Smackdown!
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
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,
To: Mr. Patrick Curl
From: Da Law Offices Of Vinny and Guido, Esquires
Regardings, as it were: Your Joke on one Mr. Darren Rowse
Dear Mr. Patrick,
Listen ups. Recently it has come to our attentions dat yous decided ta play what yous thought would be a funny on our dear friend, one Mr Darren Rowse. Yous thought, what? Dat by smearing
In the early days of the Internet, one of the biggest attractions was the fact that absolutely anybody was able to sign up for a free email account, and with it get their very own webpage. No design experience whatsoever was required for this… and it showed. Gaudy was vogue, and if you doubt me spend some time on the Internet Archive to see what I am referring to. With continued ease of use and the advent of cheap hosting, this trend continues even today. However, fortunately for those of us who are in fact design-challenged (and yes, in general I do include myself amongst the masses when it comes to a lack of graphic arts talent) in modern times we have leaders in the industry we can emulate when we want to learn how things should be done. Today let us turn to one of the Internet giants for our lessons in usability, to none other than Digg.com itself.
It looks like even Stanford University, where Google was born, has been victim to the latest WordPress exploit going around.
I was poking around in the serps from the query I showed in the last post, seeing what blogs had been hit,
Today I posted a piece that made fun of online romances, something that I generally always take with a grain of salt due to having observed them in all of their forms over the many years I have been online. The one thing that they all have in common is drama, and an abundance of it at that. So from my point of view I regard them as digital Dr. Phil episodes at their best, and Geraldo Rivera exposes at their worst… and open to commentary and examination when publicly conducted.
With this particular post, however, I named names
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”
Today Mybloglog went live with a new profile layout. In it they have incorporated a feature, by default, that shows everybody what their friends are Twittering (assuming that they have added in their Twitter information, of course). Twitter has apparently promptly responded by having a nervous breakdown. 😀
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
