Google, the ‘Information Mugger’?

On the 9th of June, an organisation few people had previously heard of, released a report branding Google as the worst offender on the web where user privacy is concerned.
This in turn, prompted a rather heart-felt response from Google’s Matt Cutts in his personal blog.

 This post is the result of a discussion thread, currently underway over at the Google Webmaster Help Group.

In fact, it more or less mirrors my own response therein:

 Ok… so now we all know that Google is an ‘Information Mugger’ who hits you over the head and steals your wallet.

On the credibility of Spammers…

This blog is rapidly turning into a ’small time’ attempt to ridicule the tactics used by spammers and unethical SEOs; a case in point being an email which arrived in one of my boxes earlier today…

“Fill out your registration form. Please!!” (pertaining to a supposed mortgage application form)

Now, let’s for a moment assume I was actually looking for a mortgage or had filled in an application form with some lender or another… how would I assess the sender’s credibility?

For starters, the message originated from cosmology@punkass.com (my apologies about the return spam, and if it’s not your fault – sorry lads; you’ve been hacked ;-)… This would of course be that reputable lender ‘Punkass, Bitch and Associates of Philadelphia Ltd.‘, who are, as we all know, a universally trusted financial institution.

SEO – There can be only one…

To use the worn-out quote from the 1986 classic Highlander… “There can be only one.”
But, like so many of my posts, the point may not be immediately obvious, so please bear with me a moment.

It’s been a hell of a month work-wise, so the blog posts have been sadly neglected, but… I guess if you have too much time for blogging, you’re not spending any time working.

Anyway… What does this SEO post have to do with a film about immortals battling through time?

A few days ago, I ran across an old colleague of mine (now sadly lost to ‘The Dark Side’) and we got talking for a couple of minutes in the street. Until a couple of years ago, she was at the forefront of the SEO industry, 100% ethical, strictly playing by the rules of major search engines and the World Wide Web Consortium and forever experimenting with new developments in her field of expertise.

During past eighteen months or so however, her work ethics do seem to have undergone a fundamental change, at least where her approach towards clients is concerned. In fact, like so many rock stars (err… Phil Collins, Paul McCartney or Robbie Williams for instance), the dollar sign seems to have triumphed over talent or work-ethics.

SEO – 1939 Style… “The Call of Duty”

Classification – Ultra Mega – Above Top Secret

“Gentlemen! We have identified a new threat! Jerry is getting ready to make his move and Cyprus is facing an invasion of unprecedented proportions which is threatening to destroy our very business infrastructure.”

As you all know, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a relatively new term not only in the Republic of Cyprus, but in much of the remaining Mediterranean region also.

In fact, it is only in the past year or so that the term SEO has been used by Cypriot operatives as a means of bringing their services to the attention of the general public.
But SEO-Jerry has been watching us with envious eyes and he considers businesses on our sacred isle to be virgin territory, there for the taking.

Who is SEO-Jerry?

Buzzwords, Fads & Web Promotion

“The road to successful web promotion is littered with the corpses of buzzwords from years gone by.”
F. B. Guntherson – Jan 2007

You have to admit that few industries are as prone to attack by buzzwords, fads and the occasional Americanism as web promotion (well… anything related to the internet really).
At the moment, flavours of the month include ‘Web 2.0‘, ‘Authority Sites‘, ‘Ajax‘ and my all-time personal favourite ‘SEO‘.
There are others of course; but if I were to try and list them all, I would still be writing this post next month.

It seems that, like alcohol and tobacco, buzzwords are addictive and, worse still, they are also highly infectious.

How many times have you heard the term Web 2.0 thrown into a conversation* without the speaker having any clear idea of what it actually means?
Actually; what the hell is Web 2.0?
Did Timothy Berners-Lee** suddenly invent another internet while no one was looking?

As buzzwords go, the term Web 2.0 is an absolute corker, since it conjures up the image of an entirely new stage in the internet’s architecture, when it is in fact merely an approach to building web sites which finally takes advantage of the fact that most users now have high-speed internet connections.
Ok, so new technologies are involved to a certain degree, but there is nothing much here which couldn’t have been done a few years ago, except that in those days you would have waited about six hours for the video of ’That guy falling off the trampoline‘ or the ‘Groovy New Web-App‘ to finish loading.

‘Ah but…’ I hear you cry, ‘What about the fact that Web 2.0 is so much more community orientated?’
Collaborative online communities are hardly a new invention.
In fact, I still remember the launch of Alphaworld back in 1995 (I’m showing my age now), so in that respect Web 2.0 is very much a case of it being the same old thing wearing a new pair of trainers and sporting the latest hair style.

*Assuming of course that you’re nerdy enough to hang around where this sort of thing is being discussed.
**At this stage you may well ask who this Berners-Lee character is, and if you do, I’m not going to tell you.
Look him up on Wikipedia if you’re interested.

Damn! I was talking about web promotion, wasn’t I?

But anyway… What about Authority Sites then?
These days we are told that we must build Authority Sites if we are to stand any chance of success in the search engine wars.
Yet surely if it had not been for the continuing interference from spamshiners infesting search engine listings with anything from Viagra to Gambling and Black Hat SEOs gaining high search rankings of questionable relevance, any site out there would be an ‘Authority Site’ to a greater or lesser degree?

Surely nobody in their right mind would launch a commercial web site which made them look like a complete idiot?
Well… but moving swiftly on.

Next we have a delicious recipe, easily prepared from common ingredients:
Take some XML, add CSS, sprinkle with JavaScript to taste and give it a stir.
‘Mmmmmm… I’m lovin’ it!‘

Wait… We need to give it a name.
Mc WebApp? XM-ava? Jav-ml? How about Java-X?

No, of course not… Let’s name it after a household cleaner*.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ‘Ajax‘.
Note: Wherever you find an Ajax, there is usually a Web 2.0 lurking nearby. The two are practically inseparable.

*Or for those of you with a background in mythology, the ancient Greek hero from Homer’s** Iliad.
**No, not Homer Simpson.

This was going to be a really quick post about buzzwords, fads & web promotion which has turned into a bit of an epic, if not an outright Geek Tragedy. 

And so, last but by no means least, we come to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

‘Ah! That fairest of web promotion maidens wafting the sweet perfume of search engine success in the direction of eager online business owners.’

Like an experienced stripper teasing her audience with tantalising glimpses of what is to come before shedding each layer of clothing with deliberate slowness, she draws in her admirers, prompting each member of her audience to leave as many bank notes as possible in her custody before the show ends.

Unfortunately for many SEO customers, the show is over all too soon, the drinks are overpriced and the stripper isn’t much to look at once she gets her kit off.

Don’t get me wrong.
I have nothing against ethical SEO companies working to genuinely improve their client’s search engine rankings and achieving long-term results.
My problem is with the fly-by-night SEO crowd which employs a fast-talking sales force and plays on prospective customer’s fears, paranoias and ignorance before absconding with a load of their cash without delivering any results whatsoever and giving the rest of the industry a lousy reputation in the process.

When I first became entangled in the computer industry (well before the launch of Alphaworld), the internet was a meeting ground for geeks, nerds and scientists. Later, as the internet began its evolution into the buzzword-laden global mass-marketing leviathan it is today, we used to call it ‘web promotion’ or even ‘website promotion’.

Then, during the course of 1999, some clever American bugger (there is still an argument about which one) coined the phrase ‘Search Engine Otimization’ and the rest, as they say, is Home Economics.

Still… In spite of my lengthy rant about buzzwords and Americanisms, there is a ray of light upon the internet horizon.
If current trends persist, there may just be a movement on the web leading back to the ‘old values’ (he says laughingly) of providing visitors with the information they are looking for instead of simply spamming them onto a web site in the vain hope that, although they were actually looking for a new lawnmower blade, they could do with some Viagra after all.

Food for thought?
Let’s hope that ‘Authority Site’ turns out to be more than another buzzword.

So you’re gonna spam a blog, eh?

After all; it’s easy, isn’t it?

All you need to do is rip off someone’s articles, post them as “original content” in your blog and interspace their paragraphs with meaningless links to whatever the trash site of your choice happens to be so as to  increase its link popularity.

But what of the human tragedy and sheer misery this approach causes, not only to the article’s authors but also the poor saps unfortunate enough to blunder along in search of something worthwhile to read?

No, you’re right.
To hell with tragedy and misery.
Nobody gives a damn about those anyway*.

*Unless they happen to make headline news.

Well… as nobody cares about the suffering of hapless article authors or unsuspecting readers, let’s take a quick look at what this particular approach to blogging actually achieves.

The theory (as close as I can make out) seems to be getting a wagon-load of incoming links to their sites without the actual effort of providing ‘value for visitors’ or having the hassle of building quality links in a sensible and coherent fashion.

Whilst on the face of it, blog spamming might seem like a good way of getting those all important inbound links, the approach is fundamentally flawed in a number of ways.

For starters there is the old ‘duplicate content‘ trap.
Since these brainiacs haven’t even gone to the trouble of writing something by themselves (written language not a strong suit I guess), all they’re doing is propagating content which has already been indexed by search engines a thousand times elsewhere and will hardly be counted as ‘original’ by any visiting search engine spider.

Then there is the sheer number of Spam-Links in the post.
Rather than taking the accepted and ethical route of wording their post in such a manner that a relevant link to their web site can be inserted into their text such as this utterly appropriate link to IceGiant web design (You see? It’s not hard.), blog spammers will drop in a link after every paragraph without considering that search engine algorithms have long since become wise to this rather old link spamming technique.

Smooth move, ExLax…
Here’s a little tip:
Any half decent SEO guide will give you a rough idea of what’s likely to be penalised and what isn’t, so you might want to do a bit of reading.

And of course, let us not forget the general public.
These days, most blogging sites offer bloggers and visitors the facility to report spam posts and, whilst not every visitor will go to the trouble of filling in a spam report form, you might be surprised at how quickly most of these posts are dealt with.

In the greater scheme of things, there is really precious little mileage to be had from spamming blogs; which makes me wonder just how long this particular fad will last.
Still… the spam trend now seems to be moving in the direction of Digg, Del.icio.us and even “gasp” the mighty YouTube, so maybe we’ll be left alone over here in due course.

I have long suspected that computers are infinitely smarter than humans and are merely biding their time.
This latest blog spamming craze has only served to convince me that my initial assessment is correct. 

Food for thought?
I’ll leave it to you.

Wheelchair Ramps for the Web?

Anyone who’s run across my articles online is likely to know that one of my pet subjects is accessible web design.

Most conversations where the topic of disability access on the internet rears its head will usually go something like this:

FP: “Accessible web design? What? Like wheelchair access or something?”
IG: “No (you foolish person), I’m actually talking about blind or partially sighted web users.”
FP: “Blind web users? How the hell do they see what’s on the screen?”
IG: “They can’t.  They’re blind, remember? They use Braille keyboards and software which reads a site’s content out loud so they can hear it.”
FP: “You’re winding me up.”
IG: “Not at all. Look it up online. The best known screen reader is called JAWS.”
FP: “Stop taking the p*ss. Jaws is that bloke out of that Bond film.”

Things normally deteriorate rapidly at this stage, as most people who know me are aware that I’m prone to the occasional wind-up such as sending my brother in law hunting up and down Colchester high street in search of the “Viking Helmet Shop” after making a rather convincing case at a party the previous night.

But that is another story…

In any case, whilst wheelchair access for the web is certainly a novel idea, the example above does illustrate the general public’s level of ignorance with regards to disability access on the internet or the available technologies to aid disabled web users. 

Let me get this straight; our technology has put a man on the moon (allegedly), given us enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity several times over and produced the USB powered coffee warming plate, yet you doubt the existence of a simple piece of software which is able to read written text out loud?

Worse still, many internet professionals are still largely unaware of accessible web design standards or choose to simply ignore them since they are seen as too much hassle and an unnecessary expense during site development.
All in all this is a sad state of affairs, especially in light of the many promotional advantages properly implemented accessibility brings with it.

I recently found myself in a chat forum where someone was spouting on about the complete and utter irrelevance of disability access standards since blind internet users only account for, as he put it, ‘an infinitely small and completely unimportant percentage of total users’.

Sometimes I do ask myself whether ignorance is truly bliss, since the individual in question seemed anything but blissful.

Ok, to be fair, the disabled do represent a very small proportion of total web users, but this is not exactly a good excuse to totally ignore them, especially as every other aspect of society has to make provision to give the same levels of access regardless of a person’s disability.

If this is not a good enough excuse to make provisions, there’s always the comparatively little known fact that search engine spiders sent out by Google, MSN, YAHOO and others will view a web site in much the same way a blind visitor’s text only browser would and will therefore find the task far easier if disability access provisions have been made.
So… if you, as a web designer, ignore the needs of blind internet users you’re making a your own life difficult where web promotion is concerned.

I love the smell of poetic justice in the morning.

Furthermore, a recent court case launched by the National Federation of the Blind against U.S. online retailer Target.com has highlighted the fact that accessible web design can no longer be ignored by web-based businesses.

Should you want further information about disability access on the web, you can visit the World Wide Web Consortium site’s ’Web Accessibility Initiative‘ section.
The IceGiant web site’s article section also contains further reading material on the topic of Web Accessibility.

But enough of this.
It’s getting late and I have to talk to my brother in law about Bonsai Volcanoes.

Food for thought?
I think so.

How to get it wrong with article marketing

Oh my!

Where to start with this one…

As a buzzword, the term article marketing has gained no end of momentum over the past couple of years or so.
Much like an avalanche, things started in a very gradual manner a few years ago with a handful of clued-up writers providing valuable information to less knowledgeable individuals whilst craftily promoting their own web sites in the process.
Blinder!

Not only did these articles get spread all over the web and provide endless sources of fresh traffic to their author’s site(s), each article would also act as an inbound link to add to their overall link popularity score.
Double Blinder!

During the early part of 2005, the movement had finally gathered enough momentum to attract the attention of the mainstream promotion crowd, which promptly leapt upon the bandwagon with much gusto.
The result was a growing torrent of badly written (yet still mainly informative) articles joining the rest on its journey down internet mountain.

By itself, this would have been easily sustainable, had it not been for the appearance on the scene of the sort of monosyllabic slack-lipper who is incapable of writing even a bad article.
Aided and abetted by shoddy pieces of software* promising to ‘Rewrite Articles Automatically’ to produce original content, these idiots are flooding the web with a barrage of toot which is not even remotely readable - in the full expectation of getting a huge number of inbound links to boost their site’s standing with the major search engines.

Here’s a quick newsflash: “Keep on waiting for those inbound links boys and girls, because nobody in their right mind will want to embarrass themselves by subjecting his or her visitors to the kind of incomprehensible waste you’re producing.”
“Oh, and if you’re relying on automatic links, these aren’t really worth anything much in the greater scheme of things, so you’re wasting your time there as well.”

A well written, authoritative article will still get far more exposure and expert standing than an entire week’s worth of automatic output.
If software could write coherent articles, authors and journalists would be out of business.
The last time I looked, they were still honourable (sort of) and well paying professions. 

*These programs rely mainly on substituting synonyms and jumbling the original’s grammar to produce something ‘original’.
On a readability and comprehensibility scale from 1 to 10 they score somewhere around minus 267.

Now, as this avalanche is nearing the unsuspecting village at the valley’s bottom, it is a mess of blinding spray, sticks, boulders and other assorted detritus which hits the unsuspecting web-mountain folk full in the face and buries them under a heap of meaningless junk, to suffocate slowly amongst the nonsense and grammatical errors whilst searching for something worthwhile.

Thank heaven for Alpine Rescue in the form of Social Networks like Digg and Delicious which allow users to rescue worthwhile efforts leaving the rest buried under a pile of their bretheren.

Food for thought?
Damn Right!

What’s in a passport? The cost of Biometrics

Although I don’t normally make a big deal about it, I am in fact a Kraut.

Sorry about your chippies and all that.

If it vill help I kan type wizh a German akcent, but zhat vill only make it hard to read.

Anyway, as all you Brits out there will be well aware, we Europeans (See? We’re all friends now.) are now living in the age of Biometric Passports.
Whilst I could say plenty about biometric identification being just another way for Big Brother to keep track of us all that little bit better, my point approaches this topic from another angle.

If we’re all one big, happy family with one government, one set of laws and one red European Passport (one each obviously, not one between all of us), why are the British charging such outrageous prices for this document compared to us Krauts?

• British European Biometric Passport – Cost £66.00 (€97.66 approx.)
  If the passport is issued by an embassy, such as the one in Cyprus, this fee rises to about £96.0o.
• German European Biometric Passport – Cost €59.00 (£40.00 approx.)
  The German embassy in Nicosia will quite happily issue the same passport for approximately £49.00

It’s the same type of passport, except for the fact that the German one is so much more stylish you understand, the same type of biometric identification, the same everything.
There is no place your British passport can get you into which our German one can’t (although you’ll probably be a bit more popular than us lot when you get there).

Do I detect the subtle aroma of ‘Rip-Off Britain’?

If anyone actually bothers to read this and manages to look past the fact that it was written by a ‘Hun’, I would love to hear your opinions on this matter, since it is just another example of the British government taking advantage of the country’s citizenry.
Small wonder that so many of you are emigrating away from the place.

Also… what are the passport fees for other European countries?
It could be quite entertaining to find out, since most of us will rarely look beyond our own borders to see what other countries are up to.

Food for thought?
I jolly well hope so.

The IceGiant has landed; with a bellyflop as usual

So here it is; just another blog launched by a web developer in the vain hope it will increase his web site’s search engine performance and bring in a multitude of new clients?

Not really…

While it’s true that everybody and his brother have been
flocking to blogging (whoever came up with that one?) in order to boost their web site’s performance, this will be more of a tongue in cheek look at human nature and the continuing tendency for the commercial moo cows on the web to jump on the latest bandwagon without any real understanding of what the hell is actually going on.

And trust me, there are an awful lot of moo cows out there, happily following the nearest Judas Goat into the slaughter house, figuratively speaking of course.

Then again; by and large, some web designers, developers and especially SEO professionals (these have a special place in my heart) are not exactly blameless where the present situation is concerned.
With what is best described as a ‘Secret Squirrel’ attitude, a certain proportion of operators in the web promotion industry seem to positively revel in the secure knowledge that they know something their clients don’t.

Strangely enough though, this quasi-magical SEO knowledge is rarely grounded in anything more than educated guesses or the instructions of promotional software which tells ‘the professionals’ what they should be doing.

But what the hell… as long as the customer doesn’t know; who cares, right?

Damn!
Did I say this thing was going to be tongue in cheek?
Sorry about that; I shall endeavor to be a bit more humorous in future.

The fact is that although most operators in the web design and promotion industries are competent professionals, there is a small percentage of cowboys which has given the rest a bad name.

Then again, these days it’s usually easy to spot black hat operators in this game.
They’re the ones who give over-the-top guarantees and refuse to discuss any aspect of their methods.

If confronted with such an individual, my advice would be to avoid eye contact and make good your escape before they get their hands on your cheque book.
In extreme cases, resort to the nearest heavy object.

Seriously though; there really is no need for operators in the industry to take the ‘Secret Squirrel’ stance.
Ultimately, the overwhelming majority of clients have no interest in discovering industry secrets or indeed any desire to learn about the more technical aspects of things.
They are merely looking for competent professionals to carry out the required task and deserve to be treated as valuable clients rather than idiots.

Food for thought?
Damned if I know.