So I’m back - spent 2 weeks in Colombia (the country). I went there for a wedding - my friend’s mother owns a beach-house there, and 15 of us crammed into that place. Not that I’m complaining - all the hotels there were $300+ per night, and the house was literally 10 seconds away from the beach.

The internet there was a bit of a chore - mostly because of damn forced localization. I can’t underline how difficult it was to go through a site like Hotmail or travel sites. At least Google had the sense to (after forwarding me to Google.com.co) to say (in plain english) ‘Go to Google.com’. The rest? Nothing. Even Sofitel.com forced me to the spanish version, refusing to let me access the english site.

Being smart and using IP targeting to redirect is a good idea. But you need to allow your visitors to access the other versions/areas if they so desire.

And another reason Google ‘wins’

1. Build up popular free software - eg b2 Evolution.
2. Contain multiple links back to your site that are big keywords (eg - web hosting)
3. Due to lots of backlinks (all in the footer while having no ‘context’ with web hosting combined with your initial authority (almost 3 million backlinks according to Yahoo), rank very high for keywords like ‘web hosting’
4. Build an absolutely crap page that is nothing more than a bunch of affiliate links.
5. Profit massively.

For all this talk of how smart Googlers are and what not - this is just one example of a crap site using footer links to rank very high for a very competitive keyword. You will find the exact same in all the big keywords.

Eight days ago I talked about how I hate marketplaces for the riff-raff that you find contained in them.

Today I get an email from SitePoint with their new ebook - “How to Flip Web Sites for Profit”

Incidentally one of the writers is Peter T Davis - I have a long history with that fellow, but that is for another day. He had written an article for SitePoint about site flipping - and one of his conclusions was:

Be careful about what you disclose.

He could have worded it ‘Hide things’ but I guess that would be the non-rhetorical way of saying things.

I’ve talked previously about exploiting Digg to get links and so forth. All links in the ‘who blogged this’ and ‘comments’ area are direct links - no nofollow or anything of that sort.

Now - what Digg does is hide old comments from old stories. But what they do do is show new comments for old stories.

So - you find old stories that were heavily dugg, and throw in your comment. Easy as pie!

Observe our friend Card Warrior going at it.

Check out the Google Cache copy of the first post he commented on.

And a ton more links - all from Digg.

So - one of the sites we run is CSS Top Sites. Sort of a side-thing (consider it an experiment), we have an automated checker that makes sure that sites are using our HTML code properly - 1. That it includes the link back (isn’t just an image) and 2. That it isn’t using CSS to hide it.

So lo and behold the latest example was GeniuneStyle.net. In the footer was only the image, encapsulated in a div that made it invisible. People are so wonderful. So the system sent him an automated-strongly worded email about how if he wants to use our service, he better include the link back and make it visible.

As most do he removed the HTML without a single peep. Some apologize, but most (being the self-entitled people they are) simply remove the HTML, shamed at being caught.

But today I Just got an email from him. Not any regular email - a mass mail. A mass mail littered with typos (eg ‘If your message was sent’ - missing letter bolded). And not only that - he had the temerity to include everyone’s email in the To field. Now I have a list of people to spam - excellent!

And so our good friend Chris Vincent provides us a nice laundry list of things not to do:

• Use another site’s services but modify the HTML for your own needs.
• When busted - man-up and admit you screwed up.
• Sending a mass email to someone that you were basically bilking for traffic.
• Have typos littering your mass mail.
• Having everyone’s email in the To field for easy email-list generation.

I have of course emailed him this post and look forward to his thoughts.

So I read that Snap is going to be monetizing their (annoying) website preview pop-up.

What caught me eye was the following (emphasis added):

Snap.com has over 2,000,000 Web site operators, bloggers and individual Web surfers currently using Snap Shots served via a webpage or browser. The Snap Shots service is used approximately 15 million times daily

That makes no sense. You have 2 million websites and people who have installed Snap Shots. Yet they generate a total of 15 million hits a day? So in 24 hours, each user and/or website generates a total of 7.5 pageviews? How the hell does that work!

To clarify - if I was a user, I would expect to visit at least 50 pages a day. That means I would use it 50 times in one day. If I was operating a website and people could use it on that, I would expect at least … 50 pageviews per day (on my site). How can a base of 2 million generate only 15 million views?

To give a sense of ration between sites and pageviews - Blog Flux Topsites has 18,284 active sites using the list. Yesterday, they generated 4.78 million pageviews.

So either the 15 million should be 15 billion - or something is way off.

It’s Halloween today, which means I’m busy gorging on the chocolate we are suppoused to be giving out [those Twix are so delicious].

With user accounts as hundreds of sites (I’m sure we can all attest to that) - ‘forgot password’ is a process I go through again. So - pick on Compete again - email addresses are easy to get to. If I put in my email address - you shouldn’t reset the password immediately. You should make sure it is the right user by sending a ‘click this link’ request to that email.

Simple usability stuff like this boggles my mind. I know Aaron likes Compete - time to reset his password ceaselessly

[I’m kidding, don’t actually screw with other people’s passwords. Just a dumb move by Compete]

I had also promised some stats on releasing freebie themes - that is delayed until next week (we have a decent-sized announcement tomorrow).

One of the first things I was taught in Discrete Math in university was that just because b happens after a does not mean a caused b.

So when I saw Matt trumpeting that by removing sponsored themes, he had saved newbie bloggers - I shook my head.

Countless blogs could have been penalized just for the theme they were using, not related to anything they did or did not do on their blog. It was a tough decision at the time, it probably drew more criticism and personal attacks against me than anything we’ve done before, but time has proved us right.

1. Beyond the smug factor, the FUD being spread is insane. There is absolutely no proof that having a sponsored theme would make you rank lower (and point #4 proves the opposite). Or de-ranked. Or anything of that sort. The usage of ‘could‘ is a nice touch - reminds me of Fox News with their ‘?’ after every preposterous idea. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt - you hit all three letters of FUD here Matt.

2. From anecdotal evidence from sites my friends operate that did get dinged (not a single one of our sites got dinged), the only thing that got ‘hurt’ was PageRank. The actual amount of traffic going to these sites has remained the same. It is obvious that lowering the PageRank was to simply hurt text sales. So - if a blogger downloaded a sponsored them, liked it, used it, and lost no traffic (other than the public value of PR) - what is the problem again? The perceived ‘penalized’ problem that has no basis in reality?

3. Sites like Engadget got hit. That is a heavyweight site that pushes a ton of traffic (we get comscore numbers). Even niche but high-pagerank sites like Daring Fireball got hit. So where do Engadget and DF fit into the schema of ‘paid links’? Obviously they don’t - this update was more than just ‘having a link in the footer’

4. No better data to look at than blogs using our themes we’ve released for free. We have released five wordpress themes for free, with every single one getting a ton of accolades (all of them have been converted to other blogging platforms by end-users). Each of our themes has a link to Design Disease (our webdesign arm) + another site. Our license requires you keep the link to Design Disease, but you may remove the secondary link. About 95% of people keep the secondary link. Looking over stats on blogs using our themes (over 1000), less than 1% had a PageRank drop (of which a few of them I am sure had a PR drop coming regardless of ’sponsored links’). I guess the ‘less than 1% of blogs affected’ needed Matt’s help there.

I would hope someone like Matt in his position would be a bit more responsible with his comments. I thought he was above FUD.

Update: My favorite two quotes in the comments:

IMO it best if theme designer used microid,rdf or cc-publisher etc .. as signature for their work.

-chaoskaizer

This coming from someone using our Illacrimo theme and not linking back (as required).

And again:

Well, i’m against sponsored themes but not so with paid links. Paid links can be a good side income for web publishers, why penalize that?

-Young Engineer

And this guy is ripping off our Blogging Pro theme.

Two people whining about sponsored themes (in just one blog post), and both of them stealing our themes. I like how moral-superiority can be so hypocritical.

Update 2: My post tomorrow should be on our own results on giving away quality free themes. Mind you - quality is the key word here.

For those that read TechCrunch, you are obviously aware of the ugly infestation that is Crunch Base.

The idea is simple - while TechCrunch covers the news, Crunch Base is where they keep persistent profiles on each company. This profile includes investors, revenue, press releases, etc. A decent idea. But what TechCrunch decided to do was every time a company name was mentioned, it linked to the Crunch Base site (instead of directly to the company).

Now there would be a simple solution to this - every time a company was mentioned, link to it directly, and then have a ‘(profile)’ link after it. But the dirty little secret was that it was a no-go due to search engines. Most of Crunch Base’s traffic is from people searching for company names. Linking using ‘(profile)’ wouldn’t give it the linkjuice it needed. I just bought a search analysis for Crunch Base on Compete.com - and other than their own brand being #1, all of the other traffic-generating keywords were company names. Point proven.

But there was a lot of angry feedback. People were not happy. So they created a widget. While you read the blog post, you would also see information on each company. You can also minimize it so that you never have to see it again. Good idea.

The problem of course is that the underlying HTML still contains links (for search engine purposes) to Crunch Base. Not that I find anything wrong with. Except that it absolutely uglifies the RSS feed.

Thankfully, there is a simple solution. Add tags around the widget HTML. Then create a WP hack that makes sure none of the HTML in between appears in the RSS feed.

Voila! This way TechCrunch gives its (well-deserved) SEO juice to Crunch Base, all while sparing their RSS readers the HTML eye sore.

Why is it that in every niche, any time there is any news/post about their niche, certain companies feel compelled to say ‘oh look at us.’ It doesn’t contribute to discussion. It doesn’t do anything for anyone. It is a self-appraising ‘look at me’ cry for attention.

Case in point: TechCrunch’s post on Judy’s Book shutting down. There are six companies plugging themselves. Without really saying much. Kudos to JD Amer from Lopico for saying how Michael is off (without having to plug his own site).

And then of course you get the more extreme version - multiple employees all plugging the same damn company.

After my post on how much I love Gothamist, I emailed Greg Sterling saying that he is totally overlooking the local-blog scene. He emailed me back asking for the players to note - and the only two I could really think of were Gothamist and Metroblogging. Sure we have our own - but it is not important enough to warrant inclusion in the discussion.

Sheesh. The world doesn’t always revolve around your website. Let other people have their moment in the sun.