Today is Independence Day in America and that means that most of them are probably out partying and watching fireworks displays. Which seems like a good opportunity to talk about them behind their backs.
American Judges Are Dumb (or at least this one seems to be)
A US Judge, ruling in the case of media giant Viacom’s piracy law suit against Google and YouTube ruled that Google must hand over detailed information about the videos stored on YouTube along with additional information from their logs showing IP addresses which could subsequently be used to identify individaul users who had either uploaded copyrighted content, or even those who had simply watched it (which means pretty much everybody that’s ever been to YouTube). This in spite of the fact that Viacom didn’t actually ask for this level of detail and Google has argued strongly against giving up such sensitive information. The two companies have been in communication with each to try to clear this up before they both suffer under the weight of the public backlash against the decision. The problem seems to be that the presiding judge just isn’t that technically savvy. According to Danny Sullivan’s first article about this the court house doesn’t even have email (or at any rate, they’re not too sure about how to work it on their internet machines).
Of course, if it does go to the wire and the judge forces Google to give Viacom all this extra information that they don’t even want, TechCrunch has a great suggestion about the best way to deliver it.
Stupid SEO Tricks
Todd Mintz put together a collection of the best of the worst SEO scams. He got a lot of big names from the SEO world to weigh in with some of the dumbest/craziest/evilest (I’m not sure “evilest” is actually a word, but hey it’s Friday!) SEO scam tricks that they’ve encountered from the inept and shady to the outright wrong and illegal. Have a read and make sure you’re not guilty of any of the things mentioned.
Clever SEO Tricks
You might recall a few weeks ago there was all that fuss about the Give It Up session at SMX Advanced. Well now the embargo has passed and people are allowed to spill the beans about what actually went on in there. Lisa Barone was one of the first off the mark with her round-up of the session and Rob “evilgreenmonkey” Kerry was quick to follow up with his own post giving a more detailed explanation of his automated technique for creating a network of micro-sites. You can also read Tamar Weinberg’s write up of the session on SERountable.
It looks as though most of the chatter about how much of the session revolved around black-hat techniques stems from the stuff that Rob and Marty Weintraub talked about.
Rand Fishkin’s part of the proceedings was largely about sharing some of his more useful tips for using advanced query operators to find out useful SEO information from Google searches. Very handy (especially since I’ve been working on compiling a list of these kind of search modifiers for a new post) and not at all black hat either.
Duthie-watch: On the road again
The world’s busiest guest blogger was back in action this week with an appearance on Dazzlin Donna’s SEO-Scoop where he compared the differences in the quality of traffic from search engines to traffic from social media sites. It was a great post that went hot on Sphinn very quickly and even scored James a coveted 5-star link from Rebecca Kelley in this week’s SEOmoz Round-Up.
James also put up a new post on his own blog where he quantified some of the benefits he’s gained from his guest blogging world tour.
Shana Albert’s Avatar Adventure
Shana Albert, better known on the social media circuit by her nickname, TheNanny612, recently decided to get her trademark curly locks cut off, which left her with the dilema of what to do about the avatar picture that she uses across all her social media profiles. Shana’s now settled on a new picture, but it took a lot of experimentation to find the one that was just right.
Funny Things From The Search World
You know how there’s that cliche about how stand-up comedians want to be rockstars and rockstars want to be stand-up comedians? Well, it seems that it’s not just rockstars who want to be comedians, there are plenty of SEOs out there who seem to have missed their calling as well. And I’m not just talking about Brian Carter and his goofy dance moves.
Linda Bustos over at Get Elastic put together this collection of LOLcats to illustrate her points about ecommerce. It really is a very informative post and not just an excuse to show off lots of pictures of teh kittehz.
Dazzlin’ Donna got in on the act as well, with her comedicly toned rant about why SEO conferences aren’t worth the expense on the SEO-Chicks blog.
Another contender from the SEO-Chicks is this post from Julie Joyce, pointing out one of Google’s more offensive “Did you mean:” suggestions.
And as if that wasn’t enough, check out this equally strange suggestion that Quadzilla happened across while he was conducting a perfectly innocent search. Honestly, what is the world coming to?
And last but not least, the gang over at Search Engine People went with an Independence Day theme for their regular Friday Funny post.
So, there we go folks, that’s it for another Friday Link-Fest. Enjoy your weekend and, if you’re American, have a great Independence Day.
