DISQUS

In the BBC article you linked to it mentions that he also forced Texaco into bankruptcy proceedings lol. It sounds like he's an adept rabble-rouser but it seems to work for him.

Skitzzo's last blog post..An Open Letter to SEO Bloggers: Back up Your Statements!

It's not that Toolbar PR isn't valid, it's just that it's a snapshot from so long ago that it doesn't really matter for what happens now. However, it does show us that something happened at least when that snapshot was taken. It's like looking at a photo of someone hitting a home run. Sure it might have been 3 months ago but they still hit the home run.

As long as Toolbar PR is the only public measure we have from Google, it's going to continue to matter. By drastically dropping the PR of these high profile sites, Google is just asking to be hated.

It's not that Toolbar PR isn't valid, it's just that it's a snapshot from so long ago that it doesn't really matter for what happens now. However, it does show us that something happened at least when that snapshot was taken. It's like looking at a photo of someone hitting a home run. Sure it might have been 3 months ago but they still hit the home run.

As long as Toolbar PR is the only public measure we have from Google, it's going to continue to matter. By drastically dropping the PR of these high profile sites, Google is just asking to be hated.

Finally we can all stop speculating about what if Thompson enters the race. While Paul is still "in the race" I find myself annoyed at having him clog up the social sites I enjoy. I think he may well suffer from over exposure because of all the social attention he's getting (like Peyton Manning for football fans).

Isn't it amazing how just a little effort would earn companies so much in good will? I mean seriously, how tough would it have been to send out an email or two letting people what's going on? And yet, they couldn't seem to be bothered and now they get this... simply amazing.

Someone should do a video of the future with a G-bot going around killing people with the explanation of “Unfortunately, a very small number of users have been living lives that are not performing to our quality standards and are being replaced with higher quality services.” What a crock of ****!

"Google, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways...."

Good grief... Google is like the New York Yankies gone crazy. Sure they buy all the top players but at least they have a farm system. Do we know if Google even has a research and development team or do they just call that the checkbook?

How long until the Google collective swallows up another of my favorite entities? I give it a year or so...

Greg, I definitely think there are SEOs who should seek partnerships etc.

Personally, I've gotten out of consultancy to work on my own projects but one thing that I miss is the variety that consultancy offers. It's not always easy to focus on one project.

BTW, the dishonest, milk em for all their worth and then dump em, provide no real value, type SEO's are worthless and deserve to be outed. I just don't think broad generalizations about the entire industry help things much.

"However, I can say without any doubt that if you are an expert in SEO, you can make far more money applying your knowledge to a business than consulting."

That's not necessarily true either. If I recall, Danny Sullivan covered this topic a while back as well. Basically though, some consultants just don't have the skills or the drive to work a business. Although, really, consulting is a business, it requires a different skill set than starting a business selling x, y, and z.

Sure there are some SEO's that are making other people rich when they could be making a fortune for themselves, but I also think there are others that prefer to stick to what they know best, and that just happens to be consulting.

Greg, while much of the information in your list is accurate, the post overall rubbed me the wrong way. It seems like you're blasting most of the SEO industry and then hedging your bets with your last point.

I actually saw a good Ask.com commercial last night. It had someone using Ask and all the different tools and things they have, it then asks, can your search engine do that or is it just... and then it zooms in on only the plain bland listings without all the bells and whistles. I probably am butchering the description but it was infinitely better than their retarded "chicks with swords" type commercials.

Google rarely plays by the same set of rules they set out for everyone else. If you get banned from AdSense they ask you to send in as much information and server logs etc that you can. They in turn won't even tell you which site to investigate. They ask people to identify paid links and report spam but in return they don't even allow us to see supplemental results anymore.

I'm obviously a bit biased but reading this I was left with the thought of "That seems about right..."

Lol that's another in a long list of unfortunate ads. Most of the ones I've seen have been on Google's own pages due to the broad search matching done by sites like ebay and others. In this case though I think it would reflect just as badly on the site publishing the ads as it does on Google.

See that's a much more creative lawsuit than the old and tired "they dropped my site so I'm suing" bit. I think Google is just BEGGING for lawsuits in a lot of different areas but people always seem to stick to the one that IMO is the least likely to succeed.

I've never been a big fan of unions anyway. I think they had enormous value at one time but I think that time has long since passed. The age of company loyalty to their workers and vice versa is dead, at least in my corner of the world.

I've got to admit, I was skeptical of Google's purchase of YouTube because it seemed like a lawsuit magnet but so far, it seems to have worked out for them. Who knows how some of these cases would have turned out without Google's massive legal defense fund behind them.

Wow, that's a pretty big step in the right direction. IMO there should be some sort of credentials or something that are required but that bloggers should definitely be viewed the same as journalists.

IIRC, there's a certain certification people have to go through or obtain to be considered journalists and thus gain the protection. Something similar for bloggers would be reasonable. I just don't think ad-supported is the right way to go with it.

It's nice that someone finally tries to estimate the time traffic takes. I took a roadtrip to San Fran a couple of years back and it was supposed to take something like 6 hours of driving on our last day to get there. Due to the incredible amount of traffic (had never been to California before) it took us right at 10 hours. It was insane.

"Googlespeak" = doublespeak 2.0 :(

Yet another exhibit in the Why I Hate Google museum. I mean for crying out loud, what harm could be done by telling us which pages are in the supplemental index and which aren't? Google's the biggest hypocrite there is. They suck up all this user data, and site info, and give out nothing. Good thing they do no evil...

I think I may have mentioned this before but we once had someone copy all of our code rather than just the content so we ended up seeing the site on Google Analytics and MyBlogLog etc. It was kinda fun to keep an eye on and find out where their traffic came from and went.

Jordan, don't feel bad, I was with you on the 100 days for Yahoo thing. Of course when you and I start thinking alike, you should be very, very scared lol.

Linky FTW!

I realize this probably qualifies me for some sort of SEO Geek award but I can't wait for this. I already use two different analytics programs but for whatever reason, I just can't get enough. Plus I'm always looking for alternatives to Google and Google's services so this fills both those needs.

Thank you! I've been seeing all these people debating the issue and every time my mind screamed "Who gives a flip?" I mean really isn't blogging just an extension of keeping your journal in a word doc? And wasn't that just an extension of keeping a pen and paper journal?

Basically I don't much care who claims to have had the first one or who is credited, so long as blogging continues to grow.