As many of you know search is a hobby of mine.. I don’t directly make money from it, I just find the high level thought process interesting to study.. I’ll let the pros work out the deatily stuff and then just pump them for info to make my websites better..

Anyway, Google has released another beta search engine called Google Scholar.. This beta engine is geared solely toward academic papers, patents, abstracts, etc.. I love it.. A little copy/paste from the about page..

Features of Google Scholar

* Search diverse sources from one convenient place
* Find papers, abstracts and citations
* Locate the complete paper through your library or on the web
* Learn about key papers in any area of research

Interested in the ranking process??

Google Scholar aims to sort articles the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature. The most relevant results will always appear on the first page.

This is a closed search engine from all appearances.. To be included you need to ask for admission in to the SE.. Talk about heavy duty spam control..

While this is cool, and all the other beta searches like Google Books are cool, I see this as the forerunner of things to come.. As more and more pages enter the vast internet, being able to categorize types of sites together to make the search experience better is a good thing.. I see a time coming in the near future where you will search various google portals for more targetted results.. Need an acedemic paper for research, google scholar, looking for a specifc book or quote, google books.. Looking to veiw a little something wearing little less than something, or a big something wearing a little something as your tastes may go, google porn..

It’s a good looking world through google colored glasses..

webguerrilla has a fabulous post about the recent SEO “contest” targetting Dave Pasternack.. It started out like many other SEO contests trying to prove a point.. This time that a guy named Dave Pasternack doesn’t have a clue about SEO..

Unfortunatly this time the contest has swept up another Dave Pasternack in the rampage.. This Dave Pasternack is a master chef and apparently focuses on his food more than his website.. That’s probably a good thing.. But why should he have to worry, I bet he really doesn’t worry, about a silly SEO contest possibly hurting his online presence??

In any case, webguerrilla has a much better Dave Pasternack post than I do. So go read his..

So I get this email:

Hi! I’m sending this message to ask if you would please place a link to VeilShop.com on your website at http://www.banglesandbrides.com/wedding_directory/normal/weddingdress/.

We offer a product that we feel would be valuable to your page viewers. Our site is a resource for great bridal accessories, including veils, tiaras, jewelry, and more.

Please visit our site at www.VeilShop.com if you would like to see more and feel free to get in touch with me anytime at Robert.Severson@MonsterWebPromotion.com. If you like, you may use this
convenient HTML code for direct insertion onto your site:

Wedding Bridal Veils
Veils, tiaras, and other necessary bridal accessories for the perfect wedding.

Thank you for your time!

Robert Severson
Link Developer
Robert.Severson@monsterwebpromotion.com

No big deal, except, the highly trained Link Developer sent a direct email to my personal email address to be included in our Free wedding directory page. Yes, it’s a free directory.. Simply click submit and we will include your website in our directory for free.. Yet, this wonderful person felt the need to email me drectly to request a link.. Guess what?? Not getting it..

How hard is it to click submit your site vs emailing me in my office and wasting my time?? Now I have to site here and write a blog post about how monsterwebpromotion.com sucks at what they do and are probably charging people good money to not do the most basic of jobs..

It probably wouldn’t bother me as much if it were some fly by night rip off artists.. But this is a front for Network Soultions.. You know the guys, they used to control all things top level domain on the internet.. It simply boggles the mind that this large company would contimue to screw people over again and again..

And now I’m off to contact the owners of the website that hired these morons and let them know that they are probably wasting their money and getting more research to exand on this blog post..

~Fey

Seems that the nice folks at web wise media (www.webwisemedia.com) are still up to their strange way of making your site popular..

Here is the process in a nutshell.. You pay them gobs of money.. They promise that anyone using their software will see your site rank higher in the search results for your keywords.. How can that be you say?? Simple, their software intercepts and alters the search engine results to place your site in the top whatever.. Their process doesn’t work at all if you don’t have their spamware installed.. IT doesn’t actually help your rankings, just abuses some poor soul that probably doesn’t even know that their computer is infested..

Normally you would expect people like this to keep a low profile.. But they don’t.. Take alook at the webwisemedia scam / redzee scam thread over at webworkshop..

A question was raised about the validity of their service.. And it was promptly responded to by some loser from Torrance, CA., extolling the virtures of their great service.. And that person was promptly banned, as they should be.. Then just a month later yet another loser from Torrance (I can say that, I’ve been in Torrance, the loser to valuable human ratio is pretty high there) comes in and tops the thread again claiming that web wise media is a great group to work with.. I believe that the climical term I’m looking for here is Bullshit..

An interesting bit of info is that Torrance is just 30 miles from Woodland Hills, CA.. Could it be possible that an employee of web wise media could be travelling the net shilling for their bosses on SEO forums?? Could it be a member of management?? Don’t really know, don’t even really care.. But it is a glowing example of the depths that some people will go to to take your money..

~Fey

Seems I’ve been slipping a little lately in keeping up with these morons that claim to be SEOs yet don’t even have the most basic of clues about the industries and techniques, or even tools needed, to provide a useful service to their clients..

Take this (http://www.searchune.com/) idiot for one.. Over at SEO Forum we have a new loser “searchune” posting a simple question.. How do I find out how I rank in the SEs, or even determine if I’m in the SEs.. In itself a simple question to be asking.. Until you look at his sig..

This guy claims “Our team of analysts, developers and search engine strategists constantly update their skills. Their expertise is sharpened through constant analysis and experimenting, which assure incomparable search engine rankings.”.. Now it may just be me, but shouldn’t these guys have, is my site in the search engines as a basic skill before they even begin to offer their services to others??

Homey please.. Crawl back under your rock and come back out when you have more than 1/2 a clue..

~Fey

ZDNet has a short article about Tim Berners-Lee’s talk about a semantic web wiki.. As a proponent of collaboration and artificial intelligence Tim’s stance on the subject is obvious.. A semantic web would allow search engines ingeneral, and artificial intelligence greater ability to deliver relevant content to the user..

And in an ideal world, I would agree..

But the folks over at Google actually get this one right.. Peter Novig (Director of search) says users tend to be incompetent.. A semantic web requires that web developers, bloggers, CEOs, etc., ‘get it’.. It requires that they include URI and RDF (Resource Description Framework) tags along with their normal XHTML and HTML markup.. And most people can’t even get basic HTML right, so how can we expect them to provide reliable RDF and URI data??

The people that will get it right, and get it right quickly will be the v1agra pushers, the heavy spammers, and of course the MFA (made for adsense) sites.. But this puts us right back where we are now with a broken search system that has little to do with what people are actually looking for and everything to do with web developers cashing in on the easy money to be made by being a whore for Google.. Not that that is a bad thing..

How do you make semantic web search viable?? Not with artificial intelligence.. At least not any time soon.. Armies of web browsers looking at site after site and determining which are eligible for inclusion in the index?? Maybe a better solution.. But there are a lot of sites out there and not enough people to search them.. I don’t really see a semantic web, LSI (latent semantic indexing), as anything that will be of any great use for quite some time.. It will simply put even more power in the hands of those willing to study and game the system at the expense of those that simply want to publish good information but lack the technical skills to compete..

~Fey

It never ends, and I’m sure that I am simply tilting at windmills in a manner that would make Don Quixote proud, but I simply can’t sit by and watch these people steal money from unsuspecting clients..

Over at WPW there is a new poster asking about datacenters.. http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=64527 The question itself is a simple one.. There are at least 64 datacenters and any one of them may be called upon to provide results to search queries at any time.. What makes this interesting is that the datacenters are not entirely synchronized since many of them run slightly varied results algos for testing reasons for Google.. A simple thing that any one who has even a surface understanding of professional SEO will understand.. Hell, even Bob at Images Jewelers gets it and he’s a late 50s something jeweler that still types in all caps because it looks cool to him..

But this guy is a “professional SEO” with a “prefessional SEO” website over here at http://www.seo-professional.co.uk/.. Charging good people real money for something he doesn’t even have a basic understanding of..

Fey~

And the fun just keeps coming.. Take a look at this new thread over at webworkshop.. http://www.webworkshop.net/seoforum/viewtopic.php?t=11243..

But then when we go to his website that he wants help with we find this little bit of knowledge on this page..

http://www.worldcomexc.com/startupbusiness/web_optimization

Why do these people keep doing this?? Do they think that if they pretend to have a clue that they will be able to make a quick buck?? Do they just not get it?? Or are they really scam artists that assume that there are enough people out there that will give them money without checking up on them??

In either case, these people need to be outed.. They need a hall of shame.. Maybe I should put that URL I bought to use after all..

Fey~