All About Content

When I did a search on [DC SEO] this week, I was annoyed to find the site bryanantler.com show up on the first page higher than my domain. Not because I have anything against the guy, but because I had written previously about this site in a post called Getting Ranked via Google Local… With No Content At All. Shortly after I posted that entry about the site being listed at the top of the page (despite the link only going to a directory folder), the local listing went away.

Apparently the site was now ranking for [Washington DC SEO] and [DC SEO] queries again… this time with no site at all.

When I clicked on the result, I got a 404 error.

The Local Results Box was showing up alternating between the top of the page and below the #3 organic results, as in the above screenshot. I tried accessing the site all sorts of ways, but they all led to the same conclusion: the site doesn’t exist.

I guess it’s theoretically possible that the site is down temporarily, but a search using the site: command also brings up squat. In other words, Google says the site doesn’t exist in its index.

A search of the WayBack Machine shows that the only time any sort of site was ever on that domain was sometime between July 17, 2007 and August 14, 2007. The other WayBack entries show the same thing I screengrabbed in my previous post: a look at the directory folder w/ nothing in it. Now there’s not even that.

Clearly when Google is displaying Universal Search results, it’s pulling that info from other indexes; it just takes data from Local, Maps, Images, Shopping, etc and injects it into the regular organic results. Those indexes obviously have different rules and algos surrounding how your site (or product) gets listed. But can’t we agree that a universal rule for all of Google’s various search results should be that the URL being returned actually exists?

Finding a well-ranked “result” in the SERPs that 404s is bad enough, but having that result be a non-existent site, one that hasn’t existed in over a year, outranking me for Washington DC SEO … well, that’s just unacceptable.

It’s the Sunday before SMX Advanced and Seattle is a mild 75 degrees without a cloud in the sky, and no rain in the forecast. If it proves to be this beautiful for the duration of the conference, it’ll be tempting to play a little hooky… or not return at all to hot and humid DC.

Domain squatting is becoming more sophisticated. Companies like Sendori are going beyond parking AdSense ads on good web real estate, instead opting to lease their in-demand domains to the highest bidder. The winner of a Sendori auction gets the domain to redirect to his own site.

It’s a service big brands will want to take advantage of (this being the next best thing to actually being able to buy the domain from the squatter) but I have a real problem with it.

The domain owner is basically just a parasite. They add nothing of value. Sendori has no interest in selling the domain, because they get to hold on to all the control. It’s not like the other company will want to build links or brand recognition for that URL since it doesn’t own it and that would be doing the equivalent of major remodeling on a rental unit — not a good investment.

Companies like Sendori are basically just holding those good domains hostage. Well… on the bright side, at least if they are redirecting to other sites those URLs won’t just be ugly, AdSense-stuffed (and often misleading) landing pages.

More from TechCrunch.

Filed under: whines and rants

So my broadband connection has been down for quite a while now. (I hadn’t noticed because my computer automatically connected me to a close-by wifi signal; it only became obvious to me that my own Internet connection was down when my TiVo let me know it had stopped updating its TV programming info.)

So I’ve had to call Comcast to fix the issue (it was definitely an issue with the cable box or downstream of the cable modem, not my ‘puter). The experience has led me to a discovery that could be a business opportunity for someone — Comcast is apparently in need of better service scheduling/tracking software.

Comcast technician #1 arrives Saturday (an hour ahead of my scheduled window, but that was cool with me), fiddles around with everything and determines it has something to do with something between my unit (the dwelling, not the cable box) and the amplifier on the roof. She gets on the phone with dispatch and tells me the earliest anyone can come out to look at the line is Monday. We decide to schedule something for the following Saturday since I didn’t want to take time off work.

On Sunday afternoon, I’m enjoying a nice iced mocha from Dean and Deluca, and I get a call from Comcast: was I not aware I had an appointment for someone to come over today? Uh? No, I wasn’t aware that a Sunday appointment was even an option, but sure I’ll run home real quick to let the second cable person in.

I explain the situation to Comcast technician #2, who had been told absolutely nothing about the previous service call and therefore needs to repeat the entire troubleshooting procedure. He determines first cable person was wrong and it really was just the box. Cable person #2 doesn’t have a replacement box (something cable person #1 would have left for me had she properly diagnosed the issue). Cable person #2 sets me up with an appointment Friday afternoon (sometime between 1 and 5) to have someone drop off a new box. Don’t see why this would require an appointment, but am told I’d have to be home.

Get a call this morning (Monday) confirming my appointment with Comcast today. Huh? Woman on the phone doesn’t know what the service call is supposed to be about but promises to make a note in the system advising the technician just to drop the hardware off at the front desk. Since they want the old modem back, I rescheduled the drop-off for tomorrow so I can bring it to the front desk tonight.

So we’ll see what happens. Hopefully tomorrow will be the last day they’ll need to remind me about the daily appointments I seem to have set up with them. (But more important: I’m cautiously hopeful that my Internet connection will be back up.)

Very disturbing article in the Washington Post yesterday. According to Sexual Threats Stifle Some Female Bloggers, “women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms — a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere.”

The author of the wonderful blog Creating Passionate Users is facing death threats. She’s just one of innumerable numbers of women who have stopped blogging or participating in online communities because of intimidation and sexual threats. The moral dilemma for me is that she says the more attention she’s getting, the worse it gets. I’m struggling over whether we other bloggers should drop the subject entirely and get her name out of the spotlight. But this is an important issue to me and I think it needs to be discussed — and nothing I say or don’t say will change this situation. What makes some people so vile? And what is it about the anonymity of the Web that turns already-vile people into full-blown sociopaths? And, specifically, whence this hostility toward women? And why?!

Some people critize female bloggers who decide to exit the space after being threatened and harassed as being thin-skinned; they say it’s “just talk”. I think those people probably have pretty poor instincts.

It reminds me of an interesting aphorims I read once: In The Gift of Fear (a book I haven’t read but have seen referenced many times), Gavin De Becker says that at core, men are afraid that women will laugh at them; and at core, women are afraid men will kill them.

I don’t know anyone who’s laughing.

Updated May 7, 2007:
Slate has an article that mirrors some of my thoughts on the issue (i.e., why “just ignore it” isn’t an actual solution to the problem).

Oh woe is the plight of the searcher. I didn’t know how bad it was until I read about this article: Search Fatigue: Finding a Cure for the Database Blues.

Apparently search engine users are suffering from a malady called search fatigue.

Search fatigue, according to the author Jeffrey Beall, is “a feeling of dissatisfaction when search results do not return the desired information”. Yikes!

I expect it to be listed in the next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (although the DSM-IV isn’t going to see a revision until 2011, according to Wikipedia).

But what about search marketing fatigue, a feeling of dissatisfaction when search engine optimization efforts do not return top-3 results for targeted keywords? As soon as that’s covered under worker’s comp, I’m putting in for permanent disability.

Tagged: are you kidding?, SEO, search fatigue

Just got back from vacation (hooray vacation!) during which I spent no time on the Internet (hooray vacation!), so the only thing I have to blog about is the tremendous amount of reading I was able to get done while away. Here are the books I read, in the order they were purchased and completed:

1. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
2. In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters
3. This Book Will Save Your Life (a novel by A. M. Homes)
4. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
5. The Plot Against America (a novel by Philip Roth)

I’m a pretty fast reader if I can focus, but that’s more than I’ve read in the previous six months combined! Okay, so I probably wouldn’t do real well if you were to quiz me about the particulars of any one of these books, but the beauty of reading for fun and not for a grade is knowing there won’t be any pop quizzes.

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
by Chris Anderson

A+. Loved it. Exceeded my expectations. I find most of these pop-econ, business “concept” books you find on the best-seller lists to be rather fluffy. And it’s not like I wasn’t already familiar with the concept of the long tail — after all, I do SEO for an online seller of consumer electronics, I live and breathe “the long tail.” I had even checked out Anderson’s blog periodically.

So I was pleasantly surprised by the book. The Long Tail is well written, with a coherent “story” and lots of supporting data based on real primary research; and unlike many books like this, it answers all the big who, what, when and why-should-I-care questions in a coherent narrative. This should be on the syllabus of any business class dealing with e-commerce or online marketing.

In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters
by Merrill “Rick” Chapman

I’d give this a B. I liked the concept — it was a response to the business school classic In Search of Excellence. In Search of Stupidity looks at the fatal missteps that cost leading high-tech companies (mostly software firms) their market dominance. It might have had the potential to be a very popular book in its category except that it gets mired in unnecessarily technical details.

The execution of some of the additions to the second edition seemed like they were a very reluctant concession on the part of the author; the “analyses” at the end of the book seemed like they were just thrown together by an author who thought his readers shouldn’t require a CliffsNotes version.

Here’s the gist:

• don’t be arrogant
• properly position your products
• don’t treat your customers like idiots or your channel partners like crap
• mind your brand
• oh and never, ever rewrite software code from scratch

This Book Will Save Your Life
A.M. Homes

Good piece of fiction. I previously read The End of Alice by this author and thought it was terrific and original… and disturbing. The End of Alice was actually pretty creepy, so I liked that This Book Will Save Your Life was quirky, uplifting and even sweet. Very well written, but I think a year from now I probably won’t remember what it’s about.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

This was one of those pop-econ concept books that, unsurprisingly, failed to meet expectations after all the hype. It wasn’t a bad book (the way I thought Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point was pretty subpar) but I needn’t have purchased it in hardcover. Interestingly enough, the endorsement on the cover is by Gladwell, who says “Prepare to be dazzled” — even though the take-away from the most interesting chapter in Freakonomics seems to be that one of the chapters in The Tipping Point is bogus.

(In the Tipping Point, Gladwell claims that crime decreased dramatically in New York City due to an innovative policing strategy that included harder crackdowns on minor infractions like turnstile jumping. Levitt argues that this piece of “conventional wisdom” is unsupported by any objective evidence. He puts forth his own argument about why crime dropped so dramatically starting in the 1990s; I won’t go into his argument, but it’s very interesting and I recommend reading at least this chapter next time you’re at the bookstore or library.)

The Plot Against America
by Philip Roth

The best novel I’ve read in several years. Previous Roth novels I’ve read included The Human Stain and American Pastoral. The Plot Against America is by far my favorite of his and probably one of my favorite novels of the last few years.

The tale revolves around the ahistorical premise that the anti-semite Charles Lindbergh wins the presidency in 1940 and passively supports Hitler in World War II. Rather than taking this premise completely over the top the way most writers would have, Roth keeps the narrative focused on the characters (the narrator is a fictionalized 8-year old Philip Roth) and the writing. The result is very strong but subtly nuanced prose that could have worked just as well with an less interesting historical backdrop.

Reading In Progress

I’m still working on Mind Set (by John Naisbitt, the guy who wrote Megatrends), which I started at the airport on the way back, and Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, which I started a while back but didn’t take with me. Now that I’m back, however, I predict it’ll be slow going again and I probably won’t finish these before summer starts, especially since I don’t find either of these overwhelmingly compelling.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

When I first read about ICANN revoking a registrar’s accreditation, it didn’t really make an impression on me; it’s not until I read the latest StepForth article that I realized how big this story was.

Forget optimizing your site if you can’t even access it. It seems like a complete deterioration in service on the part of a company called RegisterFly meant that customers’ domains were, in effect, being held hostage.

Stepforth quotes a Business Week article:

This has been a travesty. The transfer system was designed to work between two trusted registrars and completely breaks down when one has gone bad. RegisterFly has held customers hostage by not providing the “auth codes,” by arbitrarily locking domain names, by changing the “Whois” info, and by arbitrarily putting your domain into “ProtectFly”, their service to protect your identity but also keeps you from transferring your name.

We have lost domains and, more importantly, production Web sites have just gone dead, heading to a RegisterFly parking page instead. Try explaining this to customers depending on these sites for their business. RegisterFly’s debacle has ruined businesses and lives. And this could have all been avoided with a better process in place and more in-depth criteria for accreditation. This process must be improved before the Internet can truly be used for mission-critical applications.

The small-business owners who are being affected by the RegisterFly debacle have my sincere sympathy. Read the Stepforth article (or the original WebmasterWorld post if you have a login) for some tips on protecting your domains.

Short post about something not related to search engines, but an important reminder nonetheless: if you don’t have enterprise support for data storage, there are online backup options you can consider.

I have terrible luck with computers — my current work laptop has some sort of issue that causes it to spontaneously shut down at random intervals (it doesn’t even go through the shut down process, it just turns off); at my previous job I triggered Microsoft’s Blue Screen of death not once, not twice, but three times; my personal laptop went flying off my desk a few too many times after I tripped over the cord until the thingamajig that the power cord plugs into stopped working entirely (thank goodness my friend was able to rescue the harddrive) — so I really ought to make it a regular habit to back up my computer. But of course I don’t — I imagine I’m like most non-power-users in that way. Actually, I’ve learned enough about my terrible luck that I save all my work documents directly to the network because at least that gets backed up regularly. Now if only my connection to the network wouldn’t crap out so often.

The only thing I back up on my personal computer is my photographs because Flickr makes so easy. But aside from that I haven’t really considered online backup as an option, since that tends to be slow.

But one of the advertisers on PayPerPost is advertising its online backup and online storage for small businesses as enterprise-class. IBackup Online Storage starts at $9.95 for 5 gigs a month and offers a variety of add-on and collaborative features. Their service has won a number of computer magazine awards.

Frankly, since my home computer storage needs are pretty minimal (outside of my photography), it would probably make more sense for me to do all my backups onto disk (see above for story on how I have an extra harddrive sitting around for that purpose). However, if you could use an online storage/backup solution, go visit this post’s sponsor IBackup.com for a free trial.

This has been a paid post.

This falls under the category of cool tools on the Web, i.e., not so much SEO, but here’s a bit from this month’s Google Friends newsletter:

Design enthusiasts take note: there’s a new version of Google SketchUp. This 3D modeling software tool is easy to learn, simple to use, and lets you place your models in Google Earth. One of the cool new features is Photo Match, with which you can trace a photo to create a 3D model of the photographed object or match an existing model with a background photo. To stylize your models, there are features for adding fog, creating sketched effects, watermarks, 3D text, and more. And now the integration between Google Earth, 3D Warehouse and SketchUp is seamless, so that you can easily share and reuse models from other 3D Warehouse users. And as noted above, Google Earth now has the “Best of 3D Warehouse” layer that showcases the highest quality models from SketchUp users.

Google SketchUp is available at http://sketchup.google.com/. I haven’t used it yet, but it sounds wicked cool.