Grasshoppermind

First there was Blog and Ping. What was initially a legitimate method for informing blog indexes (such as Technorati) of new content, was rapidly morphed into an automated and dubious technique used by some internet marketers to drive their websites up the Search Engine page rankings. And this worked (for a while) until Google et al. caught up and altered their ranking algorithms.

Blackhat search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques often involve the creation of huge blog farms of autogenerated pseudo content all linking back and forth to each other. These useless (to the reader anyway) blogs have become known as Splogs= Spam+Blogs.

Another technique which will be recognised by anyone who has run a genuine blog for any time are Spam Comments - again designed to create backlinks from authoritative page ranked sites to the website that was being SEO’ed. Indiscriminate use of specifically written comment spamming programs has resulted in this widespread nuisance - which because most people now use REL=NOFOLLOW for their comments - no longer provides any benefits to the users of this technique.

Now we are beginning to see exploitation of Web2.0 tagging in the drive for higher search engine rankings. Automated Tag and Ping programs have been developed and released(and no I’m not going to link to them). Now we will see the automated poisoning of tagging which will reduce its effectiveness and lead to greater amounts of Splog in our feed readers.

Will we see a new round of Splogs using this method? I believe that we will, because the short term gains will appeal to the ‘get rich quick’ mindset that makes up one segment of the Internet Marketing community.

Ultimately another round of countermeasures will be produced which will reduce Tag and Ping effectiveness… and so the cycle will continue.

As of 29th March 2006, the Isle of Man is to be listed in the ISO 3166 countries list as a country separate from the United Kingdom. I would love to think that this was anything to do with my contacting Microsoft to get them to add Isle of Man to their website address forms. The truth is that due to concerted efforts from government representatives of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man over a period of five or more years, the ISO have agreed to make the appropriate changes to the countries list known as ISO3166-1. As many websites utilise this database for their pull down list of countries it seems that the Isle of Man will begin to be listed as soon as they refresh their databases.

I have just received an update from my contact at Microsoft, who says that it’s likely that the Isle of Man will be added first as a County of the United Kingdom. Whilst technically this is inaccurate, it’s closer to our goal of being able to fill in address information on Microsoft sites accurately. Later they hope to be able to make changes to their systems to allow the Isle of Man to be entered as a separate country, although this will take a lot longer as there are a lot of sites and databases that will need to be changed. I’m impressed with how Microsoft have responded to this request so far, I’ll post again on this subject when we see the changes happen.

Oh Well, one week has already gone by since I emailed Microsoft, and there’s been no response. Not good so far. Microsoft’s SPAM filter probably ate it.

I’m trying to contact anyone in Microsoft who can help me to get the Isle of Man set up as a country on their website forms. Email addresses, telephone numbers, etc. all gratefully accepted.

UPDATE: I followed up my email with a phone call, (Microsoft don’t give out direct numbers, so I went via the switchboard) and I actually got through to a person, not their voicemail. They are investigating who within Microsoft can deal with this.

Today I came across a problem that people in the United Kingdom, or United States, or any large country for that matter would never come across.

I could not select my country, the Isle of Man when filling in a web form.

Now actually this is not unusual as there are very few websites that recognise the Isle of Man as a separate country. But on Microsoft’s site, and in particular on their Mystery Solved Licencing promotion the problem was exacerbated because I had to choose a county as part of my address. This effectively forced me to put in an inaccurate address - not good for me, or for their marketing database.

So I decided to see how agile a company the size of Microsoft could be, in answering and hopefully soving this problem.

So, today 2nd March 2006.
Found a phone number from their website (0870 60 10 100) and called their switchboard.
Very helpful, gave me another number which I rang. After a five minute delay I got through to someone who gave me the email address of the “person who deals with that promotion”. So far so good. So I sent an email explaining the situation and now we wait and see what happens next!

Let’s see how this goes over the next few days/weeks…

I really want my new Dell laptop, like now please! It’s been two weeks already. I’ve had no emails keeping me up to date. Your order tracking system is so broken you should take it off line. It’s embarrassing! From their tracking page…

Please note
NB It can take up to 72 hours for the data to transfer from our ordering system to the online status tool. As a result do not be alarmed if within this timescale no record is found, simply wait 48-72 hours and try again.

Erm Why? UPS seem to be able to track status pretty well. So do DHL and FedEx. I just want to find out where my laptop is. Oh and on Saturday and Sunday the customer service office is closed.

Rant, Rant, etc.

Following up on the Sony Rootkit story, as predicted there is already significant fallout for Sony. There are Lawsuits filed against them, Virus writers are exploting the cloaking technology that was employed, Sony’s own patch appears to cause stability problems and now the anti-virus vendors are releasing removal tools. All in all this has been no doubt been a very interesting week for Sony’s PR department! If they want to do further damage to their reputation they can press ahead with the release of this copy protection scheme in Europe.

As of the time of writing there is no official press release from Sony about this, you can check here at Sony’s official press release area.

A couple of weeks ago John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing advised his readers thus:

Look, I’m not going to waste too much time trying to convince you that people are searching for every kind of business, right there in you hometown, using the Internet. Every major search engine is rushing to become the next local phone book and you need to get your business listed now, while it’s still free.

So, without further ado, can Google Local, Yahoo Local and MSN Local let the rest of the world (outside the US) register their businesses?

Please?

Over at the Google Earth Blog, Frank Taylor asks whether people are Making Money via Google Earth. Well I’m not sure that there is sufficient take up of Google Earth to replace web stores (yet). But several insights in his post resonate with me.

-Firstly, Google Earth lends itself brilliantly to location based items. I used an example of this in my earlier post Howto geotag anything. I created a Tagzania account to list several items for sale that were relevant to my location (Isle of Man). Once the KML file is opened in Google Earth, you will see some links to DVD’s and Books etc. If you click on these, you get taken to Amazon using my affiliate links. (I used ElfURL to keep the links nice and manageable)

- Secondly, The Network Link in Google Earth allows that content to be dynamic. If I add additional items for sale in my Tagzania account, these will also be displayed next time you open up Google Earth. The Network Link IS the Killer App of Google Earth

The main problem is that first someone has to find your Network Link and then load it up in Google Earth. If Google Search adds KML output for geotagged items, then we’re in business!

How about it Google?

Updated: Added link to KML file

Seth Godin’s 2nd Ebook “Who’s There?” follows on naturally from “Knock Knock” and was just released. This one’s about Blogs and Bloggers, and it’s a great introduction to give to someone asking what blogging is all about. It’ll save you a lot of time.

Just like the previous one, it’s free.

Get the PDF here (1.8MB)
or the ZIP here (1.6MB)

Seth Godin’s latest book, Knock Knock was released today. Seth turns his attention to Websites and what they’re for. This is his incomplete guide to building a website that works. It’s incomplete because he wants you to write the sequel!

If you have a website and you want customers, and then you want to keep them, then this is a must read.

Oh and by the way, he’s giving it away, free.

Get the PDF here (6.4MB)
or the slightly smaller ZIP is here (5.75MB)

Perhaps I’m being a little unkind about this survey referred to by the folks at ZDNet. Despite what seems to be common knowledge amongst those using the internet, these mistakes are repeated over and over again. For those still tempted to make things difficult for their customers I prescribe a course of Seth Godin, starting here

I found ElfURL last week and at first I almost dismissed it as a “me too” clone of TinyURL. I’m so glad I read a little further into their blurb. This is a great little utility!
you can :
- Take a big URL and make it smaller.
- Create del.icio.us tags
- Create REL tags
- Each time a link is used it is counted and you can retrieve stats on that link via RSS.

I can think of several good uses for this.
Marketing: use an ElfURL signature on your email to link to your website/blog - use the Elf RSS feed to measure effectiveness of clickthroughs from your email.
Geotagging: create an ElfURL of any webpage article and Geotag it.

Any others spring to mind? Let me know.