| LED Digest 2633: Is Cloaking Flash Wrong? |
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.AudetteMedia.com : the LED's Publisher Boutique Internet Marketing: SEO, SEM, Social Media http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. April 25, 2008 Issue no. 2633 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Basic CMS Functionality ==-- ~ Bill Wade "...my clients have been looking to be able to do some content management..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Unethical Domain Hoarding by NS ==-- ~ Barry S Mills "...it will be very effective at protecting NS from losing business due to front running." ~ Reg Charie "Screen shot of popup..." --== SEO for Flash ==-- ~ Shari Thurow "And then to make that rank due to cloaking? Where is the user in this equation?" <Moderator Comment> --== SEO Sales Tricks ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "...ranking and paying for ads are completely separate." --== Is Twitter Productive? ==-- ~ Steven Birk "Happened to run across this post about a 'Privacy Disaster at Twitter'..." ========= NEW ===================================== From: Bill Wade Subject: Limited content management Howdy LED'ers; I build entry level sites for folks, and lately some of my clients have been looking to be able to do some content management on one or two pages of their sites themselves. Some just want to invite comments from visitors and have those comments posted on a specific page, others want to be able to add a photo and some text to a page and make change often enough that they'd really rather not have their web builder doing it for them. I've been researching CMS software, and man, these packages are a bit overwhelming...offering a feast of features to build entire CMS sites, when all I need is a page or two of CMS, formatted to the site's look & feel. Any guidance towards the right program or software for my needs would be very much appreciated. Thanks, Bill Wade ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Barry Mills Subject: Network Solutions > Network Solutions is sequestering domain > names you search for and only making them > available for purchase through them, at > their premium pricing. > > Don’t believe it? Try it for yourself – > just not with a domain you want to purchase > elsewhere ; ) – and share your experience > on the digest. - Ivan Jimenez, LED 2632 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2047/190/ Hi Ivan, If your assertion that the domains remain unavailable for weeks is true, then that is definitely a problem. However, you can (theoretically anyway) get the block lifted by calling Network Solutions. I haven't tried this because it's early morning over here in the UK and they won't have woken up yet. I've run a test registration and it certainly does offer to hold the domain from being registered elsewhere, but only if you ask it to. This is not done without notification and you can opt out of it. Here is the message that pops up on the screen if you leave after a search without registering the domain you found available: ---------------- "Thanks-you for using networksolutions.com to search for your domain. If you have not made a purchase decision yet, we may be able to reserve the domain for 4 days to give you more time. Reserving the domain will help protect your search from front running. Reserved names will be available for registration only at networksolutions.com. Please note that during these 4 days anyone can register these domains through our site. To remove these domains from a reserved status please call 1-800-333-7630. For more information, please visit our home page. Please click OK to reserve all eligible domains that you have just searched." ---------------- I've run a couple of tests and it seems to work as described. As a result of my test, network-solutions-are-con-merchants.com is no longer available for registration anywhere other than Network Solutions, so hot-foot it over there if you want to grab that one. However, network-solutions-are-nice-people.com, which I also searched for but clicked "cancel" rather than "ok" on the pop-up is available anywhere you like. So it does seem to work as advised, but it would be easy to agree to the reserving without realising it if you were rushing, and the phone number provided is a 1-800 number which I don't think can be dialled from outside the USA (I certainly don't know how anyway). Network Solutions claim this policy is to protect customers from front-running, and they provide further information here http://about-networksolutions.com/customer-protection-measure.php Front-running is a legitimate concern, although I'm not sure this will have much effect on preventing it, since if you have sufficient access to private data to know someone has just searched for a particular domain name, presumably you would be likely to also know that they searched at Network Solutions, so you could register it there. Even if you didn't know, you could probably guess. So I don't really see that this offers much protection to purchasers, but I can certainly see it will be very effective at protecting Network Solutions from losing business due to front running. Barry S Mills Chairman Netstep http://www.netstep.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Reg Charie Subject: Network Solutions > Network Solutions is sequestering domain > names you search for... - Ivan Jimenez, LED 2632 Yes they are. If you search for a domain name at NS and do not take it a pop up appears a while later. The page at http://networksolutions.com says: ---------------- "Thank you for using networksolution.com to search for your domain. If you have not made a purchase decision yet, we may be able to to reserve the domain for 4 days to give you more time. Reserving the domain will help protect your domain from front running. Reserved names will be available for registration only at networksolutions.com. Please note that during these 4 days anyone can register these domains through our site. To remove these domains from a reserved status please call 1-800-333-7680. For more information please visit our home page. Please click "ok" to reserve all eligible domains that you have searched, OK Cancel" ---------------- Screen shot of popup: http://regcharie.com/images/reg/network-solutions-popup.jpg I clicked "Cancel and searched at 2 other registrars and the domain name was available. Reg Charie http://RegCharie.com - CRELoaded hosting and website design. -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: Flash SEO > The flash is fed through xml and the > developers think that the spiders can be > fed through xml as well, but we are > wondering if a parallel HTML-text version > might be best. - Dale DeHart, LED 2631 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2046/190/ > You'll still want to cloak an HTML version. > The XSLT method looks promising: > http://tinyurl.com/4yl4nr [metah.ch] There > are many other ways to do it too, such as > with divs. It really depends on the > application. - Adam Audette, LED 2632 Hi all- This is in response to Adam's post regarding the Flash so-called "solution". Since I use Flash all of the time on Web sites, I'm always trying to find or create a solution. I am very disappointed because, quite frankly, it isn't a solution at all. Look, as long as you are giving search engines one version of a Web page and users another version, then there is a problem. Basically, it is deceptive. I have no issues with matching versions of XHTML and Flash content being available (to a point), but I've been doing this a long time. I understand the boss is breathing down your neck about search engine rankings, traffic, conversions, etc., many people will not hesitate to utilize unethical practices. A lot of people will think this is a great solution. There is the assumption that users want content delivered to them in Flash. I've seen Flash used well. I've seen Flash used poorly. Only once in my entire Web design career was it necessary for us to do an entire section of a site in Flash (it was honestly the best technology solution because the interface had to be available on a kiosk). An Adobe user group? Come on! How objective are they? Do they really usability test to determine task completion, efficiency, etc. in order to verify whether users really prefer Flash-delivered content or not? I'm sure there is a rare few out there who do. Mostly, I see a bunch of programmers who are so enthusiastic about their ability to create these cool interfaces and are dying to use it, regardless of user data. And then to make that rank due to cloaking? Where is the user in this equation? I know there are rare situations where test results indicate that Flash is the best solution, but it is rare. And this very rare situation is when I am okay with the same content being delivered in a cloaked XHTML version. I am also someone who always lets search engine reps know when I cloak so that they can verify that the content is identical. I have the kahones to tell a Web site owner that their users do not want Flash and they should change the design. And I can prove it with usability testing. I also know that there are other SEO professionals who would jump at the chance to say, "Hey, your site is gorgeous! I can optimize it." Therein lies the problem. Web site owners refuse to change the design, copy, information architecture, etc. when the design, copy, information architecture, etc. is the problem. Many SEO professionals resort to doing everything except solve the problem. Users are being delivered substandard pages in Web search results. Jakob Nielsen calls this Google gullibility. If I ever stumble upon a situation where I absolutely know that users want all Flash, maybe it is a solution. I highly doubt this will happen. I am 100% sure that there are Web site owners who honestly believe that people want Flash and this is an outstanding solution. Sorry about the long post. I tried to edit it down. Sincerely, Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director Omni Marketing Interactive www.search-usability.com <Moderator Comment> Thanks for the post! Great response. Wow, can't believe you disagree. (The XSLT looks interesting to me, but I'm not sure about that extra data layer b/t the HTML and flash. I'm going to learn more about it.) Anyway, that's not the point. To me the question isn't about usability - they've already made up their minds/handcuffed themselves on that one (or ignored it altogether) - the question is what can we do? We run into this issue w/ flash all the time - in navigation, in sites, in elements. It's really no problem to cloak an xHTML version as long as the content is identical. Sadly, many, many sites don't put usability and findability at the forefront of their minds. They put design at the forefront - to satisfy their own egos, not site visitors. That's why they bring us SEO folks in - to work with what they have. We have to get creative to find solutions to issues they're either not aware of or haven't prioritized. Not every project, not every client is a perfect case study of accessibility, standards, and the result of usability testing. Most aren't... and some of the biggest companies in the world are the worst offenders! I don't see anything wrong w/ the practice when it's done correctly. I'd think you'd be a big proponent of that, so am pretty surprised! Adam -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Sales trick > Really, people, the internet is part of the > real world and the competitor did the right > thing by showing that it doesn't take a > genius to get good rankings: and it's a > good example of cheap advertising online. - Barb Sybal, LED 2632 Barb, ranking and paying for ads are completely separate. The unethical etc. behaviour on the part of the competitor was pretending that paying for the top PPC was "ranking", and was an indication of his ability as a website optimizer. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Steve Birk Subject: Twitter Happened to run across this post on TechCrunch about a "Privacy Disaster at Twitter"... http://tinyurl.com/5vu8eo [techcrunch.com] I don't use Twitter and I spent about a 1/2 hour the other day clicking on a few links that Adam provided and didn't really quite get it... If I get more time, I'll try and read some more and try and figure out how this may help me expand my knowledge and learn more about this business, but I did learn... someone's cousin joined Twitter, someone was at a bar doing shots, someone was at an airport waiting for a flight, it's hot in Puerto Rico, someone saw an old lady wearing a shirt that says "I'm hot. Try me", how to get a free desert at a Vegas restaurant when making reservations by mentioning a certain name (that one may come in handy!), etc... I was quickly asking myself, why am I wasting my time reading this? Every so often I would come across a link to an article or post that I could actually learn something from, but a majority is just random comments like those above that had me wondering if I was in some kind of chat room or something. Like I said, I just did not get it in the time I spent at a few Twitter sites... I just thought for those who do use Twitter that the above link may be beneficial to read, especially regarding privacy. Apparently the culprit with this rather embarrassing situation where a Twitter users very private direct messages between her and another person were posted directly on her Twitter page for all to read, was something called GroupTweet which is a third party Twitter Application. Here's a quote from part of the TechCrunch Blog post... -------------- "GroupTweet requires you to create a new Twitter account to use with the service, and tell it the credentials for the account. But if you accidentally enter your primary account credentials instead, it will expose your direct messages to the public. This is not a Twitter API issue as far as I can tell, it's a problem with the fact that GroupTweet is confusing and if you make a mistake, your direct messages are made public." -------------- Regards, Steven Birk http://MedicalNewsCenter.com (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr. |
