Hello All

Here is the next instalment and it comes in the form of a few Q+A’s from the link bait king Shoemoney. So here it goes:

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The picture of that adsense cheque has probably encouraged a lot of people. So are they still that size or have you been hit by the changes?

I am not sure what you mean by changes? The check is from over 1 year ago much before I discovered PPC. It was 100% organic. The site that generated that income has since signed direct deals with advertisers. I was really really new to learning how to best monetize websites when I got that check. I thought that was a ton of money for 1 month but really anyone doing that kind of cash contextually with a white hat site with organic rankings can make a ton more signing direct deals. I just did not have the contacts back then that I do now.

Are you still learning PPC, if so what have you learned recently that you might be willing to pass on.

Wow that’s a whole interview in itself. The one thing I learn everyday about ppc is that I don’t know shit. I spent a few days with pepperjamsearch who has a full 20 person team that does nothing but manage PPC campaigns and you really realize you don’t know shit. Sure they are at the top of the bell curve but that’s pretty intimidating when you’re a 2 person shop.

Rank for Shoemoney competition, what was that all about, profile raising, laugh or something else? And do you fear the ‘gray wolf’ after all he seems to relish these sorts of challenges.

It was just for fun. My blog always ranked crappy in Google and still does. I did not think it would be that hard to knock me out of the top spot. Its pretty neat to see the creative ways that people came up with (white and black hat) to try to knock me out. I don’t really have anything to fear about my blog getting knocked out of the serps… its something I write for fun and I write for myself. I ended the contest early (due to circumstances out of my control) but paid out I think double what I said and I even emailed the front runners privately and told them I would pay out if they were able to rank over me in the time frame specified. Just publicly I had to say the contest was off.

Am I correct in saying that your background is security/hacking, if so how has that helped you in the SEO game.

Yes I was a security admin for about 6 years before starting my company. I fell into this whole ’seo’ thing by accident. I build sites that people find useful and go from there. I don’t really think there is a big mystery to seo. I have yet to come across a site that offers a great, unique, service to users that doesn’t have sweet organic rankings.

When I tell people that in person they look at me like I am lying… like I really hold the key to some secret way to rank for huge terms… Well the key is just hard work over time. Anyone can bust ass for a few days but go a few years and you will not fail.

How do you protect your assets, by assets I mean sites, identity, disguising interlinking of sites. Got any tips?

Anon registers, I don’t cross link… period. I really don’t have any huge tidbits here just common sense stuff. Financial speaking when sites get to a certain point they should become there own legal entitiy. This makes it nice when you want/need to sell companies/sites off.

Are you a long tail person or a big term player and why do you do it that way?

Well again I don’t really build sites for search engines other then very basic seo. I build them more for functionality then whether or not search engines care about them. My blog for instance gets pretty good traffic yet less then 1% comes from a search engine.

How do you deal with getting large sites indexed these days?

If a site is setup properly then sitemaps with a good amount of internal linking seems to work very well. Again Seo is not really my cup of tea so this probably seems pretty basic to most people.

Do you ever see Google losing their strangle hold and what do you make of their $500 per share, madness yeah?

I don’t. Google GETS IT. They make such a huge profit off Adwords/adsense and they just keep land grabbing that space. They totally cockblocked yahoo and Microsoft when they bought uTube. They had done the testing on adsense video (which I beta tested) and they saw huge numbers then they looked at how they could expand and obviously uTube was it.

Is it madness? Well only the future will tell on how madness it is. Here in Omaha Nebraska we have a investor by the name of Warren Buffett. We bought stock in his company Berkshire Hathway when it was at 72,000.00 a share. As of right now its at $107,610.00 a share.

Google is kind of following the warren buffet model in that they just keep reinvesting in themselves. They don’t have a lot of idol money. I think right now GOOG is a VERY SHALLOW and will take about 10+ years to really solidify. Until then its going to be massive ups and downs. I have felt from the beginning that Google will be the next BRK.

What is your biggest achievement in terms of search, or if you cant be arsed with that, what about biggest achievement in life?

In Search - At PubCon 2005 I went up to the SEO INC booth and asked if I could take the SEO Challenge. They said sure what keyword do you want to rank for. I said “Ringtones”. Then they asked me what my site address was and I told them. I was #1 on Google, MSN, and Yahoo they told me to get lost.

In life – I met my wife and my life changed completely. I lost 240 lbs, quit smoking after 10 years, and started my own company.

What do you think of the current search scape and how and what one thing would have the biggest impact?

I think the more blacklists search engines maintain the more they prove that a algo based search engine is just not the way of the future. At the first ses Larry and Serge said that there was no such thing as search engine spam. Now they blacklist domains left and right and to me that is the same as them throwing up a white flag. So what’s the future? – Social voing. When I want to find news or good information on something technical I search Technorati or Digg . I almost always find what I am looking for with more relevant and up to date results.

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Cheers Jeremy, it has been my pleasure to ask you a few questions

Of course you can catch up with Jeremy in many places, but the best is probably the Shoemoney Blog

ukgimp out

Hello All

Managed to snag the great man that is Ralph Tegtmeir, also known as Fantomaster to answer a few questions about search, cloaking and facial hair. So without further delay….

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What advice do you have to the cloaker who wants to conceal his tracks from the snooping competitor, in terms of nocache for example as that has to be a bit of a giveaway or other footprints like URl structures?

True, as a cloaker you want to hide your tracks and avoid footprints as best you can. While there was some initial apprehension that usage of the NOCACHE tag might jeopardize rankings when it was introduced some years back, empirical evidence gathered since then absolutely doesn’t bear that out. So as it stands, chances are you’d be quite safe making use of it in terms of your competitors checking out cloaked content.

Beyond that, you can and actually should implement a cache buster script triggering an immediate redirect if someone scrutinzes your cached pages.. This will typically be in JavaScript, so it’s obviously not 100% secure. But overall it does help to ward off at least the less tech savvy snoops. Here’s a free JS one we’ve contributed to the SEO community: http://fantomaster.com/cachebuster.html

Finally, there’s other ways to obfuscate a cloaked page’s code to further safeguard against competitors’ determining their cloaked status with 100% certainty, but I’d rather not want to discuss them in public for obvious reasons, if you don’g mind.

Let’s not forget that in order to determine whether a page is cloaked or not you’ll have to be aware of it in the first place. Merely noticing that a well ranked cached page isn’t identical with the Serp link’s target page won’t tell you anything, however: There’s simply too many perfectly legitimate reasons why this should be the case so it’s hardly more than an extremely vague and highly unreliable indicator at best, more often than not entirely misleading.

There has been a big upsurge in widespread “blackhat operations”, mainly coming about from peoples white hat losses. What do you make of it all, have Google screwed themselves over by opening the can of worms and where do you see it ending, this is a war isn’t it?

Yes, it is decidedly a war and what’s more, it is escalating all the time. That’s not just our own, arguably biased view at fantomaster.com, it’s what that whole “surge of black hat operations” you’re rightly referring to proves beyond doubt by its very ocurrence. Because it’s quite true, and our sales figures are reflecting it beyond any reasonable doubt as well: Ever more web marketers are beginning to realize that they don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell SEM wise without resorting to cloaking in the current environment if they’re targeting even an only moderately competitive market.

While I’m not exactly famous for schmoozing with the likes of Google, in this case I’d be reluctant to place the blame squarely at their doorstep, however. Of course the engines are involved in this all, but in my view the fundamental issue is really one of dramatically exploding global competition. There’s simply too many people vying for a piece of what’s essentially the same finite, limited cake which makes for a veritable no holds barred cut-throat environment quite unprecedented in human history. And of course it’s also a result of the widely increased penetration of Internet technology – think broadband and mobile phones here, for example – this has resulted in a whole lot more technological awareness hitting the market now as well: Gone are the days when people could successfully brag at parties about “not needing all that weird new fangled Internet stuff” …

Add the fact that generating automated content on the fly has become both viable and affordable for just about everyone setting out to run a business on the Web, and you’ll easily see that the whole balloon is expanding almost at the speed of light.

The search engines are merely trying to come to terms with all this immense amount data which is actually growing exponentially all the time.

Personally I don’t see any problem with cloaking, for example if a person getting to a Product X page when they looked for Product X. So with exception to Disney=Porn what do you think is the great issue that search engines have with it?

Control – they’re control freaks, that’s all. Not that it’s very logical for them to be: After all, it’s definitely not their own content they’re making a living off, still they want each and every webmaster to play by their rules and their rules alone, period. Quite a conceit.

Now I guess it won’t come as a particular surprise neither to you nor your readers that we at fantomaster.com nurture an entirely different view. If it’s my web site, if it’s my content, then it’s my own bloody business what I choose to do with it. If they don’t like what I do, they’ll chuck me out of their index, provided they find out about it. I’m ok with that, too, but when all is said and done it’s an epic contest of minds – actually, all of SEO is, not just cloaking or “black hat” techniques.

I’ve been long enough in this business to remember the days when the search engines (or, rather, their reps) were wont to treat each and every SEO as mere scum, as dirty spoilsports who’d best vanish from the face of the earth, the sooner the better. Of course, that was a pretty self-serving and hypocritical agenda and I’ll concede that they have backed down a bit on this score which, interestingly enough, came about roughly with the advent of PPC, when what would later become Overture was still making it up as they went alon in their incarnation as GoTo.com.

On the other hand, it’s not as if the engine were really clamping down that hard in earnest on cloaking as they have always pretended to do. To some extent they’ll even tolerate it if it’s not too blatantly misleading, as in your example, or too spammy. It’s common wisdom amongst the more experienced and sophisticated SEOs that probably 80-90% of all Fortune 1000 companies are making use of cloaking one way or another these days. Ok, so if they do get caught out due to some stupid glitch, as was the case with BMW not very long ago, it’ll create a bit of a stink. But overall –
where would it leave the search engines if they actually banned all those big boys from their indices? Fat chance of that ever happening.

So while the risks of cloaking are quite real, in the same stride they’re actually pretty remote provided you play your cards right – and do it well, of course.

What advice would you give to a wannabe cloaker as after all it is considered a magic bullet in some circles?

First and foremost: Dear wannabe cloaker – please realize that cloaking is categorically NOT a magic bullet! While it’s arguably the most powerful SEO tool extant, it’s only that – a tool, no more, no less.

To illustrate, consider a somewhat more tangible example such as a chainsaw. Can you build a log cabin with a chainsaw? The answer is simple: You can – if you can! In other words, unless you actually know a) how to build log cabins in the first place, and b) how to make use of a chainsaw in the the first place, your combined expertise-plus-chainsaw will probably do the trick very nicely. But if you don’t, take care: Chances are, you might hurt yourself quite badly: no log cabin for all your troubles, and quite possibly no legs anymore, either …

By the same token I’ve always taken great care to point out that IP delivery cannot work miracles – except in a miracle maker’s hands. All that mystique surrounding it to this very day is actually quite unhelpful. Sure, it may lend us some clout by way of marketing, attracting leads in quantities, but there’s a pretty high price to pay for that as well, namely having to size down people’s frequently overblown expectations or suffer the consequences.

You see, like most marketers, we want happy clients – it serves them best if they’re actually achieving what they’re devoting their resources to, and it serves us in that it reflects well on our reputation and promotional efforts. Mystifying and spreading all kinds of mumbo jumbo about the cloaking process and what it can achieve is quite counterproductive within that strategic framework.

This said, my next advice to your hypothetical wannabe would be to learn the craft of search engine optimization and marketing as thoroughly as possible. Study the literature, subscribe to some hands on newsletters, sign up with at least some of the relevant forums, and what’s most important: test, test, test! It’s a trade like any other, an art and a science combined, so why should it take you any less time and effort to master than, for example, carpentry, model painting or digital photography?

It’s really only after you’ve gained some practical experience with SEO that you’ll be able to truly appreciate the power of IP delivery or cloaking – merely hunting for that mythic golden bullet is no viable compensation.

There ain’t no shortcuts, I’m afraid, and the sooner you realize it, the faster you’ll actually turn successful.

How many cloaked pages do you have in the wild and do you ever not cloak?

Haven’t ever counted them, really, but if we include our clients’ SEM campaigns, there’s several millions about.

And yes, we don’t always cloak. E.g. no part of our main web site http://fantomaster.com/ is cloaked, and there are several others. For one, we have to assume realistically that we’re under constant close scrutiny, but more importantly we don’t as a rule mix cloaked and non-cloaked pages on any single site anymore. Rather, we prefer to go for entire cloaked domains, what we label Shadow Domains™, a trademarked term, by the way, you’ll even find mentioned in Google’s webmaster guidelines as one of the big no-nos, ever since they filched it from us, of course without giving us any credit.

Cloaking and Adsense, how do you suggest getting around problems like Googlebot and MediaBot seeing different content and then having chat later and comparing data?

Generally, you wouldn’t want to put any AdSense code on your cloaked pages anyway: no point in it as humans don’t get to see them anyway. So it’s really a non-issue.

Your IP list is pretty legendary, just how do you do it, keeping it up to date, and disseminating that list? How long from identifying a new potential spider do you know about it and get it out there.? You must have a large array of sites looking for spidering activity and reporting centrally?

Yes, it’s a pretty sophisticated process and all the critical stages are actually run manually because there’s no way yet to automate it to our demanding degree of reliability and precision. We’ve been at it since 1999 and have honed our performance continuously, of course.

Spider catching times vary, depending on where the new entities happen to crop up and at which rate: Generally, it will only take about 30 to 60 minutes but sometimes it’s more complicated. After all, each and every spider has to be verified beyond reasonable doubt which requires some time. And when push comes to shove, we’ll rather err on the side of speed than compromise our reliability standards. Simply blanket targeting entire IP C classes after catching a few spiders from that range, as some other companies will do, simply isn’t good enough for us.

Currently, we’re monitoring in excess of 35K domains’ traffic round the clock for fresh spiders, the vast majority of them belonging to third parties. So it’s not as if we’re restricting ourselves incestuously to only those web properties we control ourselves. This gives us a sufficiently broad spectrum to catch new spiders as they crop up. And as we’re catering to an international clientele, you’ll find lots of search engine spiders in our list as well that are doing duty in other countries and languages all over the world.

Note that contrary to popular perception the fantomas spiderSpy™ list’s benefits aren’t limited to cloaking or IP delivery alone. Quite the contrary, really: Judging by the number of installed bases, it’s primarily used in the field of traffic stats analysis. You’ll be hard put to find an even remotely comparable set of up-to-date spider IPs anywhere, which lends traffic analysis an unprecedented degree of exactitude and reliability, if I say so myself.

Have you ever cloaked at a DNS level and what do you make of that as a method?

We’ve looked into it a bit but didn’t pursue it any further for a variety of reasons. Currently, it’s hard to conceive of a real world scenario where it would reliably produce results comparable to classic IP delivery.

I know you mentioned that you did not really want to pitch them, but can you tell us all a little more about the two new “Fanto” products which you don’t even have name for yet as they are both of interest to me personally?

Well, seeing that you’re practically insisting on it …

Alright, here’s a virtual sneak preview – an exclusive first for you and your readers.

For one, we’re on the verge of launching the fantomas superkeywordGenerator™. This program tackles the issue that more often than not you won’t be able to find a decent RSS feed for any given combination of keywords with any of the major aggregators. This will create a blank feed on your pages which certainly isn’t what you want if you’re making use of feeds to automatically update your page content. I don’t really want to reveal much more at this point, but once it’s launched webmasters will have an easy to use tool to overcome this issue fairly neatly and actually leveraging on the principles of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) in a proactive manner.

Expected launch date is sometime either end of September or early October, and it will be tagged as a low cost item as well. It’s not related to cloaking proper, of course, though we will integrate this functionality in our flagship product, the fantomas shadowMaker™ at some later date to ensure that even your cloaked pages will be fresh and updated regularly, no matter how outlandish your particular set of keywords and search phrases may be.

The second project is a service offering high quality header graphics focused on a variety of topics for webmasters to implement on their regular, their mini and even their MFA sites.

Ok, it may not sound like the sexiest of products, but it’s a fact that with all those private label rights (PLR) products being churned out left, right and center currently, decent unique header graphics are still pretty much a rare commodity.

By contrast, our proprietary graphics will offer best quality, they’re topically highly focused, and – this is important! – they will be offered only in very limited editions at an extremely affordable price. So chances are that you won’t see them being featured again and again on tons of competing sites across the Web.

Amittedly these projects may be viewed as a mere sideline compared to what we’re most famous (if it is that) for, but in my view that’s a bit of a misconception: While our brand name is usually associated with Cloaking and SEO products for various reasons, we’ve always been a software house developing a wide range of other, unrelated webmaster tools as well.

On a lighter note, you have what can only be described as “an industrial strength beard”, how long have you had that and any plans to shave it off or is that your own personal cloaking mechanism?

Well, after Peter Davanzo’s “best beard in search” label this take is something new, heh. I’ve been sporting it since 1979 and never shaved it off since and frankly I don’t really see any valid reason to do it now. Of course, I’ll trim it a bit every once in a while but not extremely.

And sorry, no, though it might arguably second as a cloaking device it’s really got nothing to do with it. Rather, I’ve suffered from what might be termed a shaving allergy all my adolescent and adult life. Alright, maybe that’s not the proper medical term but fact is that I respond very badly to shaving of any kind, be it electric or wet, developing a chockfull of rashes and sores everytime I ever had a bash at it. It was living hell during my time in the army when I had to attend the daily roll call freshly shaved, so it’s quite a relief not having that particular headache anymore, at least.

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Ralph, it has been my pleasure to ask you these questions and I will buy you a beer in Copenhagen for the SEO roadshow, your time is very much appreciated.

If you want to read more of what Ralph has to say, he can be seen around various forums and of course on Fantomaster

ukgimp out

Again, been a little barren on the interview front, but I have managed to snag a Q+A session from the well known Oilman. There were 10 questions, but Todd chose not to answer one of them. So Answers on a postcard for the Q he chose not to answer.

Here goes….

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You have a network of mates and I know that a lot of privileged information is passed around. How much harder would SEO/SEM be without that, almost insider knowledge?

The network certainly is key. It’s no secret that the vast majority of ‘good’ information is passed along over IM or beers at conferences. The golden days of really solid information and secrets being shared in the forums is gone. Don’t get me wrong – there’s still good stuff out there but the money tips are on the inside. I certainly wouldn’t be where I am today without the network I have. I can ask and answer questions and we help each other out. When I hit a brick wall I can often get the help I need to get around it.

Did you or do you have an SEO/business mentor and if so what sort of things do you learn as a result?

I would have to say that Greg ‘WebGuerrilla’ Boser is easily my SEO mentor. It’s not my style to gush or get all emotional but Greg has been part of my SEO life from nearly the very beginning and has helped open doors and has freely shared his knowledge with me.

That’s not to discount the long long list of friends and influencers in my life. DaveN, NFFC, rcjordan, Brett Tabke, Danny Sullivan…I could go on. I have been truly blessed over the years to have personal and professional relationships with many amazing and talented individuals. Going to an SES show is like a family reunion. I look forward to those trips for far more than the business opportunities.

An age old question here, but I don’t know the answer, so I am going to ask anyway! How did you get into SEO and given your time again how would you do it differently, if at all?

Back in 98/99 I was finishing up my university degree and working full time for a large oil company. I was a low level accounting clerk. I hated my job with a passion but what the heck? They were paying for my education and I’ve never been one to pass up a free ride. I had bought my first computer and was learning HTML for fun basically. That lead to some part time gigs doing web design for small companies.

One day a good friend of mine called up and was raving about this new piece of software he had stumbled upon. It designed pages that were search engine friendly and it then submitted these pages to search engines for you. That’s right – WPG Version 1. I built thousands of ‘blue line pages’.

With WPG in my back pocket I figured I knew more about search engines than anybody in my home town (I may have been right…) so I started selling SEO but I didn’t even know it was SEO at the time.

One day one I met up with a local web design firm (out of business now) and one of the account reps was pretty knowledgeable about search engines and he pointed me to the good old Search Engine Forums and Jim Wilson’s world. From there we all know the story of how WebmasterWorld was born and that was where I really started to make a name for myself.
The rest of the story is a blur of conferences and meeting people and eventually landing a position as Directory of SEO Technology at Range Online Media – a job I love and a whole company of great people to work with.

How do you rate MSN, potential contender or bag of cack?

I honestly want to see MSN as a contender. I know a lot of people over there and I really like them but the last couple iterations of MSN’s search index have been pure crap. If they can’t get a handle on relevancy and the fact that blogspot is not an authority to be ranked for everything then I don’t hold out much hope. Yes they have buckets of cash and can chase Google and Yahoo all day long but it’s very clear that money can’t buy relevancy and mindshare. I really wish that MSN had purchased ASK – that would have been a force to be reckoned with.

The big corporations get away with murder and it is clear to see why they can do it, eg a searcher expects to see BMW when they search for it, so to not have it there would make the engine look bad. So what is your take on it, should they get the green light or should they be flayed to death?

I don’t believe anybody should get a green light to break the rules without repercussions. The balance though is that you’re exactly right and the BMWs of the world absolutely must show up for brand searches. I’m fine with them never showing up for generics. I do all big brand SEO these days and we’re pretty careful to not cross those lines but every so often I get the urge to propose something totally evil so that we could get a ban for a few days. Look what it did for BMW – I’ve never seen better link building – hehehe.

Seriously though, I don’t believe that anybody should get an unfair advantage because of who they are. BMW deserved to be banned but 3 days is a joke. That’s not even a shot across the bow.

Thinking outside the box is essential the way I see it, but it is not always easy, how do you try and see things differently with the ultimate aim of finding the angle? Can that mindset be developed or does a person just have it or not?

I think developing that kind of mindset in a person that’s not wired up that way is nearly impossible but can happen over an extended period of time. A lot of it that kind of thinking is based on a fundamental understanding of how the system you’re working with is structured. You can’t really think outside the box until you know what the box is. I get a lot of SEO ideas across my desk and many of them are just tossed out immediately because that fundamental understanding is missing and the idea simply doesn’t work. To me thinking outside the box is an if-then situation. You can’t postulate a ‘then’ scenario with out the ‘if’ data.

You do corporate SEO, much to DaveN’s jovial disapproval but do you still keep you eye in on the darker side of things? Is it a case of knowing how to do things the dirty way” will help keep your clean stuff, clean?

I absolutely still keep my eye on the dark side. Many of my best friends in this biz still work on that kind of stuff. The information is invaluable to white or black seo. That said, I don’t believe it’s a case of the knowing the dirty stuff keeps my clean stuff cleaner. It’s more a case of understanding how far you can push the envelope. I’ve said it for years: A good black hat can out white hat a white hat any day of the week.

Can you give us an example of a “caught with your pants down” situation that you were involved with respect to SEO?

It’s a short answer but there was a day back in when I was making my debut into Phentermine spam that I was a bit lazy and bit newbie and I didn’t separate whois info and hosting companies etc and I had my whole network burned when it was at the most profitable point ever. I lost about 90% of my income over night. Needless to say it was a hard lesson learned but it sharpened me up and I haven’t been kicked in the grapes that hard since.

How paranoid are you, do you remove all traces of footprints, do you ring fence projects / networks, fake information etc, how far do you go to keep your stuff safe from widespread devastation?

Separate whois, separate hosts, unique IPs, multiple AdSense accounts etc is all good standard practice if you’re working in the spam world. If you stuff is clean then you don’t need to go to that extent. Even if you’re doing multiple site running AdSense I really wouldn’t get all fired up and paranoid if you’re not doing anything wrong. Yes people get burned all the time that didn’t deserve it but the reality is those are very isolated cases and a percentage of the whole it is insignificant. We just look at a very skewed data set when we read WMW or Threadwatch.

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Well, thanks Todd, you have been a geezer. Respect due for taking the time to speak to me.

If you dont know Todd can be heard on WebmasterRadio (SEO Rockstars), and can be found on his Blog….Oilman!

ukgimp out.

I have been doing some hunting and I have managed to track down a bloke call Sam, you know the one from the El Reg Sam the Spammer. Some of the responses are short and sweet, but from where I am sitting, schumness tells its own story. :-). So here is what Sam had to say.

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As per the el reg article do you still comment spam and have you had to change your approach to the technique?

I’m still a spammer. Techniques have adapted rather than changed massively. New challenges have come along like the mass introduction of CAPTCHAs as well as greater steps to prevent spam such as akismet etc.

They can all be beaten but it does require extra steps. While the profitability is still there I’ll continue to abuse it.

How do you deal with the heat from the angry bloggers. They do make special efforts to hassle hosts, merchants and registrars. I have even seen merchants taken out which obviously goes down like a mug of cold sick.

To be honest I rarely get any heat. I don’t know if it’s because my spam is so good, my database is so aged it only hits dead blogs, or I just hide myself well, but it is rare (maybe 5 calls in the last year) that have meant anyone complained. At the end of the day it is also very easy to say that someone must have done it to us!

SQL injection. Ever used that sort of exploit.

That’s probably illegal isn’t it ?

4. How do you conceal your identity from Joe “now fucked off” Blogger?

I don’t really. If someone is pissed off I’d rather know about it than not. Forewarned is forarmed.

You still got that old Jag?

Yup, though about time to get a new one I think

What do you think about violation of blogs, with respect to things like a memorial blog? Just because it is not maintained anymore, doesn’t mean is it not precious to someone. Or is it a case of fair game? Do you try and do any filtering on the fly, like looking for certain keywords?

If a blog or other system is in my DB then it is prone to be hit by me. If it’s your memorial blog. Sorry but it’s nothing personal. Algorithms are at play here and it is those same algos that decide whether to stick a comment on your site or not.

Proxies are the lifeblood of any spamming / scraping operation. Where do you acquire your from, scraping open lists, port scanning, onions routing or subscription.

All of the above and then a touch more

How do you tackle a new area. For example do you go after the big terms or do you go for thousands of low level converter terms? Care to share at all?

Bottom feeding AKA the Long Tail, is where the true money is at. I think an old statistic (not sure if it is still true and relevant) said that 55% of searches have no advertising shown for them. I’ll happily monetise that 55% but Its also been known to go after some of the huge traffic in the short tail.

When I arrived at your office I noticed the door to your DC and you were good enough to show me around. To set the scene, as I walk in there are big heavy metal racks. On each of those racks are shelves with desktop PC’s (no keyboard or monitors). Being the sad git that I am I notice how neat all the cabling is, all green and tied to solid objects, with what from memory looked to be 50, 2 gang power supplies evenly spaced across the wall. So now I have set the scene can you tell us how you manage the data, do you have custom programs for data collection, storage and processing? But most of all, what do you do with that data.

we have developed loads of techy geeky things that allow us to have “decent” global file systems, symmetrical multi processing clusters and the code has been adapted to work with that. Hard drives are cheap, code aint rocket science and when you throw it all together it means that (ultimately) it works and we rank!

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Cheers Sam, I owe you a beer next time I see you, happy spamming!

ukgimp out.

It has been a little quiet on the interview front but I managed to get Danny Sullivan to answer a few questions in his spare time. So here we go….

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Things change rapidly in the search field, so unleashing your crystal ball what do you think will be the next big thing in search?

I’m still urging search marketers to focus on vertical search properties. I firmly believe that at some point, you’ll do a local search on Google and get back 10 Google Local results even though you didn’t go to Google Local specifically. After that, Google will suggest you fall back to search the web if you haven’t found what you are looking for. I think all the search engines will go this route, serving up news results, shopping results or other vertical listings by default, in the right situations. Web search will remain important, but rather than chase that web search algorithm, many site owners would benefit themselves by thinking more about the vertical services. My “invisible tabs” article talks more about this: http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3115131

The SEO is a considered to be a big dodgy, a bit of a scumbag. What can be done to help get that image changed, after all not every SEO/SEM is a cowboy (Noun. A person who is unscrupulous and unqualified in business. Often with regard to ‘cowboy’ builders.)?

Last year, I called (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=7872) for everyone take a strong stance against automated link spam, inserting links into guestbooks, blogs, forums, you name it. I think that’s given us one of the worst reputations, because it really helps no one except the person running the link program — and even then, it doesn’t help them that much. People equate SEO with spamming blogs, basically.

You’ve also got different flavors of SEO. I think those doing Content SEO, can help change the attitude by reaching out more to designers, to help them they have a common goal in getting web site found. Those who do aggressive SEO, who want to walk the spam line or go over it, there’s not much they can do to change things. I trust, hope, that those creating really crappy scraper site content simply get wiped out with future algorithm shifts. Sorry if I upset anyone with that type of site, but when I hit your sites, they rarely help me and generally distract me. They do worse when my wife hits them. If you’re going to be aggressive, at least be more creative or somewhat useful.

It also doesn’t help that you can have people of whatever hat providing work with no results — taking money but giving no real payoff. I do hope that organizations like SEMPO and SMA might help educate SEO/SEM clients to be more careful in choosing firms. Many clients with bad experiences don’t seem to have done basic things like ask for references. Hey, we’ve got builder cowboys. Yes, we could regular builders more, and that might help. But you can also protect yourself but learning more about the type of services that are offered plus getting and actually following up on references.

You are a prolific writer, what with your blog, search engine watch forums and other community posting, you clearly love the subject, so what got you into it in the first place?

I used to be a newspaper reporter but jumped out of that in 1995, because the web was exciting, and I wanted to be part of it. We were building web sites and had some client who couldn’t understand why he wasn’t ranking well on the search engines. So, I started looking into it. At that time, there was little information about search engines out there. I discovered things like how some of them didn’t crawl near as often as people assumed, along with basic ranking factors. It was really interesting to me, so I published it all out for others, as a way of sharing back with the web to make up for what I’d learned from others. That got a great response, so I kept at it. Overall, search engines fascinated me, especially this entirely new industry that was literally growing and evolving from week to week before my eyes. I do love the subject, so it’s great if that’s still coming through for you.

How can the SEO/SEM industry get the respect they deserve and get more of the marketing spend from large companies, instead of them just wheeling out the techies, and thinking “it is clearly just a problem of the html or something”?

More awards would help. Yahoo recently did some, but that was more on the paid advertising side. I’ve always wanted SES to do some — Best Orange SEO Campaign! — but havent’ had the time to do more with it. Aside from awards, getting more clients to tell their stories would help. But it’s also already coming. I mean, I loved when David on The Apprentice was telling Martha Stewart to her face that she wasn’t ranking well on search engines. That was prime time television in the US! That was some degree of respect. Overall, I think we all need to be better ambassadors for our industries. Tell your stories to your various local publications; help people understand this great new medium that you’ve helped build.

How would you describe your skill set, are you technical person, into analysis, an algo chaser, an overview type person or..?

I’m a content person. I’m all about building great content, because I think the algos are designed to reward that. Great content gets links, has natural copy, gets visits, gets a lot of things the search engines are trying to model. I’m definitely not a programmer, and I got pretty jaded about the analysis/algo chasing way back when we had things like WebPosition trying to give you a database to create the “perfect page.” When so many pages were clearly not perfect, it just seemed the wrong way to go or advise many of my readers. Some like doing the chase, and some are successful with it, so carry on if that works for you. But I think it’s overkill for many people and often makes them forget the basics.

There may well be a groan from the back, but what are your thoughts on the sandbox phenomenon. Where is your camp situated and do you care to share some practical examples as what you have seen and how it can be avoided as best as possible?

To me, the sandbox is when a brand new domain fails to rank as well as you’d expect, when all the other factors say it should. And I mean really good factors that you know should make it rank well. I’ve seen sites that I know must be sitting in a sandbox or suffering from SITATMSLASB — things that seem like a sandbox, as Matt Cutts suggested: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002809.html.

What the sandbox is not is a universal excuse for “I’m not ranking well.” Actually, that IS what it seems to be today. It used to mean that specific problem for a new site, but now people blame the “sandbox” for everything. Google dropped all my pages — it’s the damn sandbox! Well, actually it was probably because your server was down, you banned the spiders, you did other things — but you’re reaching for the sandbox as an excuse.

Where do you read to keep abreast to what is going on in the search arena, from a financial business angle right down to getting dirty with search engine foibles. What feeds are you subscribed to and where do you read daily?

A lot of my feeds are right on the SEW Blog in the blog roll, and I go through them throughout the day. I also do some keyword-based monitoring through Google News and Yahoo News along with taking the tech.memorandium.com feed. Watching our SEW Forums brings up stuff, plus there’s always readers who send things.

What are the big three doing right, right now, in terms of search and business and what are they doing wrong in your opinion?

Google’s probably doing right in some of the new services that it’s rolling out, which protect it against Yahoo and MSN. But I think they’re doing wrong in also doing too many different things. I think Yahoo’s doing right in releasing finished, polished products. They are doing wrong in chasing the social sharing aspect of search perhaps a bit more than the should, but time might prove me wrong on that. It is something all of the search engines need to explore, but it’s not quite the single solution they may think it is. MSN’s doing right with thinks like the search macros and universal scroll, things that are different and unique. I love Windows Live Local, especially for its scratch pads. They’re doing wrong in having a core web search that still feels like it’s 1999. But that’s also a result of being literally years behind the others.

Imagine this, you are the sole decider in a web awards thingumy, so who would you present these awards to and why?

a. Best search engine results
Probably still Google, but I’d be really debating Yahoo and Ask, as well.

b. Best search related blog
Can’t vote for us, right OK, that’s tough. Search Engine Roundtable I wouldn’t want to live without, because it keeps me updated on the forums. Google Blogoscoped gets me a lot of really interesting things, as well. John Battelle’s SearchBlog isn’t as active as the others, but when it is, there’s stuff to pay attention to. Threadwatch has good stuff, plus you have to watch Matt Cutts and Jeremy Zawondy as well. I know you want an overall winner, but I can’t do it! But that’s a short list of some of the most active blogs I find essentially — though there are more than this, as wel.

c. Best added value feature on a search engine
That’s also hard. The site: command is something I find essential, but they all have it. I love seeing text-only cached view on Google despite thinking they should make this opt-in. I like it because seeing what a search engine has seen is incredibly useful. I think the Windows Live Search (ugh, hate that name!) universal scroll is slow but a great idea, as is Ask’s cutomizable toolbar. I loved

d.Best website

e.Best site in terms of usability.
Don’t really have good answers for these, so skipping

What do you think about the v7ndotcom elursrebmem competition, are you planning on having a go and do you think it is a bit like painting a massive target on your ass in terms of giving up the tricks to the search engines?

I joked that I wanted to have my own SEO competition, and none of this let’s all go for some made up term. Let’s put out a challenge to rank well for a really honest-to-goodness competitive term!

I suppose it’s interesting to see the various competitions, but the past ones have really felt like a game of who can get the most important links. Getting those links is more about being creative with your link bait — which I know is an SEO skill — but it’s only testing one part of it. The twist this time seems to be link to me for charity, of course. I don’t really think the contest gives much to search engines, but neither does it prove much in terms of who does the best SEO. That’s in part because today, SEO isn’t just get the traffic. It’s get the traffic that converts. I suppose the winners in the v7ndotcom elursrebmem competition really would either be whoever makes the most off of AdSense off of it or earns from selling contest merchandise. Do we have a T-Shirt yet

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I will keep it simple, thanks Danny for your thoughts and time.

If you have lived in cave for sometime you may not know about Danny’s outlets. So when you get chance take a peek at Daggle, Search Engine Watch, and of course the SEW forum.

ukgimp out.

Stepping up to the ochy we have a long serving member of the SEO crowd. And whilst a lot of people say they have no problems going after Google in the SERPs, well if you didn’t know this man chose to go after them in the courts! So for more of Massa….Read on.

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I can’t possibly ask you questions about search without asking about SearchKing, so apologies if you have gone over this 20 time previously. With that in mind, come on, did you really think that you had a serious case against the Big G? Or was it a rather sly way of getting some good PR from a pretty shitty experience?

I absolutely thought I had a serious case against Google. Restraint of trade is serious. Using power and reach to create an unfair marketplace is serious. It was serious all right. At least to me.

That is not the same as saying I thought I would win but what they did was waaayyyy over the top and it was a great example of shooting a gnat with an elephant gun. Extreme actions can have extreme consequences and they did not look at the resources in the line of fire when all they looked at was altering public perception. There were hundreds of people, (not SEO”s, not even webmasters really, just people. Regular, everyday, guy down the street kind of people), actually taking time out of their lives to review websites and categorize them by relevancy. These people weren’t trying to get on top, trying to make a deal or trying to java script, redirect, hide the text anything. They really gave a damn about what they were doing. Some of them were nice people and some weren’t. Some were young and some were old. Some of them got along together, some didn’t. But there is nothing wrong with that. That is just what people do and both Google and I should have shown them the respect to keep letting them do it. If nothing else, there was value just in the research data we could have gathered.

As to was it a sly way of getting some PR. One thing is for sure, want some link bait? Sue Google in 2002. Yowza!

Ok, here is the deal. Traffic and revenue generation were always at the top of my list of priorities. Countless hours of discussion and research went into possible promotion strategies. In 1999 I had an “in” with a major search engine. Directory actually. That “in” involved a person who had a personal relationship with something who had the authority to get sites placed into the directory. That was money in the bank. It so happens that I had paid for this “special review process” with a check which I ended up with the hard copy of the cashed check. That relationship and my “in” evaporated long ago but my guess is that the person who cashed the check still regrets that little paper trail.

Anyway, I knew, without question, argument or debate, that there were people being given unfair advantage. I had the cashed checks for goodness sake. I also knew that this could be news. So on more than one occasion there were meetings with staff and trusted advisor’s discussing the possibility of suing this major engine, (not Google), for the purpose of getting traditional press and making the general public more aware of our network. Discussions to the point that I had written a couple of different strategic plans based on that scenario. Because of the research and discussions, I knew this was not a strategy to be taken lightly. I knew once it was acted upon, Pandora’s box would be flung open and there would be no putting it back shut.

So, when I honestly felt Google had intentionally and manually, (which they later admitted to in court documents btw), adjusted the results for the sole purpose of causing me and SearchKing to lose business, I was pissed! Not only did I feel treated unfairly and that our customers and partners were being treated unfairly , I felt I was being pushed into a corner and even a mouse will stand up and fight you if you back into a corner. I had to do something as I wouldn’t have felt like much of a man had I not stood up for myself and the people who had put their faith in me.

Our customer base and income started dropping fast. What took almost 3 years to build took about 3 weeks to destroy. I had well over a million dollars invested in SK and knew if I did not act quickly I would lose every portal partner and I would soon be looking for opportunities in the lawn care industry. As it turned out I lost all the portal partners anyway, (actually not all. I believe we still have a couple hundred or so), but the point is at the time I knew I had to do something to show my customers and partners that I had the intestinal fortitude to stand in the face of adversity and to generate enough income to continue being able to pay the bills.

I’m not the first guy to allow a legal action and public relations to go hand-in-hand and I already had the strategy outlined and all I had to do was everywhere the name of the other engines was, change that to Google and it was pretty much done. It was a decision borne by passion and fear coupled with convenience.

All of that could have have been said with a simple, yes, it was a rather sly way of getting some good PR from a pretty shitty experience? I guess I’m still a little passionate about it even after all these cyber-decades. My apologies to your readers. I’ll move on.

Should Google and the others be able to do what the hell they like with their algo, after all they are theirs? To put a comparison in before you answer, you don’t have any say in getting listings in the DMOZ or being deleted, so how is that any different?

Should Google and the others be able to do what the hell they like with their algo,

ABSOLUTELY NOT! What if an algorithm was so powerful as to change the world’s mind? What if the power of that algo could then be used as a weapon to manipulate the thoughts and actions of the public against a perceived foe or a competitor? What if you had an algo but then went in to that program and turned a few knobs to give yourself an unfair advantage? I said back then and I’m saying now, that I believe we all have the right to run our businesses any legal way we like, but none of us, from the smallest to the largest, has the right to use our resources to trample on the rights and freedoms of others.

If you think about the question and the way it is worded, it is easy to see how the entire perception of the question is altered. You did not qualify the question with something like; “within their own database”. In that light, a similar question could be, “do you believe Brett Tabke should be able to do whatever the hell he likes with his gun, after all it is his gun?” What would your answer to that question be?

So, do I believe any search engine can place any site they want at any position they want for any reason they want ? I say no, not if that reason does not respect the rights of other people and the laws of the land. Let’s see how this plays out if China thinks Google is treating them unfairly. In the grand scheme of things, I play a very small role, but if China were Google and Google were me, and China forced Google into something to satisfies China’s agenda —- oh wait, they just did.

You asked >in the DMOZ or being deleted, so how is that any different?

It’s not. Remember those canceled checks I mentioned? {SIDENOTE} I am NOT referring specifically to DMOZ or any other search engine or editor. Like most of us, I’ve read the circular debates in forums about DMOZ corruption back and forth going on for like 5 years now. Everyone is free to believe what they want to believe but to me there is no debate, no questions. Editors at DMOZ have and do take actions based on personal motivations to the detriment of others. Some have, and continue to, use their power and influence for personal gain and specifically to restrict trade and give themselves, or their friends and clients an unfair advantage. It is wrong. It is illegal and it needs to stop or they should be sued.

What lessons did you learn from the SK / Google time in your life, on both a practical and business level that you can share with us?

If you sue someone, you can expect to win or lose but do not expect vindication. That is not what American legal systems are about. If you decide to sue someone outside of small claims, hire the best PR firm you can afford BEFORE filing any legal documents If you sue someone, maybe you’ll win, maybe your won’t but either way, YOU WILL PAY THE ATTORNEYS AND COURT COSTS. If you hire a PR firm — take their advice. If you sue a tech company, do not allow their lawyers to baffle the court with techno bullshit. Always remember you are talking to lawyers and judges and assume they know nothing of technology. They can learn but that education is excruciatingly expensive. If who you are suing brings up the constitution or the Bill of Rights, look for better lawyers fast!

Finally I learned even a greater respect for Google than I had before the suit. They are very smart, very business savvy and very focused. I like to think of myself as a good salesman, but I’m nowhere close to being in Google’s league. Now those guys are salesman. They are my idol!

Enough lawsuit stuff, what has Bob Massa been up to since then and what you up to 2006 and beyond?

You know, I may hold the world’s record for being accused of being an idiot on the internet. What I’m about to tell you may prove those accusations have some merit.

Of course I’ve been doing what I’ve done since 1996. Building successful commercial web presences on the net for my clients. Through it all, I’m a pretty good search engine marketer and I have focused on building a company that can service and support a wide range of clients. While most of the industry seems to want to be shed of the hassles of dealing with clients, that is what we are actually best at. But my passion still remains in building a scalable human review system. I am still putting money into that passion.

I have moved servers, built custom scripts, revised strategies adjusted budgets and hired back some of the people that were instrumental in SearchKing going back to 1999. (Still looking for others. Mike if you see this give me a call if you are interested). We are only days away from launching the network again including hosted portals and free portals. I still believe there is value in providing individuals and companies with the tools to build informational resources for a topic specific market. All they need is the tools and the support.

I want to make it very clear that I am not re-launching SearchKing because of anything to do with Google or the lawsuit. I want to re-launch a portal service because I still believe there is a way to make a human review system scalable and I think it has value on a lot of levels not the least of which is a viable business model.

Ethics in SEO/SEM. Load of bollocks and a case of all is fair in love and search or do you align yourself with the IHY type crowd?

Ethics in any business is never bollocks, (I should mention here that I am not sure what a bollock is but I think it has something to do with bullshit and I’m responding under that assumption). PEOPLE can be a load of bollocks but ethics can not. Truth, honesty, respecting the rights of others and being able to identify and ignore idiots is all that really matters.

As far as IHY crowd, I’m not familiar with anything of any importance to me by that name. I read a lot of internet marketing stuff online from a huge list of sources. If there is a crowd out there that has anything to say about that topic that isn’t just spouting off crap to draw attention to itself, I’m pretty sure I would be aware of it.

Buying links is surely a blatant attempt to manipulate the engines, so by that rationale, do you agree that you should not be surprised if you end up getting a good hiding if you engage in link buying/selling?

No, I do not agree. You /should/ be surprised if anyone gives anyone else a good hiding for doing anything that is not illegal !! You should be surprised. You should be deeply offended and you should demand your personal rights to operate a legal business anyway you choose.

None of us should have to fear a hiding, (again, a little bit of a language barrier of the across the pond persuasion here. Not sure exactly what a hiding is but I’m responding based on my assumption it is something bad), for engaging in any legal activity. If search engines don’t like sites that they believe are doing something they don’t like, they have the right to do what they want to do about it in regards to their own assets. As business people interested in increasing the value of our own enterprises, we have the right to evaluate risk, capitalize on our own assets and enjoy the same opportunities as the ones in a position to deliver a hiding. No hidings. No fear. Just doing business.

The Basic Concepts of SEO you wrote, do you still stand by it all. If not what bits don’t follow any more?

Wow, that hasn’t been brought up for quite a while. I’m pretty sure you must be referring to the one that has been hosted at http://www.v7n.com/basic-concepts.php for the last three years or so.

Keeping in mind I wrote that in like 98 or 99, naturally some things have changed. I stand by it all in the respect that I still believe it is more about figuring out the concepts than the actual procedures. I also stand by the fact that you have to learn enough about what ever field of endeavor you choose to pursue to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and then make your own decisions. That article was not about the hows. It was about the whys and the point of the whole thing was to show people how I approached SEO based on what I could see and then figuring out the motivation.

I believe there are still a lot of valid concepts such as

#2 The stupidest human, given the time and motivation, will win out over the smartest computer every time. and

#4 SEO’s do NOT manipluate search engines. The search engines alone control what goes in and what goes where.

#5 There is no such thing as search engine spam and why. And especially

#8 CYA, (it stands for Cover Your Ass)

I still unequivocally stand by those. But the thing that is most dated about that article is the shift from focus on on site content to off site, and now to the end user’s behavior. That has changed a lot since the 90’s. Even so, I think it is a decent article for anyone interested in seeing how someone starting out may think about the job of search engine marketing.

What are the key factors in getting traffic to a site?

Not to be argumentative Richard, but to my mind you are asking the wrong question. Getting traffic to a site is too easy. Just buy it!

The question should be, “what are the key factors in getting sales from web traffic?” In THAT question, getting traffic to a site is a part of the real process but not one I would consider key. The real challenge has always been the copy, the navigation, and the tech to deliver a feature/benefit message with a call to action that converts at a profit.

I’ve said before that traffic without those other things being is place is the epitome of irony. To generate traffic from being in the top 10 in a major search engine with a competitive phrase, only to have a .01% conversion ratio is an incredible waste of time, money and manpower. That is not to say there are not sound business models that make a lot of money with a .01% conversion rate. My point is that it would appear the majority of the industry sees the problem as not enough traffic when the real problem is not enough sales.

I know this flies in the face and disagrees with RC’s philosophy, ( you should interview him btw. Very interesting individual), but it should be obvious a lot of focus is put in to traffic and not into better converting sites and better converting sites should be the ONLY factor that really matters.

Can of worms potential, but …..can you define spam?

Yes I can.

It is a somewhat greasy cubed luncheon meat with weird little white chunks in it. The oddest thing though is I kind of like it. Especially dipped in flour and fried.

Even going back to those Basic Concepts you referenced earlier, I believe there is no such thing as search engine spam. There is only marketing, advertising and public relations.

You asked me earlier if I thought search engines had the right to list sites anyway they wanted, or something to that effect, and I said I did believe they had that right. BUT, with rights come responsibilities and it can’t be one way without the other. If they have the right to place sites where they want, then they need to take responsibility for their own results and stop trying to blame link buying or hidden text for their lack of ability to provide the results they want to provide.

Without the password to get into a search engines’ server, there is nothing you, me or anyone else can do to manipulate a search engines’ results. If I can’t make a search engine put my site where I want, then how the hell is that spamming anything? It is just me building my site.

It absolutely and completely baffles me that webmasters feel they are not entitled to build their sites any way they want as long as they are not breaking any laws. It is their site, their property and if there is something they believe they can do to improve their site, they should not only feel able to do it, they should feel obligated to do it. Obligated to themselves, their families who depend on their income and obligated to their visitors. If hidden text gets your competitor more traffic, then to not use hidden text on your own site when it helps you meet your objectives, to me is counterproductive and not good business. Business Richard, not lunch meat with weird little white chunks.

Some search engines may like the public to believe that they are the reason to build a site. That having the honor of being placed where the engine wants to place you is the goal of every good webmaster. They may like to promote the perception that they are the internet. Of course that is what they want to present. That is good PR, but it is not the reality. The reality is, it is just business. And if their business is being threatened by how some webmasters build their sites, they need to decide how they are going to handle that. That makes it a problem but it doesn’t make it spam.

At the SEO Roadshow, you were seen wearing a black, hat. Was that a little bit of irony there?

First of all I think the whole white hat/black hat thing is just about the silliest thing I have ever witnessed being discussed by a group of adults.

Secondly, my fashion preference has much more to do with the fact that I have had a love affair with 40’s style Stetsons ever since I first saw Humphrey Bogart smooch the hell out of Ingrid Bergman while wearing a hat in the movie Casablanca at the age of about 12, (I realize I’m dating myself here. For all you younguns that don’t what the hell I’m talking about go here http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=casablanca+movie&btnG=Search).

Since that time I’ve had hundreds of hats, (just about any style other than cowboy hats), and my color of preference in manly headgear is black. I do have some gray and brown but no white. I’m wearing my black Stetson today as a matter of fact and I still love watching old 30’s and 40’s movies. Is that ironic?

If I don’t believe in spam, how could I possibly believe in white hat or black hat? To me it is all just marketing and sales.

I’m like the dyslexic agnostic. I don’t believe there is a dog.

Peace

Massa

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Some interesting points and food for thought you made Bob. So from me thanks for making the time to answer some of my questions.

If you wish to read a little more about Bob, you could try ….BobMassa.com

ukgimp out

Incoming…… and this time in the guise of an interview with JasonD, who is known for treading both sides of the line. So without further fannying around, here we go.

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You are versed in the art of getting publicity, be it crazy Spam Man or the offering of the support of the link analysis tool. For Stangelogic is any publicity good?

Hi Gimpy,
Let me start off by saying thanks for asking me to do this interview, I hope my answers live up to the great standard your previous interviewees have set.

As to getting publicity, I don’t know if I am versed in it but I don’t shy away from it either. As to whether all publicity is good then my answer has to be a resounding no, just ask George Galloway!

Partnerships. Good or is it a case of going it alone and keeping the spoils to yourself?

Partnerships are VERY good, but there has to be a two way street. I get lots of requests to partner with Strange Logic and all of them I investigate but sometimes I have to politely decline the offers. For a partnership to work the 2 (or more) organisations not only need to get a “win” from working with others, but they also need to deliver “more than the sum of the individual parts”

If a partnership is some people working together but the value added by the parties isn’t equal then it is doomed to failure. Just for the record, value isn’t always knowledge, ability, software or money though, It can be a million other things.

Go on share a nugget with us, you may piss off a few people, but if you pick a declining technique you wont get too much heat, or is secrecy the name of the game?

Hmmmmm. Nuggets huh?

How about a Chicken Nugget. Personally I think the best nuggets there are out there are Birds Eye’s Chicken Dippers - Oh, you mean SEO nuggets. OK, let me think.

How about a really simply one that is 99% common and business sense rather than technical. The web using world is greater than the UK and US and outside of those countries they speak languages that aren’t English. Look and investigate those lingual differences in the SERPs.

In fact here is one more. 3rd level PPC companies are a good thing for a certain search engine!

Data mining, is that a big part of what you do, do you do it personally and does it provide real insight. In most cases unless you can analyse the data properly, even the best is virtually useless.

I do a LOT of data gathering and research and yes, for me it shows some VERY REAL insights as to what is happening out there. I do think you’re right though, data without analysis is like Roast Beef without horseradish. It just aint worth bothering with!

Do you think your offer to help out the engines and software providers (link here) will ever been taken up? Why do you think they have declined so far, it has to be a pride thing, no?

I sure hope so. I’m sure the guys at the big engines will get there without me or someone like me eventually, but I am very aware of the problem from all 3 sides (Engine, CMS owner and Spammer) and I believe I have the problem solved algorithmically meaning it can be culled in one clean sweep rather than trying to enforce a non standard that has shown to not work (Link Condoms)

It’s definitely a lot better than the engines have in place at the moment.

As to why they have declined so far, I guess it is partly political. I’m an SEO that hasn’t denounced the dark side. I’m a Brit that doesn’t really want to travel for the fun of it. Could there well be more reasons. I’m pretty sure there are and if I had made private, rather than public contact I guess the response may have been different.

Who knows what the future holds though and the offer is still open 

If you were running the show, what would you do, clearly the results are not that good on all three, and don’t even mention arbing and overture. How would you clean up this town?

I have some answers to some problems but personally I wouldn’t want to run the show nor do I have answers to all the questions. I’m happier working as a side act to the main event  my SEO to the big boys’ search engines.

Arbing, specifically PPC arbing is a double headed sword for the engines. Commercial, money making interests –v- public perception of search quality. Google rule the roost in this area. Keep your own results pretty clean and abuse the competition. Thankfully it’s still possible to abuse Google and just for the fun of it I like to assist Yahoo in earning some money from it. I see it as my small way of redressing the balance 

What is the ratio of clean to dirty within Strangelogic and how do you ensure you don’t get a good shoeing on your clean stuff?

Most of what we do is so clean it could be used as soap, even by Doug. At the same time there is still a large quantity of sites that we control that could be seen as dirty. Just for the record, I do get dumped on clean stuff as well as dirty, but over the last year or 2 more clean gets dumped than dirty, but a lot of that is probably down to making my dirty stuff look cleaner rather than my clean becoming dirtier.

I fell really sorry for the guys n gals and that have all their eggs in one or two clean sites but at the end of the day we must all recognise that this is a business that is controlled by 3 boys and if you don’t prepare for the worst then you will die a speedy death when the inevitable happens.

What is your technical preference, in terms of platform, hardware etc. I know you like perl (grrrrrr) but what else do you use. Tell us about your ideal box.

I love Perl. I always have and with Perl6 coming out I think it will continue. For me, there is not a more flexible and robust language for rapid development. We generally code in Perl, prove the systems and processes and if necessary for speed we recode in C.

Our platforms are 100% Linux with our own clustered distribution, employing hundreds of nodes, that we have number & data crunching all day long. We keep saying that Widget Nix will be released to the world but so many things get in the way and enhancements occur to the OS that it hasn’t happened yet. Watch this space

What is the biggest seo/coding type mistake you have made and what lessons were learned.

I have never made an SEO mistake, I simply have SEO learning experiences that the engines deliver to me! LOL

My biggest coding mistake was the Church of Heil fiasco and what I learnt is there are times to shut up rather than respond.

I asked DaveN if he looked for flaws in the search engines. So I feel it is only fair to ask you the same thing. Being a good SEO is about being aware of changes, even trying to predict. Pushing the boundaries it about taking it that step further, do you go out looking for flaws, do you share them with mates, do you experiment, what is your angle?

I try as many different scenarios as I can hypothetically cover (which is quite a few thousand at any one time). I try to look at what might be happening and pre-empt the engines deploying it. I look for problems, because once I understand that, the system simply has to be deployed to counter it.

When there is an algo change, I go back to my previous work and hope the answer is there. So far it always has been, though not always perfect, but what many of us forget is we don’t need to beat the engines. We simply need to beat the guy at #2
I share quite a bit with mates but not everything and the main reason is a spark of inspiration can come back (and often does) in return. I know some amazing guys n gals in this industry (You’re one of them Rich) and sometimes a question someone else has, for totally obscure reasons, can start a chain of events that lead to some great ideas. Only yesterday someone said something that has my mind racing with possibilities. Because of that, unrelated question, I have new software that is being built right now that will dramatically change one area of my work – Thank you Adam!

My overall angle is actually quite simple 1.61803399 degrees

My parting comment will have to be if you want to learn about search engines then build one and make it one that has to encounter the same problems as the big boys. You may choice to keep your search engine in house only, but once you’ve seen the shit the likes of Matt and Tim have to deal with algorithmically then you’ll respect the problems they have to deliver answers to and learn how to deal with their answers yourself.

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Jason, thanks for taking the time to do this little Q&A, I know I found it interesting and it was appreciated.

Any interested in finding out more about JasonD, can go to his site StrangeLogic or catch him around the forums.

ukgimp out

Dean Bloomfield, AKA DigitalGhost has agreed to answer a few of my questions and as ever comes back with some interesting points. And I am even going to claim that this was the real reason he came out of retirement

So once again read on…..

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Retirement clearly didn’t agree with you, as it looks like about six months and you gave up! So what is on the cards for DigitalGhost in 2006 and beyond?

Work, work and more work. Seriously, with a start-up launch, (Actually Marketing) client demands, research, testing and application development I see 2006 as a year of challenges. I also think that in 2006 search engines and SEOs will work more closely together than ever before.

The industry has become more sophisticated and the level of sophistication will continue to increase in the future. As a result of that sophistication, the relationship between search engines and SEOs will become less adversarial because the goals become increasingly similar. So for the future I see more research into IR and search technologies than reverse engineering algos. Just makes much more sense to anticipate than to react.

You are known for your loquacious, very eloquent, but loquacious posting on forums. With that in mind, are we going to see a return of DG on the boards and what subjects are going to get your juices flowing?

I’d be filling fora with vowel movements now if I had more time. Well, time and the inclination to repeat myself every time someone new came along with a question that has been asked and answered many times. I think the reason many of the ‘old-timers’ don’t post as frequently as they once did is simple weariness. It’s all good though; the new generation of SEOs can serve some time answering questions.

There are several subjects that excite me. Digital rights, which has been mainstream news for almost all of ‘05, social media and marketing, search technologies, education in the Information Age, why all the hype about Web 2.0, etc.

Algo’s and language seem to be a keen interest of yours so what evidence have you seen, if any, that the engines may be adopting techniques like LSI/hilltop/semantics etc?

If ‘java’ is returned as a result for a query on ‘coffee’, semantics are involved. The only question is to what extent are semantics incorporated into the algorithm? I don’t think any of the search engine reps will be mentioning LSI as it is patented by Telcordia. Are they using something similar? I certainly think so.

What was the last search related technical paper / patent that you read and do you care to share your thoughts on it?

Google’s Dupe Content patent.

My first thought is that it remains remarkably easy to smudge ‘fingerprints’ to the extent that Google’s dupe filter is duped. In reality, I think Google manages to find a lot of smudged and partial prints, which are of little use. As for SEOs and SEMs that want to duplicate content and use it, well, they learned to wear gloves and they don’t leave any prints.

You’ll know when Google perfects their dupe content filter when you can no longer find your stolen content in their results.

If you had to write a simple recipe for an SEO success what would the main ingredients be?

A. Forced me into a cliché huh? Start with good content. Then acquire quality links. Yes, it is that easy. And no, it is not that easy. Rather than a recipe, how about some qualities?

All the successful SEOs are curious. They exhibit perseverance. They are competitive. They’re confident. They aren’t afraid to fail. They hate to fail. They don’t mind being the underdog. They constantly educate themselves. But most importantly, they try a lot of recipes. A simple recipe is fine, for that simple success. But there are thousands of ways to succeed, several ways for each site, so why limit that recipe book to a single, simple recipe? Instead, cook something new every day. Throw out the recipes that leave a bad taste in your mouth.

So what did you manage to achieve with that Google Mini of yours. Although it would not have the latest algo on it I reckon it could be used on large-scale auto generated stuff to see what work and a whole host of other things, so what did you find out?

That little experiment was intended solely to find out what Google thought about word relationships. Is job related to employment? Is Job related to work or trials? Everyone keeps saying, ‘think outside the box’, well, I wanted to know what the box was thinking.

How do you rate the current search providers and what could they do better?

I think they’ve done a fantastic job of making information easy to find and a mediocre job of rating it. Until an algo is created that can differentiate between popular and important, we’re left with SERPs that display popularity contest winners.

What could they do better? Well for starters, they could solve the ‘AND Circuit” query problem. Go ahead, search for AND Circuit, with quotes and without, and let me know how useful the results are.

You have a solid and longstanding background I search, but six months is a long time. How long will it take for you to get up to a standard you are happy with and do you think it is possible for people new to search to get going quickly on a new site for instance?

I stopped working in the industry for six months, but I didn’t stop researching or reading industry news for six months. As for a standard I’m happy with? That doesn’t exist, there’s no room for complacency in this industry.

Is it possible for someone new to search to get going quickly? Sure. Will they rank well? I don’t know. Depends on the individual. The basics are well agreed upon, so an inquisitive business owner could start with the proper foundation and avoid a lot of mistakes. In competitive arenas though you need more than a couple of weeks of trial an error. I still find new ‘Link and a Promise’ sites in the SERPs though and they typically remain there until they hit someone’s radar. Getting to the top isn’t a measure of success though; it’s getting back to the top after you’ve fallen and managing to stay there that counts.

Without giving us the findings (unless you want to) can you tell us what sort of tests you are conducting right now to reverse engineer search engine algo’s and would you consider yourself a algo chaser?

A. I’ve never been a reverse engineer. I’ve always worked with prediction modeling. I want to be able to predict, within reason, where a site will place in the SERPs on various engines given a known set of variables. It’s much more valuable to have your own algo than it is to tear someone else’s apart.

Building your own search engine forces you to anticipate the same problems the search engines deal with. Issues like RLA, (Rapid Link Acquisition) are much more noticeable when you have your own set of patterns to work with than they are when you’re forced to borrow someone else’s patterns.

You may not know, but in the UK we had a marketing campaign for a mobile phone company that was based around whom you would have a one to one with. So dead or alive, who would you like to have a one to one with and why?

Nikola Tesla. I’ve always been fascinated by his inventions, his intellect, and his quirks. And I’d really like to know the truth about his ambient light with no apparent source…

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Dean, thanks for your time and your insight, some interesting thought provoking ideas you have there and I wish you lots of luck and reward with your new venture.

If you want to read more from DigitalGhost I would recommend firing up his Blog…. DigitalGhost’s Desk.

ukgimp out.

Well folks, it is time to get this mutha off the ground. Judging by the big fat text that say’s DaveN Interview you will have guessed that Mr N has agreed to answer a few questions related to search and anything else that seems pertinent.

So without further ado I invite you to read on and see what is going on right now in the world of DaveN.

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I remember when it was easy, throw up a page, throw in some links and away you go, but now things seem much harder for new builds. So how can the ordinary bloke with a website compete with aged sites and resource driven people. It’s a case of the richer getting richer no?

It certainly seems that way at the moment but I still believe that it is still easy to throw up a page and push some links to it and away you go. It’s all about knowing where to host, what’s on the page, the content of the page etc.

If you remember the old days of SEO when there were 8 Golden Rules to follow, now it is the case that there are 8 Golden Rules for each Golden Rule to follow… do you follow. More like 3D SEO rather than 2D.

There is though so much information on the web these days about SEO techniques. When I started it was all very secretive and not really understood what the true value of it was. If an ordinary person has enough time on their hands to sift through the forums they will get a head start.

Have you ever been wiped out of Google, what was it for, did you get it back and what lessons did you learn from receiving a good kicking?

Yep, I have had many sites penalised and hand removed from Google. But this was because I was lazy and stupid and didn’t keep 2 steps ahead of the game. They didn’t get back in and I opened up a fish and chip shop and retired. No, seriously we tend to run 3 or 4 different techniques at a time and if certain sites do get burnt we just walk away. We know for next time what works and what doesn’t.

I know that you do client sites that would be considered uber clean and you do outright, pushing the boundaries stuff, but are you ever tempted to push it a little to get client sites cooking that little bit more?

Not anymore. For the first time in my life about a year ago we took a clients’ site a little too far. We offered up advise which was like giving a child a gun with bullets. Basically the client went overboard on link acquisition and failed to stick within the boundaries of the Golden Rules.

You wake up one morning and you have no resources, no programmers, no full rack of servers, do you think it is possible for a non “resourced up” person to make it big in the search world. Could you do it again and how would you tackle it?

To be honest if I woke up one morning with no resources, no programmers, and no rack of servers it would probably be because I was on a yacht somewhere anchored off a tropical island in the sun, retired from the game.

I could do it again and I’d tackle it head on. I’d wake up the next morning and buy new resources and start again. I still have the knowledge that I will never lose and a great deal of motivation when something interests me.

A good friend of mine, NFFC, ran a thread on one of the forums a while ago and there was one thing that really hit home about how I work within the industry, which was the classic quote from The Godfather.

“Someday - and that day may never come - I’ll call upon you to do a service for me”.

Being a good SEO is about being aware of changes, even trying to predict. Pushing the boundaries it about taking it that step further, do you go out looking for flaws, do you share them with mates, do you experiment, what is your angle?

I do go out looking for the flaws in the search engines, which I suppose is the same as a good accountant who will try to find the loop holes on the tax system for instance. This enables me to keep a few steps ahead.

I do tend to share ideas with friends when it is advisable to. I have been caught out though in the past where ideas that I have shared in private forums have been abused. Not in the sense of being offered up to the search engines, but in the sense that if you find something that could make you £50k a month if implemented slowly and carefully and will live for 8-10months then great. But if this is implemented aggressively it may net £100k and only live for a month. The scraper sites were a classic example of this, even though I still believe that Google is still struggling with them.

When I see “golden nuggets” appear of forums, I think to myself, “there ain’t much time left on that one” and I have seen things that I have been privy to “outed” and then killed, so would you say there is a large amount of secrecy and funny hand shakes in this game?

Not too sure about the funny hand shakes mate, but there are certainly “funny” instant messages flying around the web these days. Small groups of SEO’s who are part of small private forums openly discuss ideas and new techniques.

You have a fairly large infrastructure, so you clearly believe in this business long term. So as a pie in the sky exercise, where is search going to be in 2, 5 and 10 years and will you still be able to make cold hard cash from it?

Predicting the future of the search engines is a very hard thing to do, but one thing for certain is that you will always be able to make cold hard cash from it if you manage to keep up with the changes. The word that is in the back of my mind more and more these days is “community”.

There will be more personalised search, like DaveN likes football, drinks beer and has an unnatural obsession with reading blogs. The search engines with then deliver ads related to my profile and not keyword related.
Also I feel that Google, Yahoo and MSN seem to be all focusing more on releasing new products like video download, photo libraries and software than on their own core search product.

I may be a cynical old bastard but when you take that 99% of all Googles revenue comes from adwords delivered by keyword search it’s hard to make sense that the natural listings are irrelevant, spam filled or informational.

In term of search what are the craziest things that Google / MSN / Yahoo are doing right now and how could they fix that?

I would say that for Google it would be that in an attempt to fix the 302 issues they seem to have caused some 301 dupe content issues now.

For Yahoo it will be MyWeb2. There is a funky thing that Greg Boser pointed out today that if you search for Threadwatch you get every listing from threadwatch.org, but if you search for David Naylor you get clusters of results from many sites including mine.

And MSN, it still seems that if you have the keyword in the URL and title that you can rank for anything.

How to fix these… that’s their problem… why should I tell them how to fix their problems.

You are a self proclaimed blog spammer or were, do you still do that, if not why and any plans to unleash the evil in the future?

Lol, I stopped blog spamming when everyone else started it, before it became a mainstream technique. That’s probably about the time when I started RSS scraper type sites.

The mighty blog spammer is still in my arsenal of tools and maybe one day I may dust it off and let it loose again. But as you well know I run a lot of blogs now and I know that it pisses people off a lot. Adding to that Wordpress and other blog companies do a much better job at blocking blog spam. So perhaps a project for the future will be to build a new one that will break through this extra blog protection.

Now time for a question that is like one of those quirky “end of news bulletin” stories (remember Butch and Sundance the escapee pigs). Well, what, to date has been your biggest SEO / programming faux pas, go on give us a laugh, have you ever sent 25K visitors to an aff, thought their conversion was cack then realised you left your aff code off for example?

I’ve done worse than that mate. I have built networks of sites and then when they started to pop in the plan was to monetarise them. I built one such network then forgot about half of it, so basically we were getting about 100,000 uniques a day that saw total garbage and no monetarisation at all. In fact I think there are still pages out there somewhere.

Another crazy one was that I was sat in the office with a guest while I watched with untold belief the conversation between a UK spammer and a Russian programmer. I can’t believe people actually use Russian programmers.

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Well Dave, I would like to thank you for taking the time out to answer a few questions, most appreciated.

If anyone does not know they can catch up with Dave on his Blog or talking random seemingly, unplanned stuff, on his explicit radio show with Mikkel on StrikePoint!. Enjoy.

ukgimp out.