http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=t3fr0gs

Just in case it disappears as I am sure it will sreenshot below:

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There were 117 comments made from lots of different people that First Search Consultancy did not like as many were unfavourable.

First Search Consultancy had their legal representatives contact my host and as such the posts and comments have been removed.

There are other locations where reviews can be seen of First Search Consultancy who still have content up so get searching if you want to find out more.

If I had the time and inclination I would fight the problem, but for now I simply have other stuff to do that is more important.

cheers

ukgimp

Added // I have had to close comments on this one also as several comments, the type FSC don’t seem to like have been added. Sorry.

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Here is one of many examples:

Name: BeckyJack
Country:USA
becky2622@gmail.com
Message:We would like to get your website on first page of Google.All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.Please reply and I would be happy to send you a proposal.In order for us to respond to your request for information, please include your company’s website address (mandatory) and or phone number.

The main reason why they are retarded is that they can’t even write the spider to insert the name of the website they are posting the form too. So I would have to write back with my “mandatory” website address.

Words fail me!

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I have blanked out the errors to protect the stupid (and me getting in the poo )

Just to give you an idea I don’t live in Scot Coldfield (Remember I bought from them so they know where I live) and my name is Not Mr Raza, nor that of my other half.

The moral of the story is, if you are going to spend lots of hard earned on a direct marketing campaign then at least check it. This one I got looked like it was penned by someone with a very bad grasp of English, littered with errors which makes me think the company must have the same lack of attention to detail.

cheers

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Tim O’Shea

Well worth checking out and he may well drop some nuggets. He finds stuff years in advance of others so put him on your feed reader.

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All code should have more commenting within it than actually needed.  Some coders will moan but screw them. You need to be able to get other people to be able to understand the workings of whatever you have built and probably at a time when you don’t actually have time, i.e. it has already hit the fan.

Cross Training of Programming

If you have more than one programmer then insist that they are made to understand each others applications.  Do not accept the line that “it’s [insert name]’s code and it’s a mess”, make them follow it and ensure a good level of understanding, consider it a peer review. You never know when one of your coders might get hit by a bus!

Passwords and Server Access

Parts of this may not be needed, but make sure you have an exit strategy for the time when you may fall out with your developer.  Ensure that you know what the passwords are and that they are nicely stored in password class that if needs be you could find them and change them. You also need to keep the keys (or know where they are) to the server. Make sure you know how to get in touch with the hosting company. If you are worried about looking like a bastard boss then wrap this up in “Documentation / Processes”. You may think this is overkill but I have seen instances where partners have fallen out and the techy one has been locked out the true owner and had emails re-routed and lots of other nasties.

Insist, no demand that no one ever logs in as root. It can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Get them to log in via a user name than has sudo access. Sudo can limit all sorts of things so that you can even give user rights to access just certain parts of the system, eg apachectl

Above all, have a plan for when one day you might fall out with one of your developers. I reckon that you could hide a script in the root directory that could be a one sweep password changer which your trusted man could activate when Armageddon comes. Best to stay good friends with this person

Development Server Environment

Never ever allow development on a live server. If you do you are asking for grief and woe of biblical proportions.  Have one trusted person do the final ftp/ssh to the live server. I have seen many problems, from overwriting a CSS file (gone forever) due to two people editing on a live server to servers being borked by inexperienced unix operation and god awful code. Check out my quick install of a sever.

Test Test Test and Test Again

Generally when a developer says that something is finished and working…it isn’t ready. Get them to test each others applications. You may need a suitably picky person on tap though who can find the flaws. Get them to write them down as they occur, take a screen print of complicated errors and write instructions on how they created the error or problem so that they can be tracked down. One of the best I have seen at this was Doug Scott, who if one tiny thing did not work he would assume the whole app was not working. Very funny to watch the faces of a proud programmer.

Keeping a Clean Ship

Servers can get messy, really messy quite quickly. Quite often it is just laziness and even I have done a few sneaky folder name changes to remove something offensive looking. Certain directories are sacred, under no circumstances should there be junk or test folder structures within the public_html or near there.

 I have seen the following:

public_html1
public_html2
public_html_new

This is a sacking offence . In the case above code libraries were even crossing over but only one was the real public_html. It was a real mess.

Don’t allow low level users create new linux usernames all over the shop. Make a clear distinction of where development can be done and stick to it.

CVS

A lot of the problems with coding and software release versions can be prevented by using  a CVS. One that was used to good effect where I once did some work was SVN and Tortiose SVN. This means you can see code develop, rollback when then is a problem, backup easily and much more.

Backups

There is no excuse for not having a backup procedure up and running including documentation. Consider something like reoback. You should actually test the backups too. I have seen a backup reinstated due to corrupted data only for that data to also be corrupted. You need to shelve off data periodically in cases of major corruption.

Backups and disaster recovery is a whole major project, but most important. Media  these days is cheap, a TB for £150!

Remember to keep one offsite at all times, no good if there is a fire/flood/burglary.

Code Libraries and Language Libraries

If you are working on a big application then you need to be able to find common stuff easily. You need OO programming here or at the very least nice functions clearly commented and placed in separate files.

I like to get language libraries created, where all the interaction between the user and the application is installed. So when you see a spelling mistake or error when a interaction has taken place you can get to is easily and change it, as it is a nicely named function (errorMsgUserWrongPassword()).

Avoid inline formatting within code as this gets messy when you want to change something.

Load testing

Nothing like getting a shiny new application working nicely when you alone are using it, so you pass it into 5 mates and it runs like a dog. There are applications to load test (Neoload) which can mimic user actions and can be ramped up. Your coders might cry at this point when they realise that only two concurrent users can log in, but better to find out before the big press launch:-).

Design with Scale in Mind

If you are spending time to build a decent application you are hoping that it will go big. So you need to think big from the start, design the DB as if your application will have all the features you could ever want, even if you don’t build them. You may want to add them one day and nothing makes people cry more than someone who has to rewrite a DB from the ground up when they could have planned for it in the first place.

Can your site handle a FARK, or front page of digg, if not, how can you make it. Consider page caching.

Can the application, if needs be, run separate DB servers or handle load balancing.  I have seen load balanced servers need manual updating of DB’s or some such weirdness and during the “balancing” stage it would write to one of the 2 different DB’s!

Ensure SEO Standards

Before any code is written ensure that the site and application will be both SEO’able and reach accessibility guidelines. It is super easy to SEO to a high level just by having certain things in place like standard headers, titles and page hierarchies. Make sure that you a template that is constructed from easily defined variables, wordpress does it well:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags

Have a list of standard SEO errors that must never occur.

IPR Ownership

It must be watertight on who actually owns the intellectual property rights on the application, all it’s code and anything discovered during the build. You don’t want to see your killer application re-launched  by a disgruntled ex employee.

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Anyway Jason now has a blog of sorts. Weird mental colours and fonts, but Jason never likes to conform.

Check is out…. Jason’s Shell

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A site may seek to improve it’s apparent importance by acquiring spammy links. This can sometimes be detected by examining the derivative graph of average PR (NB this is a gross over simplification, but it’ll do) of newly acquired links, since such spammy links often come in 2 varieties :

1) Link farm : often composed of many low PR pages pointing to a single site, hence the graph of d(PR)/dt will be sharply negative

2) Clique attack : often composed of many high value sites linking amongst themselves, but not outside the ring, hence the graph of d(PR)/dt will be sharply positive

Neither behaviour is terribly natural, and can be examined algorithmically. Also, although it’s not clearly stated, there must be a temporal component to this - only links acquired within a given timeframe can truly be considered to be coupled, else madness ensues. Personally, I’d put a damping factor into the coupling that relies on time separation between discovery of various links. It’s known that Google timestamp new links when they find them, so it’s not a problem

Another critical line here “A naturally occurring structure, in contrast, will tend to have more links to nodes outside the ring, thereby dissipating the importance of mutual reinforcement of the links.” - link out from your spam, for protection from detection +3. Fortunately this merely reinforces my own practices, really. I’ve noticed that a lot of “new wave” SEOs think that “PR bleed” is some horrific disease, and not a stupid name for the perfectly normal practice of linking to other people’s sites, like an actual webmaster might do. Repeat after me, hublike score, LocalRank, Hilltop.

Back to the patent… Interestingly, they propose taking the modulus of the normalised derivative value, and comparing that to a threshhold to find candidates for spam status, which may imply that the “natural” graphs of link acquisition vary very little. In clearer terms, that means that you’d expect a site to pick up a mixture of high-value and low-value links, and that the derivate contributions of each of those types of links ought to produce a fairly flat graph overall. That may go some way to explaining why the Digg / SMO boosts don’t always work.

Note that the patent was submitted in 2004 - it’s likely they’ve been using this for a while, and I suspect we’ve all seen the effects. It strikes me most immediately as a huge helping hand to negative SEO - thanks for spelling out more clearly what I need to do to make someone look like a spammer Sepandar D. Kamvar, Taher H. Haveliwala, and Glen M. Jeh. I owe you all a beer.

Footnote:

This analysis was sent to me by my good friend Brendon Scott (Aka TallTroll) who has been involved in SEO for a lifetime. If you can find him maybe you could hire him, a bit like the A Team really.

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I had to steal it to show it online. Please remember this is an actual menu in an English speaking country.

Check it out (HINT look at the Capesanti)

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Take a look:

Dogging Search, NSFW (it is now as Google don’t allow it :-))

Just in case it gets fixed here are some screen shots:

1. Initial search and warning:

2. Actual Warning

3. Server Error

So it appears that Google no longer like “questionable” stuff. This makes a mockery of Google.

Sort it out!!

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