of the page fading in. Here are pictures:

Pre-Fade:

Google Fade has Haiti Relief

Post-Fade:

Google Fade has Haiti Relief

Why did Google change this? Well, it was brought up in the Google Web Search Help forums by someone and Jaime from Google took notice. Jaime from Google said:

jeretik — thanks for bringing this up. We all share your concern for the victims of this disaster and I’m currently discussing the matter of the homepage link with the rest of the team.

This is a small but major change to the nature of Google’s fade in home page.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.


Everyone knows about the horrible events that happened in Haiti this week. The world has come together to help out, and that includes Google. A few days ago, Google placed a link on their home page, giving people information on how they can help out. The link said, “Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake.” If clicked on, it took them google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/ with more information on how to help out.

But a day ago, that link was not included in the pre-fade portion of Google. By that I mean, Google’s home page shows the search box, logo and search buttons by default and then fades in the navigation links. Prior, Google faded in the information about the Haiti relief efforts but today, Google is showing this information on first load, prior to the rest of the page fading in. Here are pictures:

Pre-Fade:

Google Fade has Haiti Relief

Post-Fade:

Google Fade has Haiti Relief

Why did Google change this? Well, it was brought up in the Google Web Search Help forums by someone and Jaime from Google took notice. Jaime from Google said:

jeretik — thanks for bringing this up. We all share your concern for the victims of this disaster and I’m currently discussing the matter of the homepage link with the rest of the team.

This is a small but major change to the nature of Google’s fade in home page.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.



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Ways to help Haiti

On January 14, 2010, In SEO, by Matt Cutts

Lots of people are thinking about ways to help Haiti after their horrible 7.0 earthquake.
Google recently introduced a page with a large number of resources for the Haiti earthquake, including the ability to donate money.
Also, a bunch of Googlers have worked to bring updated satellite imagery to Google Earth. You can also click to see [...]

Lots of people are thinking about ways to help Haiti after their horrible 7.0 earthquake.

Google recently introduced a page with a large number of resources for the Haiti earthquake, including the ability to donate money.

Also, a bunch of Googlers have worked to bring updated satellite imagery to Google Earth. You can also click to see the earthquake’s aftermath on Google Maps.

Finally, it turns out that Google’s Map Maker (which allows regular users to contribute to maps) can help with this disaster. Google added support for Map Maker in Haiti last year after Haiti suffered through Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. In less than a year, Google Map Maker has become one of the most accurate maps of Haiti, and Google is sharing the raw data with the UN. The Google Maps API provides the latest Map Maker info as a map tile set. You can read more in the blog post.

How can you help? I’d start with Google’s resource page for the quake or this page on CNN.

Update, Jan 16, 2010: Google has created (with help from the U.S. State Department) a Person Finder for the Haiti Earthquake that you can embed on your website, too:

Update, Jan 21, 2010: Google also gathered 15cm imagery (much higher quality) and just pushed that live on Google Maps.

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