When it concerns digital technologies we here in Britain are used to be feeling like living in the Stone Age when compared to the advanced wonders of the Far East. Miniaturisation and digitalisation entered almost every aspect of their daily life continuing to surprise unprepared Westerners. Almost every British visitor comes from Japan with a regular story about electronically equipped public toilets which turn a rather mundane and touchy process into some kind of elaborate and lavish ritual accompanied by a row of unexpected pleasures. However, even Japan is way behind in terms of toilet digitalisation when compared to one neighbouring city-state where recently a network of advanced 21st century public toilets was installed all over this tiny city-state.
The government of this tiny country decided to celebrate the entry into the new millennia by unveiling the most technologically advanced network of public facilities. It was indeed yet another world wonder with advanced auto-sensing flashing system, built-in 3D washing device, automatic wiping glider and many more things we have no name for in English language yet. Not only each node in this network is connected to the central hub and to all others via high-speed digital link but also they are interlinked in a complex network relaying all of the matter produced in the process to the highly advanced faeces treatment facility where they get sorted and processed for further recycling and that’s why the facility was dubbed EcoTech Loo. What is however crucial for our story that these toilets are of course featuring broadband high-speed wireless internet access with 35-inch sensor touch screen and virtual keyboard provided. But to understand the importance and the true significance of the issue raised by recent events we need to look into the history of the service in question first.
Despite of all these technological advances, shortly after the open day the system had run into some sort of unforeseen trouble. When designed the system was supposed to be free for all citizens of the country except certain categories that included among others criminals on probation, high income earners, sex offenders, known members of terrorist organisations and so on. As all those belonging to these categories have almost natural tendency to cheating the system it is not surprising that the number of paid entries into public toilets for the first year was next to nothing. The alarm was raised after the annual first report of the EcoTech Loo PLC. As soon as this figure was revealed to public, concerns started to spring up regarding mainly not the financial loss as such, but the very principle of fairness which was compromised in this case. Although the fee when paid was rather substantial nearing 10 pounds in UK currency (roughly US$ 20) the EcoTech Loo PLC is a public-private partnership and essentially not for profit enterprise, so the main issue was to find a way to restore the justice in this sensitive area. Initially the solution was to introduce personal entry cards providing free entry for all eligible individuals and charging appropriate fee automatically from the accounts of those who had no right of free entry. But the pilot scheme failed miserably as it turned out to be that it is not only extremely easy to clone the first generation cards equipped only with magnetic strip, but also there is no way to verify the true identity of the user. Some criminal gangs immediately sniffed the opportunity to make a quick buck and organised groups that provided an entry for a smaller fee using either counterfeited or stolen entry cards.
The solution obviously had to cover two aspects: increased security of the card itself as well as to introduce some way of verifying the identity of the actual user. If the former problem could be solved relatively easy just by replacing magnetic strip with a miniature chip the latter required the use of some advanced technology. It was decided to install some advanced biometric sensors right into the seat but this was not the most complex part of the system. The key to its success was brought by state of the art biometric recognition software, programmed not only to take into account significant differences between male and female private parts, but also to be able to provide 100% accuracy while recognising male standing position. When the second generation toilet cards with on-chip biometrics came into use in 2002 it was such a success that many were queing over night to replace their old cards despite of the significant cost (90 UK pounds or over 180 US$) and initial biometric recording that had to be performed on a special recording seat in presence of two independent witnesses. Needless to mention that re-recording of biometrics had to take place annually to take into account natural changes that occur in human anatomy with time.
This new system was not only efficient, practical and convenient on its own but also triggered an unimaginable chain of innovation that brought public services in the country to unprecedented heights.
Firstly the Department of Health seized the opportunity to identify toilet users and proposed to install express test devices right into every toilet to run a quick test on urine and faeces. Test results were passed direct into individual computer files kept in the department, thus allowing not only to gather public statistics but also to provide each toilet user with valuable health recommendations displayed on a special LCD screen together with test results and also available in paper format for free. It also proved to be an invaluable tool for real-time monitoring of epidemiologic situation throughout the whole country. If carriers of dangerous infections were detected with express tests the toilet emergency auto locking feature allowed to detain a person until the emergency medical team arrives to provide the necessary help. To counter cross-border spread of infectious diseases in cooperation with Immigration and Nationality directorate the Department of Health put forward an initiative according to which all entering the country were issued temporary Visitors Toilet ID cards at the expense of the state and biometric recording facilities were installed at each point of entry.
Immigration and Nationality directorate also developed it’s own programme based on existing facilities aimed at controlling the problem of illegal immigrants and have effective and measured immigration flow. The system not only greatly simplified the procedure of detention and subsequent deportation of illegal immigrants but also allowed to monitor the process of cross-border migration in great detail. Food Safety Agency soon followed the example as express test results allowed to monitor the quality of food eaten and interview the user right in the toilet about sources of food he or she consumes, which helped immensely on their clampdown on producers of substandard food and drinks. Environmental Agency took the opportunity to sort the material right at the place which eliminated the need for a rather costly excrement sorting procedure at the recycling plant.
Next there were various debt collecting agencies who established Digital Debt Collecting Association which was authorized by the government and most of other creditors to collect outstanding debts using the facility already present within the system. Each Toilet ID card is initially tied to a current account held in the State Bank which each citizen has from the age of 5. Initially it was designed to charge the entry fee direct from accounts of those not eligible for free entry. As this state was not permanent, all Toilet ID cards were linked to corresponding bank accounts by default. Quite soon other types of charges started to be processed through this extremely convenient system including particularly various types of fines. The ease of processing fines allowed replacing traditional long-term prison sentences with substantial fines for most economic crimes, petty theft and basically for the majority of crimes not involving bodily harm. Instead of locking people in the state decided not to deprive the economy of qualified labour force and not to damage the social fabric but rather use economic leverage to gain beneficial effects. As the amount of fines was often substantially larger than sums usually held on these accounts the government instituted so-called Liberty Loan automatically assigned for the period of 20 years equal to the outstanding remainder of a fine. These measures helped boosting the economy of the state as current Finance Minister proudly remarked we now have both, budget proficit, and zero inflation rate plus unprecedented growth of GDP, all thanks to reforms that had been made possible following the introduction of our high-tech Toilet ID cards.
And finally of course the facility got attention of a number of Law Enforcement agencies. Some in the Drugs Control department of the Ministry of Internal affairs realised that the express urine test could also detect the presence of illegal substances and in cooperation with General Penitentiary Directorate introduced a programme of correctional detention for drug users. This used the emergency auto locking feature to lock in those in whose urine traces of illegal substances were detected and detain them for a period until their urine test comes clean. Combined with some anti-drug treatment supplied with drinking water and correctional messages and educational documentaries played all day long on the plasma screen it helped to significantly reduce the number of drug addicts throughout the country. The Chief of the General Penitentiary Directorate praised the success of the scheme in following terms: It greatly streamlined the judicial process, saved us from completely unnecessary burocratic procedures as well as masses of paperwork and made it more objective since the duration of the sentence now is not arbitrarily imposed by judges but directly depends on the bodily state of the offender. This is much more measured approach. It creates the atmosphere of fairness in the society. With the help of the technology of the future we are building safer and more just future for our society today.
Soon the idea of streamlined detention was extended to other petty criminals covering offences usually classed in Britain as Antisocial Behaviour and it proved to be very effective. Why you may ask? Why would a criminal ever enter this kind of facility knowing that he or she will be immediately locked up in there? There are two reasons for this and both are quite logical. Firstly the fine for leaving excrements in public place (which is for most citizens is anywhere outside their own private loo) is unbelievably high and surely there are moments when you just can’t hold it. Secondly and perhaps even more significantly the only alternative to being confined are various types of corporate punishment provided by law for these types of offences. If you had a choice, which would you prefer: getting forty or fifty lashes or spending a couple of weeks in a rather warm and comfortable hi-tech environment equipped with high-speed internet access and coming out clean afterwards? You guessed what I’d choose.
And of course it came only natural that a year later it was decided to abolish old-fashioned electric chairs used for the execution of capital punishment in favour of so-called Execution Plug-in which supplemented EcoTechLoos throughout the country. The advantage over traditional electric chair came from the fact that the executed did not actually need to sit on it as the lethal charge could pass along the stream of urine. There were concerns expressed over the reliability and safety of the system but they were quickly countered by a number of field tests. In words of the Interior Minister of the current government of the country: there is no chance of the system accidentally misfiring. We can guarantee absolute safety of our execution device. Law abiding citizens have nothing to fear. It’s criminals who should be afraid. Our country holds a moratorium for capital punishment so it is not likely that our execution device will be ever used in practice but its efficiency in crime prevention as a deterrent for potential criminals is beyond comparison. Soon all the police cars too became equipped not only with Toilet ID card readers but also with ecologically friendly biometric devices which along with its main purpose provided a much needed convenience for the officers on patrol.
It all went good until today, when a huge controversy potentially leading to international scandal emerged ignited by a punitive detention of a British national who allegedly violated the pornography laws of the country. Nick Green of West London, a biology student (name and address are changed for privacy reasons) who is visiting the country as a tourist this morning downloaded and watched a video clip from YouTube that graphically depicts the process of plant pollination while using the EcoTech Loo facility. As a result he was automatically sentenced to five plus two days of corrective detention starting this morning. Immediately after the emergency auto locking feature activated Nick Green started an active internet-based campaign in his defence. He contacted his lawyers in Britain and a number of non-governmental organisations defending the cause of Internet privacy including the well-known Privacy International. In his statement he insisted that he was unaware of the fact that watching graphical depiction of plant pollination that is classed under category of animal sex especially when insects are involved into the process, constitutes a criminal offence he also called the current pornography laws of the country " ridiculous and stupid " and called for international pressure to change the definition of pornography and even proposed a convention to define what constitutes a criminal offence in relation to pornographic images. Understandably, he suffered a great deal of shock as a result of his unexpected imprisonment so he could not control his initial reactions. He also protested against the additional two days sentence for the involvement of insects arguing that plants and animals belong to different species and hence it does not constitute a natural sexual act. I’m afraid this argument may only make the matters worse.
His lawyers in their statement took a different approach arguing that based on US v. Zeigler case Nick must have had a reasonable expectation of privacy when using the Internet from the EcoTech Loo facility also arguing that satisfying this type of natural needs is by definition a very private act and hence all actions associated with it are to be considered as private hence the evidence can not be admitted. The problem however is that the decision was made automatically according to legal algorithms programmed into the EcoTech Loo facility and there is no appeal procedure provided by law. This creates an interesting legal precedent as under international pressure the government of the country is already willing to release Nick Green from his detention, but the only way of doing it is through the procedure of pardoning but Nick Green is refusing to plead guilty at the stage which creates a kind of legal standstill which is only possible to overcome by changing the draconian laws of the country and that is a mammoth tack that can only be achieved by mounting constant international pressure on the government of the country.
I fully support Nick’s efforts in this direction and as a sign of protest I decided to place the video that caused his imprisonment here in my blog. Ironically, the video is narrated by David Atenborough who was once described within the country as "a known English pervert" and whose entry to the country is prohibited on the grounds that he allegedly sponsored "the largest series of animal pornography in history". On the same grounds BBC reporters are also banned from entering the country and reporting from there.
WARNING! Watching these videos may constitute a criminal offence in some parts of the world! Watch them at your own risk.
I also decided to supplement this video with more instances of the so-called plant pornography just to keep you entertained.
P.S. it might seem ridiculous when you first look at it but we all should perhaps use it as a lesson before introducing such dramatic technological changes into our society. The rapid penetration of new technology into our dense and fragile social fabric might sometimes lead to consequences completely unforeseen at the beginning. Let the tragic fate of Nick Green serve as a warning to our government too!
My dearest SEXiest SEO – I’m infinitely sorry. How could I be so stupid not to post my virtual greetings in time? How could I think that it’s enough to make a non-virtual presentation? Forgive me SexySEO.
Well, not SexySEO actually. It’s Lora’s birthday, not hers. But she’s angry with me. Who? Lora or SexySEO? I’m totally confused and the more I think about, the more confusing it seems. Lora wasn’t angry with me when I met her at the party. SexySEO is angry that I forgot to post my greetings in her blog. But they are the same person, aren’t they? I know they are! I’ve seen them both! Both in real life and online. Admittedly not at the same time and moreover SexySEO can only be met online while Lora predominantly circulates in real world.
Surely they are the same, as it clearly isn’t the case of split personality. Perhaps it’s very much like when writing a novel author feels that when characters become more and more developed they become more and more independent and even the one that was supposed to be the alter ego becomes detached and starts demanding the right for independence. Banal comparison it is, but still worthy of taking it a bit further. Online interaction is different indeed, as you can not detach yourself from your online personality to the same degree, and the narrative of online interaction is forged daily and is never completed. It demands consistency. You can’t get too distant from your online image but you gradually realise how it attaches itself to your offline you and now we can’t make any distinction between Lora and SexySEO. But were they ever separate?
SexySEO is neither a fiction not a function and neither is Lora. It once started as an experiment. Once I suggested that Web 2.0 SEO isn’t about unique content at all. It’s about social interaction in online communities. This became known as zero content SEO in our circle but remained just an untested idea until Lora decided to put it in practice. And the course of events took SexySEO from being just a nickname to becoming a separate phenomenon, almost a brand name if you allow. Something that was started by Lora as just a proof of concept suddenly became an integral part of our online environment. Honestly. I have no clue how she did it. Perhaps the key to her social media success, along with unquestionable expertise in conventional SEO, is her remarkable and friendly personality. Not only she managed to make otherwise dull and booring business of SEO to look sexy but somehow she is able to see the best sides of all people she communicates with and find nice and comforting words exactly when one needs it (the skill I am admittedly short of). And now again I don’t know if I am talking about Lora or SexySEO, but who cares since they are the same.
So, happy birthday to you, Lora and my sincere apologies to SexySEO!
Better late than never
PS: for those who never met SexySEO here is her blogspot: SexySEO
We are all hungry for inbound links these days and even more so since the introduction of nofollow which I personally hate as it did not solve a bit the problem of comment spam it was supposed to solve but had a detrimental effect on social networks and blogsphere in particular. It turned all of us bloggers into a particularly greedy bunch. Before placing a link we started to think of how much we would lose if it’s an open link without nofollow. Although my attempt to mock the whole nofollow concept by inventing a rel=follow attribute proved to be popular enough it nevertheless is too limited to change the picture in any significant way. The only solution to this seems to be generosity. But generosity itself isn’t enough in a world governed by the principle of self-interest. Attempts to persuade an average webmaster that outgoing links from his/her site are beneficial since eventually they will bring a hub status to the linking resource were not too convincing. It needed more than just empty promises of some benefits in the future. Linking should be mutually beneficial for both the linking site and the linked one and more these benefits must be obvious and immediate. For quite some time I’ve been thinking about a strategy that would realize these objectives and finally I think I came up with one.
Initially the idea was triggered by observing rather old-fashioned SEO attempts to pull out their own sites from Search Engine results using site: operator. I am sure you are all familiar with this dumb trick and if not just follow this link to see what it does. You see? This is an example of pure greed and selfishness. You pull out your own site and only your own site. Now let’s try a different search this time using not site: but link: operator (example). These are URLs of resources linking to lzzr.com. And what’s the point, you might ask? Surely if you are greedy it does not make any sense to promote someone else’s URL but if you are clever you’ll quickly realize that it’s in your own best interests to have inbound links from strong pages. Think about the amount of time and effort (and very often money) an average SEO spends on acquiring links from pages with good Page Rank. Now, the same goal can be achieved simply by making some effort promoting pages that already have natural links to you! They are already out there, just give them some link love. Of course this way you push up resources that are not owned or operated by you and hence you loose something but the gain which in my opinion outweighs the hypothetical loss you may suffer is that all of those pages link back to you!
From strictly SEO point of view you create a perfect 3-way linking structure where Search Engine Results Page (SERP) serves as an intermediary between you and pages linking to you. In other words you link to results page and results page links to a number of sites each having a link back to you. This 3-way linking is known to be much more effective than a usual reciprocal linking and is not punishable like the outdated link farm method. On a side note: I strongly insist that the structure I just described can not be considered search engine spamming as it makes a perfect sense from user’s point of view. Let me explain: I as a webmaster certainly hold a pretty high opinion about myself and my website. Equally I should value those who appreciated my website by placing a link to it. Thus promoting websites linking to you is just a simple sign of respect and appreciation. I also assume that sites linking to my content are relevant to this content hence linking to them enhances user experience!
However the potential of this structure is limited since search engines are rarely indexing their own pages (Google results page will not be indexed and processed by Google but Netscape results page for example will be seen in Google) and even if they did these result pages are still orphan i. e. have no internal links coming from within the search engine itself. A perfect solution would be to have a page like this to be a part of your own resource – an objective that was horribly difficult to achieve until very recently in purely technical terms.
Now here is where Web 2.0 comes to the rescue. Let’s check this example from Google BlogSearch (similarly you can pull your results from Technorati but Technorati is lame). True it only displays links from blogs but look at the bottom of the Google page – you see it can be pulled out as Feed! Now, do I need to continue? Almost every single Web 2.0 resource or service comes with a built-in ability to pull and display feeds. Now all you need to do to promote blogs linking to you is to set up such feeds at every possible place and watch how pages linking to you grow in reputation and PageRank pushing up your own resource on the way.
This is exactly what I do for my blog. The easiest way is to create Yahoo Pipes page combining Google and Technorati feeds. But the easiest doesn’t mean the best since Yahoo Pipes are notoriously slow and are usually badly indexed by Google. Surely I must have more SEO Tricks up my sleeve. I obviously keep and maintain LZZR accounts on all major social networking services to beef up both LZZR online presence and exposure which is a bon ton thing to do these days. At every opportunity I include a feed with links to sites linking to LZZR.com. Of course different services have different options and consequently different SEO efficiency. On major blog systems such as Blogger, MSN Live, Wordpress.com etc. you are only allowed to display a limited number of feed entries in your external feeds and as a result sites that are at the top of Google Blog Search and the most recent Technorati entries will be favoured. In addition these link blocks are set up as separate page areas different from content and links due to their small number will have a substantial link churn. Not so good but at least something. Squidoo is a better place as they allow including a substantially large number of feed entries and besides they are displayed within the main content area of the page. But the best opportunities can be realised at Tumblr and Jaiku blog services. These two are really godsend as each new feed entry in those systems is published as a separate blog posting thus permanently affixing each link. Another interesting option is to propagate you back links feed by setting up special groups at various services like Bumpzee or the same Squidoo.
Note: I purposly avoided placing such link feed blocks on lzzr.com itself to prevent Link Farm structure.
So here is the deal: you link to any page at LZZR.com and get a bunch of backlinks to your site from places I manage and be sure do my best to promote. Your site must be a blog and it should be already indexed by Technorati and Google. I suggest you write a blog post about this very idea and link back to this very article rather than to the root. This will be more beneficial to you as the article itself already contains a bunch of outgoing links to places where I set up link feeds. However if you don’t want to link direct to the article any link to any page within lzzr.com will do including a root link. I became so excited about this idea that I even designed some buttons for the occasion. I think they visually represent the idea of LZZR linking where a LZZR link reflects from an intermediary.
Feel free to copy them and don’t be afraid of hotlinking as hotlinking is good!
Now if you are still thinking that this whole idea is just a shameless self-promotion – go back to the beginning and read again. I am sure you’ll find a rational core in all this. There is a good deal of self-interest in all this of course. I get inbound links from you. But at the same time you get a number of links pointing to you in return and this number is going to grow for as long as I’ll be finding new places to insert my link feed into. I will also be promoting pages with back links by all means available as this is in my own best interest. Thus there comes a perfect win-win combination!
PS:
Of course the temptation to copyright this idea and call it LZZR linkingTM is huge but in the spirit of true generosity I will refrain from doing so. You are free to replicate this structure for your site as this would be a really effective way to fight the nofollow greed. The only thing I would object to is if you decide to pass this idea as yours without proper attribution in a form of a backlink to this article :-). And should it be mentioned that linking back is in your best interests anyway… It’s good to link LZZR.com!
Just came across Twitter - for those who don’t know it is a microblog community that encourages people to share all pretty boring and extremely uninteresting events in their life with the whole world at a terrifying frequency. There you will have a chance to learn about digestion problems of people you would never want to meet in real life and intimate details of sexual life of pre-adolescent teenagers. Overall it’s an exiting Web 2.0 resource asking you just one simple question: What are you doing?. You are then urged to provide a quick answer as often as you can and as fast as you can possibly type. You can even post their with your mobile phone or IM client. Not surprising that most messages there vary within a rather limited range from reading such-and-such book or watching such-and-such movie to writing this very Twitter post. Remember you need to be short there is 140 words limit. A perfect abode for a community of compulsive characters with limited imagination, short attention span combined with attention deficit syndrome and good typing skills.
Believe me, I’d never mention anything like this to you, my reader out of sheer respect if it was not for a great Wordpress plugin by Alex King called Twitter Tools. Admittedly Twitter has a good API and the plugin is nearly perfect. It allows posting your twits as they are called to your Wordpress blog (I must confess I opted out, fortunately it’s flexible enough for this). In addition it makes possible posting your normal blog entries as twits which is something. From SEO point it’s a definite advantage that should be used in bSEO by default. So my advice – if you have a Wordpress blog get a twitter account, set up this plugin and on you go gaining more incoming links and additional exposure with no additional effort. I do and here is LZZR at Twitter for you.
There is of course a mild risk of heaving to deal with duplicate content issues but we aren’t afraid, are we?
At the request of WhiteHat SEO community on April the 1st this year all major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN Live declared their joint support for a newly developed XFN standard.
The new attribute rel=follow is designed to complement the notorious rel=nofollow. However unlike nofollow attribute rel=follow is designed to express not negative but positive relationship between a linking website and a website rel=follow link points to.
I’ll try to explain it in layman’s terms - when using nofollow you instruct a Search Engine not to count this link in their Link Popularity calculations for Google it will be the well known Google PR index. If you put rel=follow on contrary you instruct a Search Engine algorithm to double the positive weight of your link.
To provide greater flexibility and more granular approach it is currently recommended to use follow value in quantity proportionate to the relative importance of a web site you point your link to.
Example 1:
rel="follow"
will simply double the weight of your link
Example 2:
rel="follow" rel="follow"
or alternatively rel="follow follow"
(note that both versions of implementation are equally valid, note also that no commas needed for the second version) will increase the weight of a link 4 times 1×2x2=4
Let’s take a bit more complex instance
Example 3:
here we have follw 10 times which gives the increase of ranking in 1×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2=1024 times compare to the ranking a link would normally pass.
It is also possible to use advanced CSS2 to provide a visual reflection of the quantitative weight of the rel=follow attribute in a way similar to how TagCloud visually reflects relative tag popularity.
The most inspiring of all thing is that according to the new specification to encourage a widspread uptake of the rel=follow standard all Search Engines confirmed the change in their algos that had been altered not to deduct the proportionate weight from the Link Popularity index of a page that uses rel=follow. In other words when you use rel=follow you will be able to pass as much PR as you wish without losing the PR of the page itself (PR Bleeding), at least no more than you would if you were using a normal link without any attributes. So at last WhiteHat SEO is rewarded with a wonderful standard capable of defeating the current link spam epidemic.
Ultimately, this new attribute provides us with extremely flexible tool capable of changing the nature of the internet relationships an enhancing the social network experience. Some sceptics however remarked that it might open yet another door for abuse.
Watching my Adsense traffic from over two hundreds of sites I’ve noticed lately an unusual drop in performance. My average adsense income per site had dropped almost in half. The truth of the matter that I honestly considered this to be a natural phenomenae accuring as a result of lowering traffic and never bothered to look into my server logs. Not until I stumbled upon this article which thanks to it’s authos is published under very liberal licensing so I will draw upon it rather heavily since there is no need to rephrase something with wich I absolutely agree. Here is the punchline:
Data on several sites maintained by the operators of Texxors.com suggests that Google may be manipulating the profits webmasters receive from Google’s Adsense program. Our analysis shows statistical evidence that as a website becomes more popular, it receives less earnings per click (EPC) from Google Adsense. Since the EPC is determined by Google’s algorithms prior to the ad being served to a page, this suggests that Google may be intentionally or unintentionally manipulating EPC to increase their profit and/or Adsense participation. The method appears to be similar to the “throttling” practices that landed online movie retailer Netflix in legal hot water last year.
What follows is a quite interesting statictical analysis of stats which leads to this conclusion:
Clearly, whether you judge a site’s popularity by clickthroughs per day or page impressions, sites (and individual web pages within that site) that are more popular appear to be making less money per click from Adsense.
For all of us trying to make money with Adsence it’not good news at all. This prompted me immediately to look into my own server logs and compare the data with Adsense earnings. The sample is rather representative as it includes over 200 site for the period of the past 10 months. Foolyshly I thought that the decline in revenue stream was caused by the decreasing traffic flow; although at one moment Yahoo started sending less traffic to my sites but this was effectively compensated by the increasing flow from MSN Live, and the almighty Google itself started to send more traffic as well. So overall background gives not a decrease but a slow natural increase in SE traffic! It is rather unfortunate that the article in question does not provide any data comparison between daily page impressions and daily Adsense ones. In my case I’ve clearly noticed two things:
decreasing EPC
increasing discrepancy between Page Views and Adsense views
the latter being another and no less significant factor in the collapse of Ad revenue. In layman’s terms Google just refuses to display their ads on pages it deems too dull or for visitors from obscure countries (no offence intended) etc.
One way or another something had changed in Google Adsense from what it used to be. Unlike Bryan from texxors.com (the author of the original report) I don’t think it has a lot to do with the age of the resource. To mee it seems like Google is introducing a new Adsense algo since the beginning of this year. It looks like they inserted some sort of capping on Adsence Earnings and when you get too successful in your campaign either through too much of traffic or too high CTR you are being done by this filter. This conclusion doesn’t contradict Bryan’s observations at all: you start earning more -> your earnings capped.
I must admit this is only my gut instinct but isn’t it all we base our most important life decisions on?
So who is winning and who is loosing if it is indeed new rules of the game being at work here? I might also put forward another suggestion: Google is doing it in a bid to clamp down on MFA sites that are automatically generated in unbelievable numbers by SE spammers and BlackHat SEOs with their automatic content generators. If it is so the attempt is futile as it is nothing other than a half-measure. MFA sites in theory are violating Adsense T&C and again in theory should be banned from Adsense altogether. An attempt to impose a caping of a sort on unusually high-earning sites will certainly hit spammers but this will not spare some innocent bystanders like myself who just happen to be small-time high earners. Instead of lessening the amount of spam on the net this measure will only stimulate spammers to produce more attempting to regain lost profits. But what do I do being not in the position to generate googlions of pages as I don’t do autogenerated sites? How do I recap for my losses? In the event when it all begins to affect my pay per click profit in best traditions of free market economy I’ll start looking for adsense alternatives. Google seems to forget that their AdWords are not the Pay-Per-Click monopoly they used to be as a number of alternative ways of traffic monetization are now at hand.
So, for all of you trying to plan ahead your ROI for your Adsense-based projects here is a good adsense tip - whatever optimistic your initial EPC might look like be realistic and try to base your calculation on below 10-12c threshold or your business is in danger.
Another free adsense advise I am going to give and first of all to myself: Don’t be lazy, setup alternative ads page (I didn’t do it on my sites - and most certainly will do now!). Google hits you by not displaying their ads on your page - hit it back by displaying alternatives! Let’s not forget the main rule of advertizing - if it’s not your logo on that billboard be sure it’s your competitor’s one.
As you might have noticed from my post the other day I was a bit ironic about Google Webmaster Tools thingy. It’s been noticed by many that even those highly publicized innovations like backlink checker are not working as even a simple Yahoo Site Explorer search like this one gives you much more links that are seen from Google webmaster tools. Now the hard proof emerged that Google is not only lame, but also is absolutely inadequate providing merely wrong information to webmasters. Just look at this screenshot:
I was nearly blown off my chair when I first realized that according to this lzzr.com must be ranking first for the term Yahoo on Google. I must admit that my first thought was - thank God, my suffering is over, now I am the King of the web 2.0! And immediately after I was about to rush in panic to order a dedicated server and upgrade to a wider connection fearing lzzr.com in its current state would not stand the traffic explosion. Alas, there are no miracles in this world and I did not take me long to come back to reality and see that this simply can not be true
Now the questions are: If this isn’t in fact true than
Why on earth Google is lying to me?
What actually Google shows me?
The former one is easier to answer as it seems Google had become paranoid about disclosing even the smallest bit of info that might provide food for thought and help understanding their algos. I’ve mentioned already that Yahoo has a completely opposite policy: while Google becomes more and more secretive, they open as much as they can whuch is very helpful in daily SEO work.
The latter is a kind of nutter as I simply can not believe what I see and the only explaination for this I can find is that Google displays some kind of “microwawe-ready” results for ranking and the real ones go through an extensive cooking process before being served to the customer. I can only guess that at a certain stage in their SERP calculation lzzr.com indeed happened to rank first for Yahoo term (could it be due to my ingenious eSEO? LOL). I can even suspect that this might be so since I used a good old Yahoo regional domain seo trick but otherwise I have no clue as you don’t really think I am mad enough to optimize for Yahoo?
Ultimately, it all boils down to the fact that something is rotten in the kingdom of Google as it displays such crap and wants me to believe in it.
PS Nevertheless, how I wish it was true LOL!!!
Another addition to my SEDD collection - Google itself produced a small guide to SEDD, I quote from their Webmaster Guidelines
Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
Yes, we all can read between the lines and are used to the usual kind of understatement coming from Google headquarters. Here they effectively stated that any site found in proximity to so-called bad neighborhoods or using WebPosition Gold will be severely penalized. Here is the evil part that makes SEDD possible. Due to the weakness of Google antispam algos that can not rely on on-site factors alone in fighting spam they begin to punish for aspects that are not under control of any individual webmaster. As long as it is true it is enough in words of Google guys themselves to link to any site from well-known spammy bunches or to release Webposition Gold to any website to achieve its inevitable deranking. Quite a recipie I suppose! Hire a good henchman from the blackhat cohort who owns thousands of spammy adobes or fire up the abovementioned software and kaboom your competitor is sinking and can do nothing about it.
It’s been just a couple of days since I had written about the possibility of SEDD and what a coincidence!
In my post I was talking about Bad Neghbourhood and precisely this happened to me - I looked at my backlinks on Technorati and it happened that some jerk decided that linking a dozen of spammy Blogs to my rather insignificant article on LinkieWinkie was a pretty good idea and all because this spammer (well, he or she is, whatever you may mean by this word) diggs into the subject of holidays and my unfortunate article seemed to rate good for this keyword.
Well, there are two sides to it. On one hand I gained In link popularity on Technorati, on the other hand it’s a bit hurting as it damages my online reputation. I really don’t want to be associated with this spam!
To counter the damage I simply had to register and link in a number of Blogs on the major bloghosting services like LiveJournal, Yahoo, Blogspot, Wordpress and so on. Now my new links cover this completely. Let’s see how it will affect my rankings now.
It pays to keep your eyes open
As banner-blindness increases in all of us it seems it also affects the banner-targeting algorithms. Honestly, I was just doing my little keyword research on Technorati when I inadvertently found Jesus!
For those for whom the picture isn’t enough here is the full text:
Looking for Jesus? www.ebay.com - Looking for men’s clothing? From blazers to vests, new or used, you can find it on eBay.
At first it might seem shocking - why anyone looking for Jesus would nessesarily be interested in men’s clothing? After racking my brain for a while truing to think of a possible explaination for this rather bizzare advertising logic I came to the following conclusion:
Jesus was wearing a tunic - by far the most popular and the most wanted item of men’s dress today. Jesus as a role model as good as any other celebrity to promote men’s fashion. Besides in light of christian aparigraha it is only logical to look for this on eBay that is renown for its choise of affordable tunicas.
In brief:
Jesus is a fashon guru
eBay is a place full of cheap new or used tunicas
Christians just love shopping for bargains
It seems this or somewhat similar logic was fueling the Technorati banner targeting engine here.
PS: to all who might find it offending - please, direct it not at me but rather ask guys at Technorati what they were thinkng.
