Google starts to show (not provided) in organic results

Yes - you heard correctly, a trial new version of Google, code-named Google Ninja, is going to start sharing organic results as "(not provided)." Already infamous amongst website owners, this latest move does little to help the growing unrest and anger directed towards the search engine, which is one of the biggest in the world.

A source at the company, a Google Search Quality Engineer, who couldn't be named for privacy reasons, had this to say:

"Google take privacy very seriously. After our very successful hiding of organic keywords, people reached out to tell us how important this is to their daily lives. Now, they don't need to be embarrassed about using Google to search for drugs, weapons and ideas for criminal mayhem. As such, all organic results will be shown as "(not provided)" and the links will be disabled. Naturally, Paid-ads will still show, as people are paying for that, so it would be kind of wrong not to"   -- (Not Provided)

Web store owners up and down the country are said to be left pulling their hair out in frustration with the search giant, rumoured to be smaller than Yahoo! in its search marketing share according to DomScore, the website that rates and scores Dominatrix Dungeon owners according to popularity and domination ability.

Google Chairman, Chris Muller-Lite said that the company were just trialling the idea and that (not provided) would only make up a tiny share of the organic search results and most people wouldn't even notice.

It really is a bit of a complete joke!

Funny thought about earned links and Negative SEO

The pain of looking through your own back links to see who is linking to you, the angst of wondering what Google thinks and what to do about them. Webmasters were right to worry about Negative SEO - its true and Google is already warning and penalising sites because it can't really determine "natural" and "unnatural" links.

Earned links are the most spurious, because they come from the lowest value. I'll write about them in more detail later on. This is a funnier thought from Skype:

I was talking to one of my colleagues and I was lamenting the earned links we have from seemingly low quality blogs (i.e. lower than ours, the vast sum of the web is build in a authority pyramid shape with high sites at the top built on bases of lower ranking sites). This isn't their fault. Nor is it ours.

But here's the summary of out thinking:

*A Brief history of SEO*

2003-20012 Helping people build quality, helpful links like "visit my finance blog here"
2013: Helping people delete helpful links and replace them with just click here and disavowing all the free links you got for writing great content

*The New Rule* Write good content but not _great_ content - otherwise people will link to you and you'll have to disavow them all !

#fun #seo #negativeseo #google

seoMoz reinvent themselves into twitter marketing

SeoMoz has been a clever little company since it's founding. Their tool and USP was their ability to spy on and record other people's links. It's all rather counter productive if you ask me

Well, for a link-obsessive product (let's face it, the other SEO stuff is fudge and guesswork) - link obsession doesn't work anymore. Copying links that anyone can get is, as you've probably guessed, just not worth it. Getting higher value links is and while you can find them, you may not have the real life relationship to get them created.

What now for seoMoz?
Well, they're a clever little lot and rather than argue with link building, it seems that they found a way to cater to the masses of bad SEO's and give them what they wanted. As people copied links, more links had to be found and the whole ponzi scheme got off to a great start....

But now, the main tool in seoMoz's kit, the Link Explorer, is somewhat past it's sell-by-date, so they recently acquired FollowerTwonk, which according to it's website provides Twitter Analytics. Now this could be quite useful

Social Media is the future for.....Moz (?) !
The erstwhile CEO may often be lampooned for his "Great content" quips but it turns out that not only could this be the saving grace for (seo)Moz but there are more Social Media consultants than there are SEO's - so this should be a fantastic page turner.

We'd like to wish all of the crew over at the new Moz all the best! Watch this spot

SEO is about putting content into context. Content is a vital component of online marketing - that's the point of online marketing - to drive visitors to content! But there's a growing myth that content = marketing and we want to balance that with some new thinking.

How does Google look at content - really, its from the users point of view. You might be writing for the user but you don't get to decide if you're the right content to read at that time. That's why users like Google and, unless you have your own channel, that's the game you have to play!

Seo context in online marketing from PrimaryPosition.com

Visitor Stats for Top US Sites

Do you know how many users are on .....  ?

We're constantly bombarded with the total number of visitors for the top ten platforms, and some are better known than others. But we think that opinions are always a poor substitute for facts...

So, thanks to the people at Experian, these are the biggest websites in the US by weekly visits up to last Friday, the 23rd of February 2013..

(http://www.experian.com/hitwise/online-trends.html)

How to manage Page Admins in Google+

It seems a little more complex than it needs to be but at least its probably not something you need to do every day. Here's a quick step-by-step guide to setting up admins for a Google+ page.

Step 1

Go to your new page and “Switch to” the page

Step 2

Click on the home Icon and then select "Settings" from the gear icon

Step 3

Select the "Managers" slider switch

Opinion: twitter and Google+, some thoughts

If you've been following me, you'll notice I'm finding more and more to play with on Google+. I didn't like Google+ at the start because it seemed much more deeper-dive than twitter and I love twitters ADHD style.

In 2008 (I know, I was late to the party), I joined twitter and also started blogging. Everyone told me, as if it was written on the wall, that twitter was nonsense, a fad and would never work. In 2012, I think its fair to say, twitter went mainstream. 200 million+ users. Every news and major corporation had embraced it. Twitter was even used in revolutions and wars.

Millions on twitter tell me that they know Google+ won't work. Its failed. Its a waste ground. Millions of them have never been - but they know, matter-of-factly, unquestionably know that Google+ doesn't work, won't work and could it just go away. Without a doubt.

That's Google+'s ace card. Twitter was better, IMHO, to small business in 2008 and 2009 because it was mostly early-mid stage adopters. You could talk to big company CxO's, scientists, and journalists. Thought leaders and provokers. Disruptor's. Everyone who had a place in real life and especially those who didn't - were welcomed with open arms in a sort of start-up type liberal, open minded disruptor.

But now its main stream and that's gone. But Google+ has this in spades. Don't come to Google+ to look for twitter - keep Hello! magazine over in twitter by all means please :)


I know very few people good at predicting the future of technology. Like a handful. And they aren't the masses that laughed at twitter and then 3 years later found themselves opening an account on it. No, people are afraid of having to have two accounts. And if twitter is Hello! magazine and Google+ is twitter from 2009 - I'm pretty happy with that.