Posts Tagged ‘spam’

Google’s Penguin 2.0 Is Here

Thursday, May 23rd, 2013

google penguin 2.0We all know that nothing shakes the world of search engine optimization quite like a Google algorithm update. The first huge earthquakes were the original roll-outs of Panda and Penguin. Every smaller update to the two algorithms is like an aftershock.

Well, an earthquake happened yesterday. Matt Cutts posted on his blog that the “next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm” (referred to as Penguin 2.0) had completed rolling out.

This is actually the fourth Penguin-related update, but since the others were considered a “data refresh,” rather than an actual updated algorithm, Penguin 2.0, it is.

So, what’s the difference? According to another Matt Cutts blog post explaining terminology, an actual algorithm update seems to yield more changes, even if noticeable changes may not happen much. On the other hand, a data refresh is when data in an existing algorithm is refreshed. The resulting changes to search results is usually even less noticeable.

So, what sort of results can we expect to see from Penguin 2.0? Let’s take a look:

(more…)

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, August 21st, 2012

How many fake followers do you have?

As social media becomes more important in business and for pleasure, many people worry about the number of followers they have. For those who think that their number of followers is more important than who those followers are, there’s the option of buying fake followers. But a service launched this summer to spot fake followers, and with the attention that it’s been getting, it’s going to be hard to hide your fake followers much longer.

Fake Follower Check by StatusPeople looks at a sample of your Twitter followers to figure out how many are inactive or likely to be spam. Spam accounts are identified as those with few or no followers or tweets. It’s hard to be active on Twitter without attracting a few spammers, especially if you tweet about trending topics or certain topics spammers love (free iPad, anyone?). But if an account randomly gains thousands of spammy followers in a short time period or has an unusually high percentage of fake followers, it probably wasn’t all that random.

Twitter’s strict API plans

The Twitter Developers Blog published a post last Thursday outlining some of the changes coming to Twitter’s API in version 1.1. Guidelines for using the API, known as their Developer Rules of the Road, are much stricter, with display guidelines turning into display requirements. Authentication will be required for every request to access the API and the API endpoints will be rate limited at 60 calls per hour per-endpoint.

Along with talking about these and other changes, the blog post talks about the Twitter ecosystem. Twitter tends to group apps that use the Twitter API into four quadrants. One of these quadrants is mostly inhabited by “traditional” Twitter clients. A while back, Twitter began discouraging developers from building clients “that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” It looks like Twitter is going to begin doing more to prevent developers from building those sort of apps.

Developers have already started protesting this new API, with the CEO of Bottlenose.com starting an online petition. The Change.org petition urges Twitter to keep their previous promise to developers to be an open platform, to clarify their intentions for the developer community, to respect and appreciate the ecosystem more, and to remain to let Twitter users choose how they access the Twitter network (i.e. through Twitter.com, Twitter apps, or the clients Twitter wants to see go away).

The live-tweeted “Xtreme Dream”

Diana Nyad first attempted to swim from Cuba to Florida when she was 29, which was over three decades ago. Had she done it then, she would have written letters and made long-distance phone calls to tell people about her journey, and only once it was completed. But now, it’s 2012 and the 62-year-old swimmer has more instantaneous ways of updating people on the progress of her swim, which she calls the “Xtreme Dream.”

This time, her support team is live-tweeting updates from the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, writing blog posts, and updating a map on her website showing her position. Trending topics about her journey have popped up and will be sure to continue as we receive more updates about hitting unexpected weather and the fear of running into sharks and jellyfish.

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One Problem with the Convergence of Search and Social

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

I have always looked forward to search and social media becoming more connected. The two realms are already integrated, but there is still tremendous progress that must be made before search results are a true and accurate representation of a combination of what your social network endorses and what ranks high for SEO.

Google’s introduction of Search, Plus Your World in January was another step in the right direction, although it has been criticized for only including social results from its’ own struggling social network, Google+.

But I recently read an article on Search Engine Land that made me completely rethink my whole outlook on this emerging trend. In “Social Search: Dead on Arrival? Or On Life Support?” Trond Lyngbø discusses how incorporating social signals into search results just introduces one more way to game the system.

In addition to “black-hat” SEO tactics such as buying backlinks, people can also buy Twitter followers, Facebook ‘Likes,” or Google +1′s. Without social signals incorporated into search results, these morally questionable activities had less of an effect on Internet users. But now we are bombarded with “personalized” suggestions of who to follow and what to ‘Like.’

The article also prompted me to think about holding contests on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Have you ever entered a contest that required you to ‘Like’ a Facebook page, tweet about the contest, or follow a Twitter account hosting the contest?

In the past, doing this would increase the the visibility of the company on social networks. But as social media becomes more prominent in search, this could also result in that company’s website/content/social profiles ranking higher in search results.

I think people are beginning to forget that following a Twitter account, liking a Facebook page, or giving +1 to a website is considered personally endorsing that content.

So tell us, what do you think?

By Brittany Berger

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

Twitter opens office in Detroit

Detroit, Michigan is going through a “tech renaissance” and Twitter is the latest to join the scene, opening their office there last Wednesday. The office will be based in the M@dison Building, a historic building shared by several tech startups and will be led by Greg Myrick.

The “Motor City” office will serve marketers and ad agencies in the region, including the automotive companies that are the reason behind the city’s nickname. Automotive companies such as General Motors have already worked with Twitter on Promoted Products campaigns.

Twitter sues five spammers

We all hate spam, especially on social media. As social networks get more popular they become targets for spammers. Twitter is now taking action by suing five of the most aggressive tool providers and spammers. In a blog post, Twitter explains:

“By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal. Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter.”

In addition to the lawsuit, the engineering team also launched new anti-spam measures, such as using Twitter’s link shortening service (t.co) to analyze whether tweeted links could contain malicious content. But we need to do our part too. There are people that avoid tweeting about certain topics that tend to attract lots of spam, such as hot new tech products. Instead of (or in addition to) this, when you see a spammy tweet make sure to report it.

Big week for Instagram leaves app dominating Trending Topics

Last Tuesday, Instagram for Android was released. As a result, Instagram was a trending topic for days. Also trending was #TeamAndroid as Android users celebrated iPhone users having one less “exclusive” app. This resulted in one of the frequent Android vs. iPhone debates on Twitter.

Then yesterday, Instagram was acquired by Facebook, prompting hilarious tweets about the acquisition (more here). Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram both became Trending Topics, with Instagram still being the 7th most popular Trending Topic in the U.S.

Beyonce finally tweets

Although the verified @beyonce Twitter account has existed since 2009, no tweets had ever been sent from the account…until last Thursday. As part of a complete redesign of her digital presence, Beyonce sent her first tweet to announce her redesigned website. She also launched a blog on Tumblr, titled ‘I Am.’

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Even though it’s Thursday, it’s time for a Twitter Tuesday! Better late than never!

Marilyn Monroe verified on Twitter

Yes, you read that right. Even though the Hollywood starlet has been dead since long before Twitter existed, there is an account for Marilyn Monroe. The account is even verified, making it the “official” voice of her estate.

The @MarilynMonroe Twitter account has around 14,000 followers, and 154 tweets at the moment. The account is managed by a company called Authentic Brands Group, who purchased the rights to all things Marilyn 18 months ago.

So far, the account tweets pictures of Marilyn and quotes by her, as well as Marilyn-related news. Examples of such news include information about NBC’s new show Smash in which characters begin working on writing a show called “Marilyn: The Musical”, Michelle Williams’ new movie “My Week with Marilyn”, and current celebrities channeling their inner-Marilyn.

ABG says they plan on developing their strategy more in the next few months to make sure they are properly representing the icon: “We’re going to be aggressive about our social media strategy, because fans want her legacy to live on.” As Elton John sang, her candle’s burned out, but her legend will continue to live on.

Do you think Twitter accounts for dead celebrities are a good way to keep their legacy going?

Toyota’s spammy Superbowl mistake

In anticipation of their Superbowl Camry Effect ad, Toyota took to Twitter to “promote” the campaign but made some missteps. Toyota set up an account, @CamryEffect, along with several similar accounts such as @CamryEffect1, @CamryEffect2, and so on.

These accounts then began replying to tweets mentioning Superbowl trends, such as #Giants, #Patriots, etc. They would reply to all of these tweets with the same message including an offer to win a Camry Effect. Users quickly began complaining.

Once Toyota realized their mistake, they made the original account private and suspended the others. They also released a statement (via TechCrunch):

“We apologize to anyone in the Twitterverse who received an unwanted @reply over the past few days. We were excited to share the message of our Camry Effect campaign in a new way and it was never our intention to displease anyone…”

LeVar Burton secures @ReadingRainbow account

LeVar Burton has launched a new company called RRKidz and will be launching the classic Reading Rainbow as an iPad reading app. To promote the upcoming app, he wanted to use Twitter, but the handle @ReadingRainbow was already snagged. The owner of the account had not tweeted in over 3 years, though.

Burton first reached out to Twitter but received no response, so he looked to Twitter users. After tweeting for help, over 700 users reacted and also reached out to Twitter. In just over 2 hours, Burton was in control of the Twitter account. In the past when other people have reached out to Twitter for similar problems, it took Twitter days to respond.

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JC Penney’s Google Problem: An SEO Mess

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

SEO can be a difficult process to grasp.

That is, of course, unless you get your lessons from this gentleman.

But there are still basic concepts of what is right and what is wrong. In the SEO world, these are called white hat (good) and black hat (bad) optimization techniques.

This past weekend, the New York Times uncovered one example of the latter. Department store chain JC Penney was outed for using link schemes to artificially get top rankings for a variety of terms on Google.

This occurs when an SEO firm creates websites that cross link to a client’s product or service site. The links to the created site are placed in a word or phrase and distributed anywhere and everywhere on the internet – most commonly found in reader comment sections. You may know this as “spamming”.

Google picks up on how frequently these links are found and asserts them to the top of its rankings accordingly. That explains why JC Penney had top billing for terms as varied as “furniture”, “tablecloths” and “area rugs” throughout the winter.

JC Penney was punished and can now be found in less-ideal positions (many pages deep) in the rankings as manually placed by Google itself.

The firm in charge of JC Penney’s search engine campaigns, SearchDex, was promptly fired and the retailer now vehemently denies any involvement in the tactics.

No system is without its flaws but for those who take their searching seriously, this is very disappointing news all around. For Google to be gamed so easily for so long (this went on for months) makes you question when or if you are actually getting the best results.

By the same token, Google’s punishment of manually placing JC Penney links deep down in the rankings seems quite dubious as well. What if a searchers best result really turns out to be for JC Penney but they never see it because it’s buried in the rankings? That’s not organic either.

I think the lesson learned here is…well don’t cross Google, for one.

But the true lesson for companies looking to expand their profile on search engines is to really understand your SEO firm’s practices and make sure they are doing things the right way.

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