Added: The following comment is from Guy Kawasaki about this incident, I moved them to the top since it is relevant to the issue - mg

I was given the camera because I am doing a big favor for a photo conference. Arguably, the camera cost me $15,000. I didn’t have to review it. - Guy Kawasaki

I like Guy Kawasaki, I really do, I don’t always agree with him, but I do think he’s a smart man, and a thought leader in the space. That said I do think it pretty unfair that the A-List bloggers in the space get “free gifts” in exchange for blogging about them and Google’s Black Angel of Paid Linking Death never pays them a visit. So sit back and watch as I present my evidence and make my case in Nikon D90 link payola incident. Link Payola in the A-List Blog World »

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Look at this screenshot, looks an awful lot like match.com is trying to put a lot of text down below the fold …

If you don’t believe me try coming up with a reasonable explanation for putting the H1 tag “ONLINE DATING AT MATCH.COM” below the “Copyright 2008″ …

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People have been making accusations that domain companies have been sniffing customers searches for quite some time now. No one has any hard conclusive proof, but you have to admit it’s hard to make a case why network solutions might have registered this one, check out the whois

http://www.youguysseriouslyregistereverythingisearch.com/

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Since I spent the early part of the week discussing how Google Knols will ruin the internet, I thought it might also be fun to discuss potential ways you can use it to your advantage.

Google Knols and Opportunity »

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Think Google is a good as they would have you believe they are about detecting duplicate copy, then take a look here [fireproof safe with power]. Since result two links to result one I’d say result two is probably the original and Google got it wrong.

In this case the comments probably played a big role in the uniqueness of the documents when compared to one another. From a purely hypothetical point of view what if you cloaked the unique factors and served them only to the bots. What if you took some standard non unique data feeds and uniquified them on the fly. Serve your real visitors lovingly written marketing copy, serve the bots some really unique substitute and replaced copy with a bit of relevant RSS mashedup style copy, hypothetically speaking of course.

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Ok listen Netscape it’s embarrasing now. really you guys need step up to the plate and fix this. Looking at the state of things there are more vote bots than regular people casting votes. It’s so painfully obvious it’s not even amusing anymore. Either throw in the towel and pull the plug or fix it because right now it’s like watching a fish flop on the deck a boat waiting for to die. Jason Calacanis or Ted Leonsis if you guys know the right person send them this post and have them drop me a line … while there’s still a chance …

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Sometimes I see things that make me shake my head and wonder who’s at the wheel. If you’re running an automated voting bot, you want to use it just enough to nudge your story onto the homepage. Keeping it running after that is dangerous and just plain stupid. Letting it run to the point where your story has more votes than a story about a senator who resigns after being involved in an alleged sex scandal, is sure to raise a few eyebrows and draw some attention … probably not something you want to do

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Let’s try some wiki-jacking

Matt Cutts
Marissa Mayer
Eric Schmidt

I’ve got the wiki-nofollow plugin, so I won’t be passing any link juice, but I’m sure some of the people who scrape me aren’t using the plugin. Of course feel free to contribute in a similar fashion to see what happens. Why be jerk and do something like this, sometimes it’s necessary to be jerk and make an example, so things get fixed in the long run. Plain and simple the wiki has to come out of the organic SERP’s (think ASK.com) or lose some of it’s weight in the algo, right now it’s too much wiki too much of the time.

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While I’m generally not in the habit of outting websites who are bending or breaking the rules, when you reach the level of BMW or even Hummer the gloves are off, and you’re fair game …

Cloaking Your Hummer »

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So here’s a question for the Jason Calacanis’s and Robert Scoble’s of the world. Why is an accountant who knows the regulation and codes and takes advantage of tax loopholes that save you thousands of dollars each year good, But SEO’s who take advantages of loopholes and flaws in Google’s algorithm to bring you traffic that makes you thousands of dollars bad?

Please don’t respond or reply that Google’s guidelines or terms of service are in any way equivalent to the law. Google dictates policy for it’s own index not the internet as whole, yes there is a difference …

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Rand’s got an interesting video up about wiki-jacking watch it and then read my commentary

Wiki Jacking »

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Who’s using or has used article syndication sites heavily in the past? Seen any changes in your rankings lately? Are you using Webmaster Central, do sites who’ve syndicated your content show in your backlinks? Try popping some of those URL’s into Google to see if they are in the index, what do you see? Share your findings in the comments below …

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Wow I’ve got to say that the Go Daddy stuffed Advertisement Domains by proxy page really shows how great a human edited search engine is and how it isn’t subject to being abused by internal favoritism at all …

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So over on the Mahalo Blog they give a nice example of how sites get included, who stays on the waiting list, and who gets banned.

The priceless part is the person who’s site they say doesn’t meet their editorial standards actually gets a free straight link! Jason c’mon you need to think these things through a little bit. You may not like us but I really think you need an SEO on the payroll to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot from time to time. It’s kind of like hiring ex-con’s or hackers as security consultants.

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At SMX someone from EBay had the nerve to say they weren’t subdomain spamming, sorry I beg to differ, while looking for a white desk with a return [white desk return] I came up with one indented ebay listing followed by two additional listings, cruise to page two the non spamming continues with two more subdomains. Aren’t spamming indeed, and when you have the nerve to stand up at a conference and say you aren’t spamming you’ve given up any right to not be outted.

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If you’re going to stuff your footer with #EEFFFF (very light gray) colored text on #FFFFFF (white) background, you probably should go through the trouble of camouflaging the links as well. If you don’t it just looks like a bunch of random blue underlines floating in blank-ish white space.

Not that I’m advocating stuffing your footer with keywords and links, but if you are going to do something at least try to do it the right right way.

The things I see in day …

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Since it’s been over 48 hours since the last what are your 5 favorite toothpaste flavors meme I think I’m safe to start a new one. However this one’s going to be a bit different.

The Paid Link Blog Meme »

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Fine since Matt started this whole thing on hiding links and how people do it in really silly ways like putting nonsense in the onMouseOver WindowStatus I thought why not have a little fun and throw out a nice tip on how to mask your affiliate links.

How to Be Crafty and Mask Affiliate Links »

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One of the biggest mistakes really large publishers make today is doing SEO like it’s 1999. They throw up hundreds, thousands, and sometimes millions of pages, with the belief that more is better. This has grown exponentially with web 2.0 and blogging apps and cross-tagging, listing and publishing content in multiple spots. Here’s an example that’s pretty typical of a problem I see with alarming frequency.

How To Shoot Yourself in The Foot With Bad Plan and a Bad CMS Implementation »

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I got a tip that our friend Dave Pasternack has taken to spamming MyBloglog now. Pretty nice, one community is his own bio page at Did-it, the other is Did-it.com main site and the third is his CafePress shop. Which is particularly funny because they left out the Did-it.com actual blog, way to go for relevancy there guys!

Almost as Funny as Kevin Lee of Did-it.com posting a question on LinkedIn and then pulling it because he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted.

Now of course the page in question could be someone posing as Dave Pasternack and not the real Dave Pasternack, which would make him not guilty of spamming but make him collateral damage in reputation management problem of his own making.

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I know Werty showed something similar to this at pubcon, but this is as bad as I’ve ever seen it. 12 sponsored ads on a page and almost no way out but to click the ads. Yes I know there are two links in the upper right but well seems a bit like an MFA site to me (screen shot and full shot after the jump) Google MFA and No Way Out! »

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I’ve been playing with GMail and Google Reader lately and becoming more accustomed to the AJAX/Javascript interfaces. Which got me to thinking how good are they at separating humans from clickbots.

Are Ajax Applications Immune to Clickbots »

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Writing an effective title is truly an art form, and when you see it done to masterful perfection, it’s a thing of beauty to behold James Timothy NerdVille.net

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I’ve made no secret of my Disney fan status, in fact I have several news feeds set up to catch Disney items. Catching up in the feed reader this morning I came across the following: Top 10 luxury attractions at Disney World

Top 10 luxury attractions at Disney World How to have a five-star vacation at Disney parks and resorts

Needless to say this tickled my “link bait sensor” however upon further inspection, I realized the perpetuator of this “heinous attention garnering crime” is none other than Forbes magazine, republishing on MSNBC.com . I’ve said it many times in the past link bait isn’t anything new, the print world has been doing it for decades. It’s only new to the previously advertising averse turned web publishers.

ps: If I did it though my list would have went to 11

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All right since my whoring shameless self promotion knows no bounds, (and should make for some interesting inbound anchor text) I’m experimenting with myBlogLog. My buddy Jeremy goes for the hot babe approach, my interests are purely research oriented (oh all right I like being the center of attention it’s all about me, me, me dammit). I’m curious what benefits there are to being listed in the lower right top 50 communities section on the main community page. Looks like you need about 185 to get in but an even 200 would give me a little breathing room. I’ve currently got 124 so I need 76 more people to join my community. So how ’bout a helping hand. Did I mention that of all the people who read my blog you’re my favorite, no really I mean it, and I’m not just saying that … would you believe I’ll be your best friend … ever … for life … I’ll send you an iPhone … and pay the bill for a full year for your teenager to use it … including text and data …

Check out the avatar logo for Marketing Pilgrim … sweet

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With all this talk about Google Crawling CSS files I thought it might be nice to get an idea what’s within guidelines and what’s not.

Blue Widgets - Google and CSS Files »

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The blogosphere is buzzing today about the new stats being published by the Google reader, however I’d like to take a slightly more cynical look at things.

Google Reader - The Borg is Watching »

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One of the things I hear a lot is how do I do link bait for a boring industry like <insert industry here> . All you really need to do is think out of the box and go with a trend.

Ghost Riding the Whip - Insurance Linkbait »

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