Let's get this straight

I feel a RANT coming on here people – be ready to duck. I was making the rounds and ended up on Danny’s Daily SearchCast and a reference to a list of ‘possible’ Google penalties and filters on Joe Whyte’s site. This is where the blood began to boil.

WTF is with SEO folks and their incessant need to pigeon-hole every little theory no matter how silly or even illogical it is. While I am a fan of search technologies, I think it’s been agreed it isn’t ‘rocket science’. It certainly doesn’t need to be filled up with unnecessary mythologies and misdirection.

I have re-organized the list from it’s original form and added MY interpretations of these so-called ‘Penalties and Filters’.

I decided to start a new series called ‘Bad SEO’ – to highlight what to look for and funny anecdotes about encounters with some ..er.. uh.. not-so-professional Search Engine Optimization providers out there. I am certainly NOT going to start ‘outing’ people (naming offenders) – simply posting chronicles as a warning to the consumer; and a good laugh for the professional (hard working) SEO craftsperson. ‘Tis borne from unfortunate tales and wary consumers all in need of reassurance.

So I say to all you SEO Hacks out there – the Reality Train is a comin’ – Get off the tracks or get run over.

12 Step Program - Things you DON’T want to see on a SEO provider’s website;
<< Much of this rant is based on a REAL SEO site/provider, tho a few are JUST ME ranting – let the debate begin! >>

Here we go...

Oh..er oops.. I mean 'Link Bombs'

I was just posting this over at SEO Yak and figured I would put a quick heads up here as well. Apparently Google Bombing has been dealt a blow of its own; Matt Cutts of Google (fame?) mentioned a recent piece of his on the Google Webmaster Blog that discusses what Google is doing to defuse this nasty little sport. There is also mention of a breakdown from Danny Sullivan – I am still reading that one..

Sounds interesting … more to come after I get some sleep and read up more...

Ok still up... who needs sleep anyways, right?  – well it seems Matt and Co are givin’ it the ol ‘Hidey Ho’ and simply passing off the update (why the fuss Matt?) and his ‘gang’ merely slid along by letting us know that they are, “improving our analysis of the link structure of the web” – Which is really great kids because it will likely  be “minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs” – or so we’re told.

I simply couldn’t pass this one up. How exactly can a major search engine purport to be fighting ‘the war on spam’ when – on their own Blog and contact with the webmaster world – THERE IS SPAM!

I kid U not. And it didn’t show up moments before I arrived either. It’s been up for some 15hrs now. May not seem like much to the lay-person, but for me it just shouldn’t happen. Has anyone seen Web Spam hanging around a MSN or Google webmaster Blog? Not many that I have seen for that period of time.  I just don’t think it looks good on ‘em.

(ScreenShots Below)