Keith

In the beginning, there was the Computer.  The Computer operated alone until networking became possible (and also useful to the military).  Then there came the Internet as a way that all computers could communicate and advertise to each other anywhere, as long as there was a phone line.  The way your computer accessed the Internet was through a Browser (Netscape, Internet explorer, Safari, FireFox, etc.); this is like your particular brand of doorway into the world-wide-web.  It is specific to your personal computer.

Next came the Search Engine (Google, Yahoo, Chrome) which lives on the Internet as a sort of organizer and librarian.  This meant you didn’t have to know the exact website address (URL) to track down a certain website anymore. The search engine would do the sorting and searching for you and display a neat list of the closest matches to what you were asking.  They also try to get rid of sites that are malicious/illegal or sometimes just really annoying…Naturally there is much debate about the power we invest in Search Engines, but they are just so damn useful!
Currently, Google has by far surpassed other search engines in popularity and usability and has even become it’s own verb (did ya google it?).  What SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tries to do is make a website as clear and as recognizable to Google (Yahoo, etc.) as possible.  In other words, making sure your website can be read by robots.  Its not just people you are trying to get to see your website now, it is the All-mighty Search Engine, which determines what pops up on that list when someone types their desires into that toolbar….

Dear Hacker,

It’s been awhile since we last spoke. How are things? Remember when we watched “Wargames” and chuckled over the fact that Matthew Broderick was able to do VOIP over a 2600 baud modem? Tears of mirth and laughter still fill my eyes when I think about it…

I saw your handy work on one of my client’s sites on Network Solutions. Seems you were able to hack hundreds of WordPress sites (http://blog.sucuri.net/2010/04/details-on-network-solutions-wordpress.html). It didn’t take me long to see what you did, trying to insert iFrames in the SITE_URL row of the wp database. Very cute.. too bad it didn’t work the way you wanted (FYI, adding an iframe tag to a stylesheet link doesn’t produce the expected behaviour. Silly hacker! Next time, you should grep a replacement for “http” instead. Well, I suppose that’s what happens when you go ahead and hacks the netz without first consulting an SEO. (There’s very little money in CPM when it doesn’t convert, and your blank malware landing page didn’t work on my Mac.. to my chagrin).

Oh hacker.. When will you learn? This type of hack is not gonna get Angelina Jolie despite the quality of your rollerblades…

I know you read somewhere that Black Hat SEO is just like hacking, and you can make lots of money that way.. Well, let me tell you something. Black Hat SEOs aren’t hackers.. They’re porn affiliate webmasters! They’re clever, but they’re not criminals. Breaking Google’s guidlines isn’t the same as breaking the law… a differentiation that you haven’t quite ascertained yet.

Anyway, i’m glad we had this little talk. We’ve been through a lot together, you and I. It seems like just yesterday when you hacked my cgi guestbook for about half an hour in ’96. It took me a whole 15 minutes to find the JavaScript injection, you cheeky devil (semi colon+bracket smiley face).

Well, good talking at ya. We should get together sometime so you can talk in l33t and I can make fun of you…

Just like old times..

So, I’m gonna guess that the “automated queries” issue came from Rogers itself. When I went to this site on my iPhone, I accedentally forgot to add the .com to vancouver-seo, and got this “yahoo powered” rogers branded search result (see image).

What the hell? I don’t want to use yahoo, Rogers! If I wanted to change the default search engine on my iPhone, I’d have done that!

Hey Rogers, you tried this DNS hijacking crap back in 2007 ( http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=89219&page=9 ). It was a bad idea then, and it’s a bad idea now, you overpaid monopolistic douchbags!

I pay premium for bandwidth, not for you to hijack my Internet! I’ll bet it’s you guys who keep trying to send VNC requests to my phone.

What.. you’d think we wouldn’t notice?!? Assholes…

I just noticed that all these results are sponsored results.. I’m so tempted to click the shit out of all of those links.. but I know you’d just be making money off that…

Here is a very strange result I recieved while trying to do a google search on my iPhone. I’ve seen a page like this before when doing deep searches on a desktop (in the +200 results pages), but never on an iPhone. Is google trying to lock out us apple users to further te android, or is there a new world of mobile black hat?

Interesting stuff…

Dear Webmaster,

Did you know that you can get FREE TRAFFIC to your website?  Improbable, you say!  Well, my online ORGANIC SEARCH PROGRAM can make the improbable probable!  Did you know that MILLIONS OF PEOPLE use search engines?  Believe it or not, they do!  Each day you aren’t targeting your website to these MILLIONS OF PEOPLE is another day that you are losing $$$!  Stop losing $$$ and start making $$$.

So, Web… can I call you Web, or do you prefer Mr Master?  Good.  Here is a FREE SEO AUDIT of your website that took HUNDREDS OF HOURS of scraping domaintools.com:

SEO SCORE: 30%
KEYWORD RELEVANCE: 10%
INDEXED PAGES: 40%

If these numbers seem meaningless now, wait until you see our IN-DEPTH SEO AUDIT of your webpage.  If you’d like our IN-DEPTH SEO AUDIT for $250 per page, contact our SALES TEAM today!  Do not hesitate.  Your life may be at stake!  If you do not rank in the TOP 10 of GOOGLE, your family may shun you, your wife will leave you for another, your community will label you as a pariah, and you will get herpes.

Please do not take this lightly, Web!  Only SEO can SAVE YOUR LIFE!

Good day sir,
SEOBOT

… ahh.  I feel much better now.

I must admit, it has been quite some time since I have graced this site with a post, or a scrap of anything SEO related, so what better way to shake of the cobwebs of this site with a rant eloquent missive. I have mentioned before my distain appreciation for those misinformed web-savvy people out there who are under the delusion correct assumption that SEO falls under the umbrella of software development, so if you are one of those people, here’s a beginner’s primer…

SEO is an object-oriented language based on the link MVC (“more votes count”) design pattern, wherein the subsequent amount of AT (“anchor text”) of IL(“inbound links”) is proportional to the OP (“on page”) usage of a specific “target” to incur algorithmic favor with S Engine(s).  This is, of course, an oversimplification, but it does point out some very basic premises.

Let’s start with the classic “Hello world”.  To begin your first SEO program, open up your favorite website (I use vancouver-seo.com, its free and open source!), and start with a new page.  From there, we’ll need to enter the following script:

01 START

02 CHECKSUM GOOGLE

03 IF PAGE = INDEXED THEN GOTO 04 ELSE GOTO 02

04 REPORT "Hello, World"

05 GOTO 01 AND REPEAT

That’s all it takes!  Now go and write your SEO Programs!

This post was brought to you by the Wikipedia Verifiability Taskforce.

As some of you may know from my ranting and raving about mobile SEO, I am an iPhone afficiando.  I take my phone everywhere, and often check the SERPs at functions where I really should be paying attention to real people (ie. family reunions, etc).  I also discovered the decided lack of SEO apps available for the iPhone, so instead of complaining, I put my money where my mouth is and developed my own iPhone app with my Vancouver Island SEO friend!  Its called SEOStats and its now available for download in the iTunes store.  Best part is: ITS FREE!

Already people are asking me, “its free?  how does it make money?”.  My response is, come on people!  Seriously?  Does everything have to make money?  Damned SEOs…

After reading an informal survey of medical students using wikipedia to look up unfamiliar clinical topics I was struck with a somewhat chilling thought:  ”Have we finally traded truth for verifiability?”

I didn’t just fall off the BBS truck.  I feel I have a fairly good understanding of these connected servers we used to call the world wide web, and I understand intrinsically that reading something on the internet doesn’t mean that its true, but I am frequently disturbed by the amount of “research” that is cited as having been pulled from Wikipedia.  For those of you who haven’t read this before, here’s the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia:

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true.

Again, verifiability, not truth.  The difference is clear, verifiability is merely an agreed upon authority, whereas truth is the elusive underlying constant that philosophers search for, and the core of what we classify as knowledge (in the epistemological sense of the word).  Broken down to the extreme sense, if “authoritative sources” say “the world is flat” then Wikipedia will include it, students will cite it, and public opinion will validate it.

Now as any marketer (or high school class president) can tell you, manufacturing authority is not a difficult task, especially in the online realm.  Knowledge is not required, only popularity.  The more popular an idea, whether true or false, the more likely it will be accepted.

Some of my teacher friends frequently complain about students citing Wikipedia in their research papers.  I understand their complaints, but the reality is that not only is Wikipedia accessible and easy to use, but North America’s most popular search engine considers it a high authority (and news source)!  The dice are loaded when it comes to actual online research which, ironically, HTML was built for (well, scientific documentation… but close enough).

It is for this reason why I don’t buy the “newsprint is dead” argument anymore than I buy the “record industry is dead” argument.  Both industries are amidst a paradigm shift, and sales are dropping because they don’t quite understand why they were successful in the first place: they established themselves as authorities.  I believe, when the dust settles, people will inevitably crave substance over style…

Well, at least one would hope so.