The JCpenny incident - NYtimes and Google harm JCpenny

The NYtimes published an article about unethical methods of SEO (search engine optimization) and basically called out JCPenny who used such methods.

First off, as an expert in the web marketing industry I have to say: most sites use such methods to increase their visibility. This is nothing unusual, really.

The fact NYTimes decided to call out JCPenny and practically force Google to react seems a bit odd to me. They could have chosen almost any other website on the internet and show it does correlate with Google's webmaster guidance, but they chose JCPenny and even monitored how Google will harm them as a response to the article that was submitted to the head of the spam team Matt Cutts.

My bet is that they hold a secret interest to do so.The big retail stores that compete with JCPenny have probably earned millions just in the last months since JC dropped in ranks. Like always - in business, no one does anyone favors for free.

Is Google buying twitter?

Numerous people that hang around the webmaster world forum have claim that Google is currently "sniffing around" to see if Twitter is up for purchase.

After Orkut has miserably failed (you might have not even heard about it being Google's social network) - they now aim at the world 2nd largest social network and one of the top 5 trafficked sites in the world. This makes perfect sense to me and I concur it would be a wise move upon Google's business development team.

The problem with such move is that Google would integrate social signals from Twitter into the search results, i.e: twits mentioning websites will be counted as links and improve a website's visibility. That is currently being practiced already by Google to some extent, but when they gather the full data from Twitter, results will be changed dramatically. Millions of website owners who have not been focusing on Social media effort will have their assets harmed, at least to some extent, and even if they were doing some Facebook promotions - it will not be credited as much as twitter. That could and should cause an immigration from the love-able and much better Facebook towards dull, uninteresting, Twitter.

Website dealing with..

I came across this article about the big brother on bbc and was wondering, what you, the reader, feel about well respected websites (I hope this blog will become one somewhere in time) publishing pieces on... let's just say... minor and shallow issues.

I personally think that major websites should focus on their main core business, or deal with other business that seem a bit more "respectful" or somehow similar in content. If I add gambling posts in my blog, will its prestige wear off to some extent)?

The Nigerian scam

This is an open question for the readers - how many of you had a supposed or even several supposed rich Nigerian uncles who inherited all of their belongings to you, a person whom they never met or shouldn't have any blood connection too.

Wise people would assume something is awfully wrong with such scenario and would dump it straight into their junk box, but some people, I can assume elders and perhaps people who just break into the virtual world. ScamBusters is a really great site and has written a very good piece about it. You'd be surprised to know how many people fell into this scam.

Anti Protester.

Google's localized results - I am afraid to say but I hate it!

Google started building a firm base of her algorithm based on a certain idea in mind - people like localized results. People searching for pizza would prefer pizza delivery services in their area, and if we could improve that and show them exactly where it is, we will earn a whole lot more and improve our search results.

Based upon that concept the organic search results changed dramatically (some during mayday update). Google maps were added, as well as Google's places and more.

It's a pretty simple concept. In first glance, it seemed perfectly logical to me. Then I started looking for queries in English (because local results usually SUCK) in google.com, with my non American IP. The average, non experienced, user would not know how results change when your IP-detected Google still has results according to his automatically picked language.

These results are absolute spam. Strong English sites are mere shadows of their original local, site. Some sites build by locals, hosted on the a local host, rank despite their low quality content. Also people who has mediocre English sites and linked to it from their network of local sites do well. Who will remain out? all the relevant results of course.

Mr Cutts, for your attention.

Anti Protester.

Google's fight with spam

Barry Schwartz Wrote in his site searchengineland.com that Google has an improved algorithm to fight web-spam. I am watching the SERPs closely recently and I have noticed that there are less of a non-relevant results but still it seems like a futile fight. Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Spam-fight group and a senior speaker for the company has provided the amazing data that 80% of the new webpages to be found by Google's crawler (/spider) is content which posses of a low value.

Spam is only common in certain, sometimes dark, areas of the web, where a lot of big money is. There's a very low likeliness that it would be found someplace else and especially for information queries in most fields. So, since the web-spam group of Google consists of 1000's of people, why wouldn't they go manually over the top results and sort it out a little. I was assuming they are doing just that, but I am proved to find it's the other way around. Superb results that use to be in Google's first page are now gone, replaced by direct domain names with low quality content (a rewrite of generic templates of such sites, on most cases).

Build your free webpage

I have been recently asked by many people where they can start building their personal page or business page. I was a bit shocked from the question, living in the online world for so long and disregarding the average person low knowledge and understanding of the internet. If you do own a business do yourself a favor and learn some online marketing. It will do you well, it doesn't matter what's your business.

Here are a few great suggestions for opening your first page :

Squidoo is great, easy to use, great community, excellent for SEO and always my favorite pick. This platform BlogSpot is a great choice as well. Powered by Google, loved by Google easy to use, but yet the blogs look... well see for yourself.
Other options include the freebie Weebly or Webs.

If you are business owner, or even just the average American person (Wiki's list of household income in the states) - you can afford yourself.

A. Sparing some hours and learning basic HTML.
B. Learning how to install wordpress (it's automatic in some hosts just with a click o a mouse).
C. Buying a domain (.info costs 2$ a year, a .com is around 11).
D. Buying a hosting plan (another 4$ a month).

Within 10 hours and $10 a month you can make yourself a website. From there, it's up to you how much you improve it.