div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpYou can learn a lot more about what Google really thinks by reading what their new hires say. They are not yet skilled in the arts of public relations amp; make major gaffs like this one:/p
blockquotepInstead of being able to SEO the entire Internet, businesses can now only affect the search results for a tiny percentage of users. That’s a good thing because SEO can’t scale, and strongfont color=redSEO isn’t good for users or the Internet at large/font/strong./p
pIf you look at the Google experience from the standpoint of customers, it’s pretty good. Users get relevant search results and ads. Advertisers get their content on top of everything else. It’s a good compromise between advertising and usability, and it works really well. strongfont color=redIt’s a bug that you could rank highly in Google without buying ads, and Google is trying to fix the bug./font/strong Manipulating Google results shouldn’t be something you feel entitled to be able to do. If you want to rank highly in Google, be relevant for the user currently searching. Engage him in social media or email, provide relevant information about what you’re selling, and, generally, be a good match for what the user wants. – a href=http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3535153Googley Jon Rockway/a /p/blockquote
pWould love to hear someone more senior confirm this as the official Google company position, however they are too skilled at public relations to make that blunder (at least outside of a href=http://www.iloveseo.net/dear-google-why-do-you-want-me-to-hate-you/foreign AdWords ads/a that tell you to a href=http://www.seobook.com/forget-seoforget SEO/a)./p
/div/div/divdiv class=field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-abovediv class=field-labelCategories:nbsp;/divdiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evena href=http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_google.shtmlgoogle/a/div/div/div

div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpa href=http://www.seobook.com/ahrefs-discountimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-logo.jpg border=0 //a/p
pAhrefs is the newest entry into the link research tool space. They use their own bot and their own index (which they state is based on information from a trillion website connections)./p
pThey claim their index is updated every 30 minutes and the fresh data is available to their users within 30 minutes of the actual index refresh./p
pAhrefs also has a ranking database of roughly 45 million keywords from 9 different countries (US GB FR RU DE ES IT AU BR). The tools within their membership are:/p
ulliSite Explorer/li
liSERPs Analysis/li
liReports/li
liLabs/Tools/li
/ulpTheir pricing is very straight-forward and only increases or decreases based on volume of data you have access to. You can check out the easy to understand pricing on their a href=http://www.seobook.com/ahrefs-discountpricing page/a (and they offer SEO Book readers a 50% discount on the first month)./p
h2Site Explorer/h2
pAhref’s Site Explorer functions in a similar way to Majestic’s Site Explorer and SeoMoz’s Site Explorer. You can choose a specific URL, the domain without subdomains, or domain with all its subdomains:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-site-explorer.jpg alt=ahrefs-site-explorer //p
pIf we look at the Site Explorer results, you’ll see an overview of the last 45 days or so from Ahref’s crawl history:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-site-explorer-overview.jpg alt=ahrefs-site-explorer-overview //p
pOn the left you can see some interesting stats like the total number of backlinks, different referring IP’s and subnets (class c blocks and such), unique domains, and the types of backlinks the site has (text, image, redirects, and so on)./p
pIn addition to the overview report, you have other research options to chose from:/p
ulliNew Links/li
liLost Links (great opportunity for you to swoop in and alert the linker + sell them on linking to you and your resources)/li
liAnchor Text Profile/li
liPages Crawled on the Site/li
liReferring Domain Breakdown/li
liSERP Positions (organic ranking report)/li
liRaw Export of the Data (up to your limits based on your pricing plan)/li
/ulh3New Links/h3
pIn the New Link tab you can go back to a previous month, or work inside the current month, and find newly discovered links by the day. Here is what that looks like: /p
p img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/site-explorer-new-links.jpg alt=site-explorer-new-links //p
pClick on whatever day you want and you’ll get a list of linking urls, the target link page, and the anchor text used for the link:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/site-explorer-new-links-results.jpg alt=site-explorer-new-links-results //p
pThis report can help you reverse engineer, down to the day, a link building campaign that your competitor is running (always good to be out in front of a big link push by a competitor) and can also help you evaluate your own link campaign or even help you spot a link growth issue that may have resulted in some kind of penalty or over-optimization filter./p
pNow keep in mind that, based on their stated crawling guidelines, the stronger links from stronger sites tend to get crawled more frequently so the spammiest of the spammy link approaches might not get picked up on. For that level of deep research a historical report from Majestic SEO and a link status checker, like Advanced Link Manager, is likely a better bet./p
pYou can export this report to Excel or .CSV format./p
h3Lost Links/h3
pThe Lost Links tab has the same interface as the New Links report does. For your own domain you might want to consider tracking your own links in something like Raven or Buzzstream but this tool does report dropped links down to the day. Combine that with their crawling preferences (better links = quicker attention) and you can spot drops of substance quickly./p
pYou can use this report to find links that a competitor has lost, off of which you can contact the webmaster and see if you can’t promote your site or similar content to earn the link your competitor was previously getting./p
pYou can export this report to Excel or .CSV format./p
h3Anchor Text/h3
pThe anchor text report is exactly what you expect it to be. It lists the anchor texts of external links, the number of occurrences, as well as an expandable dropdown menu to see the pages being linked from and the pages being linked to on the site you are researching./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/site-explorer-anchor-text-report.jpg alt=site-explorer-anchor-text-report //p
pYou can export to Excel or .CSV and choose to export everything, up to your limit, or just the current page./p
h3Crawled Pages/h3
pThis report will show you all the pages crawled by Ahrefs with the following stats:/p
ulliPage URL and Title/li
liCrawl Date/li
liPage Size/li
liInternal Links/li
liExternal Links/li
/ulpimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/site-explorer-crawled-pages.jpg alt=site-explorer-crawled-pages //p
pI would likely use this report (on competitors) for checking some of their more popular internally linked-to pages as well as checking out how they structure their site. You can also jump right to a site explorer report for any of the URL’s listed on that report as well as check the SERP positions for any of them./p
h3Referring Domains/h3
pOne thing I like about Ahrefs is that it’s straight and to the point. It’s very easy to get in, get your data, and get out. Each report does pretty much what you expect it to. This report shows the referring domains + number links coming from that domain. You can access the links from each domain by clicking the Expand button next to the referring domain:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-referring-domains.jpg alt=ahrefs-referring-domains //p
h3SERP Positioning/h3
pSimilar to SemRush, Ahref’s provides estimated ranking data for keyword sets on both Google and Bing/Yahoo in multiple countries (US, UK, AU, DE, FR, ES, IT, BR, RU). The tool shows the:/p
ulliPosition/li
liKeyword/li
liCPC/li
liEstimated cost/li
liRanking url/li
liGlobal search volume/li
liAdvertiser competition/li
liLast date checked/li
liRating (estimated visitors per month based on assumed traffic distribution)/li
/ulpimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/site-explorer-ahrefs-serp-history.jpg alt=site-explorer-ahrefs-serp-history //p
pThe other cool thing about this report is that it will tell you the change from the last time they checked the ranking./p
h2SERPs Analysis/h2
pThis is similar to the SERP positioning report. Essentially, you enter a URL and you get the Google + Bing amp; Yahoo ranking data with those same metrics as stated above:/p
ulliPosition/li
liKeyword/li
liCPC/li
liEstimated cost/li
liRanking url/li
liGlobal search volume/li
liAdvertiser competition/li
liLast date checked/li
liRating (estimated visitors per month based on assumed traffic distribution)/li
/ulpIn addition to that, you also have the following reports:/p
ulliDaily Stats/li
liHistory of Changes/li
liAds Analysis/li
/ulh2Daily Stats/h2
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-daily-stats.jpg alt=ahrefs-daily-stats //p
pThis report shows you, on a daily basis, the following data points:/p
ulliNew Keywords/li
liLost Keywords/li
liTotal Keywords that moved up/li
liTotal Keywords that moved down/li
liTotal Positions up /li
liTotal Positions down/li
liRating Change (estimated percentage of traffic gained or lost)/li
liCost Change (rating change * CPC)/li
/ulpThere are graphical charts for:/p
ulliSearch Engine Traffic (shown above)/li
liKeyword Trend (total keywords ranking)/li
liTraffic Cost/li
liBar Graph for New and Lost Keywords/li
liEstimated Traffic Changes/li
liEstimated Traffic Cost Changes/li
/ulh3History of Changes/h3
pThis report breaks down the keyword changes by day and how much the specific keyword moved up/down (and the corresponding page that is ranking)./p
pYou can look at a daily report, a 7 day report, 30 days, or a custom range./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-history-changes.jpg alt=ahrefs-history-changes //p
h3Ads Analysis/h3
pAhrefs also incorporates Google (and Bing/Yahoo but I had a hard time getting figures for Bing/Yahoo) PPC data. You can pull in the ranking of the ad, the ad text, volume amp; CPC data, as well as last updated date amp; competition levels./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-ad-history.jpg alt=ahrefs-ad-history //p
pYou can look at just the keyword/ranking data or choose from their other 2 reports; keywords/ranking + ad text (Table + Ads) or just the PPC ad text itself (Ads Preview)./p
h2Reports/h2
pYou can create reports for your own domain for free or a any other site as a part of your subscription. Each domain counts as a separate report, so you can enter as many as you are entitled to in this interface but they do count against your monthly allowance./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-reporting-1.jpg alt=ahrefs-reporting-1 //p
pThe report overview looks like this:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-report-overview.jpg alt=ahrefs-report-overview //p
pEach tab represents a data point you can review. In any tab you can choose to export the visible page or the entire report./p
pThere are quite a few filtering options here, as you can see below:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-filtering.jpg alt=ahrefs-filtering //p
pYour filtering options, report-wide, are:/p
ulliURLs from – you can include or exclude based on user-defined data (exclude by word(s), domain extension, and so on)/li
liBacklinks Type – you can choose to show, specifically, different backlink types (nofollow, image, frame, redirect, form, deleted)/li
liPages – show links only to a specific page/li
liSubdomain – show links only to a specific subdomain/li
liCountries – show links from specific countries/li
liAnchors – show or exclude specific anchor text links/li
liReferring Domains – show links from a specific domain, or set of domains only/li
liIP – show links from a specific IP or range of IP’s only/li
liSubnets – show backlinks only from specific subnets/li
liTLD – show links from specific TLD’s only /li
liDate – show links based on specific crawl period/li
/ulpThe cool thing here is that you can layer on the filters as you wish. The following screenshot shows all filters selected and available:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-report-filtering.jpg alt=ahrefs-report-filtering //p
pThe reporting is really quite powerful and provides numerous ways to quickly filter out junk links so you can focus on the good stuff./p
h2Labs/h2
pThere are 3 additional tools in their Labs section./p
ulliAhrefs Top – Top 1 million domains by number of backlinks, completely searchable/li
liDomain Comparison – compare up to 5 domains for different link metrics (see below)/li
liBatch Domains – (see below) dump in a bunch of URLs and get a total count of backlinks, referring domains, and IP’s. Unsure of the limit here but I did about 25 with no problem./li
/ulh3Here is a screenshot of the domain comparison feature:/h3
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-compare-top.jpg alt=ahrefs-compare-top //p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-report-2.jpg alt=ahrefs-report-2 //p
pThe Batch Domains feature looks like this (and is completely exportable!):/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ahrefs-compare-domains-batch.jpg alt=ahrefs-compare-domains-batch //p
h2Ahrefs is Worth a Spin/h2
pI was impressed with the speed of this tool, the exportability of the data, and the report filtering capabilities. It hardly hurts to have another link database to pull from, especially one that is updated every 30 minutes./p
pThe tool is quite easy to use and it does pretty much what you expect it to. If you are into link research you should a href=http://www.seobook.com/ahrefs-discountgive this tool a try/a. The database appears to be a fairly good size for a new database and the ability to slice and dice that data from right within the web interface is a solid feature. If you do try it out, let us know what you think! We are also adding their link data to SEO for Firefox amp; the SEO Toolbar today./p
/div/div/divdiv class=field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-abovediv class=field-labelCategories:nbsp;/divdiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evena href=http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_seo_tools.shtmlseo tools/a/div/div/div

div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpSharing is caring!/p
pPlease share /p
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div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/raven-intvw-1-12.jpg alt=Raven SEO Interview. //p
pHere is the audio if you’d prefer to listen /p
object width=300 height=42
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strongEric: All right, this is Eric over here at SEO Book and today I’m fortunate enough to be joined by Taylor Pratt and Jon Henshaw from Raven SEO Tools, thanks for joining us today guys./strong/p
pTaylor Pratt: Yeah, thanks for having us./p
pJon Henshaw: Yeah, good to see ya!/p
pstrongEric: All right, so we just have some questions here that I think our readers will appreciate and some of our members have been interested to know about as well./strong/p
pstrongSo, without further ado I’ll jump right in here./strong/p
pObviously you guys are essentially the creators of an all-in-one SEO tool set which has kind of morphed into a Web marketing tool set now with all of the different things that you’ve added and certainly have a vested interest in being on the right side of forecasting the future of what will be important to search marketers here in the short and long-term and certainly there’s a lot of changes going on at the moment especially in the social area./p
pSo, I’d just like to get your thoughts on where you guys see search going with respect to what’s going to be important for us as search marketers to track, study and report on the clients; things like rankings, analytics, social signals?/p
pJon Henshaw: Yeah, I mean I think I’ll go first. This is Jon and as you said we kind of started out with just SEO and over time we have become more of that full-fledged internet marketing suite. And I would say that that was actually one of the first steps in sort of forecasting where things are going in the industry./p
pAnd at first while that was like our main focus what we started to see was sort of the merging of all of these different practices under one roof and so you saw a lot of people who just did SEO’s, a lot of people who just did paid and they started to do both. And then social kind of came into that mix, that’s the most recent thing, and so now you’re seeing a lot of agencies doing all three and on top of that they’re doing email marketing and that type of thing and so that was sort of our first step in saying SEO is not going to be enough; what we think is going to happen is most of these companies doing these sort of individual components of marketing are going to be doing them all./p
pSo then the second thing which is really what we’re dealing with now is so where is it going now? What is it that people need and I would say we’re just sticking to how we approached it all along which is we’re basically talking to the people who are doing the work out there. We’re talking to the agencies, the individuals, the experts and we’re asking them, what are your problems? Like, what are the problems that are still not being solved even just on the most practical level?/p
pAnd so we take that information and we look at what we built and we go, okay, so how can we solve that problem with Raven? And that contributes a whole lot to at least our own roadmap. Taylor might want to talk more about sort of the future of things./p
pTaylor Pratt:Yeah and building off of what Jon’s saying, when it comes to figuring out what I should be studying or reporting on I think we’re seeing, especially like Jon said with social getting more into search, people having to turn to pay-for-click to get more data, having to study all disciplines of online marketing you can’t just make the right call just by looking at what you can see in your analytics from an SEO perspective./p
pAnd so I think what we’re seeing with people are that they’re realizing, hey, I could be doing a lot better if I don’t just look at my own stuff. I want to see what keywords are performing at the highest level on the pay-per-click side. I want to see what our audience is talking about on our fan page and on our Twitter account so that I know what topics I should be writing about that’s going to get the most engagement./p
pAnd so I think we’re moving towards a full landscape of online marketing and services and it’s forcing SEO’s to try and become more knowledgeable in those others fields as well./p
pAnd, as a result, you know, that’s really what we were trying to do with Raven which was bringing together all that data so that you can be looking at it easily. Maybe I don’t actually have to do the work when it comes to pay-per-click but I need to understand it and I need to know what I can take from that to improve my own SEO campaign./p
pAnd so really when it comes to reporting and actually managing that process we need people to be a lot more versatile in their skills, they can’t just be focused on one niche anymore./p
pstrongEric: Those are all great points. I think too you guys must run into stuff like I think you could probably take ten people who are knowledgeable or successful with SEO that have been doing it for a while and they probably get four or five different opinions on what exactly SEO is. Is it…does it stop at rankings or does it stop at, you know, rankings plus traffic plus conversions plus leveraging all of the other data that you talked about. So that must be quite at challenge because I’m sure you guys have experience in the industry obviously and talking with some of the folks that you talk about, you must get a lot of different opinions on what exactly SEO is./strong/p
pJon Henshaw: Definitely. And you mentioned ranking which has been traditionally sort of a core component of what people think of when they’re doing SEO and what they’re actually reporting on to their clients./p
pAnd the thing is, is that what ranking was a few years ago, it’s not the same as it is today. And I think we know why which is the search engines, particularly Google, it just depends on who you are, if you’re logged in with your account, where you are, now obviously who you’re connected with with G+ and because of all of those things who knows what results you’re going to – who knows what the results are going to be that you’re going to get./p
pAnd so what’s happening in sort of the rank checking world is it’s getting really just unpredictable. I mean, you don’t know what you’re going to get. You have people at one end, and one of the biggest frustrations that I know rank checkers have, and I know this because we used to check them ourselves and now we, of course, use Authority Labs but I think all of them have the difficulty of that customer saying, well, this isn’t what I’m seeing!/p
pAnd so I think it’s going to get worse and worse. And so I think what’s changed with ranking is that ranking has become, or should be becoming, less important of a metric. And, instead the focus should be on organic referrals because that’s really the most reliable thing that you can look at and report on./p
pSo, in other words, if I were an agency or just even an individual SEO guy who was doing work for a customer I would make the metric be, am I increasing your organic traffic instead of where do I rank for your pet term? You know, and I think that’s the biggest change. That’s what I’ve seen over the past few years. There’s still a lot of resistance to that just because they don’t want it to be true but I think the reality is, is that rank checking is still going to be important because it still gives you an indication of health and gives you some idea of sort of how you’re performing even if it’s going to get to a point where it could never be 100% accurate./p
pSo it’ll still play a role and we’re still going to keep having that data in our system but the big, big factor is going to be actually what Google Analytics is providing and whatever stacks package you use./p
pAnd to be able to say that we increased your organic traffic by 100% and on top of that your conversions went up. I think that’s becoming more important. /p
pstrongEric: Right, yeah. Do you guys have any plans to integrate that stuff? You do work with Authority Labs. Do they do a lot of stuff with their incorporating universal results that you guys might be able to do because I know some of the software tools do that? That could be helpful/strong/p
pI think especially on the agency side of things you find that people tend to lead their value add with rankings, right? I mean, you can but that’s a big mistake. If anything, if you’re going to have conversations about rankings you have to attach an element of conversion optimization to that too you can’t just leave it at the door. /p
pJon Henshaw: Yeah, and that’s something that we’re talking to Authority Labs with right now and they actually do provide universal results with the data and they’re trying to update the API that we’re using so we can actually present that. /p
pSo as soon as we can present that we’re going to and then on top of that as far as where we’re taking things in the future, we’re going to be supporting the ability to edit your ranking results, the ability to import ranking results from other third parties. So, yeah, so we’re working on that, it’s not available right now, but that is something that we know people have been asking for, for quite a while. /p
pstrongEric: Okay. So, we talked about all of these things with how the sort of element of ranking being less and less of a flagship sort of metric to report, at least on client sites or even on sites that SEO’s might run themselves, affiliate sites, or sites where revenue is driven by AdSense or something to that affect. /strong/p
pBut I think what a lot of people would be interested to know, and I love getting opinions on this from a bunch of people all across the industry, that if you were starting in an SEO company today how would you approach the key elements of the business, you know, what are the core competencies that you think not only that are effective, but I think there’s something a disconnect between what is actually or what should be a core competency for an SEO firm, you know, link outreach, all of these things, but some of those things are hard to quantify to a client./p
pYou know, we’ve reached out to 400 sites and we obtained two links. Well, that can be a bit difficult to report on but with things like link outreach or just good old fashioned PR, social development, community building, rankings, conversions, all of those things, what would you promote to your clients as the value add that your agency or your company would bring to the table?/p
pTaylor Pratt: You know, if it were me back in my agency days what we tried to focus on was… we all say that we want to focus on conversions but I think getting even more specific than that, having specific interaction goals for different aspects of your organic traffic. So what I’d probably do is talk about how we look at both branded and non-branded traffic and we separate them. I want to have specific goals for my branded traffic that I expect them to be able to complete if they came to us organically./p
pAnd then from a non-branded standpoint, I want to be able to do the exact same things. And building off of what we talked about earlier I think going into those meetings now and telling them, hey, you know, looking at releases like when Google announced the whole not provided thing, as an agency I need to be prepared to say to my client, well, you know what, we have a work around for that. We have a pay-per-click campaign that’s going so we can still get the traffic insight behind each keyword so we know which ones we should be focusing on the most./p
pAnd I think presenting it to the client as you being able to adapt to the changing market and you not focusing just on one individual aspect is really going to be what shows them that they should be going with you over somebody else./p
pstrongEric: Right, yeah, and I think those are good points. Because I see it too, sometimes people are starting an agency, they look for things that they can…you know, like rankings are still such a big thing and I know there was some press last year about how rankings are dead. I know Jon wrote a post kind of countering that and I did as well. I don’t think that’s the case either but I think it seems like people are still, or in some cases, leading with rankings. But the problem is it takes X amount of months to get there for some terms and then you find out that the traffic isn’t there in the first place really if you’re relying on keyword tools./strong/p
pSo, that’s interesting because I think right now we have a lot of people that read this blog and in the community that sort of run their own sites a little bit and then you’ve got people who are doing some client work. Are you seeing more of an increase in folks who maybe in the past where just sort of individual SEO’s that are now filtering over to taking on some more client stuff?/p
pTaylor Pratt: Yeah, you know, I can speak for myself personally. I’m starting to take over Raven’s pay-per-click work and going into it I knew enough just pretty much what any SEO would know, pretty much what any SEO would know about pay-per-click./p
pI wouldn’t know enough to run a campaign from start to finish so starting to ramp up on that. And it’s interesting that over the last couple of months, really since not provided or at least have seen, a lot more articles around pay-per-click showing up on industry blogs. It’s starting to get a lot more coverage and I think people are starting to realize that, hey, I could pretty much get more concrete results out of my SEO program if I would just focus a little bit more time in these other areas./p
pBecause, like you said around figuring out that, hey, if I’m targeting one keyword and a couple of months down the line once I start ranking for it, I’m not getting the traffic I expected, well, we could have identified that if we just ran a traditional test just to see./p
pI mean, you can run pay-per-click tests without even getting clicks. I just want to see how many impressions I can get so I can estimate how much traffic I could potentially get if I was ranking for that keyword./p
pSo trying to get a better fit or a better feel for those numbers, there’s a lot that you could be doing with that./p
p Eric: Yeah, absolutely. The pay-per-click is absolutely the best keyword keyword research tool. So when you think of all of the time you spend digging through the AdWords keywords tool and then digging through like Wordtracker or other competitive research tools, if you took a few hundred bucks and threw it at PPC just for accidental clicks right and you threw a pay-per-click campaign up with all the keywords that you’re looking at you’d be much better off./p
pJon Henshaw: And, I was going to throw out that of course Google has done an excellent job of positioning it as one of your best options./p
pstrongEric: Yeah, yeah (laugh). And they’re certainly not shy about throwing out those coupons either./strong/p
pTaylor Pratt: No, they play me like a fiddle, that’s for sure!/p
pstrongEric: Yeah. I think the big thing, you know, in addition to on the SEO side of things with all of the stuff that Google’s been doing and continues to do especially with the Plus 1 sort of approach, is the evolution of link building where a lot of times it’s just been basic. Where we have all of these sort of tactics that have been working for a long time that I think it can be effective but I think if you’re looking mid to long-term on trying to build out, if you run your own sites or even clients that you need to see that it is almost evolving into like a sales and PR type of role./strong/p
pDo you think it’s become a little bit less about pure link metrics like page rank or some of the other stuff that’s out there like the (MAS) rank, (MAS) trust follow versus no follow or somewhere in the middle but I think it’s definitely evolved towards being more of a relationship type of approach and a PR type of approach. I’d be interested to hear what you have to say about that. /p
pJon Henshaw: Yeah, I totally agree. If you look back on even the very early days of link building it was basically build a link anywhere you can get it. I mean, it didn’t even matter what site it was, it didn’t matter where it was on the page, then as that evolved Google evolved with that. It ended up becoming, well, you may not want it on the footer or you may want it in a different place or you might want to have it on a relevant page. There’s still many industries, many site types that I would say even up to today, because I still hear stories from some pretty hardcore people out there that are like, oh yeah, footer links are still well alive for my particular thing. /p
pBut I think for the most part, for most people, you hit the nail on the head with it’s about relationships. And so that’s basically where we talk about predicting where things are going, well, we’re seeing it as it’s already there and it’s only going to increase as far as what’s important in link building is going to be building relationships with site owners, with editors, it will also be extremely important to build relationships socially so that you’re connected with people who have some degree of influence socially. And so with that one of the things that you said is, is it important to care about (MAS) rank or page rank or any of these other things? And I think it still is important. So – and the way I approach it, which I think is a fairly practical way, is it’s important to have as many pieces of data and metrics as possible. /p
pIt’s the same reason why I think that rank checking will remain important to some extent. I think the same is true with these different metrics. It’s not going to be, nor should it be, the main thing that you focus on. The main thing that you should focus on, in my opinion, are relationships with people who are relevant to what you’re trying to market. /p
pAnd that’s where what you just mentioned a second ago, that’s where PR comes in. It’s very PR-like. So that’s where I think it’s going and that’s what we’re going to be focusing on but we’re going to continue to include those other metrics just because I think they help you see the full picture so that, for example, when you’re doing research, trying to find sites or people that you want to connect with, that data really kind of helps round out your decision like, okay, this is all of the things that kind of get in here and even what I’m just looking at and making a judgment on, looks pretty good. I think I’m going to contact this person./p
pstrongEric: Like when I look for people that I might want to bring on board to do some link building for some sites it’s almost like you ignore, to a degree, SEO experience and what you’re focusing on is, is this person salesy? Are they good at PR? I mean, those are – where before it was more of a like hunker down and look for – I’ll reverse engineer this and that and pull this report, which is all still important certainly /strong/p
pJon Henshaw: Right./p
pstrongEric: But for those really premium type links that I think competition can’t get you really ought to have folks like that going forward./strong/p
pJon Henshaw: And I think content should be thrown out there too which is..and I don’t mean as if you write good content you will rank type of thing but more along the lines of one of the best link building outreach methods is guest blogging. And if you can present yourself in a way that is one that’s not too salesy, but, two, can really, really benefit that site meaning you better have a good writer on staff or somebody hired on a contract basis, the – it’s ultraistic in the sense that I can get you something really good./p
pIn fact, I’m going to go out of my way and I’m going to spend over $15 dollars on something. I might spend $100 or $200 buck to have a really good article put on somebody else’s site with the idea that I’m going to have a decent link to my site. It’ll be on a relevant site. So that to me is a pretty important component and that’s something that we focused on too and we’re going to continue to focus on. So, for example, we’ve automated some of that which is – you can go through Textbroker on Raven or you can have your own writers on staff or through contract and then they can log in and they can save the articles that they write and our content manager./p
pstrongEric: Yeah, definitely – content, yeah absolutely. That’s a great feature of Raven too. The example that I give sometimes in the forums when people ask about creating…how do we create a piece of content that’s time tested. Like, I always give the example of David Mihm who creates the local search ranking sites. You can do something like that for your industry, I mean, just think of things like that. Most industries you can come up with something that the competition isn’t doing and then you just – you almost don’t have to significantly promote it after the first couple of times. People just naturally look for it. So, yeah, that’s definitely a big piece there. /strong/p
pAnd I think, you know, like I said before, we have a lot of folks inside the forums and that read the blog that are – it’s such a hybrid of people who market their own sites and they monetize it in different ways. They’ve got clients and all of these other things. We always talk about how creating your own product, ultimately, you know, it typically ends up being the most rewarding in the long run, certainly other methods can significantly increase your companies revenue or an individual Web masters revenue. But, when we talk about long-term things and not relying on affiliate networks or AdSense serving or things like that we talk about products and I think, you know, Raven is a great case study in identifying a particular market, the need of a market, creating the product and then just marketing it./p
pBecause, I think, sometimes people miss that. It’s such a multi-step approach, it’s not just find a market and exploit it with a great product. It’s, you have to – there’s another piece to it which is the marketing which I think Raven does an excellent job on. So, what I would like to hear from you guys is, can you give us some insight into how you sort of went from thinking about Raven to developing it to marketing it and keep improving on it because that’s the other piece too. It’s not just create a product and dump it in the market and hope people buy it and never touch it again. You know, just some of the biggest hurdles you face, pitfalls and best practices./p
pJon Henshaw: Sure, I can talk from a marketing standpoint of Raven since that’s what my role is here. I joined Raven about two years ago and we had a pretty good idea with how we wanted to actually end up marketing the product and the first year that I was here, what we wanted to focus on was really cementing ourselves as a tool in the SEO industry. We wanted to let everyone know that these were powerful tools, they were things that they could rely on and we wanted to be known as an authority in that market. And last year what we really spent our time doing was focusing on becoming more of a workflow and collaboration tool. While we had these features before we needed to make it known that, hey, if you work with a team, if you want to collaborate on products with your clients or if you have a couple of contractors that you’re outsourcing stuff to, this is a tool that will make that easier and so that’s really our 2011 messaging was really focusing heavily on that./p
pBut now what we run into is, Raven does more than just SEO. We have social media tools, pay-per-click tools, email is integrated into there so how do we now market to everyone and convince them that we’re not just Raven SEO tools, we’re Raven internet marketing tools? And I think that’s really what our focus is going to be in 2012 is showing them that, one, you need to have a toolset that is flexible in all of those different areas and, two, that Raven actually fits those needs, we’re not just SEO tools anymore./p
pJon Henshaw: I think from a product standpoint we really started off working with other agencies and, in fact, we launched it and took it back offline, in a sense into like a very private beta for about six to nine months and we worked just side-by-side with several agencies; some in the US and some in the UK and they really helped us refine how the link manager should work and the types of things that need to be reported on. And then from there it was….br /strongEric:I think we lost him./strong/p
pTaylor Pratt:Oh no./p
pstrongEric: Just wait for him to sign back on here. Just to continue talking about the marketing side of things a little bit, do you find that once you’ve – when you start the marketing initially it seems like that’s a good bit of work but it also seems like on the other end it’s almost just as much work after you sort of establish yourself in the industry you’ve got to keep, you know, pushing and going to all of these different events and all of these other things./strong/p
pJon Henshaw: (completely unaware of the drop off ): I won’t say because there are some secrets, you know. And so, you know, while Taylor and the marketing team, it’s there job to really let people understand what the product does. It’s our job, at least on the product side, to figure out is the product solving the problems that need to be solved in the market? And so if we’re trying to approach SEO and social and (PBS) and other areas, are we making – you know, they use our software, are we making it harder for them or are we making it easier for them? And of course we want to make it so that it’s a no-brainer. It’s, by then, simply using it and putting their team members on there they’re saving money./p
pNot only are they saving money they’re managing their data better and they’re able to report the information easier to themselves or to their client and so that’s sort of a high-level example without a whole lot of details. But, that’s really what we’re focused on is how can we make this easier, at the same time how can we make it more robust and do all of the things that people need it to do, how can we solve problems that are not being solved by anybody on the market right now? And that’s really what we’re focused on. And, of course, all of that includes trying to absorb all of the different feature requests which also gives us an idea of what people really need. It’s not just – we don’t have to just sit there and guess or dream up something on our own in a bubble. The feature requests are something that’s extremely helpful and we have a lot of them. We have people who use the system intensely and everyday and they come up with some pretty amazing ideas./p
pstrongEric: I think we cut out there a little bit after the beta discussion. But I think the gist of it is when people talk about creating products it’s so much more involved than just develop, market and sell, right? I mean it’s – and I think we’re aware of that but I think when people hear the six to nine months that you took in beta and you were working with these other agencies, I think sometimes that’s the point that gets missed. Because you look at Raven and it’s like such a – the interface is so clean, it’s so easy to use that people think, wow, that’s pretty simple right? I mean, that’s the whole – I think its (basic) competitors have been thinking for such a long time. It’s so simple and easy, I could do that, right? /strong/p
pJon Henshaw: I would say our biggest problem and the one that we’re looking to solve this year is while you are somebody who knows exactly what you’re doing, you know and when you get in there you know how to use the system, ah, that’s simple. This does – I understand the terminology and what’s going on here. It’s not for the novice and so it’s funny because there’s that weird dichotomy there. And so you have somebody else that comes in and says this is the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen in my life. /p
pI mean, and that’s some of the cancellation messages that we get. It was like, what are you trying to do? And so our big – one of our big initiatives this year is to put education in place for those people and also for teams. We have a lot of agencies that are wanting the ability to say, hey, I really love what you’re doing here, I get it. /p
pI want my team to be on here but I need training. And so those are things that we’re working on and then the other thing, on the product side, is incorporating more contextual help and so we’ve started to slowly roll out what we’re calling the help box and so it’s the first time that we’ve ever been to a tool in the system. You actually see this help box that pushes down everything else and that gives you a brief description, it gives you a really quick screen cast of what the tool does and then it also links you out to the knowledge base. So, those are things that as we grow and we sit back and kind of go, okay, where are we loosing people? Where are they getting confused? We know that that’s something that we really have to work on./p
pTaylor Pratt: And there’s an overlap with that with marketing too. I mean, we need to be teaching people how to use the tools. We’re trying to do that more on the blog. You know, we also have that stance that we’re not going to tell you how to do your job but we need to show you the benefits of using Raven when you are doing your job. And so like Jon said, that education, I think, is really going to be helpful for users who are still trying to figure out, all right, well, what’s the logic behind this? Why is it important that these two tools are working together and we’re trying to show that both within the tool itself but then outside too. So if you are just trying to evaluate it or you are looking for a tool and you’re not sure if Raven does that, hopefully we’ll be able to demonstrate that through our blog posts, our training Webinars what have you./p
pstrongEric: So, for 2012 are there any – you know, I’m sure no competitors are listening so feel free to just lay it all out there. What – 2012, any product teases we can get? Anything you think that people might be interested in?/strong/p
pJon Henshaw: Yeah, I’ll tell you a few things that I’ve publicly talked about and then I’ll hint towards one thing and then there are still several big things that I will not give a clue to that we’re working on./p
pstrongEric: Fair enough /strong/p
pJon Henshaw: And I will say also, if you go to our blog I think maybe in January or December I wrote an open letter to Raven customers and there’s a really good rundown of all of the things that we did in 2011 and it’s huge. I was actually shocked when I wrote it. I was like, I had no idea that we did all of this. It was a good year!br /strongEric: Yeah. /strong/p
pJon Henshaw: But the things that we’re going to be doing in 2012 I’m very confident is going to be a bigger year than 2011. And the other thing that makes me confident about that is we’ve been ramping up on developers. We are truly a software company now and we, I think, (this year) we’ve just had two developers start yesterday, I haven’t even seen them yet, but it’s something that we’re getting even more aggressive on so I’m excited about that. The things that I can easily tell you about that we’re going to be working on releasing soon is we have another major social update coming down the pipeline so when we launched our social stream, real time social streams, social monitoring, it didn’t have everything I wanted but we did want to release it by (unintelligible) 32.19 so we had sort of finishing up some really awesome features that didn’t quite make it in November will be coming out pretty soon./p
pWe are actively working on the Chrome toolbar, that got delayed for several months but that is back on schedule. But you’re going to see a lot of improvements in the social area particularly with Facebook and Twitter and the (stream). We’re going to be doing more improvements on our AdWords management tool, so you’ll see a lot of nice new things coming down there. We should be adding G+ and LinkedIn this year, probably first half of the year and we’re also working on the ranking result importing which I mentioned earlier in the end of the year./p
pSo, those are things that are more public. The one hint, the on thing that I will throw out there, just because it’s really relevant to the conversation we’ve been having is we are focusing on relationships in a way that we haven’t done in the system before. So there’s going to be something exciting coming down the pipeline in regards to that as far as helping people who do link building outreach and other areas. So that’s coming. I expect it in the first half of this year and that’s something I’m really excited about./p
pstrongEric: Yeah, that definitely sounds interesting, I’ll be watching for that. Well, it sounds like you’ve got a lot to do so I won’t keep you much longer. I just wanted to take a moment to thank you guys for hoping on today. I’m going to get this up on the blog here. We’ll put it in mp3 format so people can listen to it whenever they want, we’ll get all of the text up there. For all of you listening out there, certainly give Raven a shot. I think you guys are still running 30-day trials, right?/strong/p
pTaylor Pratt: Oh yeah. /p
pstrongstrongEric: Definitely work with it a little bit. I personally have gone back and forth. I think a lot of folks maybe who are used to using software and things like that it might take an adjustment or two but I can personally let folks listening know that I’m going to put a lot more of my stuff in there. I just think it really just cuts down on a lot of the manual work; these crazy spreadsheets and my Dropbox is exploding and it’s insane but definitely work with it and give it a shot. /strong/strong/p
pIt’s going to be new especially to folks I think that do a lot of stuff that I might be doing with the software and stuff but it’ll make your life a lot easier and the reporting is unreal. So, certainly give it a shot and, again, thanks to Jon and Taylor for hopping on with us today! /p
pTaylor Pratt:Thanks for having us. /p
pJon Henshaw: Thanks for having us./p
pstrongEric: All right guys, take care. /strong/p
/div/div/div

div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpGoogle announced they rolled out a href=http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.htmltheir anti-overly-aggressive-ads algorithm/a. They a href=http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-penalized-by-googles-page-layout-algo-108613didn’t give a specific %/a on how much of the above the fold content can be ads, but suggest a href=http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/using their browser preview tool/a. Using that tool a href=http://www.seobook.com/images/instantsearch/adwords-love.jpgon Google.com’s search results/a would of course score it as a spam site, but for some small AdSense webmasters that avoided Panda, Google may have drew first blood. /p
h2Much Quicker Updates/h2
pWith a limited number of recoveries nearly a year after Panda, the first bite might seem like a big concern, however the too many ads algorithm updates far more frequently than Panda does:/p
blockquotepIf you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site./p/blockquote
pAnd for those who got hit by Panda then tried to make up for those lower ad revenues with more AdSense ad units, they probably just got served round #2 of Panda Express. /p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/pandaxpress.jpg //p
h2Is it Screen Layout, or Something Else?/h2
pIn the past Google a href=http://andrewhansen.name/affiliate-marketing/google-checkmates-me-but-reveals-internal-secrets/suggested to a nuked AdWords advertiser/a that more of his above-the-fold real estate should be content than ads. /p
pHowever Google has such a rich data set with AdSense that I don’t think they would just look at layout. If I were them I would factor in all sorts of metrics like/p
ulliAdSense CTR
/liliaverage page views per visitor
/lilirepeat visits amp; brand searches
/lilibounce rate
/liliclickstream data from Chrome amp; the Google toolbar (so even if you are using other ad networks, they can still sample the data)/li/ulpSome sites are primarily driven off of mobile views while other sites might be seen on large monitors. When Google sees every page load amp; measures the CTRs, tacking actual user response is better than guestimating it./p
pThey could come up with some pretty good metrics from those amp; then for any high traffic/high earning site they could manually review them to see if they deserve to get hit or not amp; adjust + refine the algorithm until those edge cases disappeared. Google’s lack of credible competition in contextual amp; display ads means they can negotiate pretty tough terms with publishers that they feel are not adding enough value to the ecosystem./p
h2It’s Not Just Algorithms Cleaning Up AdSense/h2
pIn addition to these sorts of algorithms, over the past year they have manually hit networks of sites with a href=http://www.seobook.com/redefining-doorway-pagesthe doorway pages label/a amp; disabled ad serving on sites or entire accounts where they felt there was a bit too much arbitrage. One of our SEO Book members pointed me to a href=http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=6dfde33304de1376amp;hl=enthis thread where a lot of Pakistani AdSense accounts got torched/a last October amp; another sent me a sample termination email from Google a href=http://www.alltipsandtricks.com/i-lost-my-adsense-account-should-i-buy-another-one-as-seen-in-google-adwords-ads/similar to this one/a:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/adsense-screw-off.png //p
pNotice that in the above:/p
ulliThere was no claim of click fraud, copyright issues, or anything like that.
/liliThere was no claim of advertiser complaints.
/liliGoogle offers no customer support phone number, no you might want to work on this advice, doesn’t list which of the sites in the account they felt could be improved, and RETROACTIVELY nuked past earnings … depending on where it is in the schedule that can amount to anywhere from 30 to 50+ days (I remember Teeceo mentioned how they waited until the day before the AdSense payday to smoke his stuff way back in the day to have maximum impact!)/li/ulpOn a href=http://investor.google.com/earnings/2011/Q4_google_earnings.htmlGoogle’s latest quarterly earnings call/a they highlighted how year on year Google’s revenues were up 25% but the network revenues only grew at 15%. They also explained the slower network revenue growth as being associated with improved search quality amp; algorithm updates like Panda. /p
pLeft unsaid in such a statement was that until those algorithms rolled out, Google admitted they funded spam. The whole AdSense amp; content farm problem was created through a href=http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/collateral-damage.phpincentive structures with unintended consequences/a. /p
h2Is the Garbage Disappearing, or Just Moving to a New Landfill?/h2
pIf you track what is going on with the Google+ over-promotion (long overdue post coming on that front shortly!) or how a href=http://www.seobook.com/follow-the-moneyGoogle is still pre-paying Demand Media to upload video content to Youtube/a, Google still may be funding the same model, but doing so while gaining a tighter control of relevancy so they can better sort good stuff from crap (when you host content amp; track user response you have all the metrics in the world to determine how relatively good you think it is). If they over-promote these sites then in the short run they create the same skewed business model problem./p
pSure hosting the user experience makes it easier to sort the wheat from the chaff, but the other big risk here is the impact on the rest of the publishing ecosystem. There will be lots of thin spam from popular people on Google+ (anyone launched a celebrity-focused Pay-Per-Plus site yet?) amp; in-depth editorial content might not be economically feasible in certain categories where there literally is no organic SERP above the fold.br /img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ads-ads-ads.gif //p
pI will complement them on their efforts to clean up some of the worst offenses (from the prior generation of bad incentives). If you were hit by it, Panda was every bit as big/brutal as the famous Florida update. If this update is anything near as significant as the Panda update (in how it impacts smaller independent webmasters) then it is going to force more of them/us to move up the value chain. /p
pThat may mean pain in the short run, but (for those who take it as a wake up call to develop brand amp; organic non-search traffic streams) far more rewards in the longrun for those who remain after the herd is thinned. /p
h2Working for The Company/h2
pLarry Page’s view on a href=http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/19/best-companies-google-larry-page/working for emthe company/em:/a/p
blockquotepMy grandfather was an autoworker, and I have a weapon he manufactured to protect himself from the company that he would carry to work. It’s a big iron pipe with a hunk of lead on the head. I think about how far we’ve come as companies from those days, where workers had to protect themselves from the company. /p/blockquote
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/google-site-review.jpg //p
pI think for many SEOs the idea of starting over is painful, but the best SEOs often enjoy the forced evolution amp; the game of it all. They don’t roll over amp; play dead or a href=http://www.seobook.com/forget-seoemforget SEO/em/a. And if Google didn’t put hard resets in every once in a while, then the big hedge funds would be mopping up the SERPs and cleaning our clocks with the help of Helicopter Ben. /p
h2Areas For Improvement/h2
pOf course this could be taken as a positive post toward Google (and it mostly is), but I don’t want to come across as a fanboi, so I thought I should do a shout out to a couple things they still need to fix in order to be consistent:/p
ulliIf Google is going to tell people that thick deep content is needed to gain sustainable exposure then they shouldn’t be ranking thin + pages in the SERPs just because it is a Google product. Even people who have *always* given Google the benefit of the doubt (full on fanbois) found the Google+ placement in the SERPs distasteful.
/liliGoogle’s AdSense is still sending out some of those automated you are leaving money on the table styled emails reminding publishers to use 3 ad units. If such behavior may lead to a smoke job, then the recommendation shouldn’t be offered in the first place. Right below the use 3 ad units there needs to be a proceed with caution styled link (in red) that links to the recent too many ads post.
/liliOld case studies that are no longer in line with best practices in the current market should have some sort of notice/notification added to them so new webmasters don’t get the wrong idea.
/liliSome of a href=https://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=enamp;answer=187653amp;topic=29880amp;ctx=topicthe AdSense heatmaps/a are roadmaps to penalization. These should have been fixed before yesterday’s announcement, but if they are still up there next week then Google is willfully amp; intentionally trying to destroy any small business owner that follows that best practice advice.br /img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/suggested-adsense.png //li/ulh2Your Feedback Needed/h2
pSince this update impacted far fewer sites than the Panda update, there are fewer sample/example sites. Did any of your websites get hit? If so, how would you describe …/p
ulliyour ad layout
/liliyour ad CTR
/liliyou mode of monetization (AdSense, other, both)
/lilithe level of impact on your site from the update/li/ul/div/div/divdiv class=field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-abovediv class=field-labelCategories:nbsp;/divdiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evena href=http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_contextual_advertising.shtmlcontextual advertising/a/div/div/div

div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpa href=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ba3465c-3f8c-11e1-ad6a-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1joIJeNtNThis/a is an interesting play:/p
blockquotepBBVA, Spain’s second-largest bank by assets, is teaming up with Google to use its search engine results to provide advanced forecasts of hotel and tourism demand in the country, part of a plan to market real-time economic indicators to its clients./p
pThe bank and internet group will announce on Monday a scheme called the “BBVA-Google tourism activity in Spain indicator”. The first pilot project has focused on measuring advance demand for hotel stays and tourism interest in Spain by using search engine data./p/blockquote
pPrivate investors get to see that search data before anyone else does. If you have a retirement plan invested in stocks, then you are at an asymmetrical information disadvantage because Google is providing an in-depth look at that search data to competing investors who can trade on the information before it is public. /p
pIs search traffic a big deal? Is there enough signal there to matter? Yes. And yes./p
pI read an investment report earlier today about a company where the hedge fund’s rating amp; valuation was largely based on / justified by the SEO strategy of the underlying company amp; their current Google rankings…the report even had keyword ranking charts in it!/p
pWas Google paid for giving BBVA access to the above data? Or was it thrown in as a freebie in exchange for a href=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16486796getting over 100,000 BBVA workers to switch to the cloud amp; emgo Google/em on the enterprise software front/a? /p
pIf Google has over 90% search marketshare in many EU countries amp; is willing to leverage proprietary search data to win contracts in other fields, how does anyone compete against that emdata bundling/em?/p
pFurther, think of all the damage hedge funds amp; huge banks have done a href=http://notthetreasuryview.blogspot.com/2012/01/recessions-and-recoveries-historical.htmlto societies the globe over/a this past decade amp; now Google is directly helping the bad guys./p
pThat is Google’s approach to their proprietary information: if you invest in their ecosystem and use their analytics tools you can’t get your own analytics data (a href=http://www.seobook.com/false-privacy-claimsas they have to protect user privacy/a), but they will gladly strongsell that same data off to someone else/strong. /p
pIf there is no public outrage at this test then the data units will start getting more granular. Rather than measuring categories Google may sell data on a per-site or per-company basis. Looking at how Google has consistently disintermediated partners everywhere else, if Google is feeling bold they may suggest that selling the data to others also permits Google to trade on the data as well. /p
pWhat’s far scarier than an angry search engineer looking at your large paid link buy or a href=http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_osm_vandalism.phpa rogue Google contractor hacking up your site/a? A Google hedge fund with a substantial short position on your stock. /p
pRecall that Eric Schmidt has stated:/p
blockquotepOne day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try and predict the stock market… Eric Schmidt continues, and then strongwe decided it was illegal/strong. So we stopped doing that./p/blockquote
pBased on Mr. Schmidt’s above comment, is it reasonable that Google now profits off leveraging their data for securities analysis? What made the above clearly illegal amp; what is going on now above board? What’s the difference between them? a href=http://www.seobook.com/google-caught-sting-operation-kenyaPerhaps a contractor layer/a?/p
pAt the same time a href=http://adage.com/article/digital/google-stocks-print-outdoor-ads-privacy-focused-campaign/232133/Google runs sweeping ad campaigns reminding people how Google protects them online/a, while hosting banking data in the cloud amp; making themselves a juicier hacking target. /p
pGoogle a href=http://www.ncew.org/index.php?src=newsamp;srctype=detailamp;category=Conventionamp;refno=224warns publishers against using paywalls embecause it is a poor user experience/em/a while a href=http://mertsahinoglu.com/google-changes-short-term-loan-market-overnight/wiping out competing lead aggreagtors with new guidelines that are likely impossible to comply with/a. Sites like Highbeam Research get smoked by algorithms like Panda amp; the Google works with the folks who already have the legislature in their pocket to get them more data. The lesson here from Google is to provide a clean front end user experience and then sell the data back out the other end./p
pa href=http://www.adbusters.org/content/everything-fine-keep-shoppingEverything is fine. Keep shopping/a (on Google.com + your Android phone)…Google will ensure the data is monetized to its full potential./p
/div/div/divdiv class=field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-abovediv class=field-labelCategories:nbsp;/divdiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evena href=http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_google.shtmlgoogle/a/div/div/div

div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpWow…this is pretty…um…a href=http://www.seobook.com/transparencytransparent/a./p
pAccording to a href=http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/this post/a, Google was caught scraping Mocality, calling the listed businesses, soliciting that they move to Google Get Your Business Online, disparaged the directory they were scraping in the client call, and then lied about having the permission of the directory they were scraping to try to con businesses into working with Google. /p
pA few select quotes:/p
blockquotepThere are absolutely no costs, and this will be agreed on before it’s put on… No one will come and tell you like Mocality used to do, someone tells you it’s free and then they come to ask for money. You know that Google doesn’t fool around here.br /
…br /
Mocality used to charge people and many of the people who used to be in Mocality we have taken them and transferred them here. Didn’t we also find you on Mocality?br /
…br /
Ai…they used to…but some people didn’t used to pay. They [Mocality] used to go and ask people to pay them around Ksh. 20,000 and people refused. It was things like that.)/p/blockquote
pGoogle’s business model *is* buying or building things that are free and then later pulling back features and/or sneaking costs in on them. Whether it be clubbing Android carriers with compatibility, saying search ads are evil then placing them everywhere, Google Maps API terms changes, terms changes on the Google AdWords API, Google hotel place listings with endless price ads, or emkeyword (not provided)/em in web analytics while trying to force you to register in Google Webmaster Tools to get any keyword data at all! /p
pAs if that wasn’t bad enough, when the fake business asked Google if Mokality was ok with this, this was the exchange:/p
blockquotepMy question is does Mocality know that you’re getting their con…our contacts from their directory?br /
~~~br /
Yah. They know. They know that very well. They have agreed with Google when they were on that thing./p/blockquote
pI have long stated that the difference between spam and quality content is who is spamming. With the recent widely criticized over-promotion of Google+ in the search results and this sort of scrape, lie amp; disintermediate the source Google’s true character is shining through. /p
pFacebook amp; Twitter are smart not to leave the barn door open for Google. /p
pAll information wants to be free and wrapped in Google’s ads. Or so the saying goes…until they can be trusted it won’t be. And they have done A LOT of brand damage to themselves in the past couple months. /p
pstrongUpdate:/strong Google was mortified emthat they got caught/em doing this:/p
blockquotepWe were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We’ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved./p/blockquote
/div/div/divdiv class=field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-abovediv class=field-labelCategories:nbsp;/divdiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evena href=http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_google.shtmlgoogle/a/div/div/div

div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/link-outreach-boomerang.jpg width=375 height=267 //p
pSometimes it’s the little things in life….Boomerang for Gmail (and Outlook) is an incredibly useful, lightweight, powerful link outreach app./p
pLink building has a special place in the SEO industry. Beyond being one of the harder skill-sets to master and acquire, link building is likely the most important element of an SEO campaign./p
pLink building can also be the most difficult job to:/p
ulliScale internally and externally/li
liTrain someone to do efficiently/li
liOutsource/li
liHire someone for/li
/ulpHow to hire link builders and how to train them are certainly worthy of their own (upcoming) blog posts but this post is going to sing the praises of a Gmail and Outlook plugin that is essential for my link building workflow./p
h2Boomerang for Gmail (and Outlook)/h2
pOutside of the really cool name this plugin makes my workflow much more streamlined and efficient./p
pI don’t use Outlook so I’ll be focusing on the Gmail plug-in here. The Outlook plugin has most of the functionality of the Gmail edition (minus the Send On options) and you can check out the Outlook version a href=http://www.baydin.com/boomerang/index.htmlhere/a./p
pThe key benefits to using Boomerang (referencing the Gmail app going forward) are:/p
ulliSchedule emails to be sent at a later date/time/li
liSet reminders on emails so they pop back up at a specified time/li
liSet email reminders from your smartphone/li
/ulh2Send Emails Later/h2
pYou can install Boomerang for Gmail a href=http://www.boomerangGmail.com/here/a. You can use this for Gmail and Google apps and you’ll need to use Firefox or Chrome./p
pYou’ll manage Boomerang in two places; you can get to it in your Gmail toolbar:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/boomerang-top-toolbar.png width=339 height=133 //p
pFrom here you can access your scheduled messages to make any changes and access various help and how-to’s./p
pThe other area where you access Boomerang is in the email dialogue box. When you go to compose a new message or click to reply to one you’ll see the Boomerang button and see all the options available for sending the message:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/boomerang-send-later-compose.png width=444 height=415 //p
pIf you click on anything other than the specific time option at the bottom, the message is scheduled straight away./p
pIf you need to access your Boomerang-ed messages, just go back to the top Gmail toolbar, click Boomerang, and click access Scheduled messages./p
pThe other cool option when composing a new message is listed right below the subject line. From here you can have Boomerang return the message to your Inbox if no one replies or even if they do (marked as unread, starred, etc; these options can be changed in the access scheduled messages option on the top Gmail/Boomerang toolbar option):/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/boomerang-below-subject-line.png width=621 height=351 //p
pYou have the exact same option when replying to messages as well./p
pThis is incredibly useful for a variety of link building actions such as:/p
ulliTracking the effectiveness of email pitches/li
liScheduling a bunch of pitches to line up with various promotions and outreach campaigns, in one shot/li
liUsing in conjunction with Gmail’s canned responses for scalable link outreach and management/li
liNever forget about a link prospect/li
liMake Gmail a self-contained link outreach system for staff members/li
liAvoid awkward time zone issues on email deliveries if you have staff outside your targeted market’s location/li
/ulh2Email Reminders/h2
pWhile the Send On features are the most useful for link outreach, the Reminder functions can be useful as well./p
pBoomerang has Gmail-like functionality in the way it auto-offers a solution. Here you can see I’ve got a Staples coupon that expires on January 16th. Boomerang is asking me if I’d like to return this to my inbox on that date:/p
p img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/boomerang-staples.png width=600 height=272 //p
pOutside of that functionality you can click the Boomerang reminder icon in the toolbar to get the reminder options available to you:/p
p img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/boomerang-reminder-emails.png width=485 height=431 //p
p So rather than setting something in your calendar or in your task management application, you can use Boomerang to re-populate the email when needed./p
pYou can add a condition to this and say that you only want to be reminded of the message at the selected time IF no one responds, simply by checking that option above. Otherwise, it will come back whether someone responds or not./p
p You can also use your iPhone, Blackberry, or Android to set up a message for yourself to arrive in your inbox at a certain time with their a href=http://www.boomerangGmail.com/mobile.htmlmobile option/a./p
h2Privacy Concerns/h2
pLetting an app access your data on mail.google.com shouldn’t be taken lightly. Here is what they say about privacy:/p
blockquotep
Why does Boomerang for Gmail need access to my email account?/p
pLike most other Gmail plugins, we need access to the full email data to be able to move and send messages. In our queries, we only store the headers of the message (subject, sender, time) so that we can uniquely ID the message you want to schedule. We don’t store any message text.br /
Does it mean you have my Gmail password?/p
pNo, we don’t have access to your Gmail password. You are authorizing through Google’s official OpenID system./p/blockquote
h2Sign Up for Boomerang/h2
p You can get a full-featured pro account trial for free, for 30 days a href=http://www.boomeranggmail.com/here/a. I am anxious for them to release the open/click tracking for even deeper link outreach analysis./p
p If you are looking for a more enterprise level solution, with team-wide tracking and monitoring, please check out our reviews of a href=http://www.seobook.com/comprehensive-review-buzzstreamBuzzstream/a and a href=http://www.seobook.com/raven-seo-tools-reviewRaven Tools/a./p
/div/div/div

div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpAll things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. – Friedrich Nietzsche/p
h2Everyone Except Me Should be emOpen/em/h2
pBeing labeled as emopen/em or emtransparent/em is a great public relations strategy. Executed effectively it gets ditto heads to feel like they are part of a movement and spread your propaganda./p
pHowever actually being transparent is often a poor business strategy. /p
pWhen WordAds opened up someone in the comments suggested that they should win by being open like Google. I read that and laughed. a href=http://cdixon.org/2009/12/30/whats-strategic-for-google/Where Google is losing you can count on them pushing the open label in order to build momentum/a amp; destroy the asymmetrical information advantages of existing market leaders. But where Google leads non-transparency is the norm./p
pA few examples amp; comparisons:/p
ulliClaiming to run an open auction, while running obfuscated quality metrics that price gouge advertisers.
/liliAt the same time Google is trying to push social sites to offer transparent data, they decided to block some Google search referral data (unless you are paying for the clicks, then you get that data).
/liliWhen planning some of the features behind Google+ one of their employees wrote a book about the social circles concept with Google’s blessings. Then, emafter/em he wrote the book, a href=http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog/2011/07/why-i-left-google-what-happened-to-my-book-what-i-work-on-at-facebook/Google revoked permission to publish it/a!
/liliNuking affiliate links of some websites amp; then investing in Viglink, a network that automatically turns links into affiliate links.
/liliBurning some networks of websites for being doorway pages amp; then investing in the Whaleshark Media roll up amp; launching Google Places.
/liliNuking some UK financial comparison sites for link buying amp; then buying BeatThatQuote.
/liliSuggesting 60 or 90 days of penalty is a reasonable penalty for sketchy links amp; allowing BeatThatQuote to rank 2 weeks after penalizing it without cleaning up any of the paid links.
/liliAndroid is emopen/em but internal Google emails revealed that carriers were getting wise to Google using compatibility as a club.
/liliNot sharing revenue share stats with AdSense partners for a half-decade.
/liliWhen websites are nuked they are frequently given no explanation. Worse yet, their content often re-appears in the search results on some other domain that stole it, in many cases while being wrapped in AdSense ads.
/liliArbitrarily making it hard to export AdWords campaigns to other services (amp; making it against the TOS to do same via the API).
/liliThe Panda update was needed to rid the web of garbage content. And yet Google is pre-paying Demand Media to post videos on YouTube. Since the Panda update downstream Google traffic to YouTube has more than doubled amp; a href=http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-were-we-watching-this-year-lets.htmlYouTube is serving over a trillion streams per year/a!
/liliIn spite of a href=http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/49843-authors-guild-files-for-class-certification-in-google-case.htmlnot having permission to do so/a, a href=http://paidcontent.org/article/419-back-to-square-one-in-the-google-books-settlement/Google has been scanning books for nearly a decade now/a. Yet whenever Google goes to court they try to get the court documents sealed so that their statements couldn’t be used against them.
/li/ulh2Judge, Jury, Executioner/h2
pCalls for transparency in SEO may sound great on their face, but once you peal back the covers the absurdity is laughable. If Google didn’t discriminate against certain types of players amp; if Google didn’t compete in the very markets that it judges then perhaps transparency would be a good idea./p
pHowever Google is perhaps the single biggest direct competitor in many markets, so to be fully transparent with them a href=http://www.seomoz.org/blog/aaron-wall-and-i-debate-the-open-discussion-of-webspam#jtc163233when they are the opposite with you/a is a naive business strategy: /p
blockquotepI also disagree that outing each other would make the industry less like a mafia, because SEOs aren’t the mafia. SEO is a symbiotic marketing channel reliant on Google, until the next big search engine/method comes along. In a mafioso analogy, Google would be the mafia – as they control the market. Removing all webspam wouldn’t necessarily create better search results or a fairer market, as Google still decides who wins and who loses. The biggest winner being Google itself, the next level being their friends./p
pSecrecy is also the cornerstone of all marketing channels. Social Media for instance works in a similar way to SEO, except they have secret voting methods rather than secret linking methods. You don’t see major social media companies outing a rival’s voting methods, as it would shine a torch on their own methods. Even outside of marketing, McDonalds probably worked out KFC’s magic blend of herbs and spices decades ago, but it’s not in their best interest to tell everybody./p
pOuting webspam helps an SEO blog to keep their UVs up and their VCs happy. It helps a failing newspaper to appear modern and edgy, whilst allowing the contributor to launch a protection racket off the back of another company’s misery./p/blockquote
h2Do You Want SEOs to Seem More Professional?/h2
pHow often do you see tier-1 public relations firms marketing themselves by smearing other PR firms? /p
pstrongYou don’t./strong/p
pYou might see a company like Google hire a PR firm a href=http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/12/09/browser-study-sheds-light-on-firefoxs-insecurity-and-google-approves-this-message/to push a bogus study to smear the security of a competitor/a, but you rarely (if ever) will see one PR firm smear another in the media./p
pWhile some of the more intellectually challenged members of the SEO industry a href=https://twitter.com/#!/mikehoward/status/148392622283694080associate search spam with molesting children/a (talk to Google about that after their recent Chrome fiasco), those with a bit of intelligence and/or experience realize that many of the issues are gray and murky. What one person considers as spam one day a href=http://www.seobook.com/reddit-distilled-virantethey later sell as advanced months or years down the road/a. The ecosystem a href=http://www.seomoz.org/blog/aaron-wall-and-i-debate-the-open-discussion-of-webspam#jtc163137isn’t some static black amp; white code/a:/p
blockquotepThe question is less whether black hat and webspam are a good thing or not, but if Google is the unbiased and benevolent instance who shall make the rules. Google is a business and persuits its very own interestes, since it is aware of its market power with a lot of arrogance, aggresivity and obviously double standards. That was also Aaron’s point, but seomoz has been missing the point completly in the last time./p
pI expect an SEO portal/community to focus on how stuff actually works/can work, not to propagate how the monopolist does it want to work. It is their risk of doing business if they decide for an algorithm, not ours. It is our risk however, to decide whether to stick to the rules or not. And it’s not only about ethics but has several practical implications…/p/blockquote
h2Full Disclosure Required, Except From Us/h2
pOn paid links Google claims to require machine AND human readable disclosure. Then on their own site they use a href=http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it%E2%80%A6or-maybe-not/an ad color background that literally fades to white/a on many monitors. Maybe it is legitimate that they are only able to few some of the users some of the time. But some of their ad initiatives have 0 disclosure at all. None./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/flight-search-disclosure.jpg //p
pThat is now a href=http://consumertravelalliance.org/?p=629part of the organic search results/a, but is that a paid ad? /p
pYou wouldn’t know by looking at it, but a href=http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203686204577116700668483194-lMyQjAxMTAxMDIwNjEyNDYyWj.htmlaccording to the WSJ/a it is: Google lists booking links to the airlines as advertisements, but the company declined to comment on how much money it makes from the arrangement./p
pThere is no disclosure that you are in a paid ad funnel until the very last click. And those who fail to pay are either unlisted, listed last, or have a broken booking process where their brand is arbitraged in an attempt to flip the click to somewhere else. a href=http://www.fairsearch.org/acquisitions/google-built-google-for-airlines/According to Leocha/a, “Google and the airlines have a sweetheart deal with each other, and the consumers are getting screwed.”/p
pIn the hotel market Google is also testing comparison ads amp; price ads./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/hotel-comparison-ads.jpg //p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/hotel-price-ads.jpg //p
pNotice how little they care about relevancy so long as they keep the click on Google or are paid for the referral. They rank the car rental company emAvis/em as a top Las Vegas hotel! And even the ad links that are sold off of that do not line up. Priceline pushes the Plazzo Luxury Suites amp; Booking.com pushes the Venitian./p
h2Retarding Investment in the Search Ecosystem/h2
pWhat do you suppose the above behavior does to cash flow amp; multiples of a href=https://flippa.com/2672588-6-year-old-hotel-reservation-website-80-yoy-increase-very-stable-top-rankingswebsites in that vertical/a? Of course it contracts them amp; retards investment. Who wants to a href=https://auctions.godaddy.com/trpItemListing.aspx?domain=hongkonghotels.orgstart a new hotel website at this point/a? What other verticals have investment held back by the fear of Google’s eventual entry? /p
pIf you only had to manage competing against other market competitors amp; staying inside Google’s editorial guidelines then investment isn’t that difficult, but if you have to stay within Google’s guidelines in the short term yet try to build a business that is sustainable even after Google enters amp; destroys the market it is far more difficult./p
h2Skimming the Cream/h2
pAt any time Google can enter any market and a href=http://reversemortgagedaily.com/2011/12/11/mortgage-licensing-shuts-down-some-of-googles-lead-plans/skim off the cream/a: An independent study from Leads360 showed consumers using Google’s comparison ads converted better than any other lead provider./p
pOther affiliate networks which do not own the search channel have to a href=http://www.leadconfidential.com/the-fraud-paradox.htmlfight through quality issues/a if they try to build similar scale./p
h2A Self-serving Bias You Can Count On/h2
pWhen Google enters a market it might buy out a competitor, buy out a supplier, bundle, a href=http://brianshall.com/content/google-are-pussiesuse predatory pricing/a, grant themselves superior search placement, adjust the relevancy algorithms and/or editorial guidelines, a href=http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/27/buysafe-sues-google-over-trusted-stores-service-fears-annihilation/violate IP/a, scrape 3rd party content, a href=http://beta.fool.com/seasonedgeek/2011/12/29/how-it-larry-page-has-avoided-prison/work with sketchy advertisers/a amp; publishers to undermine competing business models, or any combination of the above. /p
pThey are rarely transparent with their interests when they enter a market. Almost everything is labeled as a beta and just a test. They a href=http://www.bloomberg.com/video/71427180/promise to act appropriately/a amp; you may not be aware of the steamroller until you are under it. /p
h2Web Scrape Plus+ (Now With More Scraping)/h2
pGoogle the +1 button launched amp; Google+ launched Google highlighted a href=http://raventools.com/blog/forbes-reports-that-google-plus-will-be-universal-ranking-signal-then-pulls-the-article/how they would use the + button usage as a relevancy signal/a. Google recently started a href=http://mashable.com/2011/12/20/google-brand-pages-search/inserting + pages directly into the search results for brands/a amp; right from the very start a href=http://www.seobook.com/the-doorsthey were using it as a scraper website that would outrank the original content source/a. /p
pGoogle used the buy in from their promised relevancy signal to create a href=http://www.thegooglecache.com/white-hat-seo/how-to-buy-1178857-links-the-google-way/a badge-based incentivized system which acts as a glorified PageRank funnel/a to further juice the rankings of these new pages on a domain name that already had a PageRank 10./p
pI recently read a blog post about a href=http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-plus-seohow anyone could do the above/a amp; the opportunity is open to everyone. But the truth is, I can’t state that something will become a relevancy signal that manipulates the search results in order to get buy in. Or, if I did something which actually had the same net effect, Google would likely chop my legs off for promoting a link scheme./p
pRecently the topic of Google+ as a scraper site came up yet again a href=http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_is_going_to_mess_up_the_internet.phpvia Read Write Web/a amp; on Hacker News a Googler stated that a href=http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3424457it was childish to place any of the blame on Google/a!!!!!! /p
pGoogle determines a href=http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/introducing-application-rich-snippets.htmlhow much information is shown near each listing/a amp; can create relevancy signals in ways that a href=http://www.seobook.com/free-lunchthings tied to Google/a get over-represented (a href=https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rovio.angrybirdslook at the +1 count here/a). When they do that amp; it destroys other business models *of course* a href=http://www.fairsearch.org/general/senate-calls-on-ftc-to-investigate-googles-business-practices/Google deserves/a a href=http://www.searchneutrality.org/foundem/google-written-response-senate-antitrust100% of the blame/a./p
pIt may be a href=http://www.seobook.com/search-engines-affiliates-publishersmore profitable for Google/a to a href=http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/google-tries-to-kick-authors-guild-out-of-court-in-book-case.arssqueeze out some of the players/a, but if a href=http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/at-web-censorship-hearing-congress-guns-for-pro-pirate-google.arsGoogle’s quest/a for a href=http://www.techworld.com.au/article/409347/google_plans_seek_books_lawsuit_dismissalfree content/a manages to destroy business models amp; the ecosystem as a whole then they are not a href=http://www.fairsearch.org/general/trust-us-can-we-still-take-google-at-its-word-which-one/doing what is best for the user./a/p
h2Things We Do Not Approve…/h2
pGoogle a href=http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/11/22/google-just-used-its-search-app-to-sneak-most-of-chrome-os-onto-the-ipad/can bundle themselves into markets/a, but when others do the same a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203413304577086463731021828.htmlit is a big no no/a:/p
blockquotepA Google spokesman said applications that are installed without clear disclosure, that are hard to remove and that modify users’ experiences in unexpected ways are bad for users and the Web as a whole./p/blockquote
pGoogle’s founding research a href=http://www.seobook.com/archives/000897.shtmlhighlighted how bad ad-driven search engines were/a amp; then Google’s core revenue engine of paid search was built on a href=http://news.cnet.com/Google,-Yahoo-bury-the-legal-hatchet/2100-1024_3-5302421.htmltheir violation of Overture’s patent/a. They keep a href=http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/01/ibm-assigns-patent-filings-to-google/buying swaths of patents/a to protect against a href=http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/12/british-telecom-sues-google-over-six.htmltheir other violations/a./p
pThe business model of violate amp; then buy protection has helped lead to a protection-racket styled marketplace in patents that makes the risk of innovation for smaller players so expensive that it drives them under./p
pWhere Google has gained a dominant position in a marketplace they can begin misdirecting for profit. Let’s say you link to your own location on Google Maps to drive traffic to Google amp; help your users locate your office. Well in some cases they then reciprocate by confusing users by putting an ad in your location bubble./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/an-ad-inside-your-ad.jpg //p
pOnce again, you are forced to buy your own brand unless you teach your customers (and prospective customers) to avoid Google products./p
h2Sure I May Have Failed, But at Least That Failure Was Transparent…/h2
pIf you are fully transparent against an arbitrary set of guidelines when the company that judges you also competes against you amp; brushes up against the limits of the DOJ amp; FTC then you might lose for no reason other than being transparent. And not only are you competing directly against Google, but the algorithms are a href=http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/infographics/brand-branding-brands.phpbiased toward certain players/a./p
h2Creating a Two-tier Web/h2
pIn 2006 Google’s Eric Schmidt a href=http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/12/what-google-really-wants-net-neutralityadmonished others for attempting to create a 2-tier web/a: /p
blockquotepToday the Internet is an information highway where anybody — no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional — has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can’t pay./p/blockquote
pBut when Google launched their Panda algorithm they did the same thing. /p
pTheir quality content thesis could have come across as being honest emif/em they weren’t still a href=http://www.seobook.com/follow-the-moneypre-paying Demand Media to upload content to YouTube/a./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/panda-revenge-time.jpg //p
pYou might get smoked by a Panda update or have your accounts arbitrarily frozen while operating at a 7 out of 10 level, and then you see a href=http://adage.com/article/digital/meet-google-s-biggest-u-s-search-advertisers/231434/Ask is Google’s biggest advertiser/a, a href=http://www.seobook.com/ask-and-thou-shalt-receivetheir arbitrage gets a pass/a, amp; that feed even monetizes misspelled searches for Google’s brand. /p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/barnabe-googe.jpg //p
h2Risks/h2
pa href=http://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec11/risk-success12-11.htmlRisk is needed for adaptation/a, so some amount of risk is good, but…/p
ulliIf you invest in ultra-high quality content amp; then a href=http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/01/google-places-borrowing-yelp-iphone-app/someone else scrapes you and outranks/a you then your business model might not be sustainable.
/lilia href=http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/22/138576167/when-patents-attackGoogle’s approach to patents/a has helped feed into a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/jul/15/app-developers-withdraw-us-patentsa side current of risk/a for a href=http://furbo.org/2011/07/13/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-independent-developer/independent developers/a.
/liliFor many businesses the unknown Panda risk is every bit as damaging as a href=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14138267the great firewall of China/a. Each additional unknown kills x% of small new online businesses. If a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/opinion/13friedman.htmlunemployment is high/a, companies are not hiring amp; the bar for self-employment is too high then the web stagnates./li/ulpstrongIf the old established corporate competition needs to be as good as you to compete then there is little risk to being transparent if the competition is doing nothing beyond following you around. But if the playing field is tilted and the competition only needs to be 5% as good as you are to beat you (and can easily come from behind to copy any success you have) then full on transparency brings much more risk than potential profits. /strong/p
h2You Are the Ad/h2
pWe are moving into a media world where the content becomes ads amp; even how people interact with the ads and content becomes a part of the ad./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ads-as-content.jpg //p
pFurther Google uses their data advantage to create other asymmetrical advantages. While a href=http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/07/11/how-banks-plan-to-compete-with-groupon/credit card companies sell personalized ads in network/a, Google is a href=http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/11/google-working-on-a-marketplace-for-advertisers-to-buy-and-sell-your-data/creating a marketplace to buy and sell user data/a./p
pEvery time you view a page and click an ad (or even don’t click an ad) a href=http://www.economist.com/node/21541706you are feeding highly personal data/a back to Google. And they will use it as they wish. Here they are saying thousands of people like eBay, which is of course plenty reasonable, except for the fact they claim the people voted for that specific page rather than the site as a whole. /p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/256gb.jpg align=left /img src=http://explicitly.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Aaron-Wall-+1-Fleece-Blankets1.jpg //p
pWhat’s worse is that sometimes they will put your picture next to a listing and a href=http://explicitly.me/how-to-get-a-celebrity-to-endorse-all-your-products-on-googleclaim that YOU PERSONALLY voted for a specific page/a amp; use that to market that item to your friends and contacts. The problem with this is that: /p
ullieven after you remove the vote for a site they still keep showing it
/liliyou may vote for site A amp; they will show your image as voting for site B
/liliwhen they show your picture they claim you voted specifically for the page being advertised (even if that page is promoting a scam or something else you wouldn’t endorse)/li/ulpOnce again, I will highlight that they use the votes against the wrong sites amp; pages and that they keep showing the votes even weeks after you remove them./p
pWhere is the transparency in that deceptive crap?/p
h2Others Are Just as Bad, But Are Not Monopolies/h2
pBut Aaron, you are just being a href=http://searchengineland.com/simpsons-future-google-104570hard on Google/a, why don’t you ever mention Ask or Yahoo! or Bing?/p
pI did mention Ask above. /p
pBing has done numerous a href=http://searchengineland.com/bing-travel-search-kayak-favoritism-google-wsj-105904self-serving things/a, including a href=http://marketingland.com/holiday-deals-sites-confirm-bing-dropped-them-just-before-black-friday-cyber-monday-332some that are flat out sketchy/a./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/bing-cyber.jpg //p
pYahoo! offers a useless buying guide for fish tanks that is nothing more than a paid pointer to Overstock.com.br /img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/yahoo-fish-tanks.jpg //p
pIf you click on their coupons tab on that fish tanks search Yahoo! shows you coupons for tank tops, which is pretty idiotic.br /img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/yahoo-training-tanks.jpg //p
pWhy is this Yahoo! Shopping amp; Yahoo! Deals product so ugly? a href=http://searchengineland.com/the-end-of-yahoo-shopping-company-substantially-outsourcing-to-pricegrabber-33251They outsourced it years ago/a. So it is a non-product amp; thus the integration can’t be anything but crappy./p
pWhy do Yahoo! amp; Bing typically get a pass? They own a fairly low search marketshare. Missing traffic from either or both of those is certainly significant enough to be felt, however even when they are combined it is still less than half of what Google controls in most markets. Market leaders are expected to operate in less conflicted amp; less self-serving ways than also ran players in their market do. If Microsoft would have had 10% or 15% marketshare for their operating system then it is unlikely their browser bundling would have come under such scrutiny./p
h2Transparency in The Real World/h2
pIn the past I highlighted how every form of media is manipulated in a href=http://www.seobook.com/media-literacy-seos-or-why-seo-outing-badWhy Outing is Bad/a, but I thought it would be fun to run through some other markets and highlight how transparency often exists only as an illusion (to lure in punters so they can be rooked)./p
pTrueCar aimed to a href=http://blog.truecar.com/2011/12/12/an-open-letter-to-the-automotive-industry-from-scott-painter-founder-ceo-of-truecar-inc/make that market more transparent/a by giving consumers pricing data online to remove some of the asymmetrical advantage dealers have amp; makes the sales process smoother for consumers. How does the automotive market respond? Honda issued threats to their dealers amp; now TrueCar has a hate video ranking for their brand./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/google-truecar.jpg //p
pThis nontransparency is not something new, but rather the way it has always been./p
pIt exists at every level of society. a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204058404577110541568535300.htmlCountries/a a href=http://abcnews.go.com/International/chinese-hack-us-chamber-commerce-authorities/story?id=15207642#.TvjQiPK8hREspy on one another/a amp; companies may chose to show different views of the world to different markets./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/revolution-vs-anxiety.jpg //p
pAnd what they do internally doesn’t match the story they share publicly. Look no further than a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304203304576448291349364376.htmlthe News/a a href=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/hacking-was-endemic-at-the-mirror-says-former-reporter-2319039.htmlof the/a a href=http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/dirty_business_as_usual_at_new.phpWorld’s/a a href=http://www.alternet.org/story/151713/the_big_lie_at_the_heart_of_rupert_murdoch%27s_media_empire/?page=entirehacking/a a href=http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/7075673/what-the-papers-wont-say.thtmlscandal/a:/p
blockquotepNews International’s leading profit centre, the News of the World, was dependent on a very ugly culture of lawbreaking, hacking and impunity. This freewheeling, ask-no-questions attitude spread to other parts of the organisation, such as the Times and the Sunday Times, both of which used have used illegal or unethical techniques. Even more troubling, when senior News International management were confronted with evidence of wrongdoing, the company made false statements and took actions which prevented key evidence from reaching the public domain. /p/blockquote
iframe width=560 height=349 src=http://www.youtube.com/embed/tSWHzGRksvo frameborder=0 allowfullscreen=/iframep
The same company has not only been accused of hacking at some of its other news outlets (by its own employees no less) but was also a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/news-corps-legal-trail-in-the-us.html?partner=rssamp;emc=rssaccused of similar in other lines of business/a:/p
blockquotepBoth cases involve News America Marketing, an obscure but lucrative division of the News Corporation that is a big player in the business of retail marketing, including newspaper coupon inserts and in-store promotions. The company has come under scrutiny for a pattern of conduct that includes below-cost pricing, paying customers not to do business with competitors and accusations of computer hacking. /p/blockquote
h2Were The Robber Barons Transparent?/h2
pGoing back into history it is sort of hard to pick a starting point (one can go to the spice trade amp; orders that are unsealed at sea, or likely earlier than that) but to pick a somewhat recent starting point, we could a href=http://baselinescenario.com/2011/12/27/state-of-nature/look at the railroads/a:/p
blockquotepSo how did unnecessary, inefficient railroads get built? Because of government subsidies. In short, the federal government paid to build the railroads through massive financing subsidies and also gave them ample land grants. The trick to building a railroad was not knowing anything about railroads or even about business; it was having friends in Washington who could give you the right financing and land subsidies./p
pEven then, the railroads lost money. Not only was there insufficient demand for their services, but they were run by people who were generally incompetent. (For one thing, they didn’t even know their own costs of doing business.) Yet the people who owned the railroads made fabulous amounts of money (of which Stanford University is one symbol). The main way to do this was simple. The people who controlled a railroad (generally by putting up very little of their own money, thanks to the government subsidies) would also wholly own a construction company. They would cause the railroad to overpay the construction company to build the railroad—in effect transferring wealth from railroad stockholders and creditors into their own pockets/p/blockquote
pWhat did the Robber Barons invest in? In large part a href=http://www.financialsense.com/financial-sense-newshour/guest-expert/2011/08/27/01/andrew-gavin-marshall/the-bilderbergs-the-think-tank-behind-global-governmengovernment, media amp; educational institutions/a so that strongthey could help educate society on how to behave much more civilly than they have/strong./p
h2Corporate Advocacy/h2
pThere are tons of marketing campaigns designed to educate society about the impacts of various companies. BP now a href=http://adage.com/article/news/bp-launching-national-ad-blitz-tout-gulf-recovery/231758/markets the gulf coast economy/a they plundered.br /img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/corporate-advocacy-advertisement.png //p
pATamp;T’s astroturfing campaign to acquire T-Mobile a href=http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/into-the-depths-of-atts-let-us-buy-t-mobile-astroturf-campaign.arswas so over the top that it actually backfired/a./p
pGet the facts styled campaigns are rarely about promoting a complete worldview.br /img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/brand-myth.png //p
pRemember the $500 million fine for Google from them pushing ads selling overseas Viagra in the US? Now they promote scaremongering ads against fakes from filthy labs.br /img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/google-viagra-safety.png //p
pCoca-cola runs emThe Beverage Institute/em amp; has doctors highlight how healthy soda is./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/corporate-advocacy-ad.png //p
pAt the same time, when Pepsi was sued over an alleged rat being in a can of Mountain Dew. Pepsi’s defense a href=http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/01/pepsi-says-mountain-dew-can-dissolve-mouse-carcasses/46868/claimed/a: the mouse would have dissolved in the soda had it been in the can from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff drank it turning the mouse into a ‘jelly-like’ substance. But don’t worry folks, it’s healthy. /p
pAt least we still have water. /p
pWhen they are not busy a href=http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bolivia/leasing.htmlmaking it illegal to collect rainwater/a, Bechtel wants you to follow them on Twitter./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/corporate-advocacy-ads.png //p
pIt is hard to know what is in our food amp; those who label things as organic have to fill out more paperwork than a href=http://www.salon.com/2011/07/08/farmageddon/singleton/those who manufacture frankenfood/a. Then there are the baseline chemicals sold as biodegradable which are not. /p
iframe width=425 height=349 src=http://www.youtube.com/embed/cYO2k_o16E0 frameborder=0 allowfullscreen=/iframep
Oh well, at least we have insurance./p
pState Farm is a href=http://www.badfaithinsurance.org/the #1 ranked bad faith insurance company/a, but at least they upload amp; advertise irrelevant funny videos to YouTube to create brand signal for Google./p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/so-fooony.png //p
h2Transparency in Everyday Life/h2
pOf course some of a href=http://topmassachusettsdeals.com/the worst affiliate offers/a, a href=http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/whitepages-identifies-the-ten-most-aggressive-call-spammers-of-2011-1601416.htmthe most aggressive sales calls/a amp; a href=http://www.jayweintraub.com/2011/12/because-we-all-love-a-good-online-marketing-scam.htmlother scams/a are designed to prey on ignorance of small print amp; rebilling, but even generally good businesses practice in asymmetrical skimming. /p
pA few recent examples:/p
ulliYou are reading this on a computer monitor right now, right? LCD manufacturers recently had to a href=http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/27/us-lcd-settlement-idUSTRE7BQ0KK20111227pay over a $553 million price fixing fine/a.
/liliSee a href=http://www.amazon.com/review/R15JDVMGOGGWMR/ref=cm_cr_rev_detmd_pl?ie=UTF8amp;cdForum=Fx2LS8V736IJ2ZJamp;cdMsgNo=5amp;cdPage=1amp;asin=B00005NIOHamp;store=magazinesamp;cdSort=oldestamp;cdThread=TxGA422HKSFPOZamp;cdMsgID=Mx3COSS6KZN7BYJ#Mx3COSS6KZN7BYJthis review/a about spam mail (the physical kind) from National Geographic.
/liliCell phone companies a href=http://patrick.net/forum/?p=1167660bill you for services you don’t even use/a and then there is a tax added a href=http://www.fortliberty.org/the-government-handing-out-free-cell-phones-and-youre-paying-for-it.htmlto subsidize handing out free cell phones/a.
/liliOne of the largest religious institutions was found to be associated with a href=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049647/BBC-documentary-exposes-50-year-scandal-baby-trafficking-Catholic-church-Spain.htmlillegally selling off hundreds of thousands of babies/a (after telling the single mother that their newborn child died). This process was going on through the late 1980′s!
/liliMedtronic surgeons which were paid over $60 million a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303627104576413663395567784.htmlheld back nasty side effects/a.
/liliOnline poker was made illegal in the US a few years back. The thesis for why it was made illegal was reinterpreted internally by the DOJ a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/us/online-gaming-loses-obstacle-at-justice-department.html?_r=2amp;pagewanted=allin September/a, but that wasn’t a href=http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/25/us-internet-gambling-idUSTRE7BO0HA20111225announced publicly/a until just after one of the Absolute Poker co-owner a href=http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/20/us-poker-fraud-plea-idUSTRE7BJ1DE20111220admitted his guilt/a. The public announcement a href=http://www.marketwatch.com/story/doj-online-betting-opinion-spurs-gambling-stocks-2011-12-27increased the stock price of numerous gaming companies/a, as a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203686204577112890018052440.htmlNevada gets ready for online poker/a.
/liliThis past holiday season Best Buy not only a href=http://adage.com/article/news/consumers-calling-buy-grinch-stole-christmas/231742/sold products they didn’t have/a, but in many cases when they did have them they charged a rate higher than the one advertised a href=http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=199682unless you caught it/a amp; forced them to charge you the advertised price.
/liliWhen looking at my credit card bill I saw a scammy $22.99 charge on it for a credit report I have never ordered. I looked up information about the company offering that service amp; the #1 result (with sitelinks) was my darn credit card company’s website! They had to conduct a block on themselves, but if you don’t notice it they will steal $23 a month until you die.
/li/ulh2Is Our Financial System Transparent?/h2
pWhen one looks at the field of finance it is story after story of deception, nontransparency amp; lawlessness. It is a constant reminder that a href=http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/07/no-such-thing-as-business-ethics.htmlthere is no such thing as business ethics/a./p
ulliWachovia a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangslaundered $3.84 strongbillion/strong in drug money/a for a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/20/war-capitalism-mexico-drug-cartelsviolent drug cartels/a. As if that wasn’t bad enough, we also a href=http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/2011/10/operation-fast-and-furious-scandal.htmlsold them weapons/a that wound up at murder scenes with our own border patrol dead amp; a href=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-flout-law-getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales.htmlthe Koch brothers sold weapons to states that we brand as rogue./a
/liliBank of New York Mellon a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204879004577108630218485566.htmlripped off their clients with unsavory Forex rates/a: As investigators sought to determine whether the bank overcharged clients to execute their currency trades, a senior BNY Mellon executive nicknamed Rambo urged traders not to tell clients how much money they made on trading, according to the informant.
/liliA former Federal Reserve member a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204464404577118682763082876.htmlwrites about the Fed/a: No matter the legalistic interpretation, the Fed is, working through the ECB, bailing out European banks and, indirectly, spendthrift European governments. It is difficult to count the number of things wrong with this arrangement.
/liliBank of America recently had to pay $335 million a href=http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500395_162-57346617/bank-of-america-settles-discrimination-suit-for-$335m/to settle a discrimination lawsuit against minorities/a, due to Countrywide (who is NOT on your side) charging juiced interest rates. Bank of America a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576414222265248768.htmlhad to pay an $8.5 billion settlement/a to investors who bought some of the junk mortgages out the other end.
/lili What’s happened is that, almost overnight, we’ve switched from democracy in real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording. There was no court case behind this, no statute from Congress or the state legislatures. It was accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it. – a href=http://harpers.org/archive/2012/01/0083752Christopher Peterson/a
/liliThe financial markets a href=http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc111205.htmare becoming glorified crack houses/a: Frankly, I am concerned that Wall Street is becoming little more than a glorified crack house. Day after day, the sole focus of Wall Street is on more sugar, stronger sugar, Big Bazookas of sugar, unlimited sugar, and anything that will get somebody to deliver the sugar faster. This is like offering a lollipop to quiet down a 2-year old throwing a tantrum, and expecting that the result will be fewer tantrums. What we have increasingly observed over the past decade is nothing but the gradual destruction of the ability of the financial markets to allocate capital for the benefit of future growth. By preventing the natural discipline of the markets to impose losses on poor stewards of capital, and to impose interest rates high enough to force debtors to allocate the capital usefully, the world’s policy makers are increasingly wrecking the prospects for long-term economic growth.
/lili Companies are often a href=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/7974581/Burger-King-in-talks-with-private-equity-says-WSJ.htmlbrought private, leveraged up on debt/a amp; a href=http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php/11597-Corporate-Pension-Fund-shortfalls-weigh-on-recovery-Eric-Janszen?p=119321have their pension programs destroyed/a to a href=http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_15/b3979057.htmmake profits for private equity investors/a: Nowadays private-equity firms often spend hundreds of millions of their own money on an acquisition (BW — Feb. 27). Just as often, though, they load up the companies with debt and use the money to pay themselves special dividends and other fees that allow them to profit even if the company itself struggles. Then the backers take the company public, often pocketing the lion’s share of the offering.
/liliIndividuals who put in extra hours of work because they are sold on the promise of their options may also find a href=http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/26/skypes-worthless-employee-stock-option-plan-heres-why-they-did-it/those/a a href=http://allthingsd.com/20110628/exclusive-skype-employees-were-briefed-in-plain-english-the-internal-equity-incentive-plan-deck/disappear/a: Taking away the value of options that are vested means that the concept of vesting becomes bogus. It doesn’t matter whether the employee understood if this was the deal or not, it’s a scummy practice, and it’s ultimately self-defeating (both for the company and the industry as a whole). Who would go to work for Skype (or any PE-backed company) in the future?
/lilia href=http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/22/us-foreclosures-idUSTRE7BL0MC20111222Limitless fraud before the courts/a amp; dancing on the graves of the newly homeless: Court records show that the firm angered state court judges for alleged false statements and filing suspect documents. Arthur Schack, a state court judge in Brooklyn, in a 2010 ruling said that pleadings by the Baum firm on behalf of HSBC Bank, a unit of London-based HSBC Holdings, in a foreclosure case were so incredible, outrageous, ludicrous and disingenuous that they should have been authorized by the late Rod Serling, creator of the famous science-fiction television series, The Twilight Zone.br /
…br /
The law firm said it would shut down after New York Times columnist Joe Nocera in November published photographs of a 2010 Baum firm Halloween party in which employees dressed up as homeless people. Another showed part of Baum’s office decorated to look like a row of foreclosed houses.
/liliThat theft of physical property a href=http://barnhardt.biz/is ongoing/a: Also announced over the weekend was the jaw-dropping, yet illuminating fact that the MF Global bankruptcy was fraudulently, nefariously and illegally drawn up as a Chapter 7 BK for a SECURITIES DEALER and NOT a commodity brokerage as it should have been. Look, MF Global was the second-largest non-bank FCM in the United States next to NewEdge which is the old FIMAT. If MF Global wasn’t an FCM, then there are no FCMs. Of course it was an FCM. It had $7.2 billion in customer seg funds as of August 31, 2011. And yet MF Global was immediately, from the get-go, put into Chapter 7 BK as a SECURITIES FIRM. This is fraud. MF Global’s BK should have OBVIOUSLY been established under Subchapter IV of the Chapter 7 code as a COMMODITY BROKERAGE.
/liliAnd as banking criminals literally steal money, destroy lives amp; undermine the rule of law a href=http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/measuring-the-financial-sector-2/to grow their profits/a sleazeballs like a href=http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/dear-jamie-dimon/Jamie Dimon/a think that the reason people hate them is envy.
/li/ulpThe above makes no mention of helping Greece hide governmental debt, bid-rigging bribes in Jefferson County, robosigning bogus foreclosure documents, and a host of other crimes. But one thing in common with all the above crimes is this: no jailtime for the banksters./p
pSince there is nothing stopping those criminals a href=http://www.truth-out.org/austerity-and-modern-banker/1325513814they keep up their crimes/a:/p
blockquotepBig banks represent the ultimate in concentrated economic power in today’s economies. They are able to resist all meaningful reform that could really change their compensation schemes. Their executives want to get all the upside while facing none of the true downside./p
pBut capitalism without the prospect of failure is not any kind of market economy. We are running a large-scale, strongnontransparent/strong, and dangerous government subsidy scheme for the benefit primarily of a very few, extremely wealthy people./p/blockquote
pimg src=http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2011/12/BAC%20Earnings.gif //p
pThe actions of the financial cartel are both obvious amp; predictable. And the damage they do a href=http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php/19599-The-Next-Ten-Years-%C2%96-Part-I-There-will-be-blood-Eric-Janszen?p=200282#post200282is felt worldwide/a:/p
blockquotepCredit-financed economic booms, by turns in private then public credit as one ratchets up the other over a series of booms and busts, are as irresistible to politicians as hookers and maids.br /
…br /
The failures of American FIRE Economy policies are behind the movements in Libya, Yemen, and Syria, as reflation measures, from quantitative easing to currency depreciation, steal purchasing power from low income families world wide, strongacting as the most regressive tax imaginable/strong. Simmering hatreds are exacerbated by the developing global crisis over oil supplies and costs.br /
…br /
The so-called debate about debt ceilings, spending cuts, and entitlements reductions is a red herring. The public debt crisis arose from the 2007 – 2008 private credit market crisis, not the government liabilities that have been building for decades. The mistake of both the left and the right is thinking that we can escape an output gap without facing up to the politically unpopular task of strongdemanding that creditors take a loss on loans taken out during the credit bubble era/strong./p/blockquote
pA creditor that makes bad loans deserves to go out of business. Their outsized compensation can’t be justified unless they are also made to eat their losses. But rather than holding them accountable for their own actions, a href=http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2011/12/19/inflation-is-key-to-euros-recovery/societies the world over/a a href=http://economicsintelligence.com/2011/08/11/the-economics-of-riots-and-austerity/absorb that pain/a. /p
pFascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power- Benito Mussolini /p
h2Slavery, Debt amp; Freedom/h2
pThere are currently a href=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952335,00.htmlmore slaves alive than at any point in history/a. And many people who are not slaves are still being a href=http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2789498enslaved by crushing debt/a:/p
blockquotepMoney is a human construct. The fact that our money is now backed by nothing more than our collective future ability to produce relegates us to that of slaves./p
pMoney=paper=blood hours./p
pBlood hours are a finite measure. Heartbeats./p/blockquote
pWhat’s in your wallet? Is it a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203686204577114530815313376.htmlthe new debt slavery card/a: A personal bankruptcy is supposed to cut borrowers loose from lenders and debt collectors, but Capital One Financial Corp.—one of the nation’s largest credit-card issuers—sometimes doesn’t want to let go./p
pa href=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-29/citigroup-collides-with-death-in-indonesia-emerging-market-debt.htmlCitigroup has an effective strategy/a they employ in some 3rd world countries to deal with those who can’t pay:/p
blockquotepAfter dropping his younger daughter at school, Octa walked into Citibank’s credit card collection department on the fifth floor of the Jamsostek tower just after 10 a.m. Four hours later, he left the 25-story building slumped motionless in a wheelchair — a victim of what police allege was a violent assault by debt collectors. Driven to a nearby hospital in a Citibank car, Octa was pronounced dead on arrival. /p/blockquote
pUnfortunately, even if you stay out of debt, you are forced to a href=http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/taleb1/Englishsupport banking scams/a:/p
blockquotepbefore being bailed out by governments, banks had never made any return in their history, assuming that their assets are properly marked to market. Nor should they produce any return in the long run, as their business model remains identical to what it was before, with only cosmetic modifications concerning trading risks./p
pSo the facts are clear. But, as individual taxpayers, we are helpless, because we do not control outcomes, owing to the concerted efforts of lobbyists, or, worse, economic policymakers. strongOur subsidizing of bank managers and executives is completely involuntary./strong/p/blockquote
pIn the US the reason the government debt outlook is so bad is in part due to a href=http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2831689overpaying for assets owned by the likes of Citibank/a:/p
blockquotepThe way the banks make money now is by hiding their losers off balance-sheet, or by forcing them on the taxpayers, and after having themselves declared systemically important, adjusting their on balance-sheet exposures accordingly, crashing the system and cashing out on their leveraged derivative bets, also at the taxpayers’ expense. /p
pIn real life, if there is such a thing anymore, all of the major banks are arguably insolvent. So, in reality, they’re not making any money at all, they are merely having it transferred to them by their political operatives in Congress and the Federal Reserve Bank. This, after all, is the modern purpose of the Congress, and has always been the purpose of the Federal Reserve System./p/blockquote
pimg src=http://publicintelligence.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/repeat-violators.png //p
pEven as they destroy savings, a href=http://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec11/stocks-jobs12-11.htmlkill jobs/a amp; undermine the competitiveness of the economy, why does the government continue to a href=http://patrick.net/forum/?p=1162830support such scams/a? Without the scams amp; cost-shifting a href=http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-influence-industry-supercommittee-members-are-lining-up-fundraisers/2011/09/06/gIQAa9BZAK_story.htmlthose in government/a wouldn’t have a href=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/05/bloomberg_articlesLXB3FG1A74E9.DTLas much wealth/a, a href=http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=197792power/a amp; a href=http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=200044influence/a. It is a href=http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-26/noda-s-urgent-task-is-tax-rise-as-japan-debt-swells-economy.htmldebt/a amp; a href=http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=199695cost-shifting/a that a href=http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2789363fuels them/a:/p
blockquotepgovernment and banks are stuck together like a couple of dogs screwing and we don’t know which is on top. Here, Republicans need government a href=http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr08/solar4-08.htmlto finance war/a and Democrats need it to finance social programs. Both need it to finance both, as that is how government attempts to maintain power and influence over the people this day and time./p/blockquote
pThe congress a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204844504577100260349084878.htmlliterally sells insider tips to hedge funds/a:/p
blockquotepWhen Senate Democrats finally brokered a compromise over the proposed health-care law, a group of hedge funds were let in on the deal, learning details hours before a public announcement on Dec. 8, 2009./p
pThe news was potentially worth millions of dollars to the investors, though none would publicly divulge how they used the information. They belong to a select group who pay for early, firsthand reports on Capitol Hill./p/blockquote
pDue to the compounding nature of debt, if those at the top are not allowed to fail a href=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/what-is-debt-%E2%80%93-an-interview-with-economic-anthropologist-david-graeber.htmlthen those at the bottom will fall hard/a:/p
blockquotepIn the past, periods dominated by virtual credit money have also been periods where there have been social protections for debtors. Once you recognize that money is just a social construct, a credit, an IOU, then first of all what is to stop people from generating it endlessly? And how do you prevent the poor from falling into debt traps and becoming effectively enslaved to the rich? That’s why you had Mesopotamian clean slates, Biblical Jubilees, Medieval laws against usury in both Christianity and Islam and so on and so forth./p
pSince antiquity the worst-case scenario that everyone felt would lead to total social breakdown was a major debt crisis; ordinary people would become so indebted to the top one or two percent of the population that they would start selling family members into slavery, or eventually, even themselves./p
pWell, what happened this time around? Instead of creating some sort of overarching institution to protect debtors, they create these grandiose, world-scale institutions like the IMF or Samp;P to protect creditors. They essentially declare (in defiance of all traditional economic logic) that no debtor should ever be allowed to default. Needless to say the result is catastrophic. We are experiencing something that to me, at least, looks exactly like what the ancients were most afraid of: a population of debtors skating at the edge of disaster./p
pAnd, I might add, if Aristotle were around today, I very much doubt he would think that the distinction between renting yourself or members of your family out to work and selling yourself or members of your family to work was more than a legal nicety. He’d probably conclude that most Americans were, for all intents and purposes, slaves.br /
…br /
Clearly any pretence that markets maintain themselves, that debts always have to be honored, went by the boards in 2008. That’s one of the reasons I think you see the beginnings of a reaction in a remarkably similar form to what we saw during the heyday of the ‘Third World debt crisis’ – what got called, rather weirdly, the ‘anti-globalization movement’. This movement called for genuine democracy and actually tried to practice forms of direct, horizontal democracy. In the face of this there was the insidious alliance between financial elites and global bureaucrats (whether the IMF, World Bank, WTO, now EU, or what-have-you)./p/blockquote
pimg src=http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ch1.gif /br /
Those who have the least often a href=http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/02/19/Poor-Give-More-to-Charity/give the most/a. a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7LzE3u7BwExcessive/a a href=http://biophilic.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-much-inequality.htmlincome inequality/a (especially when driven by fraud) leads to a a href=http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjune11/moral-hazard6-11.htmlmoral/a and a href=http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/world-wide-mind/201111/the-turning-point-the-moral-example-uc-davis-studentscultural/a rot. Financial cartels amp; governments can only a href=http://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec11/risk-servitude12-11.htmlenslave people/a in a href=http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/18/first-steps-in-reforming-the-u-s-financial-and-tax-system/so much debt/a amp; a href=http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/07/20117313948379987.htmlhand out so much soma/a before they either a href=http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/09/people-are-close-to-revolt-views-from-afar/244731/revolt/a or simply a href=http://www.zerohedge.com/news/entire-system-has-been-utterly-destroyed-mf-global-collapse-presenting-first-mf-global-casualtylose/a a href=http://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec11/why-im-hopeful12-11.htmlfaith/a./p
p(On a related note, a href=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8987359/Americans-buy-record-numbers-of-guns-for-Christmas.htmlDecember saw record gun sales/a.)/p
pState actors a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedamp;v=FBk1ogP18K0#have/a a href=http://capitoilette.com/2011/11/15/oakland-mayor-jean-quan-admits-cities-coordinated-crackdown-on-occupy-movement/repeatedly/a a href=http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/occupy-portland-protester-was-lying-on-the-ground-in-compliance-portland-police-continuously-beat-him-in-the-back-with-clubs-until-his-eyes-rolled-back-in-his-head-loses-use-of-right-arm.htmluse/a a href=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/police-state-ows-other-crackdowns-part-of-national-coordinated-effort-bloomberg-defies-court-order-to-let-protestors-back-into-zuccotti-park.htmlviolence/a to try to encourage a similar response. Instead a href=http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/pepper-spray-art.htmlthey created a viral meme/a amp; a href=http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-the-ows-protests-20111110#ixzz1the movement lives on/a./p
pOf course a href=http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=197814there are opposition research hacks/a willing to a href=http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/19/8884405-lobbying-firms-memo-spells-out-plan-to-undermine-occupy-wall-streetdig up dirt/a on anyone with wide reach who opposes the state-sponsored fraud: It will be vital,” the memo says, “to understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.” /p
pThe state a href=http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/mainstream-media-presstitutes-for-the-rich-and-powerful.htmlhas long manipulated mainstream media/a and has tools for a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networksspying on social networks/a, a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/11/us-justice-department-legally-hacked-twitterhacking accounts/a amp; a href=http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/157501-state-dept-shifts-digital-resources-to-social-mediaastroturfing online/a, but a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/world/us-military-goes-online-to-rebut-extremists.html?_r=1amp;pagewanted=allsock puppets/a can only go so far against reality./p
iframe width=420 height=315 src=http://www.youtube.com/embed/J8CqaHTygSc frameborder=0 allowfullscreen=/iframeh2Who Does 100% Marketing Transparency Help amp; Who Does it Hurt?/h2
pWe have a href=http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/is-the-sec-covering-up-wall-street-crimes-20110817an SEC that shreds over a decade of evidence/a (a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203935604577066242448635560.htmland engages in other illegal behaviors/a), a href=http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/banks-pressing-for-foreclosure-settlement-prior-to-investigations/a government that bails out the criminal enterprises/a amp; a court system that broadly a href=http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/06/a-license-to-lie-backdated/makes it nearly impossible to win a financial fraud lawsuit/a./p
pa href=http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-powerful-corporations-world.htmlThe biggest companies/a amp; a href=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-flout-law-getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales.htmlthe biggest people in business/a at this point are simply a href=http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/01/settling-prosecutions-for-pennies-on-the-dollar-is-a-type-of-bailout.htmlabove the rule of law/a amp; a href=http://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec11/risk-rule-of-law12-11.htmlare not held accountable for their actions/a. Worse yet, a href=http://www.thenation.com/article/161057/wikileaks-haiti-let-them-live-3-daythe corrupt system has global influence/a./p
ulliIn 2004 a href=http://articles.cnn.com/2004-09-17/justice/mortgage.fraud_1_mortgage-fraud-mortgage-industry-s-l-crisisthe FBI warned/a that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud and that it would create a crisis.
/liliMy administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks, a href=http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/04/obama-to-banker/the president told them/a.
/liliAnd, in spite of the FBI highlighting the massive mortgage fraud, and the above quote, the president (who is a horrible human being) aims to keep the population misinformed amp; ignorant, publicly stating that a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUBUw3e2Gk4what Wall St did wasn’t illegal/a!
/li/ulpa href=http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/obama-prosecuting-fewer-financial-crimes-than-under-either-bush-presidency.htmlimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/obama-bankers.jpg //a/p
pHenry Kissinger has a famous quote about power: Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that. Since then a href=http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0811/call_uncle_sam_5c130fdd-0e34-4b04-99e1-3d923ea3919e.htmlgovernment officials have become much more evasive amp; smooth talking/a. Unfortunately, a href=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MK22Ak01.htmlfreedom of the press only goes so far/a:/p
blockquotepthis is how the much-lauded freedom of the press myth in the US actually works. If you perform the job of an actual journalist, telling truth to power, forget about attending press conferences at the White House, Pentagon or State Department. You won’t even be admitted in the building./p/blockquote
pWhen you ask for total market transparency it changes nothing with the criminality at the top, but it does a href=http://boingboing.net/2011/08/12/south-korea-to-abandon-real-name-internet-policy.htmlcreate a juicy data source/a a href=http://www.abc2news.com/dpp/news/crime_checker/baltimore_city_crime/city-police-are-investigating-another-home-invasionfor criminals/a while a href=http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57324779-281/doj-lying-on-match.com-needs-to-be-a-crime/harming/a a href=http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110805/02595015400/police-city-use-ridiculous-cyberstalking-claim-to-try-to-identify-jail-creator-mocking-videos.shtmlpersonal/a a href=https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2011/07/08civil/a a href=http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/wtf-what-fawkesliberties/a amp; a href=http://www.truth-out.org/recognizing-unpeople/1325894936unpeople/a a href=http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.htmlwith limited power/a:/p
blockquotepThe people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power. “Real names” policies aren’t empowering; they’re an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people. /p/blockquote
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