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Excerpt: Dear Microsoft (cc: black hatters),If you don't fix this problem, I promise to make a sport out of getting people I don't like delisted from your index.  It's just plain irresponsible.  And the problem is compounded in scope by another defect in your product — the failure to handle redirects properly.  This one is quite embarrassing, as any site that has a successful affiliate program may be subject to an undeserved penalty.  It's not just an edge case, and i…

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Excerpt: Often, marketers want to create several variations on content for a particular URL in the interest of observing which one converts the best.  It is typically an ongoing optimization process, and many different variations may be served over time to that end.  This is called split testing.The problem with split testing is that it cannot be considered in a vacuum.  First:1. Page A may perform better than page B with regard to conversions, but:2. Page A may perform more poorly in the …

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Excerpt: Today I did a presentation for YouNeverCall in Israel.  They actually started selling by cell phones, but the owner morphed it into an SEO firm as he discovered the importance of SEO in internet marketing.  Israeli SEO firms are now popping up like wildfire, and many of them are consulting to companies in the United States.  This has a lot to do with currency, salary disparities, and untapped talent.  Anyway, I did an SEO presentation for them because they paid for my vacatio…

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Excerpt: By way of this post on Search Engine Roundtable, I found out that Yahoo! now supports wildcard matching for rules in Robots.txt.  This is great news. Why?  It's now de facto part of the standard — as the "big three" finally all support it!This makes wildcard matching much more useful, as my exclusions usually apply to all search engines.  What is its utility if one of the "big three" doesn't honor such a rule?  In that case I&n…

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Excerpt: I'll be in Israel for the next week or so doing consulting work and vacationing, so posting may be a bit sparse during that time.  In light of that, I decided to open comments for the Site Clinic of November.Leave a comment with your site.I may do a post about how the SEM culture in Israel is quite different as compared to the US. For example, Rand made a great post on SEM salaries recently; but it's important to note that those salaries don't translate well overseas, even after…

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Excerpt: PixelLogo is a graphic-design firm.  They author web site templates, corporate identity design, etc.  If I had to compare them to another company, I'd say they're more of a real design-firm, but with elements of TemplateMonster as well.  They apparently knew enough to hire some SEOs who look like they did quite a few things right, but there are some major architectural issues that remain.  Many SEM firms cower in fear when they're faced with the idea of fixing dyn…

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Excerpt: I said I would release this if enough people asked.  Enough people asked, and I'm pretty sure this is OK to do under the GPL license.  I've highlighted the parts that have changed.  Peter Harkins declined to add the features for reasons I respectfully do not agree with.  In any case, I've made the mod optional in the configuration with a checkbox (see below).  See the below script.  Changed parts are highlighted: Note: This file replaces "…

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Excerpt: Since I got my 10 links, I can now post again.  Needless to say, until then, I had a bit of free time.  What do you think I was doing?Let me tell you.  I decided to do an objective investigation as to whether cloaking is alive and well in "the" Google image search.  It is.  And she's apparently, umm, working it.I fancied that I would investigate some indian sex (careful!).  I was just sorta nearby in Fiji after all.  I'm sure you could find so…