Slashdot Mirror
Online Store to Sue Blogger Over Google Ranking?
An anonymous reader writes "An online business owner is threatening to sue blog owner Dean Hunt (DeanHunt.com) because he is upset that the blog owner is doing better than his business in the Google search rankings. After an initial threat, Dean received a follow-up threatening to take legal action against him. So far Dean has elected not to name and shame this business owner."
Yeah, well there are lots of blogs that do better than a number of businesses and organizations for whatever reasons Google assigns ranking. I get a number of amused emails from people that find Google ranks my blog higher than their dedicated sites for a shocking number of items. They want to know how I've engineered it, and I have to say I honestly don't know. But if they want to pay Google to increase their ranking above mine, go for it.
I suspect part of the reason is my selective use of links in articles I post to supplement the content I post with targeted information, as well as my hosting it from my office in an educational institution. Occasionally getting linked from places like Slashdot, BoingBoing and Digg can't hurt either....
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Who ever is doing this, I'll bet there's some stupid law they can leverage that says that Top Level Domains (TLDs) should only be used for what they stand for. Afterall, the
When I search for Dean Hunt, the blog beats any references to that lawyer's firm by a long shot but the links referring to the lawyer follow the blog immediately after it's #1 slot.
Anyone else find it hilarious that all these news articles are going to Google bomb the blog into a no-way-beatable #1 position for at least a few months? And what's this guy supposed to do? Check Google daily to ensure that he hasn't offended this ranking implication that the online store claims should be in place superseding Google's pagerank?
My work here is dung.
An undisclosed somebody is threatening to sue a poor little blogger over something. Come on. This is not news. Where are the facts?
Haha, you have to love morons on the internet thinking they own the world
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
Dean Hunt needs to stop exploiting Google Ranking. Since when are blogs a good source of information? its all biased and geared towards biased views.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
It would be funny to duplicate the content and massively interlink sites to drop the business page ranking even worse. Does anyone know if this approach has been successfully attempted in the past?
Click here or here.
Google cache links:
d eanhunt.com/bizarre-google-request-update+http://d eanhunt.com/bizarre-google-request&hl=en&gl=us&ct= clnk&cd=1
d eanhunt.com/bizarre-google-request-update+http://d eanhunt.com/bizarre-google-request-update&hl=en&gl =us&ct=clnk&cd=1
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:2Dkt-Yaf0yoJ:
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:2Dkt-Yaf0yoJ:
So rather than wait for this blogger to cave into some asshat's demands, we smoke his server utterly. Nice.
People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
FRCP 12(b)(6) the thing. Plaintiff has not stated a claim upon which relief can be granted. Then you're done.
What's the point of suing the blogger? If Google is the one that creates the page rankings, and is the reason why that blog is ranked higher than his website, how is it the blogger's fault?
/. traffic killed it...
Maybe TFA explained it, but it's
This is my signature. There are many like it but this one is mine.
The lawsuit isn't needed anymore. By posting the story to /. as an anonymous coward, the store owner just blasted the bloggers website off the net. Now google'ers will bypass the downed blog website, and go on to the store.
Brilliant!
Now that deanhunt has been slashdotted, the bogus claimant can rejoice, for deanhunt no longer exists (at least for a few hours).
Put a little link at the top of his site saying "If you're looking for Texas lawyer .... click here (link)".
What's next? Students sued because they're more popular than the unpopular students? "Sally only won home coming queen because she's a cheerleader and promiscuous! It's UNFAIR!"
TV ad - Was your child devastated when she wasn't voted home coming queen? The law offices of Dewey Cheatum can help. We also provide Google ranking services.
Anyway, here's the first blog post:
And the second bizarre email:
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
So you link to this Dean Hunt guy on the front page of slashdot, further increasing his page rank.
A nice, swift kick-to-the-nuts to the business responsible for this frivolous lawsuit.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Google is the one ranking entries. The blogger has absolutely no control over what Google does. So why is this even his question?
Think about it. No matter how frustrating it may be, can Bob sue Jim because Mary said Jim was a better lover? Of course not.
For that matter, if a lawyer is involved hasn't this already gone far enough to bring in the state bar? Lawyers can push the envelope, but they can't threaten to sue somebody when they know they have absolutely no chance of prevailing.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
A quite I heard:
Fighting on the internet is like the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded.
While not necessarily the most tactful of quotes, it does ring true.
I made a website for a local business owner and helped him promote it, even getting several number 1 spots on relevant google searches. One month his PageRank went down a notch, so he immediately calls me to ask what he can do about it. I explained the basics of how it works and why there is nothing he can do about it aside from getting more links.
.)
So he tries to phone google to ask them to change it back. I'm not kidding. You can guess where that went...
He tells me about this, upset, and I explain it to him again. All he can do is try and get more sites on the web to link to his page. Still desperate for a better rating, he makes a final proposition. My wife has a site with her resume and some articles on it, with a PR two steps higher than his. Could he put his site on that domain instead? (Not going to list the site, but the url is HER NAME, think www.janedoe.com
The point is, some people just don't get it.
The guy's name isn't Bernard Shiffman by any chance, is it? :P
Let's all make a link to deanhunt.com.
Bernard Shiffman trying new business models! ;-)
I am totally serious. My blog was SUED BY MICRO$OFT because I made some software that was so much more awesome then theirs. I even have the letters they sent me to prove it!!11!!! Now, if the Slashdot editors will kindly accept my claim without any sort of validation and post me on a Slashdot front page...
Seriously. Show an ounce of journalistic integrity and don't give a podium to utterly baseless claims. He doesn't even say what company is suing him so we can't even bother to ask that company if this is real. Any idiot could have made this up for the singular purpose of driving up hits. I am not saying that the guy is liar (he very well could be telling the truth), just he shouldn't get a free stage to advertise until there is at least the semblance of a claim that can be fact checked.
Considering the refered site in the post is now 500 error.. I think the submitter has accomplished what their threats did not.
... but who knows in this day and age.
I am not saying that "anonymous reader" IS the person sending the threats to Deanhunt.com
Wouldn't every body here want to see a blog by Mike Hunt?
Laugh. It's funny.
Okay, it isn't. It's tired and overused. And oddly enough, MikeHunt.com is safe for work. Whoddathunkit?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
On a site I run, I've got articles I've written about other businesses (typically complimentary) that invariably rank higher than the businesses' own web sites, especially on slightly odd-ball searches, but often on something as simple as the business's name. And the only thing I'm doing is using better grammar, and generally carrying on in a more conservative way. Google seems to reward restraint. Breathless promotional material always seems to take a back seat to lucid, well-constructed information.
Sure, Google ranks plenty of blatant trash higher than it sometimes should, but it's not always that way. My own experience is that actual, real content remains king. Small businesses frequently don't take the time to actually write any real meat for their own web sites. Hell, a lot my older stuff still isn't even all that standards-compliant (I swear I'll get around that CSS stuff one of these days), but it usually exceeds the sites about which I'm writing. And, of course, it's a feedback loop. The more credible some of my pages appear, the higher the new ones rank, too. No witchcraft, no magic sauce: just careful writing and resisting the urge to run content from the slimier ad engines.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Dear [edited]
Since your business [edited].com is doing rather well and top ranking is important to your business. Please transfer $[edited] in U.S. dollars to this [edited] account. When that happens I will gladly remove any and all references to [edited].com.
Thanks and bite me
I saw a link to this on his website: http://www.deanhunt.com/services/index.html
It raises some suspicion as this guy's business seems to be googlebombing. Perhaps he fabricated this story in order to get his website up in PageRank by people linking to him.
I suspect a fake story to help his search engine optimization business: http://www.deanhunt.com/services/index.html
Yes great. He posts a truly funny e-mail exchange on his site. And now he even gets slashdot exposure.
He even wrote: I will make a viral campaign!
http://deanhunt.com/category/seo/
This is it and you have fallen for it. Stupidos.
He should just ignore the guy. His site is more popular than the business one for a reason. So he should just register another domain, make it clear on his blog that he'll be transferring across in the event that he's sued, sit back, and do nothing. The business guy can go to all the trouble and effort of suing, pay the money and inherit the domain after wasting his time and effort. Within 2 months the blog will be back at the top of the google rankings and Stupid won't be able to go back to court to claim the new domain because he'll look like an idiot.
Merry Christmas Charlie Brown
The world is filled with winners and whiners..
I'll settle for my blanket...with a warm cup of coco in the corner...
And hopefully THIS year what Goes around will COME around...
Doesn't this business owner have better things to do than blame
some guy who's GOOD at what what he does ?!
Like advertising ??!!
Blame the other guy and move along...nothing to see here...
Cheers
End of Line.
To send letters like that. I have a feeling Mr. Dean Hunt is fabricating this story, as his business is mainly google bombing and search engine optimization.
What's frustrating here is that Dean has not thought to ask the question I'd really liked answered: why does this bozo believe that he has a legal claim to the top Google hit for a particular search term? Dean, how about it? At the very least it will probably shut the guy up.
See Misconfigured Webserver, Threats to Call FBI.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
keep playing with this guy!!! he's a bully and (although I am not a layer) he dost have a leg to stand on. The only way he can win is if you cave in, he will then make you feel even worse about it by saying "I told I was right, you should have listened to me and not been so silly"; or words to that effect. Use a lot of humour seeing as he got angry(jealous) that you ranked higher that will depress him if he thinks you are not affected. Lastly put his name on you blog, if you and the internet are laughing at him he will shut up. Dont get upset or angry.
This reminds me of a similar occurrance last year when Dave Redl, owner of the "Familypants" brand, wrote a cease and desist letter to a website. This website had a discussion forum and one of the forum users named himself "Familypants". Message posts by that user appeared higher on Google than the Familypants website.
If anyone cares, I wrote a rather opinionated, juvenile, and scathing blog entry on this topic. The next day I felt bad about being such a meanie to Dave Redl so I wrote a follow-up article, but halfway through I realized that my wrath was justified.
Some consider Google too truthful for its own good, it seems.
Another example of this kind of abuse happened recently to the owners of JC Guest House - Bed & Breakfast.
Does the link from several high traffic sites increase his ranking further, or will this only happen for certain keywords?
Whats In it For Me!
A key marketing term. People only go to a web site when there is something in it for them.
If you just put advertising for your service or product, people will only go when they want your service or product -- if they make it through all your competitors. People generally do not send others to a sales pitch. If you put up information related to your product, but also to educate them and turn it into more of a destination then to buy, you get people going there before they want to buy so when they want to buy, they check you first.
Fight Spammers!
I ought to sue Eric Raymond, because he's ranked higher than me. That gives all Raymonds a horrible reputation. It's libel, I tell you, libel! He's intentionally making me look bad! If this guy sues, then I can find another thing to charge this "Eric Raymond" (if that's even his real name, he's such a kook that I'm sure he can't really be named Raymond) with.
Unfortunately, at the moment it looks like the threats are entirely without substance, as he hasn't even named what the potential legal action would be. I hope he gets on with it soon, because he is holding back my efforts to improve my reputation through litigation as well. )=
Could it be? I mean, truly, really possibly, actually? That a web site talking about, and providing information about, something is considered more relevant than a site selling something? I know that when I search for a specific product, 99 times out of 100 I'm not looking for a place to buy it, but for a place to get information and reviews about it. Under those circumstances, I find the sales sites to be annoying noise. Perhaps Google is finally doing something about this.
Someone has got to find out what site this is...
There is NO evidence this guy is telling the truth, but there is ALOT of evidence this guy is lying his ass off. Don't believe this Slashdot readers!
And I'll share it for free:
A rich internal link structure.
Blog software creates this by default, but you can do it manually. A recent website I was hired to optimize will illustrate this. The site is customSiliconeBracelets.com. When I was hired they were on the 30th page for their two desired phrases: Silicone Bracelets & Custom Silicone Bracelets. Now, they're number 1 in both of those.
To accomplish this, I did two main things:
1. Add a bunch of text. It's mostly nonsensical. It's not meant for human consumption. It's there for keyword density.
2. Add a shitload of intra-site links. Every keyword in that nonsensical text is linked to other pages in the site. If you tried to navigate the site by following such links (instead of using the sites navigation) you'd go in circles for hours. Which, when you look at the logs, is essentially what Googlebot does.
Of course, there was all the "standard" stuff like page titles, H tags, links with titles, alt text on images, etc. But those only get you so far. The real beef is in the link structures, friends.
I don't really care if the guy made the whole thing up or not. Just reading the whole shebang along with the comments makes me chuckle. Hell if it is a hoax it is actually *more* funny.
Laborare Est Orare
This seems *very* suspicious. Parent quotes from this post.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Pronunciation: 'kä-(")m&rs
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, from Latin commercium, from com- + merc-, merx merchandise
1 : social intercourse : interchange of ideas, opinions, or sentiments
2 : the exchange or buying and selling of commodities on a large scale involving transportation from place to place
I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure blogging would neatly fit under definition #1.
Is this not in fact the Viral Campaign he talks about starting on his blog? Seems to be working, since he's on Slashdot already, plus all the links go to his site and none to the other (ostensibly undisclosed) address.
Peter Boyle's death is appropriate news for an entertainment/celebrity news site. This is a technology site and it's not appropriate here as he has no connection to technology or technology-related issues.
This man owns a search optimization business
Nice catch, Sir Homer.
Here's where he tells us he's going to mount a viral campaign.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Just to reiterate what someone else tracked down in hopes of getting this (wholly ambiguous and suspect to begin with) story checked out:
http://deanhunt.com/category/seo/
Basically this guy has a side job of helping companies up their pageranks, and made all this up as an "experiment in viral marketing". Nothing to see here...and sure explains why he's keeping the company name and search terms secret.
The person doing the suing is totally misguided and obviously trying to extort money through fear rather than having an actual case.
How could someone sue another site owner over his google ranking? He has no control over how google rank his site, unless he paid google, which is perfectly legal anyway. At least they should be suing google, but probably decided they'd be destined to lose.
Anyway google don't hide the fact that they sell search ranking order as a product/service.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! It was worth a good laugh anyway.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
My online identity of nearly 10 years (Bones3D) is probably starting to look awfully tasty to some enterprising 3D modeling/animation software developer, since it sounds like it'd be a high end inverse kinematics system of some sort. In my case though, it's more of an amalgam of a high school nickname and the field I was trained in several years later. So the two parts are virtually unrelated.
Another fun one, would be my real name itself (James Meade), which actually is a popular clothing manufacturer out in the U.K., similar to what Levi Strauss is here in the U.S. I'm not real worried about them though, since I rarely use my real name online more than I have to.
At any rate, it helps to be aware of how your identity could be taken out of it's original context and used for commercial purposes.
Needless to say, it does bring up an important question... how much is your online identity worth to you? And on what terms would you be willing to part with it?
8==8 Bones 8==8
I've grown to learn that when people make a point to let you know they're "honestly" doing somthing, or "genuinely" feeling some way, they're full of shit.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
(1) It's all made up by the blogger. Essentially, it's a twisted plot to raise his own traffic.
(2) The email isn't fabricated, and the publicity for this blog is engineered to drive the business's ranking into the ground.
an AC (anonymous cynic)
Wow. Sued by Microsoft for competing with them? Those guys just don't know when to stop, do they?
K.
...is that slashdot and many of it's readers are replying to this seriously.
This story has no merit. If it were real, why not post the real name of the site that this person sending this email? Why not at least post the keywords that supposedly are being used?
Surely there is no expectation of privacy or confidentiality from sending a non-solicited email.
I call bullshit.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
If you look for an astronomy club in Pennsylvania, the teeny little 30-member site I run is #2. The only reason for that, that I can think of, is because it's in my /. sig.
Clear, Dark Skies
Walk into a police station with a fake AK-47 and and aim it at people.
The will get your name in lots of blogs, and hopefully launch a precedent that will be followed by other SEO "consultants".
Peter Boyle's death is appropriate news for an entertainment/celebrity news site. This is a technology site and it's not appropriate here as he has no connection to technology or technology-related issues.
Who said anything about Peter Boyle? This is about some blogger attempting shennanigans pretending he's being threatened with a lawsuit over google rankings, in an effort to boost traffic to his site.
That said, nobody has done the Frankenstein monster better than Boyle.
1) Anybody who runs a website with a reasonable number of users gets shit-loads of this sortof email every day. You ignore it and just accept that the world is full of nuts and we've allowed them to send emails
2) This guy is quite clearly interested in fiddling with Google rankings - indulging him by linking and quoting his blog is really really not very helpful.
Oh my, if you hover over the people's names who have submitted responses, seems like each person's web site that the name links to is a business. I tried to submit a response, but it was rejected! He's a sneaky devil. That is how those sites are getting higher rankings, his blog links to their sites through the fake comments.
mr pibb + red vines = crazy delicious
If he has misrepresented himself, that has to be illegal?
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
http://www.hawknest.com/
but the same thing has happened to me (not the suing part though) my blog rating is higher than the actual resturaunt I was reviewing
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Because it's business? That says more than I ever could about the "royal" mentality that many people seem to have. And in all this time, I has presumed a certain level of snobbery was all in my imagination! You know, that "Us vs. Them" feeling we all get? I'm definitely on the "less successful" side of the "Us vs. Them" fence.
But for this business professional to actually come out and SAY what I had always suspected they believe is just... I don't know the word for it... unsettling in a way. I guess it's because I also believe there is a lot more that goes unsaid. So like cockroaches, if you see one, there's probably thousands. If they'll say this and believe it, there's probably a LOT worse going on in his head.
I commented that maybe he made it up and linked to his own blog entry. My comment was waiting for moderation for a few minutes before dissapearing. looks like it really is made up.
These things are becoming more common. Just recently there was the SEO who was sued over rankings between competitors. That created quite a stir -- his response in the end was to settle out of court for "5 figures"... It's a shame but I understand the reasons why. Precedents will be set if this keeps up because who wants to take this thing to court and lose their a$$ in legal fees. Especially when you can stay below the radar and make good money in SEO right now.
Mike Hunt?
THANKS, I'll be here all week!
Serious business.
Do No Evil
...and give this joker's sites a pagerank of 0.
I hear the search term was "assvibrator".
No way is that illegal. Only in certain cases, like advertising, and being/faking a doctor or a cop is it particularly illegal. And if you use a confidence scam to take property or money from someone, that's also illegal. But some dude with a web site fooling people into thinking that some fake email corresponding is real, for the purpose of having fun in the internets? No problem at all, even if he's just in it for the google ad revenue.
for great justice
sw5YRhw4ln3pr7$Ock1/4ma0u8Lw2Tm5l6/7DOiC5e6t4NSb6
When did this happen?
Why?
Infuriate left and right
We don't live in some utopian communist star trek world. I would prefer such a world, but nobody in charge asked me what I wanted.
You're talking about wanting an internet that's not shaped by profit. Guess what: It's gone and it's never coming back. It's been gone since, at least, 1995. And you know what else? That's a good thing. The internet would not be what it is today if it weren't for companies and the driver of profit. It would be full of Geocities websites, academic resources, resumes and term papers. Yawn.
Furthermore, the fact that you equate seo with things like fraud and price fixing is totally overblown. But before I get to that, I want to address your "google would have more time to wipe my ass if SEO didn't exist" remark.
Think again. That same company that purchased my services, as I mentioned in another post, paid Google nearly 3/4 of a million dollars in Adwords.
Google is what it is today because of FOR PROFIT companies. It would've never made it out of stanfords basement labs if the web wasn't what it is.
But lets get back to your idea that SEO is a bad thing. I live in a midsized city, about 300k people. One of our Malls that is well-located has been growing and growing for 20 years now. It's grown so much that it's actually put 3/4 of the other malls in the city out of business.
Furthermore, many businesses close locations all over the city just to move to the neighborhood with this mall.
Location Location Location.
This is what SEO is. It's getting the best location on the internet that you can.
It doesn't hurt anybody, because these same techniques can be used by ANYBODY. It's a level playing field. So you can "hate me" all you want--I promise you that I don't care--but all you're doing is proving your ignorance.
Slashdot is full of people that think that software should be free, search engine rankings should be sacrosanct, and it's a bad thing when people make a profit.
Unfortunately, we don't live in a world like that. I butter my bread writing software and I cringe every time somebody suggests it should be free. Free software doesn't work. There is no model in existence of a major free application working. All of the free applications were paid for by somebody. The developers that work on Linux, MySql, OO, are *paid* developers. The companies that pay them do so by selling other software or services.
SEO isn't hurting anything. I would argue that your attitude, if it were actually held by enough people to even matter, would. Significantly.
The store owner is living proof that the total number of horses' legs in the world is not evenly divisible by four.
Maybe he can get the guy with the pipes to re-route them for him.
Not right now, we're busy trying to view a blog by Dean Hunt. Since he's the topic of this Slashdot story.
It's not wire fraud for lying?
Or what your saying is it isn't a criminal matter, it's a civil matter... ?
http://www.hawknest.com/
Could there be a remote possibility that bloggers now start inventing stories to attract more clicks?
Yeah, and probably he is happy to get so many backlinks from slashdot to his site :)
It is a really nice idea.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Which is well-known for legal harassment of any business that has the word monster in its name or its products' names?
However, to rephrase Lloyd Bentsen, "Mr. [edited], you're no Monster Cable."
Tag lost or not installed.
An entry for wicktionary:
deanhunt
It looks like this is turning into a cautionary tale for would-be advertising gurus: just becoming widely known is not enough; you need to very much avoid becoming widely known as a laughingstock.
It's potential that this business owner needs to read some documentation on Google's PageRank mechanism, get over himself, and check all of his outgoing links. Dean Hunt's website gets an overall pagerank of 2 as of my posting of this comment, so it's obviously a problem with the business owner's outgoing links. If only people knew what they were doing before they started throwing lawsuits at people... last night I just saw an older episode of South Park where everyone was suing everyone else for 'sexual harassment' -- proving that it's just silly to sue over these things. The judge, if it ever gets that far, will hopefully just throw the damn thing out.
"Your blog" is deanhunt.com, and you are Dean Hunt. You are scum. Please end yourself.
For it to be a civil matter, you have to show damages. Try explaining to a judge that this ass-clown stole your precious /. time or wanking time, and that you are financially harmed as a result.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Whats wrong with you people? its been stated several times that this is a hoax, why do you people keep falling for it? does no one read the existing comments before they post?. Besides this isn't viral marketing, its just lying and a hoax.
Before I complete any SEO contract I submit the site to Googles review team. If it gets banned, I do what I need to do to fix it. Usually it's just a 30 or 90 day ban at first and they'll unban you if you fix the problem that caused the ban.
If it doesn't get banned within 45 days after submission, they pay the remaining part of the contract and it's considered complete.
So far, 15-or-so websites later, I've *never* has a website banned.
All you need to do is follow their webmaster guidelines, as I've already said.
All this talk of "gaming the system" by people who seem to not understand the "rules of the game."
You maroons, stop linking to his site! You're just playing into his hand.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
He's exploiting Digg, Slashdot, and every other online community that has decided to link to him. If you even look at his blog itself (not the contents of its posts), you'd see that his blog is new and pretty lame. There's no way in hell he would link higher than an online store that likely has been around longer than his stupid blog has.
His "viral campaign" worked, but he should have done a lot more to have covered his tracks because all signs point to LIAR.
Folks, I've been studying this stuff for years, and Google may be fooled for a few weeks by schemes like this, but it only lasts until it's next re-evaluation. Remember, they didn't get to be the number-one search engine through being gullible idiots. They've seen EVERY TRICK before, even if you just heard of it.
ANY scheme to artificially boost page ranking, be it keyword stuffing, link farming, invisible text, generated page mazes and redirects or meta-tag voodoo is sure death to the site in the long run. Correct, it may be number one this month, but next month it will be number one-thousand if it isn't blocked/banned entirely.
Pardon the offense, but the ONLY sane answer to "How do I get better ranking?" is "BUILD A BETTER SITE, DUMBASS!!!" Consider putting some good (for humans!) content on it, which will be natural linkbait. Paying people to submit your site to Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, etc., is of course one form of cheating that still works. For now.
Here's my tip to this Anonymous Coward:
Check that website once a month for the next year.
Do you know when we first gained the top spot? December. 2005. That's fully one year. In that time, the most we've dropped is to number 2, toggling between us and the current #2 site.
The really crappy thing is that people don't understand the difference between SEO that's allowed by google and SEO that's banned by google.
I personally submit all of my sites to the google review team before completing the SEO contract. Including this one.
Proof that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about is right in his message:
"Keyword Stuffing" --> Illegal practice. Google has a 'keyword density threshold' Stay comfortably below that number, and you're OK.
"link farming" --> Creating an artificial network of external back links isn't going to work. If google sees a big flux in your back links too quickly, you're penalized
"invisible text" --> This is a big no-no, and I've never employed it.
"generated page mazes" --> I'm assuming he means pages that automatically refresh to other pages, which Google considers "doorway pages." Again, it's a banned technique.
"meta tag voodoo" --> Google doesn't even use meta tags in its ranking. It only uses them to build the site description.
"Submitting to Slasdhot, Reddit" --> This is the linchpin that proves he's FOS. These sites always add a NoFollow attribute to prevent GoogleBot from following the external links.
This is simple, folks. I've been doing this for a while now. Two years. Everyone of my SEO contract sites has been reviewed by google, and none have ever been blocked. I'm not including the URL of my business website in any of these posts. I'm sharing this information for one reason only: For the benefit of anyone who wants to employ it.
The SEO Bible is not some E-Book you purchase for $30. The SEO Bible is the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Follow those, and you're golden.
Take my advice, don't take my advice, I don't care. I make an average of $10,000 on each SEO contract I've done. I'm giving away the info because I believe in the free exchange of ideas.
Some people are frustrated with themselves (or something) and they chose to attack me. Fine. I don't care. But I have no alterior motive. And if you don't trust me, follow the progress of that website. It was on page 30 in May of 2005 when I started. I got it to the first page after the Jagr update in September 2005. Three months later, they were number one.
Here's a post by Dean on WebmasterWorld from back in May:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum44/2127.htm
Dean seems morally-challenged. Here's another goodie from WMW:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum10/11401.htmAnd, finally, one more:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/667.htmLooks like Dean's been toying with various scammy concepts for a while.
In any case, he's looking like more of a sleeze by the minute.
Look at all the comments that he got... have you ever seen so many capitalized and punctuated comments in reply to a post on a blog in your life? And this Dean Hunt guy seems to like the word hilarious... it shows up over ten times on the page. "# miked Says: December 9th, 2006 at 9:21 pm wow, came across this site via digg I'm amazed at hour stupid people can be. Hope you hear from this guy again soon!" Who mispells how as "hour"?? Poor guy, though. He must have spent hours thinking up comments from "different people". Or maybe they're actual comments. Hmm... I feel stupid. Oh well, I spent so long writing this thing I might as well post it.
He did a really good job of it. A scan of his last couple months of posts show that on average he gets about 3-5 comments per post (if he's lucky). With this google search term fiasco, he's been getting dozens of comments per post, the highest so far being 158 on one post alone.
Mission accomplished??
You're right. He is a liar. And a loser. The worst part: a recent update to the story that he posted as his latest entry. From that post:
> I would like to thank you all from the bottom of my heart
> for your support on this. I have been trying not to take
> any of it too seriously, and your comments have really
> helped me.
No, Dean, let us thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You are scum and all the traffic in the world will never give you or your web site any purpose. Keep grasping at those straws loser, as well as leaching off of other's work and their humble naivety. Again, it will never give your worthless existence any meaning, only magnify the look you've given us all into your phonyness.
Dean, you remind me of a saying: liars think that everyone lies. In life you can be a liar or you can portray truth and light, but not both. You can be a leach and a follower or you can be a creator and a leader, but not both. Do I need to point out where you fit in? You are worthless.
Dear Blog Readers,
:( Then, on the way home a car splashed into a puddle and it got me all wet. To top everything off, when I got home, my mailbox was full of bills! I guess it must be that time of the month...
Today I went to the store and they totally screwed me there. Seriously, the manager was being a total dick. I would have fought him, but I'm too much of a pussy
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Maybe Google will send the business owner a box of Kleenex or perhaps a block of cheese to go with his whine since he's crying about his rank so much. Why not. They've sent aspirin for a headache.
Specks
Batteries not included
> It's not wire fraud for lying?
Lying is not illegal.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
:( oh well.. so much for using agents of the state to do our bidding..
http://www.hawknest.com/
This lie, if it was one, led fraudulent use of computer resources. It's like spam, one message doesn't waste enough resources to be worth the light of day, but when you put all the spam messages in aggregate it a significant level of usage and represents legitimate damages.
Likewise, if this is a lie, then every click wasted what in aggregate amounts to 10's of thousands of dollars in wasted CPU cycles and net bandwidth.
http://www.hawknest.com/
And maybe some (not all) blogs should be ranked higher because more people find what they say about those businesses more interesting and useful than what those businesses say about themselves.
If I want to find contact information and other objective information (menus, product/price lists) for the business then I'll try their website first, but if I'm wondering whether to do business with them, frankly their website is secondary.
Even if I'm looking for docs on a particular product I don't bother with starting from their website, I start with google - most corporate website search engines are crap - for example you get lots of useless PR releases bullshit instead of actual tech specs or drivers. They should just put all their pages in plain HTML where search engines can index them. But I guess someone has to waste lots of company money on paying expensive "web designers" to charge megabucks just to create all that crap and slap on a useless search engine.
I mean who cares what "Divinci's Pizza" says about their pizza? Who even cares about Divinci's pictures of their pizza? A blogger's recent opinion and pictures of their pizzas, restaurant etc would be far more interesting for someone trying to figure out whether Divinci is worth a try.
If Google starts to rank businesses higher just because businesses pay them AND[1] Google's searches become less useful to me, I'll just switch search engines. Same goes if it's bloggers or whoever else instead.
[1] If McDonald's wants to pay 10 million USD to Google a year just to be top ranked for "McDonald's Corporation" go ahead - I don't think it will make my search results less useful.
4. (Rhyming slang) A contemptible person. "That guy who works in the marketing department is a complete Dean."
Anyone read one of his posts on October 4th in the SEO section of his website? He intends to embark on a 'Viral Campaign'. Here are a few of his ideas: "Viral Campaign Stey by Step: Firstly I need to find something that is going to get a reaction from people and get them talking. I have already chosen what this will be. Next step is to create a site that is going to get your point across and act as a call to action for the readers. After that will be the promotion of the site via related sites." http://deanhunt.com/category/seo/ Sounds like this is one of his business techniques http://www.deanhunt.com/services/index.html
Just as Roland Piquepaille paid Slashdot to link to his adblog.
Slashdot is a commercial site. It's not about pleasing you. Unless you're a Slashdot shareholder, in which case it's all about pleasing you.
Come explore the real world some time.
Hey, if people are paying for AddOns like RDX, why wouldn't they pay for cute-sounding voice actors to join them on Ventrilo for 5 hours a night, 365 days a year?
Easy there fellow. The editors of /. are not journalists and cannot be expected to "check sources" like they'd be submitting stories for the print version of the NY Times. This is a techie site and the editors should just decide whether a story is interesting enough to make the page.
Furthermore, isn't it more fun when things backfire like this and the hoaxter gets caught than in this would have just ended up in an editors trash bin ?
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
Pron sites are suing his brother and fellow blogger Mike Hunt for ranking higher when certain searches are carried out in Google.....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
so, it's clear from history that in the USA you can sue for random crap that doesn't make any sense. The fact that you *CAN* sue for something that's clearly set out to you makes no sense. in many other democracies of the world the government would show the guy Google's TOS and show the business that Google has no responsibility to them, and not allow the lawsuit to happen.
what i'm personally worried about is the fact that i have a website. what if someone decides to sue me for crap like this? i'm a poor college student who cannot afford a lawyer, and cannot afford the time in court because of my studies. i can't afford to deal with crap that's _clearly_ not my fault. what compensation is provided to me? the #1 point here is the affording a lawyer part. what the hell do i do?
I'm on a mailing list about blogging and I send a message for the group talking about this case.
They reject my message (Message not approved: Online Store to Sue Blogger Over Google Ranking):
Renata, I'm going to reject this email from being published in the group since I am concerned about the group injecting itself into someone's legal affairs. Your connection with the topic is not explained, which is also a possible problem.
I am concerned that accepting it for publication to the group without a more thorough description of the situation might cause some problems down the road for us by appearing to take sides.
If you think I am misreading this situation please let me know.
[edited], co-moderator
OMG!!! It's just news...
http://rvincoletto.multiply.com/journal/item/314
Why do i always see the best posts when i dont have any mod points. bah.n s
I totally agree with your point. creating jobs/money is not the most important thing when determining the legality/morality of an activity.
unfortunately many activites that harm other are allowed because (ironically) they harm everyone. pollution is the classic example - the polluter takes all the financial gains from not desposing of the waste properly/not producing the wast in the first place. everyone on the planet is affected by the negative results, but only a little bit each. The gains are concentrated with those who cause the problem and the damage is spread over many people.
the idea is explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_Commo
i think this is a good way of looking at the problem of SEO/junk mail/spam
for each individual it might only be a slight annoyance, and it is always logical for a company to do it but eventually the 'environment' is damaged to a point where it is not usable.
i.e. email becomes unusable because of the levels of spam, search engines become useless because of the artificial results
some of these things are already happening...
how many google searches have you done where the first page was just a load of rubbish - price comparison sites, fake 'reviews', review sites where nobody has even reviewed the thing your looking for. and of course the classic ebay results which seem to fill most searches (get a clue - if i wanted to buy it on ebay i would search on ebay!)
Yeah, being threatened with a lawsuit by idiots is a rite of passage for anyone who publishes anything on the net.
One time I got an email demanding that I remove information from various web sites or be sued for libel. I pointed out (a) that the web sites were archives of Usenet postings, and that I had no control over what someone had dredged out of Usenet and decided to republish on the web; (b) that I had posted the information to Usenet with an explicit expiry date that had already passed years ago, so in fact I had already requested that the information be taken down; and (c) that the information was factually correct, and hence not libelous. The kook agreed that the information was correct, but continued to pontificate about lawsuits. I never actually got sued, though.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Hey, when's the last time you tried managing a 4,000 page static website? The database back end is searchable as well, and it makes my job as a developer and other's as udaters or site managers much simpler, so we aren't spending millions of dollars with a team round the clock trying to change one link on 2,000 pages. Static HTML is great, for a 5 page site.
I just checked the 20-or-so google servers. They're number one or number two for all of them still.
Sorry to disapoint you!
...You seriously can't expect people to take you seriously when you compare junk mail to the maffia, can you?
Give me a break. At least come up with a relevant argument.
I said plain html - make it easier for search engines to index meaningfully AND for people to use. Most companies shouldn't be having all those silly flash + javascript pages - they aren't in the entertainment or ad industry and shouldn't pretend they are. Craigslist seems to be doing ok for all that "ugliness".
But if you want to generate static html pages from a DB hey that's not that bad an idea. Might actually work quite well if you can store the "Last Modified" times of the files/data in the db and restore them correctly. Lots of webservers are very good at serving up static files. Could keep multiple copies around and use a symlink to point to the version you want.
After all, as I mentioned - it's not as if many companies (even the big ones) get their own site search engines right. So they might as well just embed a google search form and use it as their site search.