Smackdown!
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
I was perusing Sphinn today, and noticed a submission in the Top 10 list entitled “Google University Bulgaria turns into a PR disaster“. Disaster? Wow, I thought, I had better read that!
Turns out it had to do with a bunch of people registering for an invite only Google event, and then Google rejecting a bunch of those registrations. Yes, a few people who were invited were rejected as well, but to be fair it was billed as first come first serve. To me, not that interesting a story. I didn’t Sphinn it myself, but
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
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
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
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. 
Danny Sullivan is actually off the hook cause I’m sick tonight, and have no energy to speak of… I was going to do a deeply involved detailed post having to do with cojones growing and owning up to events as they really happened…
Instead, I’ll just ask…
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.
Way to go, Matt! 😀
Although he said that it could take a while, it looks like the changes Matt mentioned he started the ball rolling on, that DazzlinDonna posted about back on Dec 3rd, “Admission of Guilt Will No Longer Be Required For Google Reconsideration Request“, have indeed gone through. For the most part, that is.
Donna wrote a piece today entitled, “Less PageRank Floating Around In SEO Niche“. The post was based around a comment Matt Cutts made on SEOmoz having to do with the fact that certain sites seeing lower PageRank had to do with the fact that “there’s less PageRank flowing around in some areas (e.g. search and SEO)” and not that those sites had been penalized. Her conclusion from Matt’s statement is that she thinks most people were wrong about the recent visible PageRank penalties being just visible, and that the the penalties were probably also behind there being “less PageRank” in the SEO niche.
