Quote of the Week: Now Get Back to Work

"Just 'cos you work on the internet, and Twitter happens to be on the internet, does not mean Twitter is work." - Matt Davies

From 21 Reasons Twitter is Bullshit. And I think I just killed a kitten.

Posted by Melanie Phung

SEO Blog FAIL

So recently someone tells me that I should do a post about SEO on my blog. Um, okay. Apparently my blog can haz FAIL.

Posted by Melanie Phung

MSN India Syndicates Plagiarized Content

If you do a Google search and there are two results that contain the same wording, and one of them is from some no-name blogger and the other is on the MSN.com domain, which one do you think is guilty of plagiarism? If you guessed the blogger, think again.

Let's be clear, I'm not talking about my content being scraped by some spam blog. That happens all the time and I'm quietly resigned to that. What I'm talking about is plagiarism by a professional writer, for profit, on a presumably credible news portal.

My recent post on Viagra's anniversary happens to rank well for a search on that phrase, but so does an article posted on MSN India.

This piece, "written" by Aditya Mehta and syndicated through India Syndicate blatantly rips off my post's funniest line (on what SEOHack calls my only decent best post on this blog). The one word difference (the use of a second "please" at the beginning of the last sentence) is due to my having gone back a day later and editing it out of my post because it was redundant... something Aditya Mehta apparently didn't catch.

It's not MSN's fault because they just bought content from a third-party provider, right? And I'm sure India Syndicate has hundreds of freelance writers, making too difficult for the content syndicator to police all its writers. (<-- this is sarcasm, in case that wasn't clear. I don't care how difficult it is to do QA on a product you sell, that's still your responsibility)

So, boo-hoo, who really cares about MSN India or some stupid Indian article syndication company and whether a few sentences of a fluff article aren't original? Well, it certainly pisses me off and since this is my blog, I get to rant about whatever I want. There's also no easy way to contact MSN's editorial team or India Syndicate (an email to their Contact Us address bounces), so it's not like I have any other outlet.

Who, if anybody, is responsible for ensuring integrity of the content on MSN's network (whether it be MSN India or any other portal)? And now that freelance writers for India Syndicate know they can get away with content theft and even have that work published on major resume-padding sites like MSN.com, what's to stop them from taking shortcuts on everything else they do from now on?

It's really not that hard to figure out if something is plagiarized -- a company with resources like MSN surely can afford some sort of software that checks if content already exists on the web (you could even call it a "search engine") before it publishes something to its content network.

Update: April 8, 2008

Wow, did my complaining help? The URL to the offending article has changed to point to a completely different article. Good thing I took that screen shot of the SERPs first; wish I'd done the same with the page itself since I wanted to go back and check how much else of that article was copied from other people. The complete text that was copied from me read:

Indirectly or directly, Pfizer is responsible for probably half of your email volume, so be sure to take a moment to reflect on the historic importance of this day. But remember, if your celebration of Viagra's anniversary lasts more than three hours, please call a doctor. (original post)

Here it is viewed from a different angle:


Same URL, different page info when viewed through my browser cache. The old post appears to be gone from MSN, Google and Yahoo as well.

Labels: intellectual-property, navel-gazing

Posted by Melanie Phung

Quote of the Week: Hannibal Lecter's Guide to Link Building

Quote of the Week from Eric Ward's article on so-called "best practices" in link building:

Hannibal Lecter followed a set of "best practices" when he ate a census taker's liver, and those best practices included Fava beans and a nice Chianti, but having best practices didn't make him any less insane.

Labels: link-building, quote-of-the-week, spam

Posted by Melanie Phung

Context Is the Castle Vanguard

If content is king, then context is the set of guards who protect the king's castle. That's a terribly tortured analogy, but my point is that one needs the other. What is content without context but just so much noise?

This week one of my coworkers wrote a post about another mutual colleague calling him a creepy old guy. [damn, there's that word again]. The post enumerates reasons why the guy is creepy, including "he tries to be cool by writing a blog" and "He has been out of college for like 5 years". I knew it was satire as soon as I glanced at it.

About half the commentators were outraged though. One writes "Is it really ethical to attack a fellow blogger without provocation?. He tries to be cool by writing a blog? Ummmm Does he really need your approval to write a blog? this is over the top." Yes, it's way over the top ... clue #1. But the broader context in this case was the relationship between the people involved.

My office is a very friendly, laid back place and everyone enjoys joking, teasing and engaging in animated political arguments. Reading the post as an extension of their office interaction, I knew it was intended to be, and received as, a funny prank. (The author's response to the first comment was another big clue.)

In a recent post on this very blog, I appear to berate a commentator for being a total hack Making fun of people who read your blog is a pretty dumb practice, and anyone who stumbles across that post without knowing the context would probably be less than impressed with my social skills. [ed. but he really does run the worst SEO blog ever, honest.]

The context in this case is a long-standing (well, long enough) history of being friendly snarky at each other on his blog. In fact, I remind him he's a hack all over the internet like here and here, too. But there isn't any hostility or malice behind it, and he knows that (I think, yes?). He's even so kind as to find opportunities to link to me using really good anchor text, and I return the favor.

But understanding the context of a conversation, from which the content derives meaning, doesn't have to be as difficult as researching everything about a person before leaving a comment on a blog. Sometimes you just need to pay attention or put your critical thinking cap on. A blog I've just started reading, InternetMarketingSucks.com has a warning label right across the top of the page and another one right below: "Best viewed at 1024x768 with a sense of humor."

Lots of people pan stupid products and level large doses of sarcasm at their objects of scorn, but few go as far as the sucker who runs InternetMarketingSucks.com. Take a look at the level of detail on that site/blog - that's a PhotoShop license going to good use right there. If you spent just a few minutes looking around the site before leaving a comment, you wouldn't make the mistake this commentator did:

Why are you such a loser dude? Seriously, if you think that Internet Marketing sucks then why do you blog about it in the first place? And just cause you have failed at Internet Marketing does that mean that everyone else should fail? I guess NOT! Why do you think conventions such as Affiliate Summit are organised? Because people are actually doing money off Internet Marketing! Duh! Bleh you and your blog suck!

So, the thing that all these examples have in common is ... hm... that what you perceive as me being mean and nasty is actually me being very funny, so lighten up and get a sense of humor, will ya? ... no, that wasn't it. Ah, yes, what I mean is this: step back before you post a comment and make sure you actually understand what's actually going on.

There isn't necessarily anything wrong with leaving drive-by comments, but be aware that you are walking into someone else's conversation. Unless you stop and listen for a minute, you might not have any idea what the conversation is really about*, and you risk making a fool of yourself.

I've done it plenty of times. New motto for this blog: I make mistakes so you don't have to.


* Or you might understand the topic of the conversation perfectly fine, but not the people involved in it, leading to confusion, paranoia and possibly the need for restraining orders.

.

Posted by Melanie Phung

10 Years of Viagra Spam

Ten years ago today, the FDA approved the Pfizer-manufactured little blue pill, marketed under the trade name Viagra.

Sildenafil, the active drug in Viagra, was originally designed to lower blood pressure, but why lower blood pressure when you can raise... the amount of spam in people's inboxes. Cheap magic manhood pills available anonymously online? That's profit ready for the picking.

According to Wikipedia, Viagra has plenty of other uses too:

A low-concentration solution of sildenafil in water significantly prolongs the time before cut flowers wilt.

So next time you get get an email promising you your girlfriend's eternal gratitude, and you're ready to hit the delete button, think about the multitude of other uses Vyyiagr@ has.

Indirectly or directly, Pfizer is responsible for probably half of your email volume, so be sure to take a moment to reflect on the historic importance of this day. But remember, if your celebration of Viagra's anniversary lasts more than three hours, please call a doctor.

Photo credit: Digital_Freak

Update: April 7
Oh look, what an honor: Aditya Mehta, on behalf of India Syndicate totally plagiarized my last paragraph and is republishing it on MSN. Classy.

Update: April 8
The plagiarized article has been removed from MSN. The URL now points to a different article.

Posted by Melanie Phung

Internal Search Box Displayed in Google Sitelinks

On Monday, while doing client research, I discovered that Google is now displaying a site search box underneath Google Sitelinks in results for some general queries.

Sitelinks for navigational searches are becoming more common and you've long had the option to see "more results from [domain]" if you had an indented result -- the "more results" link would show you results from the query you had just conducted but limit them to just pages from that domain -- but a search box within the results is much more interactive. A search box basically prompts you to refine your search, but do so only within the most authoritative site.





Even more fascinating to me, however, is that this internal site search is displayed not just on results where the search was clearly navigational -- like a search on "Intel" might have been.

Doing searches on bible-related phrases (don't ask, it was for a client), I saw the same thing for queries that seemed pretty general.

I ran queries on [online bible], [bible search], [bible passages] and even queries using advanced operators and still got not only Sitelinks but also a separate query box for searching that specific site.



Imagine how powerful this type of display would be if you're an e-commerce retailer! It immediately gives your site an appearance of even more authority and people can search your site without even needing to click away from the SERP.

Queries conducted with this Sitelinks search box also get saved to the user's Google Web History if they're logged in. Something you wouldn't get if they used the search box inside your site.

Neither of the two sites given in the examples use the Google Search Appliance - so whether you use the Google enterprise system for your internal search doesn't appear to be a factor in getting this to show up for your results. (The Google Search Appliance is a horrible choice for site search, btw. Not at all suited for site owners looking to provide on-site search functionality.)

Labels: Google

Posted by Melanie Phung

"The Algorithm" Says Good-Bye

Lisa Barone says a bittersweet (or maybe just bitter) good-bye to the little search engine that could. After chugging along in 4th or 5th place for so long and one utterly confusing ad campaign, Ask.com is giving up the ghost. Well, technically it is restructuring to "instead focus on a narrower market consisting of married women looking for help managing their lives" in the form of a Q&A site ... but c'mon. That's just sad. As Lisa says, there would be more dignity in just retiring the name.

Labels: industry buzz

Posted by Melanie Phung