Google Bashing for Traffic

Google is slowly replacing Microsoft as the company people love to hate. While I may have a love-hate relationship with Google myself, sometimes it really irks me when mainstream media outlets do it. [editors note: we are not main stream, and with zero readership, hardly an outlet]

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Webroot-Says-Hackers-Exploit-Google-Trends-With-Malware/

This article from eWeek (again, I use mainstream loosely) explains how hackers use Google Trends to figure out what is a timely news article people might search for, then monopolize on the search terms by writing fake blogs.

Is there any reason to mention Google in this article, other than making it worth reading? You could replace “google trends” with “reading the newspaper” and it’s just as plausible. The mere mention of Google is the only reason this article is interesting. Get a clue eWeek.

Oh wait… they have one. They write an article about Google, put GOOG in it and it comes up during a google finance search… remind me to….

Using Google Alerts to Piggyback on Your Competitors Marketing

One of my favorite tools for link development is Google Alerts. Google alerts allows you to enter in a keyword and whenever Googlebot comes across that keyword in a new page it will send you an email. It’s an invaluable service on it’s own, and an extremely powerful tool for link development.

We use it to build links in the following way:

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Registering a Domain Name

I have more domain names than the average person, for several reasons.  For one, I like to have a good name when I need it for a project, and I try to think ahead of all the future projects I may want to do and register a name while they may be less expensive or easier to obtain.   I also have a bunch of domains that I used for thin affiliate sites but still have a trickle of traffic and I keep for nostalgia’s sake.  Still others I have because I was drunk or tired when I bought them.

If you have a portfolio of names, large or small, it’s never a bad time to re-evaluate your registrar.

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Sequoia Capital, one of silicon valley’s leading VC’s, gave the following presentation to all of their portfolio CEO’s this week in an emergency meeting.

It’s a good read, although not exactly groundbreaking. It lays out the economic situation and urges their CEO’s to cut costs (staff) FAST, raise money NOW if you can, and GET A BUSINESS MODEL. (I love that last one).

Here is the presentation:

CEO_ALL_HANDS_10-7-08_FINAL – Free Legal Forms (<-- huh, this isn't a [free legal form]. Odd off topic spammy widget link - nofollowed. I would have been ok with [pdf hosting] or something related.)

PubCon Search Marketing Conference

If you can go to just one conference this year, this is the one.

You can get a discount of 20% by using the following code: co-94120

I get a kickback for this, but that’s not my reason for posting. All proceeds will go towards a round on me.

Firefox Has Broken a Critcial Browser Feature.

But you need to get your shit together.  Why do you auto-complete itunes when I start out a web site with ‘w-e-b’?  It doesn’t  make sense.  I visit WEBmasterworld.com 10 times a day.

So why did you break it in 3.0?

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Web Designers

If you allow your web design company to put a link back to their website on the bottom of yours, you are paying them TWICE.   Even worse, it’s recurring billing.

Because Google’s pagerank algorithm uses incoming links to a website to determine it’s importance, there is an entire industry that has developed around buying and selling links.  Links can help a design firm rank for search terms that then bring them more business or revenue.  When you let your web designer put a link at the bottom of the website YOU paid for, you are paying them in link equity.   The value of this link on the open market can vary from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars a month!

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…unless they stop doing this kind of krap:

Microsoft Still Has No Idea that Other Browsers Exist

Google has 70% market share, and if Microsoft wants to reach that, alienating 23% of the world’s users isn’t a good way to start.

It astounds me how Microsoft continues to think inside the box. The entire company from the ground up seems to be totally oblivious that they don’t have 100% browser market share. I have worked with several ex MS guys, and although a small sample size, I always get the impression that it’s not malice that makes them force people to use IE for certain services, just complete ignorance of the world outside of MS.

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I stumbled on this beauty over at Google Trends the other day. I twittered it, but figured I’d follow up with a post here. The chart is the average search volume over the last 12 months for [How to File Bankruptcy].

How to File Bankruptcy on Google Trends

The slope of the chart has increased in each of the last three years. The snapshot is for just the last 12 months and has a very clear upswing for September. It’s a bit chilling.
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We’ve decided to focus our energy here, so check back for regular posts. We’re still cleaning up the place, so give us some time to get the theme and plug-ins worked out.