For years now, on an on-again/off-again basis, Google has had issues with the way that they treat 302 Temporary Redirects. Going back at least as far as 2004, you can find discussions about websites getting hijacked in the serps, all due to problems arising from the way that 302’s were treated. The issue was that if one site redirected to another using a 302 Temporary Redirect (as opposed to a 301 Permanent Redirect, which has come to be known as a “search engine friendly” redirect), often times
SEO
Why The Google Keyword Tool Is Useless For SEO, Even With Exact Numbers
Recently there was a bit of a hubbub surrounding Google’s Keyword Tool External (the keyword suggestion portion of AdWords that was made public a couple of years back). It started when a few people, like Barry Schwartz from SERoundtable, noticed that the tool was showing specific numbers for search terms instead of just green bars. Even though at first
How To Completely Clean Your Hacked WordPress Installation
Update 08/13/2015 – Please note: The following Do It Yourself guide on how to de-hack your website is designed for people who don’t necessarily know how to read php, but do know how to work their way through installing WordPress, themes, and plugins. It also assumes you know your way around whichever hosting control panel it is that comes with your host. Because malicious code can be very hard to weed out from the legitimate stuff, especially for someone who is not a programmer, this guide recommends that you start over with a completely fresh theme on your site. This means that for many, the customizations that were done to the theme will be lost, or will need to be re-done. For those of you who would prefer not to do that, or who have a complicated or ecommerce site, or one with heavy traffic and you would like to completely minimize the downtime, I do offer professional cleaning services. I can de-hack and secure your site without losing any of the design or functionality, and in most cases there is only a few minutes of downtime near the end of the process. For more information, please fill out my contact form.
Getting hacked sucks, plain and simple. It can affect your rankings, cause your readership to be exposed to virus and trojan attacks, make you an unwilling promoter to subject material you may not actually endorse, and in many cases cause the loss of valuable content. However, once it happens it is usually best to not procrastinate on the clean up process,
Google Updates List Of Third-Party Ad Providers
Well, that was quick. For those of you not using my Free Google Third-Party Ad Providers Widget, which automatically updates whenever Google changes their list of third-party ad providers, it’s time to update your privacy policies once again.
If you are already using the widget,
If Googleplex Employees Don’t Understand The Webmaster Guidelines, How Can They Expect Webmasters To Adhere To Them?
Last month, in one of my posts, I had decided to include a few images to see how well they might rank for their keyphrases. I had never targeted any of the image searches, and due to one of the topics of the post it seemed like a good opportunity to do so. When I went to check later to see if the images happened to be indexed yet, they weren’t. It had only been a couple of days, and I really didn’t expect them to be there yet, so that was really no surprise. What did surprise me, however,
Sitelinks at #60 – A Warning Shot From Google
Last Thursday Barry Schwartz (Rustybrick) reported over at SERoundtable about a discussion going on in a Google Groups thread, having to do with a webmaster who had dropped 6 pages from the #1 spot, but was still seeing sitelinks when he did get to his listing. Barry said that he did not see the listings for himself, and was wondering why no one else could see them (he knew they were real due to a screenshot the webmaster took here).
The answer to Barry’s question is that
Introducing: PuzzCAPTCHA Advanced Comment Form Protection, LinkMyPics – The Hotlink Advantage Maximizer… Oh, and Evan Rachel Wood, Topless [NFSW]
No, my blog wasn’t hacked by porno webmasters, and no, I’m not converting Smackdown to an adult website (although, to be honest, kids or sensitive people should always approach my blog with caution). I wanted to test some of the various image search algos, and as it just so happens the search [Evan Rachel Woods Topless] currently brings up no valid results on Google Images (which kind of surprised me, but more on that at the end). Since I am also releasing a WordPress plugin to help prevent comment spam (which blogs coming up for queries like that probably encounter a ton of) and a very nifty little widget that helps turn image and bandwidth theft into links, I figured I would do all 3 at once. I promise, I am putting all of the questionable images way below the fold… so if you are the sensitive type,
Network Solutions: Not Just Thieves and Hijackers, Now Using Tactics That Can Get Your Site Banned From Google
Network Solutions apparently wasn’t happy just being slimy in the domain purchasing arena (see: WARNING: Do not check domains at Network Solutions by John Honeck for background on that one), and have now moved into the realm of not caring if they damage your existing sites as well.
According to TechCrunch, NetSol is now engaging in the practice of Hijacking Unassigned Sub-Domains, which put simply means
Link Bait Kindergarten: Creative Thinking Must Come First
This Tuesday Matt Cutts published a post, that he had originally written in Dec 2005, entitled SEO Advice: Getting Links, where he outlined some good ideas that can lead to getting more links in to your site naturally. Some of the concepts he touched on were things such as providing a useful service (one time or ongoing), becoming a resource, or simply being the first to come up with a catchy idea. The ideas were all well laid out
Official Sphinn Standpoint: Infomercials Are *Not* Spam
Last Friday, poking around, I came across an article that had been submitted to Sphinn at the beginning of the week entitled “1:1 Interview With Search Marketing Authority and Visionary Hamlet Batista”. In the description it is billed as “a great interview where Hamlet discusses his introduction to SEO/SEM, touching on his immensely successful projects”, so I click through to see what he has to say. There I am greeted, no doubt whatsoever, with…
… an infomercial. That’s right, this “great interview”
