Don't Get Stuffed!

For those of you that rely on your Google ranking to bring in the trade SEO is more than just an interesting exercise, it's a essential element of your business plan and discovering that Google has penalised you for over use of keywords can quickly move from an irritation to a disaster in terms of visits. I am aware of at least one PC repair firm that which habitually was in the top 5 for certain search strings suddenly vanishing only to reappear 50 entries down from number. For the company involved and given that people seldom search after the first or second page, this was a disaster. This disaster takes on 70s all star movie proportions when the webmaster tries to put things right only to find that they are still way down the lists.

Background: The site has excellent content when I looked at it, but past version of the site definitely suffered from more than a degree of keyword stuffing. Competitors were close but could not match this site's content, but on checking out the backlinks, I was surprised to find that there were very few. I trawled through the site pages and quickly found although the company had tried to deal with the key word stuffing, some pages still held examples and urgently needed to be cleaned up.

The site's initial reputation was built on some excellent content but the over-optimisation of the site using key words, specifically using the same key word too many times - key word stuffing had resulted in the Google bots taking a dislike to the site which in its turn had caused it to sink down the rankings.

Once the site was penalised, the reputation of the site was effectively negated and the next ranking consideration were the site backlinks, the competition had more backlinks and so they rose while our company sank. The practical result of this will be that for an unknown period of time the company's will fluctuate wildly in the rankings - there is no limit for the amount of time this penalty will continue to be imposed.

So what do you do if you and your company find yourself with a similar problem?

1. Get rid of key word stuffing and make sure you clean the entire site and not just the index page. This will means that that there will be an end in sight to the penalty eventually.
2. Build ongoing links, these links will be the foundations of your new credibility, incoming links from quality site will also help.
3. Check out Google Webmaster Tools and look at the errors/alerts/warnings for your site, also build a new sitemap so that new content and the lack of keyword stuffing will be clearly flagged.
4. Freshen content - write some of the article and add others - this will provide activity which Google cannot ignore.
5. Be patient. It could take a while, something to remember the next time you are tempted to do a little keyword stuffing

Good luck.

Google Hacks 2

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Get the local time anywhere - not quite a hack, but a useful little tool regardless. Enter simply 'what time is it to get the local time in big cities around the world, or add the locale at the end of your query, like 'what time is it hong kong' to get the local time there.

Flying. Enter the airline and flight number into the Google search box to get the arrival and departure times right inside Google's search results.

Currency, metrics and other guffin: Google's powerful built-in converter calculator can help you out, convert measurements, show how many seconds there are in a year (seconds in a year) or how many euros there are to five dollars (5 USD in Euro).

Compare items with "better than" and find similar items with "reminds me of". The results will almost always lead you to discovering alternatives to whatever it is you're searching for.

Use Google as a free proxy: Google's cache to take a peek even when the originating site's being blocked, with cache:example.com.

Remove affiliate links from product searches by using -site:ebay.com -siteizrate.com -site:shopping.com operator.

Find related terms and documents: Adding a tilde (~) to a search term will return related terms. For example, Googling ~nutrition returns results with the words nutrition, food, and health in them.

Make Google recognize faces: A special URL parameter in Google's Image search will do the "Add &imgtype=face" to the end of your image search to just get images of faces only.

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Bad Phorm

Image via Wikipedia

Worried about Internet security? But possibly using BT as your provider, after all British Telecom is practically an institution, one to trust right? Er...wrong, with a capital W and a big "rong" attached for good measure. The European Commission has started legal action against Britain over the online advertising technology Phorm. Phorm claims its technology is "fully compliant with UK legislation and relevant EU directives".

OK I am guessing readers are saying, all well and good Wanderjahre, but what's this got to do with me. Try this one on for size, information courtesy of those nice people at The Register. BT admitted last year it had tested Phorm's technology on its network with thousands of customers without asking for their consent or informing them of the trials. It later carried out further trials of the service, which it markets as Webwise, with the consent of users.

More than ten million customers of the UK's three largest ISPs (BT, Tiscali and Sky) will have their browsing habits sold to a very dodgy company who are rumoured to have kicked off their time on the net as spyware. BT’s servers were secretly passing data on subscribers to its "new" advertising partner as long ago as last summer. At the time, BT and its partners refused to acknowledge any relationship at the time.

The Register, usually pretty sound when it comes to matters like this have devoted a big chunk of their websites to have the issues around Phorm have developed. They claim to have the full technical info on what Phorm is up to, check out their site for more information. Anti-virus companies have said that in their opinion Phorm is Spyware pure and simple. Now some users will not be alarmed by this but if the UK's inadequate internet laws permit its existence, do you really want your browsing habits scanned to provide "targeted advertising" For myself I am quite capable of finding what I want on the net without having some company or other throw their ads at me! If I am hooked into a company's VPN what guarantees do I have that Phorm cannot be exploited to enable some unscrupulous type to check out the data I am sending and receiving. Or does anyone including the Phorm truly believe that something like this cannot be exploited by the hacker brigade.

From the legal standpoint the issue centre around whether users have given their consent to the technology A spokeswoman from the commission told BBC News that the EC wanted the UK to ensure there were procedures in place to ensure "clear consent from the user that his or her private data is being used". "Technologies like internet behavioural advertising can be useful for businesses and consumers but they must be used in a way that complies with EU rules," the EU's Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said in a statement.

Phorm's works by "trawling" websites visited by users whose ISPs have signed up to the service and for whom the technology is switched on, and then matches keywords from the content of the page to an "anonymous" profile.

Users are then targeted with adverts that are more tailored to their interests on partner websites that have signed up to Phorm's technology. The technology differs from other behavioural advertising systems which tend to use data only from partner websites visited by users, and do not work in conjunction with internet service providers. The service has proved controversial for some campaigners who believe it breaks UK data interception laws.

Last year, Phorm received clearance from the Home Office and police closed a file on BT trials of the technology which looked into their legality.

The UK government have said thatthe technology could only be rolled out if users had given their consent and it was easy for people to opt out, although its worth bearing in mind that BT went ahead with trials without consultation. The European Union Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications requires member states to ensure the confidentiality of their communications and related traffic data. States must, it says, prohibit interception and surveillance unless the users concerned have given their consent.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group said: "There are big legal questions surrounding BT's use of Phorm, so we welcome the EU taking the government to task. "BT should respect everyone's privacy and drop their plans to snoop on the internet before they damage their own reputation further. Websites should protect their users and block Phorm now."

BT have declined to comment on the EC's actions.

Firfox users should check the Phorm addon here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=phorm&cat=all

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