We tend to believe that authenticity is typically more associated with the information source rather than numbers or how we evaluate them, but precise numbers typically sound

• more factual

• well researched
• authentic

even if they are not.
When you want to play down something, you

• don''t focus on it

• gather weak data
• using research methods with favorable slippage
• round in your favor
• use rough estimates
• IF you talk about it, use loose language

But since 2003, Johns Hopkins researchers estimate 655,000 Iraqis have died. Bush thinks it is closer to 30,000, but even that is a large number considering how our reason for invasion was fraudulently associating Saddam Hussein with September 11th events.

As Bush would say:

"One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." – President Bush's interview with CBS News' Katie Couric, Sept. 6, 2006

Even math is dependant upon marketing [PDF]. I am always perplexed when people say you shouldn't talk about politics on a marketing site. Politics is nothing but marketing. It is an ideological system of fraud and measures to bilk the world of its wealth and beauty for the profit of select power sources - at any expense necessary, and often without any connection to reality, or concern for the future.

From Carl Sandburg's The People, Yes

I pledge my allegiance,
say the munitions makers and the international bankers,
I pledge my allegiance to this flag, that flag,
any flag at all, of any country anywhere
paying its bills and meeting interest on loans,
one and indivisible,
coming through with cash in payment as stipulated
with liberty and justice for all,
say the munitions makers and the international bankers

"War is a racket always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
...
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes even twelve per cent. But wartime profits-ah! that is another matter-twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent-the sky is the limit. All that the traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it."

If Death Tax is such a big deal, then why don't politicians care about death itself?

Sometimes I give quite bad advice. And the reason is that not everything applies to everyone. One of the bigger flaws in the advice that I give is that I am quite ambitious. And thus when I enter a market I try to come up with ideas that will eventually allow me to get a dominate long-term self reinforcing position. Endless Ambition:
I try to rank sites for queries like SEO, Forex, and other exceptionally competitive markets. And then I have worked with some of the largest sites on the web, which further reinforces that line of dominate big markets thinking. And as my income has increased it is also quite easy for me to have a value system which is quite inaccurate when compared with people new to the web trying to dig into a market (just like I was a couple years ago).

For example of my overly broad ambitions, a person might have a site about car engines, and on occasion I may respond with something overtly ambitious like these are the keys to dominating the automotive vertical.

Wide Audience:
The reason it is so hard to give SEO advice are:

• the rules are ever-shifting, people read and believe old content, and many sources intentionally publish misinformation

• many people take everything literally
• many established authorities trade on inflated income levels based on past reputation, and some likely are not even competent in the current market
• in an industry where most lack credibility one of the quickest and easiest ways to try to build authority is to call out an established authority as being wrong
• controversy breeds links and authorities, even if it is created under a false pretense
• business risk profiles, brand strength, financial and technical resources, and competition levels are vastly different from company to company and market to market

Doing Well is an Iterative Process:
Sometimes I give that dominate a broad market type of advice to other people, but many people who are new are just trying to carve out a niche, so they can quite their job and then reinvest into the web. And when you are doing many things at once you are rarely going to be able to start off with a near perfect market position. I still have my earliest websites, but relative to this one they were all failures, but eventually they led me to create this one (and other profitable sites).

Most Markets Are Easier:
I recently gave a friend some advice, and then after I did a bit of in depth market analysis, I realized that my advice was garbage, and that they did not need to do ALL (or even most) of the things I suggested. Their market is low hanging fruit. In many markets doing this or this is really all you need to do, as long as you establish a bit of trust right out of the gate. Part of the reason that seemingly expensive SEO services may be worthwhile is that you don't just get answers, but answers that are tailored to your business, website, market, brand, and resources.

Most businesses (and most markets) are not well integrated into the web. That is part of the reason someone who is actively involved in discussions about the web can easily dominate their vertical in search. If a bath tub website gets link love from popular blogs because the owner speaks at webmaster conferences then he has a distinct advantage over competing sites, especially because those links will be hard to replicate.

Instant Success, Just Add Blog!
After a person writes a blog for years it is easy to assume that blog juice is the answer to everything, but it really depends on what you are good at. Many leading blogs are only leading blogs due to market timing, and only keep their position by selling white lies.

It also didn't hurt me that blogs work well as a marketing tool for those in controversial topics which rapidly change (like SEO).

The Bias of Self Preservation:
Unless you are a whack job nobody wants to feel like they are a bad force. Any source of advice, business, or topical authority is typically going to biased toward the goal of self preservation. With that in mind, many bloggers will keep blogging long after they no longer have anything original to say, and will error on the side of making the importance of their trade (or blogging in general) far more important and complex than they are. Especially if their goal is to sell a how to information product that is sold as a way to make sense of the space.

A Lack of Traditional Business Costs:
Another error or bias in advice that I give is that I still have almost no traditional offline business experience. Being in the military does not count because it is so dysfunctional, and other than that I only had one middle level management job for about 8 months before jumping on the web. I create partnerships, but have no employees or product costs, so it does not hurt me much if I take far bigger risks than other people do because my lifestyle and business are fairly immune to huge cycles in my level of exposure or income. I have roughly the same amount of work to do with this site each day weather I sell 0 or 25 ebooks.

A Lack of Respect for Most Self-Imposed Authority:
After hating living on a submarine and then working 70 hours a week as a middle level manager I grew to hate authority and traditional jobs at a young age. Watching things like The Money Masters and Manufacturing Consent, reading authors like George Orwell, and books like A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History have made me highly suspicious of authority.

Feedback:
In some ways some of my biggest weaknesses may also be strengths, depending on your perspective. But, what other common biases / flaws / errors do you see in the advice I give or logic I use to dispense it? What do I do that you really like? What do I do that you really hate?

I recently added a brief overview of SEO to Work.com. Work.com is sort of like a Squidoo.com for business. An easy link from an authoritative site, and a chance to build co-citation. :)

As more and more companies push for consumer generated content there are going to be more and more bottom feeder link opportunities. In niche markets, if you use these types of resources, get a few directory links, and get a few links from relevant websites you are in the game cheap. If you think of search engines as ad networks trying to learn topic specific language sets you can help work yourself into the vocabulary by doing things like:

• making sure your brand is mentioned on these types of sites

• creating a bit of news
• getting references on a few industry related sites
• submitting to the correct category in a couple trusted directories
• participating in a few forums
• posting a good amount of content to your own site that references important industry related brands, organizations, and terms

If you are part of the language that defines an industry you have a distinct advantage over anyone who is not.

George Orwell was a great writer. I recently came across a cool paper he wrote in 1946 titled Politics and the English Language. In it he stated that most bad writing typically has the following two signatures:

1. staleness of imagery

2. lack of precision

He believed that it is the job of every writer to try to maintain (and improve upon) the clarity of language

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

He believed that politics is directly responsible for the demise of language

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Which is only made worse by the all encompasing nature of politics

In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.

The core issue is the lack of clarity necessary to make political statements sound reasonable

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.

And the creation and usage of loose words and phrases that are allowed multiple meanings

In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made
with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

How do you correct the problem of writing watered down language like politicians?

Think visually

When yo think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations.

While thinking visually ask yourself these questions:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

He also came up with these 6 rules:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never us a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

If you ever look at some of the Delicious Popular or Dugg stories and think they are basic, that is probably part of the reason they are popular, because they are easy to understand.

One of the things that makes Jon Stewart so enjoyable is his clarity. Check out Jon 2 minutes in here where he quotes Bush saying "One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."

Update: As mentioned in the comments, here is a bit more clarity.

Via SEW Google is trying to make it even easier to upload items to Google Base. Why?

If they can get the most relevant, most descriptive, and most comprehensive results then eventually users will use it more. After they get enough users what was once free can be charged for, or they can find other ways to make money from it. If many merchants upload similar data it probably makes it even easier to identify and filter commercial data from the organic search results. It won't be long before the organic results are out of reach for most stores, and most merchants are forced into using AdWords if they want to buy exposure. Google has outsourced AdWords training, turned determining relevancy into a game, and wants to be the default product information database.

Google will probably also allow merchants to store inventory data in Google Base, which will only help Google make their results that much more relevant, and help merchants tie their ad spend directly to their current inventory. If Google roughly knows historical search trends, related searches, click value, ad spend, conversion rates, inventory levels, and pricing details they would have to screw it up pretty bad to not be able to make money from transactions that originate through a Google search box.