Signature in forum profile - Is it a sort of spam?

Getting backlinks from forum signatures is in existence from the day forums came into existence and had the feature to have backlinks. Is it still a good strategy I fear no. Forums are meant for quality discussions getting solutions for problems that you cannot find anywhere else in internet. Using such a wonderful resource for the same of spamming the search engines for backlinks is not a good idea.

I am personally not against it but if you see forums like digital point forums they allow forum signatures in exchange for minimum amount of postings and this actually helps the spammers more. I have seen many just start useless repeat threads or one do one line posts just to create an extra page with backlink. Digital point forum is a typical example of forum spamming most people who visit there are lacking of any SEO knowledge and this leads them to wrong assumptions on forum signatures.

There are discussions here just to know what keyword to use in forum signature, which page to link to, whether multiple pages from same sites can be linked, Is text required besides anchor text etc. I feel all these are just waste of time people can rather spend their time usefully than spamming forums for signature links. I request leave the forums alone they are very useful places for getting quality information.

Labels: Spam

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Adwords phishing beware

Now i see increased activity of adwords phishing, I get a lot of emails like this

"Our system was unable to process a payment for your outstanding Google AdWords account balance using your primary credit card. For the time being, your account is still open, and your ads are still running. However, we require you to update the payment information in your AdWords account very soon in order to ensure continued ad serving. Please update your credit card information in order to trigger our billing system to try processing your payment again. If you plan to use the same credit card(s), please use the 'Retry Card' button on the Billing Preferences page of your account. Otherwise, please follow the steps below to update the information in your AdWords account. 1. Log in to your AdWords account at: http://adwords.google.com 2. Click the 'My Account' tab. 3. Click 'Billing Preferences' link. 4. Click Edit next to the appropriate 'Payment Details' section. 5. Enter your new or updated payment information. 6. Click 'Save Changes' when you have finished. In the future, you may wish to use a back up credit card in order to help ensure continuous delivery of your ads. You can add a back up credit card by visiting your Billing Preferences page or visit the AdWords Help Centre for more. Tip: You can review the status of your billing on the Billing Summary page, under the 'My Account' tab. If a payment has been declined, click 'Payment Declined' beside the line item to review information for that particular payment. Once your payment has been processed successfully, you can view and print an invoice from your Billing Summary page. ------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. If you have any questions, please visit the Google AdWords Help Centre at https://adwords.google.com/support/?hl=en_GB to find answers to frequently asked questions and a 'contact us' link near the bottom of the page. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available. Sincerely, The Google AdWords Team"

Most of them are scam igmore it,

Labels: Spam

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SEO - Spam - spam spam and more spam from junk SEO companies.

We get these regular spam emails and we at Search Engine Genie are against spamming people for SEO related work.
Spam SEO email:
"On studying the lately Google algorithms - we have launched our new Link Building packages which are highly competitive and more productive in terms of Back Links and SERPs of website. You might have noticed that these days when we analyze PR pattern in top ranking sites, most of them are not high PR and even if you analyse backlinks of any site, most of the sites listed in backlinks list are low PR. In nutshell, there is no pattern of Pr is fond either in SERPs or Backlinks. Therefore only relevancy of the linking page matters these days. Also, it is suggestible to go with a mixture of all page rank links to avoid Google Filter Trap as Google tend to catch the uniformity in patterns of incoming links and it tends to reduce the weightage you should be getting of each campaign.
This founding has made us launch a new package of thematic links (irrelevant of PR) as well as update our existing packages to match with Google requirements. We have now included the following in all our packages - 1. We offer deep links in each campaign (acquiring links for inner pages with home page, targeting keywords for their related pages only).2. We offer rotating anchor texts (a set of couple of link details is used to make sure that Google does not identify a similarity in anchor texts for all back links).3. We offer a mixed PR links in the final report.4. We create links slowly and do not get all links created in a day or 2, so as to make it look natural for Search Engines.
These are not the only quality benchmarks but are only a few of those which are always taken care of while creating links for a project site. Still, if you find any link below the quality expected for genuine reasons, we replace it immediately without asking a second question (the first one will be the reason for which it was rejected).
We realize how important it is for many companies to outsource their business to other reliable companies and therefore to choose the Right Outsourcing Partner. Most companies overseas have achieved a significant amount of savings by outsourcing either complete or part of their Link Building, SEO or designing/development projects to India not only to cut the costs but also to ensure guaranteed results.. Thanks to the IT talent and cheaper labor costs in India.
With all our campaigns we assure you - -> Links will produce an organic traffic at website by doing ethical link building-> An appreciable improvement to current SERPs (search engine result position) at targeted keywords and keyword phrases.-> Balanced mechanism to prevent Google Filter trap.-> Goal oriented strategies for cost and time effective end product i.e.-> Complete return on investment ( ROI)
The methodologies we use to build links are --->Article posting - well written and preapproved by you, articles are submitted to highly reputed article directories.-->Link Popualrity - One way links are created by getting links on other theme related websites.-->Directory listings - Links are placed on relevant categories of a few highly reputed directories.
Please note that we can do all or a few selected methods to create links on the basis of your choice. We have a few packages for each of these.. with base package starting @ $5 per link. Please feel free to let us know for more details on quality, process or pricing.
Minimum order quantity is 100 links. We provide links @ 25 links/week."

Labels: link building, Spam

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Apologies to our users for Badware attack on our site.

We recently had our site being attacked by a virus injection code due to the vulnerability on our server. Older version of IE was responsible for this code injection and since it happened in a weekend we were unable to fix it immediately. We got a warning note from Google but our tech guy was there to fix the site by sunday afternoon. Monday morning Google removed the warning message from its search results after we cleaned the site for potential badware and filed a review. Google was very quick to fix the results and we are very much thankful to Google.

Now we have our guys monitoring the site 24 hours a day 7 days a week for potential problems they will be able to fix it immediately if there is any sort of problem. I once again apologize to our dear website users. We get more than 10,000 users a day and if anyone's system got affected we apologize for it and will make sure this will never happen again.

Our site is a safe site and will remain to be safe now and for ever,

Unfortunately we have the following message in Google safe browsing diagnostic. Google has all the rights to protect its users from malicious codes we will make sure this never happens with our site again.

"What is the current listing status for www.searchenginegenie.com/?

This site is not currently listed as suspicious.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 105 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 2 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 09/14/2008, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 09/13/2008.
Malicious software includes 2 exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 1 new processes on the target machine.

Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including :::::::::.com.

1 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including ******.cn.

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, www.searchenginegenie.com did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

"

Labels: badware, Spam

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Malware attack warning in firefox by Google

Firefox uses Google's malware filter to block sites having potential malware. A webmasterworld member has reported seeing this. He seem to notice it only now though this has been there for a long time,

he says,

"G have long been warning in their serp that a site may harm your computer, but this is new to me...
My platform is Mac, FF, with Addons; NoScript, MacAfee SiteAdvisor, and AdBlock Plus.
I was NOT using any Google site or feature, but tried to visit two sites I regularly go to +from a bookmarks page on my desktop+.
The first was a Formula One news site, the other a cycling enthusiast site, nothing dodgy at either usually.
However, a semi-opaque interstitial warning page covered my browser view warning me that the site I'm trying to visit may harm my computer, and according to my setting I am being warned, proceed or not?
Instead of visiting, I clicked on the "More info" link and was taken to a Google url (sorry I didn't save the url) with data on the site's malware problem, and last 90 days scanning results. It seems they had some harmful script inserted in their ads by a third party.
I removed those sites from my bookmarks page.
What concerns me, is that later I realized that I hadn't used any Google feature to visit those sites, so how did G know I was going to them?
I didn't go through G search, or a G bookmark. I went through a simple homemade bookmarks page on my desktop.
I have a Google account that I remain logged into most of the time. I use it for sitemaps, and the Google removal tool, G alerts, and of course G search.
However when I looked in my G account settings for anything remotely like, "Warn me if I ever try to visit a dodgy site", and there's nothing there remotely like that. I use the default "moderate" setting to stop filth showing in the serp.
So, how come G popped the interstitial, when I wasn't using any G site feature I'm aware of? Too spooky.
All I can guess is that McAfee are collaborating with G on the Site Advisor feature, and extending it's reach beyond the G serp? Or perhaps it is the NoScript addon people who G are collaborating with?
Normally when the McAfee addon warns you about a dodgy site it will point you to an info page on the McAfee domain, not the Google domain.
Anyone else seen this recently? Was it a test run, a slip-up, or old news?
Interestingly, I visited the same F1 site today using the same method, and got no warning interstitial, nor did the G serp listing of this site have any warning note. "

webmasterworld.com/google/3736923.htm

Labels: Search Engine Marketing, Spam

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Spammer Gets Jail - AOL user spammer gets jail

A spammer who spammed AOL users badly with his junk pharmacy spam got 26 months of Jail term. I am sure the Jail term he got is something he deserved. I wish all email spammers in this world gets Live jail terms. They are terrible low lifes.

Labels: Search Engine Cartoons, seo cartoons, Spam

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Google comes closer to ethical SEOs and SEO companies

Google recently rewrote their SEO page in Google Webmaster help. Before it used to focus on unethical SEOs now they have a more standard document where they give credit to companies who help Search engines deliver better results and webmasters / site owners develop better websites . According to Google good seos

Reviewing and providing recommendations on your site content or structure
Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
Content development
Managing online business development campaigns
Keyword research
SEO training

Well those are good points are most of them are basic stuff handled by any SEO company or SEO consultant. Apart from this good SEOs provide ethical ways to build quality back links. As we know Back links plays a very important factor when it comes to Search Engine Rankings especially in Google. Getting natural links through traditional ways are an important way for top rankings in Google.

1. Write articles which are useful and unique for users. This will help relevancy of the website as well as attract visitors which will result in back links.

2. Provide widgets that are useful and for free which will pay by itself through quality back links.

3. Impress the big authority and GOV sites by providing what they want they will link to your site if you can provide things they want to see and use often.

4. Make your site link worthy by making it as a useful hub for targeted users / customers. Good contents, attractive graphics, tools, forum, blog will all help If you have regular repeated visitors then you have achieved something. Repeated visitors are important since word of mouth referral is important for spreading the word which will result in quality back links.

According to Google some useful questions you can ask a SEO company:

Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
Do you offer any online marketing services to complement your organic search business?
What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what time frame?
What's your experience in my industry?
How long have you been in business?

I agree with all those questions they are pretty straight forward and covers a lot of things. If a good SEO gives a clear answer for these questions i am sure he can relied upon. I respect Google and will live by their stance on SEO even before this updation i never had anything against their rules. Its their search engine and they set the rules for it. We need to live by it. If we can't and if something wrong happens we need to face consequences. This is how it is and this is how it should be.

Vijay

Labels: Google update, Search Engine Marketing, Spam

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Google uses Search Logs effectively to combar Webspam

Fighting web spam using effective tracking of logs and click through data.

Matt Cutts Senior Software Engineer and Lead of Web Spam Team in Google recently made an interesting post on how Google effectively fights spam using Data collection.

Web Spam is the most annoying part of Internet today. Especially more than 85% people uses search engines to land on any site for the first time Search Engine Spam should be totally avoided when it comes to user search experience. Search engines have always had the taunting task of fighting web spam from the day they came into existence. Google is one of the search engines which used effective anti-web spam methods to combat search engine spam. This is one reason they are keeping their position on top of all search engines.

First time i have seen Google really acknowledge that they are using log data in their algorithm to combat spam. According to Official Google blog

"Data from search logs is one tool we use to fight web spam and return cleaner and more relevant results. Logs data such as IP address and cookie information make it possible to create and use metrics that measure the different aspects of our search quality (such as index size and coverage, results "freshness," and spam). Whenever we create a new metric, it's essential to be able to go over our logs data and compute new spam metrics using previous queries or results. We use our search logs to go "back in time" and see how well Google did on queries from months before. When we create a metric that measures a new type of spam more accurately, we not only start tracking our spam success going forward, but we also use logs data to see how we were doing on that type of spam in previous months and years.

The IP and cookie information is important for helping us apply this method only to searches that are from legitimate users as opposed to those that were generated by bots and other false searches. For example, if a bot sends the same queries to Google over and over again, those queries should really be discarded before we measure how much spam our users see. All of this--log data, IP addresses, and cookie information--makes your search results cleaner and more relevant."

As per Matt cutts IP address and search logs do play a role in judging the quality of results delivered to users. I personally feel this is a good option i know there are some IPs that spam the search engines more than the regular IPs if Google is able to monitor the IPs pretty well they can effectively block automated queries and this can be used in search algorithm. Some keywords will always be spammed more than others, Google as they say can use these type of tracking to impose more filters to those kind of phrases. As a person with more than 5 years of experience with search engines i can see Google imposes stronger filters for certain phrases than others. For keywords like Cancer, mesothelioma more gov, org authority sites rank which for keywords like auto transport, real estate commercial sites do a better job. Really enjoy the way the results are displayed since i don't like to see a commercial site when i search for medicine related information. Most of the time commercial sites provide much lesser value to users than non-commercial sites. There are areas where we need to see more commercial sites and there are areas that needs more information sites to be dominant. Only way to get this right is to check through the hysterical data and search logs and see what keywords are searched more from where, what the user did after clicking the data etc. User tracking can be done effectively using strong filters and effective methods.

Search Engines are facing problems every day. Apart from Web spam and search engine spam they see DDOS attacks, excessive bot activity, scrappers etc. To stand on top they need to keep working on stronger methods to combat spam.

Official Google Blog post here

Labels: Google, search engines, Spam

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How to prevent Google Bowling - Interesting discussion in WMW

I came across an interesting discussion in webmasterworld about how to prevent damage to a site by links from other sites. You can read more about the discussion here. http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3677877.htm

Tedster a long term member and webmaster world Administrator answers pretty well. I am very impressed with his answer and agree 100%.

Even if you block IP addresses or redirect pages, the links that point to your
website are still there, and they're on other sites that you can't control.
Those links will have whatever effect they have with Google's also.
There is
one thing that protects a website against Google Bowling - a solid backlink
profile of its own. The more your "real" quality backlinks grow, the less anyone
else's malicious actions can affect it.

Regardless of spam backlinks or now as tedster says a good backlink profile will automatically remove any bad PR received from bad links.

Labels: Google, Spam

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Not Enjoying all these spams

I get really ****** off when i see emails like this ending up in our company mail iD.

"Providing you 100% Manual Directory Submissions With Page Rank Details.

I am Niraj from India.
Providing you 100% Manual Directory Submissions With Page Rank Details.
I have one year of experience of directory submissions work.
and I am done 1000 directory submissions work all are manually in 8 to 10 hours or so.
I am doing it every day. It's my Job and passions as well.
And therefore I get $500 (Rs. 20000) per month. All because of Directory Submissions work.
You would be quite get surprise that my salary increase because of that below reason.
Before six month my salary is $250 (10,000) and I get other same kind of directory submissions job in one of our competitor company suddenly I put resignation in my firm.
And my manager told me that why u should leave our firm. My answer is that I will get $375 (Rs. 15000) per month suddenly my manager double my salary put my increment 100% and give me $500 (Rs. 20000) per month. And told me that never think to leave our company.

I am the only person who done 1000 directory submissions in a one day (8 to 10 Hours).

And then I got an idea to start my business own.

And providing manually Directory Submissions Service.

At this below price I will get some order in small amount directory submissions work like 5 to 10 sites directory submissions in one month.
100 Directories $10.00250 Directories $20.00500 Directories $35.00750 Directories $ 45.001000 Directories $65.00

But I can't get any regular client yet for directory submissions work.
I think you are one that client that's why I describe you all that.

R u give me regularly that kind of work.
I have a staff of five person they can submit 500 Directory per day as well.
I am sure u will find grate quality as well.
RegardsNiraj Patel"

I would have expected atleast some good english this letter is horribly written i can't believe how he can expect to get any business from it.

Labels: Spam

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Google Advisor site diagnostics tool - Google's free tool

Google now offers diagnostics report for a site for example

For our Site Searchenginegenie.com Google says the following
www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://searchenginegenie.com

Safe Browsing
Diagnostic page for searchenginegenie.com/
What is the current listing status for searchenginegenie.com/?
This site is not listed as suspicious.
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 2 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 05/10/2008, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days.
Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?
Over the past 90 days, searchenginegenie.com/ did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.
Has this site hosted malware?
No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

Well though the report sounds great for our site i am not sure how much i can believe Google on this.
I did the same search for serials.ws a popular crack download site. This site has f**ked up my system couple of times just for downloading some useless cracks. I am not sure how Google gives the following certification.

Safe Browsing
Diagnostic page for serials.ws/
What is the current listing status for serials.ws/?
This site is not listed as suspicious.
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 1310 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 05/26/2008, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days.
Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?
Over the past 90 days, serials.ws/ did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.
Has this site hosted malware?
No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

Well no malicious stuff on this site according to Google? that's very weird since this site is very popular for malicious downloads. Don't have a hint on what criteria Google judges the quality of a site.

Labels: Google, Search Engine Marketing, Spam

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tnx.net banned from Google

tnx.net is banned from Google for violating Google's guidelines. If you see their site tnx.net you can see they are selling text links without nofollow and selling Pagerank links which are against Google's guidelines. Their site is banned from Google obviously but to avoid looking like a banned site they blocked Googlebot from their site

their robots.txt ( tnx.net/robots.txt ) reads

Useragent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

Well they not only like to violate Google's guidelines they will also teach you how to hide links using their Spam tool,

forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=526547

The tool promotion page in Digital point forum reads

"Have you ever thought of WHY Google wants to scare you from buying links? Because it works great, when done with care, of course! In the previous thread "How to Rank N1 in Google for a Highly Competitive Keyword - Revealed" I spoke of some tips which will definitely help to stay away of Google's radars when buying links. Backlink building has to be done with great care - not to get penalized. 2 main points are: moderate link placement speed and a variety of link anchors to make links look natural. When over 100 new links pointing to one page appear in several days, all with same anchors (which is unnatural) - Google will most likely notice you and the pages you were promoting may disappear from SERPs for 1 month. This automated "too many links at once" filter is intended to keep you away from buying links, but it's very easy to avoid this filter! "

Already we know text-link-ads.com run by patrick gavin was banned now we have an other link broker under Google's radar go down.

If people think link brokers are the solution i recommend don't take that page. Instead find ways to improve your site and attract links.

Labels: pagerank, penalty, Spam

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Sanford wallace AKA Spamford wallace awarded 234$ million fine for spamming

Well people in online marketing industry for a long time should be knowing the long term spammer and one of the worst email spammer of all time Sanford Wallace. His company cyber promotions started in 1991 is one of the foremost email spamming company. He closed his company due to lawsuits and public pressure and now is resorted to spamming through more sophisticated methods.

Wikipedia has lot more information on this spammer . Well Now he is faced by a lawsuit by myspace for spamming their members using fake IDs. Now a civic court has ruled against him and he should pay 234$ million as fine to myspace for abusing their services. Well i am sure he is not going to pay this anyway i dont think first of all he has any where near that money to pay. I am sure this is just a warning lawsuit from Myspace to everyone trying to spam their users. Wallace was previously asked to pay FTC more than 4 million dollars as fine which he never paid http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0423142/WallaceFinalJudgment.pdf now i am sure for the type of low life he lives he will never pay the 234 million.

Spamford wallace runs his personally blog probably started very recently here http://sanfordwallace.com/wordpress/?p=5 . I am not sure whether its his personal blog ( no way to authenticate ) but seeing from the postings it seems its the real sanford wallace.

The thread about recently lawsuit really attracted me.

his post

"$234 million dollar judgment
I just read that a court awarded MySpace a $234 million dollar judgment against me. That's pretty amazing since I haven't even been served in this case since the preliminary injunction about a year ago. Regardless, the check's in the mail.
"

and his replies

admin Says:
Good demonstration of how some people base their thoughts on erroneous information. #1 The poster doesn’t understand the meaning of a civil judgment. #2 The poster clearly feels I send crap in his or her inbox even though I haven't sent a mass commercial email in over 10 years.

admin Says:
"Innocent until proven guilty" does not apply to civil actions. And I am still waiting to be served. And I haven't been hiding either. The whole case was one big PR move.

admin Says:
There’s a big difference between crying "its not my fault" and "they won a $234 million dollar judgment without even serving the defendant." I'm not asking you to care about me. I'm asking you to care about what happens when a huge corporation and the gov't have a common interest.

I personally want all the email spammers to go to hell or serve Capital punishment they are just a disgrace to internet and Internet freedom

Labels: social bookmarking, Spam

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Yahoo Mcafee join hands to pick out spammers in search results

Yahoo has tied hands with Mcafee to pick spammers from search results and warn innocent searches from potential problem they might face visiting a website. If you see the following screen shot

You can see the warning display from Yahoo search results. The site featuring in search seem to be an email spammer. Emails submitted to that site are added to some bulk email lists and results in 1000s of spam to those email IDs. Now Yahoo includes a warning to remove these potential spammers. The note says "Use caution in providing your email address. It may result in unsolicited or spammy emails" The site featuring here is carbonneutral.com a potential email spammer according to Yahoo and Mcafee.

There will be some innocent occurrences of this where sites may get flagged for sending unsolicited email whereas the people who reported the email as spam had actually elected to receive it. But this is rare most of the time email spammers are spammers regardless of whether they are guilty or Not.

Labels: Spam, Yahoo

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SEOmoz can i have an optout / Unsubscribe link please

Sorry to say i am not happy about commercial emails from SEOmoz, When i joined i never found any option where i opt-in for their commercial emails. This is the recent email I got from them

"You may have seen our launch of our new SEO Video Training Series on the
blog last week. Dozens of people took advantage of our special
introductory pricing and the feedback on the series has been fantastic. We want
to make sure everybody who wants to learn sound SEO fundamentals can get their
hands on this awesome training product, so we've got a special offer for
you.
We promised we wouldn't offer the ridiculous Introductory Price of
nearly 40% off again, but here's what we can do: make it more affordable than
ever for you to get the SEO Video Training Series at the PRO Member price of
$199 ($200 off of the Retail Price of $399)...
Until Saturday, May 3rd, you
can get the complete SEO Video Training Series AND 1-Year of SEOmoz PRO
Membership for only $499! Purchased Separately, these items would
cost $798. Even with the PRO discount on the Video Series, you'd still pay $648
for both. Look at it either way you want, you're saving a minimum of $99!
To
take advantage of this awesome, limited-time offer, simply go to the SEOmoz
Store and add a 1-Year SEOmoz PRO Membership and The SEO Video Training Series
to your shopping cart, then use the Coupon Code COMBO50 during checkout to
receive your special price on this great package.
Cheers, The SEOmoz
Team
PS-Remember, this offer is only available for Three Days, until
Saturday, May 3rd!
PPS-If you're thinking of attending SMX Advanced in our
hometown of Seattle, PRO Membership will get you 10% off (early bird rates still
apply!) as well as an invite to our incredible party (check out what happened
last year)!
This email was sent by: SEOmoz4314 Roosevelt Way NE Seattle, WA,
98105, USA"
Update profile:

Ok i dont see an opt out link in this email. When i click on update profile i am taken to the login page where i have to find the email settings and then i need to remove tick to opt out. Why do i need to do this? . I think SEOmoz should ask whether i opt in for commercial emails from them when i register.

i don't want to receive couple of commercial emails and then run and find a way to opt-out,

Thanks for understanding
Search Engine Genie.

Labels: search engines, Spam

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Most recent SEO related Informative Thread in Google Groups.

I have already read this thread in detail but i keep reading it again and again. Just one single thread and it has ton of information from some of the best Search Engine Experts. Especially I enjoy the SEO expert's friendliness with Search Engines. Most of the forums i see there will be a huge crowd ready to bash Google. But this thread is so much fun to read just because it has real valuable information from experts like Matt Cutts, John Muller, Aaron Pratt, JLH, SEO101 etc.

I recommend everyone to read this thread and understand how a webmaster was able to over come his penalty and get back his ranking in Google. Accept you are wrong and Google is always ready to forgive. We had a client who came to us with a penalized site. They bought links from TLA and Google has detected those links and imposed some sort of penalty. We reviewed the site and recommended client to remove all paid links and file a re inclusion. You know what his answer was?
"Google is the looser since it has banned his site. Google is unlucky because it doesn't have his company site in their index" . Come on client if not your site Google has millions of sites to index and they are not worried if one aggressive site is not in their index even though it might be world's best. It took us lot of time to convince him to clean up paid BLs. Finally he did but still he was not ready to give up his Ego and submit re inclusion. We on behalf of him filed a re inclusion and finally the site came back to Good top rankings. He was all praises for us but the truth we didn't do anything all we did was explain in detail mistakes that was previously done on site and said that it will never be repeated again. Google accepted our words and included the site so lesson learnt if you want Google to send free traffic for your site play by their guidelines if you going to spam them face the consequences.

Read that thread again its better than my voice

Labels: Search Engine Optimization, search engines, Spam

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Pending Spammers - Aggressive affiliate Marketers

Google and other search engines have weeded out most of the spam out of their search engines. But still one industry that keeps Spamming the search engines using very innovative methods. is the ever aggressive affiliate marketing industry. I know many affiliates still depend on Search Engines for traffic to their spam site will affiliate links all over the place. So how many of us like affiliate.

Personally affiliate sites are a No-No for me. When I click on Search engine results and end up an a affiliate page first thing I do is to close the browser and find an other result. I hate to buy from someone who is reselling the product than buying directly from the dealer.
Affiliates still spam the search engines using methods search engines are never aware of before. Its very difficult to tackle this industry since lot of money is involved in this industry and many affiliate marketers are not willing to find better ways to do online business. I don't blame all affiliate sites there are some rare sites which do provide Good information while have random affiliate links mixed on their site but most of the affiliate sites don't add any value for any visitor. Also MFA ( Made For Adsense ) sites are an other disgrace to search engine users. When i click on a result and see a page full of adsense ads, affiliate links i never enjoy the site nor will i want to visit the site again.
i hope search engines completely get rid of all sites that have affiliate links and dont add any value for users this is the last type of death to spam I am looking for in Search engines.

Labels: Google, Search Engine Marketing, Spam

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Dont teach how to run business for Search Engines.

So what's up with the paid text link debate. I have seen enough places where people complain Google is teaching them how to run their website and Business. Is that considered Joke of 2008. SEOs are here because Google and other search engines are here. There is no special technological industry named SEO. This whole industry is here because of flourishing Search engines so why complain them.
Text link advertising is not the traditional way you advertise? You do it for Search Engines. Everything you do for search engines be ready to face the consequences. Want to ride behind the back of a Search Engine make sure you play by the rules. Search engines have the rights to penalize text link publishers/advertisers manually, algorithmically by editorial review anyway they want way as long as it improves the quality of their results. Why complain that Search engine's are teaching you to run a business while actually you are the one who is teaching Search engines how to run a business. As the Search Engine experts have stated you are free to do anything on your website and the same way Search engines have every right to do anything with their algorithm as long as its for the best for their users. I am part of a SEO company too and I always Bow to any changes Google make if there is a ranking change for our sites or our client sites we try to see what mistake was done and find a solution. We never put the blame on any Search Engine. As long as we are in Search Engine Optimization industry lets be close to Search Engines and play by their rules. If we move a bit away from their guidelines lets face the consequences.

I humbly request Search Quality engineers like Adam Lasnik, Matt Cutts not to try and defend what you are doing, keep doing what's best for your users and don't worry when somebody tries to curse Google for something they do with their algorithm. If 1000 SEOs join together and curse Google for penalizing paid links what does it show? They want Google to stop penalizing paid links so that they can keep buying links and keep manipulating results its as simple as that. I cannot find an alternate reason for it i am sure its not the reason you are looking for that is best for your users. So keep doing what's best for your algorithm and users and please dont justify and try to defend your ideas. People who love Search Engines will know how to appreciate it.

Search Engine Genie.

Labels: Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Spam

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rel= external nofollow and rel=nofollow difference

I have seen many people ask in forums what's the difference between rel=external nofollow and rel=nofollow,

Nofollow is a co-ordinated efforts from Google, yahoo , MSN to stop crawling links that are considered not trustworthy or spammy. Today many blogs, message boards, forums, news sites use nofollow tag to prevent spam in their comments or other areas of the blogs or forums. Now there is a new tag that is similar to rel=nofollow that is rel=external nofollow, external nofollow works the same as nofollow tag but this tag opens links in a new window instead of the same window. If you want to try just add rel="external" it will open the link in a new window. it sort of works like target=_blank. Target blank opens all hypertext links in the new window and rel=external nofollow, blocks all link juice and opens the link in a new window.

So if you find a blog that uses this dont get too excited, links from these blogs dont count. Move on and better luck next time

Labels: Google, Spam

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Cloaking still works in Google Blog search - cloaking in Google

I was surprised to see Cloaking still works in Google or atleast in Google blog search, When I was searching today for our blog post which usually features in Google blog search as as we make an entry we came across a really weird site, It showed some snippet in search results which was very interesting to click but when we click on the site it redirects to a via-gra spam site

This is the spammer's website check the redirected and cloaked URL,

So how will Google stop spamming and cloaking in blog search

Got to wait and see,

Search Engine Genie.

Labels: Google, Spam

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