| LED Digest 2218: Do Visitors Adjust Font Sizes? |
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In this issue: the Click Fraud Battlefront, Font Sizing and Usability,
Email Delivery and Open Rates, and Anchor Text and Linking.
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=========== NEW ==================================The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ............................................. August 4, 2006 Issue no. 2218 ............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Click Fraud Battlefront ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Font Sizing ==-- ~ Kerry Branham "...who really knows how to change font sizes on a site anyway?" --== Email Delivery & Open Rates ==-- ~ Mary Findley "I also have a question and I'm sure this has been covered in the past..." --== Anchor Text & Linking ==-- ~ Greg Watson "Now [this] is a pretty simple example of the influence of anchor text!" ~ Sarah Hayes "...a few months back I tested this out..." ~ Bob Gladstein "Your beliefs are yours...and I have a right to disagree with them." ~ Michael Linehan "By the way, I am genuinely interested..." <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, Thanks to John Barendrecht for sending me this piece on the latest click fraud news: it seems the major search engines are uniting in the fight against scammers: Leading Search Engines Agree to Team Up to Fight Click Fraud ------------------------- "The initiative... will draw upon the expertise of Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to attack a problem threatening to erode their profits. Combined, the three companies control 86 percent of the lucrative U.S. search engine market, according to comScore Media Metrix. "The collaboration of three fierce rivals like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft shows how serious the industry has become about curbing click fraud before the issue squelches an online advertising boom that's enriching the search engines and their partners. Google, the pacesetting search engine, earned $1.3 billion on revenue of $4.7 billion through the first half of this year alone." http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060802/click_fraud.html ------------------------- I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the latest hub-bub over the "hive fraud" occuring across the 'Net (see SearchReturn 078: Gangs of Clicksters: http://www.searchreturn.com/digest/078.shtml ). Attentive readers will also note that recently Google added some analytical functionality to the AdWords control panel for click fraud tracking (see Inside AdWords for this: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/07/estimating-invalid-clicks.html ). It's interesting that Google calls click fraud "invalid clicks" -- a bit softer sounding, I guess. Love to hear your thoughts on this. Have a great weekend, Adam ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Kerry Branham Subject: Font Sizing > While my browser lets me set the text size to my preference, your > site takes that option away from me and makes me use your choice. - Tom Aman, LED 2217 I'm not so sure I agree with Tom on this one. It's true that "forcing" a font size on site visitors takes away control from them, but other than very techy people, who really knows how to change font sizes on a site anyway? It would be an interesting study to see how many people are really affected by this aspect of websites. I know how to change font sizes in one keystroke, but I never use it. From my experience (in working with all sorts of comsumers of PC's, since I work for a computer shop), people who have trouble reading simply utilize a screen resolution that allows them to see everything larger on screen anyway. They also have the option of using large fonts with their screen resolution. To me there are worse problems with design of sites other than what size the font is. Take, for instance, when someone decides to use a background image that is too pronounced to be able to make out the text over the background. To me that is more ignorant than forcing a visitor to view a site in a font size chosen by the designer. I sincerely doubt that the majority of web visitors know you can change the size of fonts on a website. Kerry Branham K-S Marketing kib, ksmnet.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Mary Findley Subject: Email Delivery and Open Rates I too have been out of town and have not gotten completely caught up with posts so I don't know if this has been mentioned or not. I receive a considerable amount of sp*am emails even though they say I have opted in to receive it, which I have not. Generally 2 out of 40 are exact duplicates. They both come from the same sender when I check the source codes and the exact same name is on the email. These would also be reported as two opens rather than the one they actually are thus giving further false reports. I also have a question and I'm sure this has been covered in the past but I'm out of town considerably and miss many issues. My email address is being used constantly to send sp*am. The last was with certain patches for men, which irritated me to no end. I had a very difficult time tracking the manufacturer of these patches and the list company who fraudently stole my identity. Is there any way to find out who is sending the spam? The source code is not clear, of course. I ended up sending an email to all of the patch manufacturers I could track down and told them of the consequences of fraudently using someone else's identity. Every one of them of course claimed their innocence. Is there a website or tool where I can track if my email address is being used or how can I at least find out who is using my address? Thank you! Mary Findley Mary Moppins http://www.goclean.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Greg Watson Subject: Linking > My point was that I have seen the anchor > text of one link carry enough weight... - Bob Gladstein, LED 2216 > And my point is that you have not demonstrated this. - Michael Martinez, LED 2217 I think Bob has done an excellent job of demonstrating this. However, perhaps I can offer a simple example. I rank #1 for a keyword in Google that is a Spanish language phrase that does not exist on my all English page. Neither does the English keyword equivalent exist on my all English page. What does exist are 7 inbound links that use that Spanish language keyword. Now that is a pretty simple example of the influence of anchor text <grin>! it can't get much more simple than that <grin>! 1. The webpage is all in English. 2. The Spanish word does not exist on my webpage. 3. The English translation of this word does not exist on my webpage. 4. The keyword is used in anchor text in 7 inbound links. 5. The webpage ranks #1 in Google for that keyword. Greg Watson -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Sarah Hayes Subject: Linking I know very little about SEO but a few months back I tested this out on a friend's website that had no position on Google and the website hasn't been optimised in anyway as you can see by visiting www.activelink.co.uk. On the bottom of each page on my website (www.bromleynet.co.uk) I placed a hyperlink with his company name, Active Link. Within a week of doing this if a searched on Google for Active Link the following results were returned: UK search position 1 Web search position 8 I removed the link from my pages and within a couple of week his positioning on Google had gone completely. Waited a couple more weeks and added the link back on to my pages again and the position returned. If you search for incoming links to his website the only ones are myself and more recently the new website that I've set up for him. When we originally added the link from my website his new website didn't exist so the results we got were from the link on my website alone. Best regards, Sarah Hayes www.bromleynet.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Bob Gladstein Subject: Linking Last try, Michael. You wrote: > You had a great ranking, but you don't establish > that it was due to anything in particular. You mention > one link. That's not proof there were no other factors. - Michael Martinez, LED 2217 In my last post, I mentioned that it was within the realm of possibility that there were perhaps thousands of links of which I wasn't aware. I don't know if you caught the sarcasm there, but of course no one can claim to know what is on every page of the internet. One can only go on what one is able to see. I was unable to find any other page that linked to my site using that anchor text, and I didn't find that surprising. "Manequin Parisien" means Parisian model. I had gotten the site listed on a few low-level French directories, but because my French isn't very good, I had 1) used the word "modele," 2) made the mistake of putting it in the feminine rather than the (correct) masculine, and 3) never identified her as a Parisian model, because, while she currently lives in Paris, is a Ukrainian who had until recently been living in the Czech Republic. So I had been listing her in directories as "modele Tcheque". Could other people have listed her as "manequin Parisien"? Yes. Did I look? Yes. Did I find any, even one of them, on any search engine? No. At that point I feel it's safe to say, despite my lack of absolute knowledge of every word on every page on every server, that there was only one link using that anchor text. You wrote: > It's this kind of slip-shod analysis that so > permeates the SEO community that makes > it difficult to believe anything the SEO > community in general says or implies. In the absence of complete knowledge of the contents of every page on every server, research over the course of a year and the failure to find a single second example of a piece of anchor text is about as good as you can get, Michael. But even then, I never referred to this as "analysis". I merely pointed out that you had claimed that such results had to come from large numbers of links, and in my case, that claim did not fit. Could it have been two links, and I just failed to locate one of them? Absolutely, although I did try. But I think it's pretty safe to conclude, after spending a good deal of time looking, that it was not "a large number of links." Your analysis, or if you did no analysis, your claim. My example, intended to put a dent in your analysis. See the difference there? If not, try harder. It really is there. I promise. You wrote: > Now, either you feel Google changed its algorithm or you > don't. If you don't, then what was the purpose of your > comment? You're trying to have it both ways by implying > that the algorithm changed and then insisting you made > no such claim. I never said whether Google changed its algo or not. I never implied it. My statement had nothing to do with whether Google has changed its algo or not. What was the purpose of my comment? The purpose of my comment was to point out that absolute statements like "Those abnormal searches don't occur because of one or even a handful of links. They occur because of a large number of links" should be taken with a grain of salt, because someone is always going to have an example that doesn't fit into such a claim. Where is your proof of that statement? Are you groping blindly, making slip-shod analyses, or just taking a document from a decade ago and accepting it at face value? Do I care? Not really. Your beliefs are yours, whatever they may be based on, and I have a right to disagree with them. Did you notice that this is the first time I've asked you for proof of your claim? I didn't want it before, because this was just a conversation. You made a statement, and then I made a statement intended to make people consider the possibility that your statement might not always be true. You want proof, although you offer none. You choose to insult me. I don't see why you find that necessary. Now you say that you didn't make any claims of absolutes and I'm putting words in your mouth. You wrote: > But it's not an 'example of a single link carrying enough weight > to rank a page that does not contain that text'. You have to show > there was nothing else involved, and you haven't done that. Don't you have to show, after making the statement that that "those results... occur because of a large number of links' that they cannot occur without a large number of links? You made a claim. I merely gave an example. Why is the onus on me and not you? You wrote: > I never make such claims, Bob. You should > know better than to put words into my mouth. No, you're flipping things over again, Michael. I'm not putting any words in your mouth. Should I quote it again? "They occur because of a large number of links." That statement is an absolute. You did not say, "they occur primarily because of a large number of links, but other factors may be involved." You did not allow for exceptions. You did not accept the example of a single exception. You did not suggest possible reasons why the example might not be a suggestion. Instead, you chose to insult. But you cannot claim I have put words in your mouth. I quoted you, many times. If anyone else would like to explain to me how your statement is not an absolute, fine. As far as putting words in people's mouths goes, you claimed I had made a claim that Google's algorithm had changed, when I in fact said absolutely nothing about the algo. You then try to pin me down by saying that "either you feel Google changed its algorithm or you don't," but I don't see the point of that, since I was not writing about whether or not the algo had changed. Either I think Lenin was from Samoa or I don't. But who cares? What does it have to do with the point I was making? I was looking forward to your latest addition to this discussion, because (silly me) I thought it would contain an apology. Now I'm done. Bob Gladstein -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Linking > You had a great ranking, but you don't establish > that it was due to anything in particular. You mention > one link. That's not proof there were no other factors. - Michael Martinez, LED 2217 Now this is getting just plain silly. Imagine if any time anyone put forward a thought in LED, they had to PROVE there were no other factors involved! > You're trying to have it both ways by implying that the algorithm > changed and then insisting you made no such claim. If fact, he implied no such thing. I think Bob may realize that many other factors could also remove any rank boosting effect of the link - like the link simply being deleted, or other people soliciting inbound links or adding content, or new sites coming into existence. So not in even the remotest sense does his STATING the rank had dropped mean he's IMPLYING that the algorithm had changed. Talk about slip-shod analysis! By the way, I am genuinely (and non-sarcastically) interested ----- if it wasn't the single link containing mannequin Parisien, what other factors could possibly make a site rank for two words that occur nowhere on the site? To explain that (without slamming anyone else's thoughts) would be an interesting, positive and valuable contribution to the discussion. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy
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