Tag: google

The Death of SEO?
As the regular readers here know very well, I’m quite the techy and invest a lot of time in the social web and the web 2.0 landscape. Doing that, I realize we sometimes take things for granted, so to speak. We feel like YouTube or Facebook have been around for an eternity, but neither of them are more than 5 years old (or open to the public for that amount of time).

The web changes, fast and so does the world around us (which this video reminds us of). Many bloggers and web fanatics, see search engine optimization (SEO) as something holy. If you just figure out the right keywords, manipulate your site’s content in such a way so that the search spiders will crawl your site and give you high traffic rankings, then you’ll be successful.

One of the most important ways in which Google gives page rankings, is links! If your content is linked to often, then it’s worth more than content that is not talked about a lot. To Google, the only content more valuable than that is the content whose publishers will pay for to promote it. Basically, Google assumes that your content is worth talking about, based on the links. The problem that arises now however, is that Google’s becoming less and less able to track the links coming from the most valuable conversations: those on social networks.

Earlier I mentioned Facebook. If you click a link on Facebook, it sends you to the page with a nice and shiny Facebook bar above it. On Facebook a link to this post would look something like this:

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=123091020346&h=ukq9m&u=L423Y&ref=mf

Instead of like this: http://www.basbasbas.com/blog/2009/07/20/the-death-of-seo/

Popular social bookmarking service Digg also does something similar. Actually, they’re worse, because Digg is actually hijacking traffic.

Probably the most common SEO killer is the Short URL. Services like TinyURL, Bit.ly, is.gd and tr.im make URLs shorter so they fit into the 140 characters that Twitter offers, or just so that long and ugly URLs look more elegant or are easier to paste somewhere (sometimes email clients tend to mess up really long URLs).

Where will this lead?
- Google’s PageRank algorhithm depends on determining what’s worth talking about.
- Google tracks this by the number of incoming links and their weight.
- Short URLs are becoming increasingly popular, making it increasingly difficult for Google to track what’s worth talking about.
- As Google starts having trouble determining what’s worth talking about, people will start using other ways to search for relevant content.
Half the time I’m looking for something, I use Twitter’s search engine. Why? Well, it’s time relevant, personal, let’s you interact with those that share the content and it can reveal trends. Twitter’s engine is still a bit basic and I expect to see some marvellous services that will start rivalling Google in the coming years. OneRiot could be such an engine. Maybe it will be Friendfeed if they reach critical mass so that Friendfeed will not be just for techies anymore.

What do you think? Will social networks mean the death of SEO as we know it? What is SEO anno 2009 and what will it be five years from now? What role will social media play in this?

Share this story on Twitter or Facebook! Here’s the short URL: http://bit.ly/QJ4u0
July 20, 2009
Google Friend Connect

Still apartment hunting. Quite exhausting and boring at the same time. You have to be ready to rush from apartment to apartment, but sometimes you’re simply waiting for people to contact you to tell you about new available flats.

So, while I was waiting yesterday, I set up Google Friend Connect, which allows me to directly connect to the community/readers of the blog, but also for you to connect to me, or even each other. Google seems to be rolling out a lot of options for Friend Connect, with which it aims to turn the more static media on the web into social media, or even integrate them with the existing social media, such as Facebook.

I’m going to activate some of them, for you (and myself) to play around with. First thing I want to experiment with is a wall on which community members can write their messages or even post YouTube videos that might be interesting to me or other people that visit this site. Not sure how/where to integrate it however, since I can’t reduce the width to less than 280 pixels. I’ll be looking at that. For the meantime get connected. Scroll to the Google Friend Connect widget in the left sidebar and join up!

Bas

January 20, 2009
Turkey seeks names of YouTube’s Ataturk insulters from U.S. government

Hurriyet Daily News reports the following:

Excuse me? Is this the Soviet Union I’m living in? In the past I’ve made a comparison between Turkey and China regarding the freedom of the press and I also said at the time that it was an exaggerated comparison, as Turkey’s press enjoys a lot more freedom than China’s. But this, this has not been equaled by China, I believe.

This summer we saw American Tibetan activists hold demonstrations in China during the Olympic games; they could not have done that if they got detained upon entering the country. Yes, they were arrested and deported, but only after committing a criminal fact in China. Most of their names could have and should have been known to the Chinese government. They write about the Tibetan cause publicly.

What this prosecuter is asking for is detestable and I am shocked and outraged.

“Those YouTube users determined to be living outside Turkey will be detained upon entering the country.”

Detained and then what? Imprisoned for insulting Turkey? They did not commit any illegal acts if they published these videos outside of Turkey, unless they are Turkish citizens, which might make it illegal. If I were to say “the US is a big pile of smelly cowdung”, I cannot be arrested upon entering the US. If I however threaten someone in the US, particularly government officials, there’s a good case for them to find out my name and to detain me upon entering the country. What this prosecutor is asking for is to limit the freedom of speech with matters pertaining to Turkey worldwide.

The whole YouTube ban is pointless anyway. Research in Alexa.com’s traffic ranking system has shown that YouTube is the 10th most popular site in Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan surprised everyone when he stated that even he uses YouTube.

In other news Hurriyet reports the following:

““There was a vigorous internal debate between Wong and her colleagues at the top of Google’s legal pyramid.” Wong, who had to play mediator, decided that Google, by using a technique called IP blocking, would prevent access to videos that clearly violated Turkish law, but only in Turkey. For a time, this solution seemed to work for the Turkish judges, who reopened access to YouTube.

But last June a Turkish prosecutor made a demand that Google block access to the offending videos all over the world, to protect the rights and sensitivities of Turks living outside the country. Google refused, arguing that one nation’s government should not be able to set limits of speech for Internet users worldwide. As a result Youtube has remained blocked in Turkey.”

Me: Hey Twitter! Some guy on your network said my site sucks and used some profanity. I feel really insulted. Can you ban the entire network from saying bad things about me? Oh you can just make it so that my IP address can not see it anymore? Well, I’ll be using proxies to see it anyway, but I’d prefer if you would make any insulting depictions of my site invisible all around the world.

FAIL.

The vice president of the European Parliament’s Human Rights Sub-Committee, Howitt, criticized the ban, saying that around 1,000 websites are blocked in Turkey and this places the country alongside some of the world’s worst nations for cyber censorship.

The information age is here and it’s never going away. You’re a really marvelous country Turkey, but it’s time to do something about these ridiculous prosecutions.

BasBasBas.com is about a Dutch student living in Istanbul. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul and travels in the region. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.

December 5, 2008
Digiturk causes Turkish ban of Blogger/Blogspot
Since Friday, it’s been impossible to access popular blogging platform Blogger or any *.blogspot.com domain from a Turkish IP address, due to a ban imposed by a court in the south east of Turkey.

Previously it was rumoured that Adnan Oktar, by some considered the leading Muslim advocate for creationism, might have caused the new ban, since he successfully got WordPress and Google Groups banned in the past, as well as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ website. However, this rumour was refuted by someone pointing out that Oktar operated in Istanbul courts and the verdict banning Blogger was passed in Diyarbakır, at the other side of Turkey.

Click to enlarge.

It’s now reported that it is not Oktar that got Blogger banned, but Digiturk, a subscription based digital TV platform that owns the rights to the live broadcasting of Turkish football league games. Apparently, Digiturk asked Blogger to take several blogs or blog entries down containing links to pirated transmissions of the live games. Blogger did nothing, Digiturk went to court and under Turkish intellectual property law, they managed to get Blogger banned completely, effectively banning millions of websites that have nothing to do with Turkish football or pirating.

Digiturk’s court cases in the past have managed to block Justin.tv and MyP2P TV for the same reasons.

Turkey’s NATO membership and EU ambitions seem paradoxical to the infringement on the freedom of press and speech of its citizens, residents and visitors by banning sites like Blogger and YouTube. The EU’s making a blacklist of censoring countries and are creating software for people in these countries to use to bypass the censorship (see: Global Online Freedom Act).

Thanks to safak for his tip about Digiturk!

Some useful links to unblock YouTube/Blogger (blogspot)/other blocked pages in Turkey:
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October 26, 2008
Google Bans Ecocho on Earth Day

Being a rather idealistic person, I’ve welcomed (with open arms) search services which try to make the world a better place. My homepage used to be My Eco Seek, but when I heard about Ecocho I switched. This search engine service allowed users to search using Yahoo! or Google and with the profit they get through sponsored ads, for every 1000 searches made, they plant two trees. Google put a stop to this though, on Earth Day, of all days.

The Internet and its effect on the environment

Research has found that the Internet and the digital technology industry are responsible for 2% of worldwide CO2 emissions, which is the same share as the airline industry. Being a growing phenomenom, in terms of its users and of its importance, it is great that there are more and more initiatives of websites becoming carbon neutral.

The Internet is a great medium for making the world a better place. There are so many places for activists to find each other and work together, such as Change.org or Rethos. Even Facebook can be utilised to find like-minded people through their Causes, Events and Groups functions. Nowadays our options to fly carbon neutral are increasing. Dutch airline KLM has such a service, but you can also use independent services such as Trees For Travel.

So the airline industry is busy trimming their CO2 outputs, slowly, but at least they’re making a start. Why not the internet? That’s what the founders of Ecocho must have been thinking when they came up with their concept.

$New Search Engine Ecocho\'s logo$

Google decides to stop Ecocho from using its technology

Even though Ecocho had great results in their first weeks, possibly exceeding their expectations, can now only offer their visitors to search environmentally friendly using the Yahoo! search engine. Although I haven’t looked into their statistics, given the popularity of Google, I would guess that that was also the most picked option for using Ecocho.

So what has happened?

The Google AdSense team has found that Ecocho was offering incentives for users to perform searches and AdSense, one of Ecocho’s sources of income, does not allow sites to offer “monetary or non-monetary” incentives to users. This includes paying users for clicks, or donating the profit to charity.

Ecocho would make money every time somebody clicked on the Google ads (or sponsored search results) they would see in their search results, but Ecocho has never encouraged users to click ads. They actually met the Google AdSense team in Australia before launching and they got two thumbs up, but apparently now they have been turned down (both the thumbs as well as Ecocho).

For more information, look here.

So what to do?

Ecocho asked users to ” target=”_blank”>email Google AdSense about their decision and one of their users set up an email that people could send out.

Dear Adsense Support,

I am one of the many users that frequent http://www.ecocho.com, a site recently denied the use of Google search technologies. I must express my disappointment with this event. However disappointed, I understand the value of the specific point of policy that is in conflict: “AdSense does not currently permit sites that offer monetary or non-monetary incentives to users to perform searches on click on ads.” I also understand the the argument regarding the “inability to verify the accuracy of any charitable claims and need to protect the user and advertiser experiences.”

This is equitable and overall good policy practice. I do, however, wish to implore the altruistic nature and the user-demand for such a service. Due to these reasons I ask, with a voice that echoes many others, that the time needed to ensure and verify the legitimacy of this service is taken. We are confident you will find Ecocho to be completely accurate and genuine.

We respectfully ask that proper attention is given to the wishes of the Ecocho community and that a viable agreement with the http://www.ecocho.com staff be made promptly.

Sincerely,
Ecocho and Google User

This should be emailed to .

Google says they’re committed to “helping to build a clean energy future.” Yet they ban Ecocho, a legit environmentally friendly service, on Earth Day of all days – while having an Earth Day logo on their frontpage!

Yet they don’t seem to be taking action against some services (which I won’t name or list, but you can find it in the comments here) that do encourage users to use their search engine for personal gain. Ecocho shares its fate with another ‘charity’ search engine called Aidgle.

Here’s something else the people from Ecocho had to say:

We asked if we could get the Google Adsense premium feed, but were told that they would only consider this once we reached several million searches per month. In the mean time they said they were happy for us to use Google custom search.

So obviously we are puzzled as to the sudden change of mind of Google.

Could this… possibly… be about money?

Google, think about your image.

People, share the news please using the applet below and don’t forget to email Google!

April 22, 2008

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