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Let’s add to the list one more automated method of skewing the search numbers… TrackMeNot was brought to my attention through this article on Yahoo!.  Heard of it?

This is a classic case of jumping on the bandwagon. I understand AOL releasing user search data has sprouted untold amounts of privacy concerns for many. The truth is, those in the know already had those concerns. But since the AOL data hit the main stream we’ve now got doctoral students from NYU coming up with terribly bad solutions to the problem. I don’t quite understand how sending fake queries to the major search engines every 12 seconds is going to fix the privacy issue. Add to that, this ‘invention’ is only a firefox plugin, which makes it 90% less effective anyway since only 10% of internet users use firefox. Add to that, those 10% tend to be savvy users and would see right off the bat that this is a terrible idea.

Even so… i just don’t get the thinking here. User data will still be recorded. If a user searches for something personal… will surrounding it with queries about ‘boston clocks’ really help things very much? The answer is no. Anyone who gets their hands on such logs (the government perhaps) will simply be searching for incrimminating terms and disregard the normal searches. Yes, it may send some AOL marketing scumbags to spam a few users with clock shop advertisements, but that’s about it.

Oh yeah… there’s one other MAJOR issue too! This tool completely violates search engine TOS. Anyone that decides to actually use this plugin will be breaking most search engines terms of service. It’s clearly stated that the SE’s do not take kindly to automated queries.

No Automated Querying
You may not send automated queries of any sort to Google’s system without express permission in advance from Google. Note that “sending automated queries” includes, among other things:

• using any software which sends queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage “ranks” on Google for various queries;
• “meta-searching” Google; and
• performing “offline” searches on Google.

And any automated queries they do allow must come via a personal API. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that this plugin does not force a user to enter an API key. So, not only will users be skewing already skewed keyword data, but they will also eventually be getting their IP blocked by the major SE’s, and thus not allowed to perform any search queries, period.

Wait.. maybe this guy IS on to something. If everyone gets their IP address blocked by the major engines… no one will be running any searches at all. If there are no searches, then there are no privacy issues. BRILLIANT!

Ok.. ok… maybe not. Since i’m a native of new york and our lovely company office sits close by to NYU, i’ll go ahead and give this guy a pass for now. But i hope in the future the bright minds over at NYU might get a little bit more into the game and come up with some real world solutions to these types of problems… Otherwise, stay out of the search space =D

DIGG This

Sometimes when you code a page you might want to have one color for the link and a different color for the underline.

There’s a simple solution to that. You need to add a span inside the link, span that will contain the actual text of the link:

<a class="link" href="http://www.ecommercepartners.net/blog/wp-admin/yourlink.com">yourlink.com</a>

Now in the css you will apply one color for the “a” element and another color for the span:

a.link {
color:#FF0000;
text-decoration: underline;
}

a.link span {
color:#000000;
}

And your link is good to go with a brand new underline.Of course you can have a few variations of that playing with the hover states.

Well, the next wave of saturation-style commercial activity over the airwaves – that I’ve long been predicting -  is now showing signs of actually arriving. (Every writer likes to say “I told you so”, and he needs to be indulged now and again, just to keep him forming professional judgments.)

Cellphone users in the United States are now getting used to seeing advertisements popping up on their screens (text message (SMS) advertising). And I can report that mobile phone advertising is on the verge of a massive explosion, with campaigns now in the works on a scale that previous technological constraints made unattractive or unreliable.

Recently mobile network operators have begun to revel in much faster networks, and handset manufacturers are providing bigger screens, even on smaller, slim-line phones – and with fuller color, too.

The biggest element in changing our – the audience’s – receptiveness to such an an advertsiign medium is the increase in text messaging. Around 30 percent of the 217 million mobile phone users who are currently registered use their instruments to send SMS messages, according to veteran, Boston-based market researchers and consultants, the Yankee Group. Also softening up the market is the growth in wireless web-surfing, and the ubiquitous availability of video.

Advertisers, of course, are bowled over by the demographics which offer a predominantly much younger audience. TV shows aimed at the 18-25 year-olds are making a point of urging their viewers to send text messages as a way to express preferences, say by voting for their favorite character or responding to a poll question.

When cellphone-users access sports results, advertisers have been quick to place their banner ads alongside the scores, and if a phone-user subscribes to a video news-clip service, a pre-roll video ad is the perfect way to reach them with a commercial message

Maybe the biggest attraction for advertisers is the fact that – unlike television sets in even the most eager viewers’ homes – young people’s ever-essential cellphones (and many now don’t even bother to have a landline) are virtually NEVER OFF, and they’re always at hand. How attractive is that for a communicator, of any kind?

The Yankee Group’s survey says about 42 percent of cellphone subscribers are open to receiving mobile advertising if it’s relevant to them. Madison Avenue, we know, will delight in such stats and aggressively exploit them.

Since the Federal Communications Commission is auctioning off more of the radio spectrum to corporations who are eager to get into wireless technology, the much greater network capacity that will result is bound to lead to a faster wireless web. More information will be transmitted, more quickly, to more mobile devices that in turn will be developed to store more data. You can expect me to come back online in the not-too-distant future, to say once again “I told you so”.

AOL has released a few days ago, by mistake, a “collection” of users search queries (CNET news link).People started blogging about it, AOL apologized for the mistake and took down the logs. So far so good.
What astounded me mostly was the fact that almost everybody was only concerned about privacy. As shocking as such a log may be and as weird as the common searches may appear, nobody will ever sue you for searching for “naked pervert monkeys suiciding”. However only very few seemed interested in where those logs and analysis of the searches are supposed to be going to .Where it is sold, how it is used, what that implies.
For example :

AOL User 24868

The life of 24868 circles around pottery barns, HTML, MySpace (one of AOL users’ favorites), camping, limos, bedroom furniture and hair extension tools.

(http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-08-08-n53.html)

Now..what would you want to sell to that user?What kind of offers would you make to him? Who got to e-mail/contact him first?
These are the questions that go through my mind now, and though I’m not really familiar with the secrets of SEO, this might just make me start studying it.Because after all, WWW is a market, right?

Do you have – oh, of course you have – an e-mail inbox overflowing with unwanted messages? It’s becoming the bane of internet living, as we all know, having to clear our mail every day of spam. I have a friend who has to do it every HOUR.

But how much, I wonder, is this clearing operation we all do an example of “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” – as my old Scottish grandmother used to rather graphically say?

According to a new survey (Aug 3rd, 2006) from e-mail marketing services company Return Path, more than one in three consumers mistakenly report e-mail that they have actually chosen to sign up for as “junk” or “spam,”

Out of 2,035 Web users who were surveyed 36 percent said they hit the “spam” button when they want to unsubscribe to e-mail that they have previously agreed to receive. Almost that same proportion–31 percent–said they don’t use the “unsubscribe” links that are found in commercial e-mails.

The over-reporting of spam of course presents a troubling problem for e-mail marketers because senders that have been wrongly characterized as spammers can wrongly end up on the blacklists that are amassed by service providers.

The odd thing is – and it’s a hard obstacle to get past – that many consumers appear to believe they have no choice. Those who trash their messages as junk were asked why they didn’t take what the well-informed would see as the obvious course of clicking the “unsubscribe” option. Their general answer? A lot said that they were suspicious.

They thought it could all be part of a sneaky plan to hook them further – that clicking ”unsubscribe” would simply result in yet more e-mail. Verbalized reasons given by respondents for not trusting this option included: “If I do I just get more junk” and “They only use this as a ruse to certify an email address,” and “Most often they do not work.”

The study also found – something that’s decidedly unsurprising in today’s competitive e-commerce climate – that a large proportion of the e-mails that consumers receive every day are commercial in nature. Nearly half of those surveyed said that over 60 percent of their inbox contents were commercial mailings.

The commercial mailers maybe need to educate their addressees better about their options.

I look at the this article as a little piece of vindication for myself. It’s been tough explaining what I do to friends and family over the last 6 years or so. While in college everyone else was pursuing the normal degrees.. Me, I wasn’t pursuing any of them.

Instead I focused on a little known process we called SEO, and search engine marketing in general. I’ve endured the torture of birthdays, holidays and other family/friend oriented events where I continuously tried to explain my field of work to the always inquisitive and often times critical, friends and family. Needless to say.. many of them thought I was a bit of a kook. Some even thought i was full of $hit..

It didn’t help that my older brother was a fine up-standing corporate citizen working with a world renowned software company (and still is). His story goes over much better with the crowds. When I began to tell people what i did… their attention quickly turned back to my brother in a manner similar to, “So Sean, have you cashed in your stock options yet? Do you think you could get your brother Ryan a job there too?”

Well folks… instead of asking me what I do (then ignoring my answer or doing a bit of eye rolling) and whether or not there’s an actual future in it, allow me to point you to this quick synopsis entitled “4 Jobs on the Cutting Edge“. And I quote:

This is an especially important task in today’s Internet-driven world, where many customers first learn of an organization and its products or services through the Web. Because of a shortage of experts in this relatively new area, many top SEOs receive multiple job offers.

So there it is.. direct from a 3rd party we see SEO listed as a HOT JOB of the FUTURE. And not just a hot job… but on the cutting edge too. See, mom and dad..? I wasn’t making this whole thing up and I really do have a bright future! Lucky for me, I’m more than 6 years into this field and can honestly say that I am now one of the most experienced individuals in the industry today. I had to sweat it out though.. As with anything new, there were no guarantees of a future.

And to anyone out there that I’ve tried explain my field of work and you didn’t quite get it, I’d like to stress the following point one last time:

No.. I am not the guy that causes those Pop Ups..

SEO is a true and legitimate process with an end goal of creating the most valuable user experience possible through logical site design, architecture and a clear message. The search engines were built for the users and as long as we conitnue to build our sites for users, we will continue to drive success.