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LED Digest 2164: Watching the FrogBlogs Print E-mail

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List Moderator:                     Published by:
Adam Audette                          LED Digest
adam, led-digest.com     http://www.led-digest.com
..............................................
May 19, 2006                         Issue no. 2164
..............................................



            .....IN THIS DIGEST.....


====== NEW =====================

        --== Spam via Feedback Forms ==--

                ~ Eddie Teo
"Anyone facing the same problems?"


==== CONTINUING =================

        --== Thinking Linking: The Big Daddy Update ==--

                ~ Dirk Johnson
"Link to and get links from sites that are
relevant to your own."

                ~ Jim King
"...Google's inherent geekiness is starting
to penalize web sites that don't fit [their views]."

                ~ Michael Martinez
"Be patient. Observe. Experiment."

        --== Repeat Emails ==--

                ~ Fernando Bergamaschi
"I do not try to sell ice to Eskimos."


==== BILLBOARD ===================

        --== Fighting Spam - A Study ==--
                ~ Susan Johnson


========== NEW ===================================

From: Eddie Teo
Subject: Spam via Feedback Forms

I am not too sure if it is me or what, but recently, I discovered
there are a lot of spam coming through via our feedback forms.  This
seems to be a new form of spamming (at least to us, it happened only
about 2 - 3 months ago).

I am quite positive checks are in place to ensure fieldnames etc.
are completed properly before it gets processed and submitted to us
(via email).

Anyone facing the same problems?  I am getting "Scooter", "Cialis",
"Viagra" types of spam mails, all via the feedback form.

Anyone has any solutions to overcome this??

Thanks in advance.

By the way, how silly can these spammers be?  All these feedback
will go only to a single person / small group of people, and yet
they are doing this? If you are a spammer reading this, wake up! :D

eddie teo
www.online-technology.com


======== CONTINUING ===============================

From: Dirk Johnson
Subject: Think Before You Link

> Matt is NOT saying you should not reciprocate... Think of them
> exactly that way: you want sincere, editorially chosen links.
        - Michael Martinez, LED 2163

Michael, I appreciate your comments about this, and for all LED
readers, there is no need to revisit old battles about reciprocal
linking today.

Instead, I want to make a couple of points that are often completely
overlooked among the dramatic rantings on the SEO forums.  Far too
many activists in the SEO world attempt to speculate about what
*might* happen. It's not that complicated, really. Michael has hit
upon some very good points, especially with respect to "editorially
chosen links".

Just the other day, I was reading the blog posts of a rather
well-known SEO guru. I had to laugh at how ridiculous some of his
concepts of "good" linking have become. The guy has gone off the
deep end with wholesale speculation about what works and what does
not. Much of it was based on the raw SEO mythology that is bandied
about on the forums. His "solutions" for clients were horribly
expensive, since he is now a huge proponent of just buying links in
a particular, stealthy way. Maybe it works, but at what cost?

What should be done is to look at what has been successful, and what
continues to be successful. Speculation merely provides these
various SEO chatter-heads with a means to pose as "sophisticated" or
"scholarly", but it is mostly meaningless jibberish, since the basis
of their analysis is often quite narrow in scope, and possibly even
selected to provide them with a pre-determined conclusion. ONLY the
analysis of a lot of real search results in real world situations
indicates what works. Nothing else matters.

There are many SEO specialists who are well-grounded. Here's an easy
way to sort them out: The more complicated their approach, the less
grounded in reality. It's that simple.

Because we get to work with hundreds of sites, we get to see a lot
of situations. The sites we work with use all manner of SEO methods,
because we're just one cog in the wheel for them. Often, an SEO
specialist sees only the effect of what they themselves do for their
clients, and that is often a very narrow sampling that is hopelessly
skewed toward what they do. We can see trends and anomalies within a
much broader context.

From our perspective here, not much at all has changed during the
Jagger / Big Daddy "upheavals". Heck, throw in the Florida update
from a couple years back. We have watched site after site hold or
improve rankings during that time period, even as many of the
"experts" speculated wildly about what would or did happen. If all
the dire predictions from the SEO chatter-heads had come true, we'd
be out of business at this point. To the contrary, our clients
continue to bring new sites to us.

I am not here to sell. I am making that point in order to provide
information to LED readers. Because, as Michael rightly points out
in his post, what Google seems to continue to reward is relevant,
editorially-vetted linking. That may or may not be linking via
reciprocation. Reciprocation itself does not seem to matter much as
a factor.

There are two ways to attempt to reciprocate. One is to go out there
and link to anything that moves, regardless of subject matter, etc.
Two and three years ago, a lot of sites tried this approach. We did
not do that here, but the SEO guru that I mentioned previously was
once a huge proponent of indiscriminate reciprocation, and he did it
aggressively for his clients. We actually removed his sites from our
consideration, for that reason. For a while indiscriminate
reciprocation worked, and to a certain extent, it still does, but it
is a much riskier approach these days.

As people have come to understand the risks, earning a reciprocal
link from another site has become much more challenging. There is a
significant amount of editorial vetting taking place, especially
with respect to relevance. The old "we link to anything" sites are
no longer good link partners. They now have to play on their own
playground with each other, because a lot of the more discreet site
owners will not link with them anymore.

The reason I say all of this is because, by and large, those who
reciprocate with discretion have been largely unaffected by all the
Google updates. Sure, there are anomalies and some collateral damage
when Google does an update. And there is, unfortunately, such a
thing called Google bowling (see Michael's post). I have seen it.
But by and large, sites that pursue relevant, editorially-vetted
links, reciprocal or not, have be doing what Google seems to want,
and have been continuously rewarded.

This is borne out by a review of real search results, when a broad
sampling is taken.

That's why we avoid completely the various fads and link gaming
strategies that are popular on the SEO forums. I have never seen any
of them as being as effective as just doing the right thing, as if
the search engines did not exist. What's the right thing? Link to
and get links from sites that are relevant to your own. I've been
saying it for years, because it's worked well, for years.

Best regards,

Dirk Johnson, Partner - Operations

DomainDrivers LLC
www.domaindrivers.com
www.linkstrategy.com


-------- new post - same topic ---------

From: Jim King
Subject: Big Daddy

My take on this new Google strategy is that link value as a way to
run a search engine (the main reason for Google's success) has run
its course as webmaster's and spammer's link strategies have swamped
the so-called "natural" links on the web (links created as a
courtesy for the value they bring to the web site visitor).

This would not be so bad except that Google has no clear "next
strategy" to automate their ranking algorithms, and they are now
making "value" decisions from their own narrow point of view. Blogs
may or may not be the way, but Google's inherent geekiness is
starting to penalize web sites that don't fit Google's "model" for
relevant content. I don't begrudge them since they are only trying
to keep their finger in the dike as the SEO strategies and spammers
try to overrun them, but they should be able to do better given
their history, reputation, and unlimited funding.

Unfortunately, corporate sites and corporate blogs are now the only
sites in fashion with Google to the detriment of many small
businesses and existing "hobby" sites on the web, including many
with long histories of value to many web surfers. I guess this is
good news to the SEO firms and spammers since the small businesses
and mom and pop sites will no longer be clogging up the Google
listings with niche information, but to me it signals an end to
democracy and entrepreneurship on the Internet. Sad.

Jim King


-------- new post - same topic ---------

From: Michael Martinez
Subject: Big Daddy

In LED-Digest 2163 I wrote:

> Matt singled out bloggers as good sources of links.
> He is not talking about blog comments, but rather the
> links that bloggers embed in their posts.  These are
> what Google describes as "editorially chosen" links.

and

> ...But for now, if you don't have your own blog, go to
> one of the major services and start one. Put links to
> your sites in the blog.  Write something every week.

Let me point out (as I am sure others will) that simply creating
faux blogs will, at most, be only a temporary aid.  I know for a
fact that some automated bloggers are being chased down by blog
service providers.  Their automated entries are taken down very
quickly.

If you choose to blog, do it honestly.  Don't go for overkill.
There are two kinds of spam blogs I have been watching for sometime.
 I call them FrogBlogs and MushBlogs.

A FrogBlog is one of a series of blogs operated by a single person
through sock puppets.  They typically have very short brief entries
consisting of a link and maybe a sentence of associated text.  Think
of a frog leaping from lily pad to lily pad across a great pond.  A
FrogBlog is a lily pad.

A MushBlog is an automated blog that consists of jumbled up text
scraped from multiple other sites.  The robots do this to avoid
duplicate content filters.  But they produce gibberish.  Like
FrogBlogs, they are used to build link popularity, but sometimes to
carry paid ads, too.

Some FrogBloggers graduate to MushBlogging because after a while
they get tired of posting links by hand.  I believe that Google is
actively trying to filter out these blogs.  They don't last long in
BlogSearch.

And don't assume that I started a blog for search engine marketing.
My personal blog came about for entirely different reasons.  I post
real content there, mostly just personal anecdotes.  However, this
week members of the blogging communities have begun reporting to
each other significant increases in referrals from Google.  The
reports of traffic increases are LEGION.  I have seen it happen on
my own blog.

It is too early to know what this means.  Maybe it's a temporary
spike.  Maybe it's a sign of a serious change in Google's strategy.
Maybe it just means more people are using Google's BlogSearch, which
just got a neat facelift.

Be patient.  Observe.  Experiment.  And please don't put words into
my mouth.  Ask me to clarify anything I say if you want to question
it.

Michael Martinez

"Cuando Maria canta, canta para mi"
http://www.michael-martinez.com/
http://michael-martinez.blogspot.com/


-------- new post - new topic --------

From: Fernando Bergamaschi
Subject: Repeat emails

> You may regard sending the *same email*
> to the *same client* every few days as advertising...
> there is a high probability that these clients
> will start to see it as SPAM...
        - Tom Aman, LED 2163

I apologize for not expressing very clearly (my native language is
not English). I send different emails of the same product to the
same clients. And send emails related to their business. I do not
try to sell ice to Eskimos.

Internet is a medium that should be used together with regular mail,
phone calls and personal interviews.

I do advertising not spam.

A big bulk of emails is a consequence of being exposed. I am listed
in search engines around the world at more than 12 years and receive
tons of emails. I have a fast method of select what interest me. As
Internet increases I will receive more and more emails.

As to your Spam study if I can be of help.

Regards

Fernando Bergamaschi


==== BILLBOARD ===================================

From: Susan Johnson
Subject: Spam study

> Are there 20 or 30 LEDers out there who would be willing to take
> part in an "unsubscribe" experiment / study?   Please email me
> ( This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , with a subject line of "Spam Study")...
        - Tom Aman, LED 2163

I have followed this thread with interest and did indeed attempt to
use the unsubscribe option.  However, most of the spam that I
receive does NOT have an unsubscribe option.  The few that I do
receive with an unsubscribe option are related to things that I know
that I have subscribed to, or are from legitimate companies just
trying to do email advertising.

I checked my partner's email.  Because of his position in the
company, he receives hundreds of spam messages per day.  I would say
that 80% of the spam that he receives does not have an unsubscribe
option either.  And, also, for him as well, most of the remaining
'spam' is related to things that he has requested or legitimate
email advertising.

As a conclusion, we both felt that at the end of the day, it was
more time-efficient for us to just read the subject line and delete
the messages we know are spam, otherwise we have to open the email,
unsubscribe... etc...  And I am reluctant to send a nasty email to
the sender, because I am sure most of these spam messages that do
not have an unsubscribe option are being sent from stolen or invalid
email addresses.  I know that our website has been in that situation
a few times.

Perhaps others have had the same experience with most of their spam
messages and perhaps that is why there was a low response rate to
your request.

It's always nice to see that someone is taking initiative in
combatting spam though.

Susan Johnson


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