2006 March 05

Search Engine Strategies might be the only conference I attend where spammers achieve a sort of punk rockstar status. This isn’t the typical blast a million messages out through an email account kind of spam that a monkey could do, search engine spamming seems to be a black art requiring constant study of how the search engines work in an effort to keep up with all the changes made to combat spamming. It’s not that anyone directly advocates what these black hat search marketers are doing; celebrity is born from the idea there are people out there smart enough to game the system. At SES Chris interviewed one search spammer who asked to remain nameless while providing some interesting details about the inner workings of the search spamming world. On one hand the interview reveals some of the motivations for spamming the search engines. More interesting are the search spamming tactics these black hat marketers won’t employ because even they are annoyed by the end result. Think of this as the Lex Luthor to Matt Cutts’s Superman.

Read more on Meet Joe Spammer – Confessions of a Search Marketer…

At the Podcast Hotel (a wonderful event put on by a wonderful guy), I learned that Seattle's goverment was getting into rebroadcasting local artists through “on hold” sessions for public utility callers. Took me forever and a freakin' day to unearth the page with all the proper information on it. Sure enough, they're calling it Podcasting OnHold Music. They did a fair job at explaining what one would need to do to subscribe to the programming, but decided not to hyperlink the actual RSS URL (I'm certain, fearing that n00bz would have a meltdown upon seeing raw XML code in their browser). Kinda cool, although I wish they'd hyperlink every one of the artists if they have a full-on Web site elsewhere. That, and I'd appreciate the ability to download the files independent of the OnHold mashup. It's good to see my city trying.

Read more on Podcasting OnHold…

We’ve all done it at least once. You search for something on Google and end up clicking on a result that lands you on a page of gibberish, loaded with pop-ups and tons of links off to affiliate programs. Matt Cutts is part of the Google team tasked with keeping this stuff out of the search results, so you get the information you want when you search. He’s also one of the few people at Google blogging openly about the frustrations involved in delivering relevant search results. Chris caught up with Matt at SES to talk with him about his current Googlefast, search engine spam and what it’s like to be mobbed by swooning fans after every panel discussion at SES. If you care about where you rank in the search engines for business, ego or anything else, this is one interview you don’t want to miss.

Read more on Matt Cutts of Google on Search Engine Spam…

Continued from Day 1, Day 1.5, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9…

• Busy for most of the day running errands. Hence, my primary search experiences were through my mobile phone. Gada.be really shines here.

Read more on Googlefasting: Day 10…

Matt emailed me about a new service that Russ Beattie apparently featured the other day (I don't read Russ much anymore for numerous aforementioned reasons). Check out Virgin Radio on your Series 60 or Symbian UIQ phones. Kinda nifty, although I'm still not using a Nokia device regularly enough to find this any more useful than the MP3 player that sits on my desk collecting more dust than new music.

Read more on Cell Phone Virgin…