Very cool presentation my Googler Mark Lesser. He talks about how one should take a step back and try and enjoy the “art of doing nothing” at least once a year.
Something I should deffinately consider doing in the near future.
Was just checking out David Naylor’s Aftervote and I must say it’s very impressive.
For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Aftervote formerly know as Younanimous, is a Search Engine that bases it’s Search results on a voting system similar to the ones we see on most of the Social Networks.
However, the interesting bit is that rather then attempting to fetch it’s own search results (and trying to compete with Google, Yahoo and MSN) it’s using the Search results from these engines and then proceeds to sort them out through a social voting system.
The Ajax back-end makes it really east to get where you want, and the overall design is absolutely impeccable.
I have serious doubts about the scalability of this, but nevertheless it’s a great idea.
A deffinate thumbs up!
According to a poll conducted by the University of Michigan, for the first time Google has been left behind in a Costumer Satisfaction survey. Although the margin is very Small, an interesting pattern seems to be emerging, as Google is belonging to show signs of discontent, specially among IT professionals.
It is also very interesting to see this happen in a crucial turning point for Yahoo, as the new CEO Jerry Yang is about to unfold the companies strategy for the next years.
Note: Big thanks to Rui for bringing this to my attention.
Just to tell you that I am aware that the blog is having a lot of issues at the moment, one of them being that the blog posts are outputing a “404 page not found” error.
Me nad my programmer are adressing this and hopefully we will have it all sorted in a couple of hours.
Update: This issue has now been resolved.
Seems that Google is taking down the paid video rentals and downloads in a couple of days. This of course means that all of the rented videos will no longer be playable.
An email was sent to the Google Video purchasers informing them that they would be credited a fantastic sum of $2 in their Google Checkout accounts, that’s right bonus and gals, not $0.50, not $1, but a total sum of $2 for your troubles!
For god’s sake, why doesn’t this multi million dollar company just reimburse the money people spent with the videos they rented and were expecting to have access too?
I just noticed that Problogger has a new design, and dear oh dear…
Is “overall ugliness” some sort of a trend right now? In the early nighties that rugged unclean look was “the look”, so I’m guessing this is cyclic.
What’s up with this Technorati look? Is it just me or that font is just hard to read and in all fairnness, ugly as hell?
By the way thank you David Naylor for starting the trend with the splendrous redesign of your Blog.
My very patient programmer Cody Robert added a couple of very neat features to the blog that make it more user and Search Engine friendly.
I’m going to create more specific categories for the SEO posts, so things might look a bit messy until I’m done.
Here is the list of stuff that was added:
The K2 Nested categories features is particular valuable since K2 doesn’t offer this our of the box and I haven’t seen this work well in any other blog.
In a day or two I might post the hack for anyone who is interested.
I know this one is a bit off but I feel it might be very useful information for anyone that hold a Paypal business account.
If for some reason you need to change your Business name, just login to your account and follow this link: https://www.paypal.com/us/wf/f=ap_namechg
It’s as simple as that. No Faxes, or bank statements are needed. All the credit for this information must go to the following Digital Point Forum member: jestep
I believe that today was the first day I ever had a real feel of insecurity towards Google as a company and as a brand.
About 7 days ago I took and passed the AdWords Professional Exam, and patiently waited for the exam results to reflect in my Client Center AdWords Pro tab. Three days had gone by and the system still didn’t recognize that I had passed the exam.
Decided to send the AdWords Professional team an email expressing my concern. The next day I got an email from them asking me to send them the Prometric email that attested that I had passed the exam. I promptly sent the required information and finally got a reply almost two days later telling me that regrettably I would have to take the exam again since the ID that I used to take the exam didn’t belong to me but to one of my clients.
Now, please bare with me…I registered to take the exam through the link “Register for the Exam” I believe in the “Client Center Pro Tab”, that redirected me to the Prometrics website.
When I clicked on the registration form the ID field was already filled in, so I assumed the information was correct and took the exam.
What happened was that for some reason it placed one of my clients AdWords ID in the field and allowed me to carry on the registration.
Even if in theory it was my mistake, because I should rechecked the information before submitting the form, why would I have to pay another 50$ to take an exam that I had already passed just because there was mistake with the account ID in the exam form? Take into account that I have full control over my client’s account, including the email address associated with that account, so I would easily be able to proof that I was the one who took the exam.
This however didn’t help me much, and Google Support promptly congratulated me in passing the exam and told me that regrettably I would have to take it again. Wasn’t that nice?
Decided to give them a call and sort out this nonsense. Surprisingly, or not, there was no Support line to be found. Now, I spend a lot of my own money as well as my client’s on AdWords, and this company isn’t open to helping out when I need them? What if it was a matter that required a fast and urgent intervention, would I have to wait 24 hours for an automated reply from Mr. Googler bot?
I eventually found the Google support line (1.866.246.6453) on the Google SEO Forum and called them.
The employee that attended me was called Ann, and what a difference! I must say I had never experience such a good level os support. She was polite, listen to what I had to say, but best of all, she was Human! Didn’t interact with me in “Bot mode”, and make me feel like I was actually a client.
All I can say is that 8 hours later my problem has been resolved.
So I’ve been reading all about SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin’s supposed vendetta against Web directories. In all fairness I hardly believe he has anything against Directory owners at all. He is merely expressing a point of view that is valid in many ways.
To kick this off, let me just briefly state where I stand on this. I believe that whilst the sale of links through a Web Directory platform is not a very good business model, it is undeniable that they bring value to their clients, even if Rand states otherwise.
Every SEO in the process of Link building submits his client’s websites to directories. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or in denial. There could be cases where this step simply isn’t needed because the SEO holds control over a Network of websites that provide him enough “link power” to discard the directory submissions process; this might be the case for Randy.
A Web Directory, as product to the end user is simply worthless. Keep in mind that the owners of the websites that are listed in the directories are not the end user, or better yet, they shouldn’t be.
Why is it not valuable? To be put it very blatantly, because no one will use it to search for content.
Also, in a Webmaster perspective, I serious doubt that directories generate enough traffic in quantity and quality in the regular category listings to represent a good ROI .
Web Directories have one single purpose, to pass link weight to the websites listed in the various categories.
I have seen some very surprising reactions by directory owners who seem to be taking this rather personally. I’m guessing that the most extreme reactions are coming from owners of small directories, because the ones who have been around long enough know that they have nothing to worry about.
My final take on this, is that of course that certain directories will have a good impact on your SERPS, just select the most contextual directories for your business, and the ones that are authoritative, even if they are generic.
One of the things I love about this industry is that every day you discover people who are willing to test things out, that don’t simply take things as they are. Kuddos to them!
Shaun Anderson tried to figure out how Google would treat and index a title with 50 terms inside the tag. The results were very surprising to say the least.
Hobo SEO UK : “You can put 50 words in your title tag, we’ll read it”
Not really knews I know, but I’m posting a followup on this subject and decided to post the orininal post for furture refence.
It’s not only the SEO Rockstars show that seems to be completely inactive, even Oilman’s blog isn’t as active as it once was. Does anyone have any info on this?
I decided to remove the “Dissecting Page Rank” paper from my work plan. The reason for this is that I came across a paper that pretty much covers all aspects that I intended to approach. It’s possibly the best independent study I have seen on Page Rank.
So, if one has nothing to add on a subject, why not simply shut his pie hole?
Like someone stated before, for a blog that holds in its title “SEO experiments”, there is not a lot of that happening here lately. 
So I feel it’s time to announce my plans for this particular content area for the rest of the year.
The publication of these Papers/studies will be conducted in a slight different manner then the content of a post. Since I am going to invest a lot of time on research and testing, I am going to take a more “institutional” approach when publishing my conclusions.
By this, I mean that I will be posting the methods that I used to reach the conclusions, as well as the. I have seen this methology used in a couple of SEO experiment websites, and I feel they do such a good job in clarifying issues that otherwise are just talked without real evidence backing them up.
I will be creating a separate section in sidebar, to mark a clear distinction between them and the regular post categories.
Realistically, with my shortage of time it was imperative that I limited the number of “papers” to be published until the end of the year, so here are the topics:
If you have a subject that you would like me to analyze, please don’t hesitate to contact me, I am more then open to all suggestions.