Recently, I wrote about Google demoting JC Penney for getting links from dubious places. Now it has demoted Overstock.com for getting links from very prestigious websites – .edu to be precise.
Amir Efrati writes in The Wall Street Journal:
Google Inc. is penalizing Overstock.com Inc. in its search results after the retailer ran afoul of Google policies that prohibit companies from artificially boosting their ranking in the Internet giant’s search engine.
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Google just released a new extension for its Chrome browser. Initially I wasn’t sure what it is called, as it seemed to be “block sites from Google’s web search results”. On closer inspection, it is “Personal Blocklist” and here is the official description:
The personal blocklist extension will transmit to Google the patterns that you choose to block. When you choose to block or unblock a pattern, the extension will also transmit to Google the URL of the web page on which the blocked or unblocked search results are displayed. You agree that Google may freely use this information to improve our products and services.
The underlining is my emphasis. Continue reading
A few blogs have picked up the story about the paid links allegedly obtained by JC Penney’s former SEO company SearchDex. Vanessa Fox’s detailed article in SearchEngineLand led me to Doug Unplugged, the blog of Doug Pierce, of Blue Fountain Media.
An interesting find by Doug was SearchDex’s client list, which has now been taken offline but might still be in the (Google cache). If you have a paid account at OpenSiteExplorer or MajesticSEO, it might be worth checking out the backlinks.
The discussion at Webmasterworld: Paid Links at JC Penney – Google Takes Manual Action.
The New York Times has published a well-informed account of how a major US retailer was using alleged paid links from dubious websites. Entitled The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, writer David Segal outlines the process of searching for household items and then is surprised that:
in the last several months, one name turned up, with uncanny regularity, in the No. 1 spot for each and every term:
J. C. Penney.
The company bested millions of sites — and not just in searches for dresses, bedding and area rugs. For months, it was consistently at or near the top in searches for “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture” and dozens of other words and phrases, from the blandly generic (“tablecloths”) to the strangely specific (“grommet top curtains”).
Another common mispronunciation (मिसप्रोंन्सीऐशन)
Incorrect: कमेन्ट
Correct: कॉमेन्ट (Emphasis in bold)
The “co” has a कॉ sound, not क. Isn’t English confusing? 🙂
This is a commonly mispronounced set of words among the IT community in India.
Incorrect: डेवलप डेवलोप (emphasis in bold)
Correct: डिवेलप (all syllables with equal emphasis)
Incorrect: डेवलपर डेवलोपर (emphasis in bold)
Correct: डिवेलपर (all syllables with equal emphasis)
Incorrect: डेवलपमेंट डेवलोपमेंट (emphasis in bold)
Correct: डिवेलपमेंट (all syllables with equal emphasis)
Finextra reported on a Reserve Bank of India document that says in part,:
The working group further goes on to recommend that the RBI “consider moving over to chip based cards along with requiring upgradation of necessary infrastructure like ATMs/POS terminals in this regard in a phased manner”.
The RBI is not by any means the first Indian entity to use this clumsy word. It isn’t in any English dictionary. The correct word is “upgrade” (noun). Of course, the document is full of other errors. The above paragraph can be written as follows:
“consider moving over to chip–based cards, along with an upgrade to the related infrastructure such as ATMs/POS terminals in a phased manner”.
Generally, most Times of India posts attributed to “TNN” show signs of poor English. Here are some posts that persist in using “upgradation”
The Wayback Machine or archive.org served a good purpose. In its early years it tried to keep a copy of many pages from websites great and small. People who inadvertently deleted their website were able to recover some of the content through it. More recently (five years ago, not five weeks), it couldn’t cope with the quantity of pages and people complained when it hadn’t indexed their pages. Many SEOs blocked its spider from their sites.
When I checked some well-known sites, I was surprised that they hadn’t been archived for some years:
When I am searching for a good air fare or want to make a hotel booking, I don’t use Google. I go directly to sites such as Expedia, Travelocity, Hotels.com, Kayak and their Australian counterparts. That’s because I have found good bargains in the past and have bookmarked them. What chance does a travel portal have these days of ranking high in Google, given that many SEOs are saying that brand is important for ranking?
Let’s fire up the Google Keyword tool and get some of the most searched travel terms in the US:
I prefer to get the maximum number of results in a Google Search, namely, 100 results. For the past few days I noticed that I was getting only 10 results even after I went to the Search Settings (Preferences) and changed the number from 10 to 100. My preference was not sticking.
Why was this happening? The likely cause is that the Google Instant feature generates a lot of data traffic (more so for Google than you) as you type the search term, so Google nobbled it. This is not so likely when you realise that Google could have simply taken away the option to see more than 100 results. Anyway, the solution was easy.
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You probably know the streets in your neighbourhood better than other suburbs, so what better way to test your new GPS than to plot a route from your home to some known destination. I have evaluated a few car GPS units and own a couple of Garmin units. The most recent one is a Garmin nuvi 1390T, which is powered by Sensis® WhereIs® Maps. But this post isn’t about the GPS — it’s about the maps.
Have you tried to plot a route in Bing lately? Here is what one of my local routes looks like. I live a couple of streets off Wattle Avenue in Werribee in an area that was a market garden eight years ago. Wattle Avenue borders the dairy and agricultural technology training colleges, in other words, we have green paddocks and sheep along Wattle Avenue.
Whenever I have an issue with my Netspace ISP ADSL1 connection, I dread the conversation with the tech support person, as it takes a while to establish that I have half a clue about ISP operations and connectivity. Long story short — I bought an Edimax AR-7284WnA wireless modem router to replace a Billion BiPAC 7300G device that was getting flaky. I am at the extremity of the ADSL coverage from my exchange and the ISP tech support implied that nothing was wrong with the line. I was leaving for an overseas trip and my family was getting fed up with the constant drop-outs, so I bought the cheapest device I could get in my suburb. Billion has a good reputation but none to be found near me over the counter on a Saturday. Hence the Edimax, cheap at $77. (Later I read that OzBargain had it for $60 some weeks ago)
It was a major pain in the bum to set up for wireless security, mainly because of the Taiwanese English instructions. The Setup wizard always reverts to a default time zone of Beijing/HK and some default NTP IP addresses. My hurdle was the VPI/VCI values and I had no time to look up the acronyms. This is not a product for the non-techy consumer.
I managed to get past this step and had to choose WPA2-PSK as the strongest available security, but this meant that several gaming devices such as the Xbox couldn’t access it, since they only have WPA-TKIP. Hence the Auto mode was eventually chosen.
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[ Tushar Tere ]