SearchInfluence

It’s been a bit over three years since I’ve used the once-titanic blogging site LiveJournal for anything. LiveJournal’s still got an active community, but it’s true that asking “What’s your LJ name?” of a new acquaintance is a little bit more embarrassing today than it was in 2003. My account’s dead (nah, it’s not on DeadJournal), but every few months, some brave archaeologists attempt to set up some horrible advertisements within the internals of this hibernating brute.

Here’s one of the emails I got:

Google is feeding local business owners to the wolves with their latest Places update. Lior Ron, Google Places Product Manger, announced yesterday evening that Google will be “helping” business owners keep their business listings updated by now allowing anyone, mischievous competitors included, to edit your entire Places listing for you. Yes, even if it is verified.

How… thoughtful of Google.

Damn it feels good to be a Panda.

Over two weeks ago, Google scared the SEO community by publicly releasing what even they called a “ ...

CityGrid Media, who recently invested significantly in Orange Soda (an SEO/PPC firm out of Utah) has chosen to use the favored tactic of Nigerian princes and Offshore Link-Exchangers to drum up business for their new partner Orange Soda.

CityGrid Media (Orange Soda) Form Spam Image

I’m very surprised to see this kind of thing from a company of this stature.

I’m glad to see that the address is in New York and not American Fork Utah as I’m fairly confident the folks I’ve known at Orange Soda wouldn’t condone this behavior.

Full text of email message follows:

No one likes SPAM! I’m not talking about the canned meat product. I happen to like the stuff myself. It reminds me of camping when I was a kid. What I am talking about is that which clogs our inboxes, dilutes and degrades the integrity and usefulness of … well, pretty much every new form of communication that arises.

In Twitter’s blog post “State of Twitter Spam” they identify

Twitter SPAM as “behaviors that range from insidious to annoying. Posting harmful links to phishing or malware sites, repeatedly posting duplicate tweets, and aggressively following and un-following accounts to attract attention”

Yelp is intended as a review site where users can write and read reviews for local businesses to help make informed buying decisions. It’s a powerful tool in that users trust the real opinions and feedback from their friends and neighbors. Yelp’s user-driven reviews allow everyone to add in their opinions of products and services at local clubs, restaurants, and businesses in all forms.

There is obvious value to a small business owner in getting users to leave positive reviews. The question is how much should a business pay for a review? No, no, no … I’m joking. The question really is how do you encourage customers to leave Yelp reviews naturally and organically without abusing the intent of the site?

BBB, BizzSpot partnership takes a shady tack to entice local businesses.

So, it’s taken me a few days to get back to this, but I was blown away by a recent cold-call from a company purporting to be the marketing arm of the Better Business Bureau.

I think everybody knows that the BBB is a commercial venture, but this was a little over the top.

Here’s why I liken it to Merchant Circle: The caller says “This is Valerie calling for William Scott. Calling on behalf of the better business bureau if you could please contact me at 888-xxx-xxxx. Thank you.”

Private Links Builder is trying to help me rank better for Plastic Surgeons New Orleans. I’m highlighting some particularly amusing stuff.

These are actually pretty good from a sales perspective. What they lack is any kind of real preparation and review.

See also: Links Hog and High Web Rank

Subject: I visited your searchinfluence.com site and had a question

I was looking at websites under the keyword plastic surgeons new orleans and came across your site searchinfluence.com. I see that you’re ranked #10 on page 5 in google.

High Web Rank is trying to help me rank better for Chiropractor New Orleans with their 13,000 sites.

For a little background please see my Links Hog post.

Hello,

I was looking at websites under the keyword ‘ chiropractor new orleans ‘ and came across your website http://www.ifindsales.com/. I see that you’re ranked number 2 on page 15.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of why you’re ranked this low but more importantly how easily correctable this is.

Are you aware of what the difference between first page and page 15 would mean to your business?

I happened to stop by Mihmorandum, the blog of Portland Oregon Website Designer David Mihm and David solved a problem I didn’t know I had.

WordPress Spam Injection = Google Penalty for My Blog (But Not Website)

I had been wondering for about two weeks why I was no longer ranking for “Locomotive Consultant” and reading David’s post made me check my code.

Darn spammers ...