blogthropology

Google Senior Vice Pres Dumps $8.9 Million Of GOOG Stock

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Panic Button! Last month Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Senior Vice President, David Drummond, made a public statement about Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo, in which he characterized the move as one that rose “troubling questions”. A couple of weeks later, Google co-founder Sergey Brin echoed that sentiment, stating that he found elements of the potential union between Microsoft and Yahoo as “unnerving”. Less than 1 week after that, comScore (Nasdaq: SCOR) released its January 2008 qSearch paid click report, which demonstrated that from December 07 to January 08 Google had suffered a 7% drop in paid clicks, which are the bread and butter of the Google machine.

Later that same day, in what as far as I can tell was a widely unreported move, David Drummond dumped what amounted to at least $8,960,000 of his stock in the company.

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Spammer? Or Budding Creative Marketer?

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Before I went to bed last night it looked like the nightly spam attack was in full swing at Sphinn again. This morning when I looked, I could see that it was still going on, although it seemed as if the mods had at least deleted most of it. One submission that did catch my eye was by someone whose submissions I had seen before, that I had thought were questionable back then as well, entitled “What is a keylogger good for?”:


(click to enlarge)

I started to write a comment

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Google Reconsideration Request Language Modified Again

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Kudos goes out to Matt Cutts, again. 😀

The changes to the language in the Google Reconsideration Request (formerly known as the Reinclusion Request), that were discussed on SEO Scoop back on December 3rd and here on Smackdown again on the 18th, have finally gone through. Essentially, the changes have to do with

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Matt Cutts: Industry Leaders Are Incapable Of Performing Editorial Discretion

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For those of you who have missed the stories behind Google making Donna Fontenot jump through hoops and taking her prisoner of war, where’s a brief rundown. At one time Donna accepted money for advertising (fully disclaimed as such), and some forms of those adverts involved the client getting a link back. Google pimp slapped Donna back in October. She went through and changed everything she could find that might be the problem, and filed a reinclusion request back in December. As of yesterday

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Hey, Donna… Your Lips Tired Yet From Puckering That Long?

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Donna, I admire you. You sure do have some stamina, the way you’ve had them Louisiana lips of yours puckered so firmly to Google’s evil ass this long.

I dumped text link ads. I nofollowed paid links. I javascripted links that might be mistaken for paid links. I canceled my sponsored review accounts. I switched to a different method of monetization (Scratchback) that serves Google-friendly, nofollowed links. (And btw, Google, that put a huge dent in my revenue, just so you know). – Donna Fontenot of SEO-Scoop.com

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Wired Says Screw It To All Search Engines After SEL Inspired Spam Attack, Disallows EVERYTHING With Robots.txt

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So, it looks like after the mishap this past Friday, where SEL accidentally exposed the Wired How-To wiki to spammers, Wired has instituted their new spam deterrent measures. They seem to have gone just a tad bit overboard, if you ask me.

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All Humor Aside, Here’s Why Matt Cutts Statement About AdWords Above SERPS Is BS

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Sometimes, as geeks, we forget how the non-geek mind works. Things we take for granted as being obvious aren’t always so to the untrained eye. Yes, when most of us who live on the Internet perform a search on Google, we know without even thinking what is sponsored and what is not. Most of us probably won’t even see the ads in front of us, aside form the habitual scan for competitors when performing queries that might relate to our own sites.

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Matt Cutts Says: Paid Ads *Are* A Type Of Search

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As many of you know, Andy Beard has been out of the posting loop lately, due to being preoccupied with moving. Luckily he did manage to get in a much needed review of Matt Cutts post on paid links.

I stumbled across the post last night, and I saw a quote by Matt Cutts that caught my attention a bit:

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