Why Off Topic Link Exchanges Suck

So I recently got this email:

Dear Webmaster,

As you are probably aware, Google has changed its algorythm and now removes sites from its search results when they have exchanged links with sites that are not in EXACTLY the same category.

To prevent being from blacklisted in Google, it is imperative that we remove our link to you and that your remove your link to us!

Our url is www.SITE.com.

We are removing our link to you now. PLEASE return the courtesy and remove your link to us!

Note that Google is updating its results this week and failure to remove these links immediately will likely mean not showing up in Google for AT LEAST the next 4 months!

Thank you for understanding,
Site.com Partners

The email is bogusly incorrect, and I don't think I traded links with the site mentioned, but that is the exact reason why this email is extra crappy.

If you trade links highly off topic you increase your risk profile, and if it helps you rank:

  • Whenever there is an update your competitors can send these remove my link reminders out for you.

  • There are only a limited number of relationships you can have. If you link out to a million sites your links out to junky sites will be a higher percentage than most sites, you will have more dead links than most quality sites, and many of those people will remove their links to you.
  • Your competitors could pay people from Jakarta $3 a day to go through your link trades and trade the same links.
  • Quality on topic sites may be less likely to link to you if your site frequently links off to low quality resources.

I think most sites which recently went south in Google probably lacked quality linkage data, not because they had too many links.

Traffic Power Has Not Yet Replied to the Motion for Summary Judgement

I recently spoke with the lawyer again about the evil / shoddy anti free speech lawsuit the fine folks at Traffic Power thrusted upon me.

About a month ago my lawyer filed a motion for summary judgement.

Stuff in the court system tends to drag out, but my lawyer said Traffic Power's response is at least a week late & he filed a reply of non oposition [doc] requestion that the motion be granted.

Link Monkeys and Links Within Content

Jim Boykin continues his ongoing rants about links:

Since most people are still thinking "the numbers game" when it comes to obtaining links, most people are buying "numbers" from "monkeys" on crappy link pages.

When will the world wake up that the numbers game has passed the tipping point in Google. Engine are trying to get smarter with how they analyze sites. My overall thought is that they are working to identify, simply, "Links within Content and Linking to Content"

Not too long ago when I interviewed NFFC he stated:

This is what I think, SEO is all about emotions, all about human interaction. People, search engineers even, try and force it into a numbers box.

Numbers, math and formulas are for people not smart enough to think in concepts.

Amazon to Sell Electronic Book Access

Amazon to Google: we own books...

From the Journal:

[Amazon] is introducing two new programs that allow consumers to buy online access to portions of a book or to the entire book, giving publishers and authors another way to generate revenue from their content.

Although Bezos does not come right out and say it, clearly this is a shot across the brow at Google, especially with the timing of their recent print offering.

While Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos wouldn't comment specifically on the Google Print controversy, he said, "It's really important to do this cooperatively with the copyright holders, with the publishing community, with the authors. We're going to keep working in that cooperative vein."

After Google develops their micropayment system I bet they also directly broker a large amount of media.

New Google User Profiling Patent

Loren does a good rundown of a new Google patent Personalization of placed content ordering in search results in his Organic Results Ranked by User Profiling post. Some of the things in the patent may be a bit ahead of themselves, but the thesis is...

GenericScore=QueryScore*PageRank.

This GenericScore may not appropriately reflect the site's importance to a particular user if the user's interests or preferences are dramatically different from that of the random surfer. The relevance of a site to user can be accurately characterized by a set of profile ranks, based on the correlation between a sites content and the user's term-based profile, herein called the TermScore, the correlation between one or more categories associated with a site and user's category-based profile, herein called the CategoryScore, and the correlation between the URL and/or host of the site and user's link-based profile, herein called the LinkScore. Therefore, the site may be assigned a personalized rank that is a function of both the document's generic score and the user profile scores. This personalized score can be expressed as: PersonalizedScore=GenericScore*(TermScore+CategoryScore+LinkScore).

For those big into patents: Stephen Arnold has a $50 CD for sale containing over 120 Google patent related documents.

I think he could sell that as a subscription service, so long as people didn't know all the great stuff Gary Price compiles for free. (Link from News.com)

MicroSoft Buys Into VOIP, Again

TheStreet reports M$ looking at VOIP again:

Microsoft said Thursday it has agreed to buy Media-streams.com, a privately held firm in Zurich, Switzerland. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Media-stream's VoIP technology, which enables telephone calls over the Internet, will become a core part of Microsoft's platform that enables workers to use the Web to collaborate on projects. Microsoft envisions such collaboration encompassing several different modes of communication, including email, instant messaging, Web conferencing and telephone calls via the Internet.

Media-streams is the second VoIP firm acquired by Microsoft in the last few months. In August, Microsoft acquired Teleo

MicroSoft Windows Live Launched

Windows Live software platform getting plenty of buzz.

Firefox Support coming soon. No surprise there. Search champ unimpressed. So are others.

If MicroSoft would learn to do the small things right they wouldn't need to try to create Monopoly 4.0 and Robert would not need to post why so many people do not trust them even though he knows how to fix it.

At least Robert has great job security. EVERYTHING should be secure.

Why People Use Each Search Engine & Lead Value Per Typical User

In Searching for why consumers use certain search engines Internet Retailer looks at recent Majestic Research as to why searchers are loyal to their favorite search brands.

The study shows most Google users primarily are there because they believe Google has the most relevant results (although the fact that Google has not had a longstanding portal as long as it's competitors may bias the study to conclude that result).

Of the other major engines Yahoo! was the only one which had significant votes for relevancy, but Matt Cutts recent post about Yahoo! hand coding probably does not help them much. Tim Mayer just did another Yahoo! update report, and a reader mentions that [online casinos] is just about as spammy as it could be.

In Following the Search Engine Referral Money Trail Jeremy Zawodny shows his search referral ratio, earnings ratio, ad CTR, and effective CPM per engine.

His site has a tech bias, so I believe that favors Google somewhat, but Google sends the bulk of his referrals. MSN and AOL users are much more likely to click content ads than Google or Yahoo! users. I believe that is a function of user sophistication. Less sophisticated people are click happy because they probably don't know they are clicking paid ads.

Google Launches Google Print Book Search

Google Print now allows you to search full text of books in their Google Print program.

After you search you can click on a result and enter your Google Accounts password to view a full page and the two pages before and after it.

The WSJ stated:

The company said it won't display advertisements on public domain book pages or any book pages Google scans from a library.

Perhaps Google realizes being the default search means they can have a few loss liters, and not monetizing the public domain works undermines the Google is a greedy company statement cried far and loud by critics of the program. Google Print is facing numerous pending lawsuits.

Google vs Madison Avenue

Google looks like it wants to own Madison Avenue. The Journal also has a free article on Google vs Madison Ave., and John Battelle recently interviewed Google's Omid Kordestani and Sergey Brin.

If you look at the SEO Bytes monthly toplist you will see that in spite of a recent major Google update many of the most popular threads are about how to monetize Google AdSense ad space.

A year or two ago few of the threads covered monetizing content. It seemed like everyone just wanted to rank or assumed nobody would share that how to profit info. AdSense and similar programs work well for quality and automated sites alike.

While Google monetizes crap sites they usually deny their connection to it, keeping the shadiness far away, funding much of it.

Ask Jeeves is a bit closer in some of their relationships. A few days ago I noticed my mom's computer had some Ask MySearch type spyware activites on it. Sure some of it may be uninstallable, but sometimes when you enter a URL in the address bar it says no site found just to redirect you to ads. Shady.

While some say one bad AdSense site may bring down the whole Google AdSense only took around an hour to approve my mom's new site for AdSense, so Google is not putting up much of a barrier to entry.

The more I read and learn about communities and click pimping the less value I see in my current business model, especially when SEO is usually framed in a negative light and I have to deal with this sort of garbage. After all, even as Case is out AOL is suddenly hot again, and some said Steve was just another spammer. :)

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