That is funny.

I’ve talked to IncrediBILL at a few conferences and he’s always raving about his anti-scraper tools. He’s been talking about about his ultra-anti-scraper technology. I was always skeptical of something scraper-proof. I finally found a site using his technology, and I have to say it is definitely scraper proof. Check out this screenshot in Firefox with Outline All Images enabled:

Yesterday I witnessed a pretty phenomenal panel at SES called “Are Paid Links Evil?” With a title like that, you know there is going to be some heat right off the bat. I wasn’t going to post at all, but I think I’ll throw my few cents in. First of all everyone on the panel (except Andy Baio) did a phenomenal job. Matt did a great job of toeing the company line, and diverting any questions into the question he wishes the attendee would have asked. Michael Gray in my opinion did a great job of hitting Matt’s points out of the park. Thats not to say that Matt doesn’t have some legitimate points, but Michael was able to pretty well knock down the ones Matt brought up. Todd Malicoat reiterated several of Michael’s points and added a few valid points of his own. I wouldn’t say he added anything earth shattering, but to be fair Michael covered almost everything. Greg and Todd added the “Look, we do this” perspective and I always love hearing Greg talk because he doesn’t mince words. This crack team really took a lot of the FUD-power out of the search-engine’s argument. Andy did a good job of convincing everyone that he wasn’t qualified to even sit at the same table as Greg, Todd, Michael, and Matt much less speak to the question of legitimacy of paid links.

So a few points:

- Matt argued that people are trying to muddy the water and accusing Google of saying that “all paid links are bad”. Matt drew a distinction between paid links that pass PR and paid links that would be clicked by users. If anything, I think Matt is muddying the water in this case. Look we all know what we’re talking about here, the buying and selling of PR. To say that some paid links are ok if they don’t pass PR is creating confusion, not clearing it up. Lets tackle the actual issue, is it evil to sell PR?

- It is in fact nearly impossible to rank in a competitive space without buying links. Google created this monster. You can’t just put your site out there and “do good” and expect to rack up links. It simply won’t happen. Buying some juice is critical. Unless Google can put a stop to it COMPLETELY, its futile to talk about doing it on any level.

- At the beginning of the session they showed this amusing video. As you can see I just linked to the video. The site is about home rentals. How is that a relevant link? How does that improve the user experience? It doesn’t. And yet before getting called out on it, Matt encouraged this type of thing as “creative”. So its ok to make an off-topic link-baiting piece, but buying a link from an on-topic relevant site to connect 2 sites that are in the same space is not ok by G/Y/M? Thats just ridiculous.

- One more thing I’m going to add in edit: lets not forget that this buying/selling links hurts Google’s OWN link-selling business. Like I said before, we’re talking about PR-passing links..but the reality is that this DOES affect their own bottom line with AdWords.

I think those are the key things I’d like to throw into the ring. Certainly no one “won” the argument, although if you were on the fence hopefully it pushed you either way more definitively. I think Google is going to go on a major PR offensive to spread FUD about buying/selling links. I do think it’s good that the search engines aren’t just getting a pulpit to spread their FUD like I’ve heard has happened in the past.

Didn’t this cold-calling crap die in 2001? This is no better than viagra spam as far as I’m concerned.

The link-exchange wall-of-shame:

Hello,

I came across your website today while looking for sites related to my website’s general theme, namely internet marketing and search engine optimization.

I must say I really like your site and I wanted to see if you’d be interested in exchanging links between http://dellanave.com/ and my site http://www.doneseo.com.

This would bring more targeted traffic to our sites, plus increase our PageRank with Google, and other search engines, as they give greater value to the links from the topic-related sites rather than irrelevant backlinks.

If you’d like to swap links please add the following code to your site:

<p><a href="http://www.doneseo.com/">SEO Services</a></p>

<p>DONE! SEO is an industry leader in the field of Search Engine Optimization</p>

Once you’ve added our link please let me know where it is and any details you’d like to have used for the link back to your site and I’ll add your link promptly.

Feel free to email me direct to contact me at links@adeptmarketingconcepts.com to discuss the details on the possible partnership.

Hope for the fruitful cooperation,

Best regards,
Mike Jones,
http://www.doneseo.com/

The first time I used Google Checkout I was astonished at how useless it was. In my opinion, they had taken something so simple, and made it more complicated, adding one more place I had to fill out all my billing/shipping information. I also was getting duplicate correspondence (one from Google, one from Buy.com) on everything. Awesome, another layer with no added value.

The second time I used Google Checkout I saw the light. With a few clicks, my order was on the way. No inputting order details, no effort. Maybe there was something to this after all.

The third time I used Google Checkout will be the last. On December 12th I placed an order for a backpack for a Christmas gift from eBags. Today I was wondering where it was, and logged into to my Checkout account. I see this under the order:

A little odd that it hasn’t shipped. So I called eBags. Their response: “Sir, we have no record of that order.”

Congratulations Google, you’ve succeeded in building a layer of complexity over something that was relatively simple, you’ve added no value, and now you’ve even managed to screw it up to the point where you’re losing orders. Merchants are going to love this.

Now what do I give this kid for Christmas? Maybe Google should send me a Google backpack.