Downstrike/search

From the page: "Their stipulations for submitting a reinclusion request require an admission of guilt on the part of a webmaster who, as I found myself, could be the victim of a third party. Google's policy of obscuring their reasons for de-indexing makes it much harder for honest, but cracker-victimized webmasters to return their sites to a state that is acceptable to Google. In fact, Google's policy is far more burdensome upon honest webmasters than it is upon cheaters -- the cheaters know what they have done that is out of compliance, and the honest webmasters have no such knowledge of where the problem may lie.

So I had to clarify my response to Google's stipulations:

The TalkOrigins Archive has never deliberately violated Google's quality guidelines. Our site has operated since 1995 in the same way, well before the origin of Google, and will continue to provide quality information to our readers even if Google ceases to exist as an entity. We never needed Google's quality guidelines in order to make a quality website, and we would not lower our quality if Google decided to impose guidelines that were injurious to the standards that we have ourselves set and maintained."

From the page: "The real difference is that PayPerPost doesnt pay very much for their posts and the ads on A-list blogs go for hundreds, and in some cases thousands of dollars, per month. See that difference now? It boils down to the have-nots getting punished and the haves all shaking their finger in an I told you so fashion.

I have no worries today. I am not a PPP user and Ive already been penalized for selling links (with no traffic loss, by the way), but I cant help but bastardize Niemollers poem:

They came first for the text link sellers, And I didnt speak up because I wasnt a seller of text links;

And then they came for the blog networks, And I didnt speak up because I wasnt in a blog network;

And then they came for the Posties, And I didnt speak up because I wasnt a Postie;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

From the page:

'The Google Checkout blog, currently a PageRank 8 site, recently posted about the success of GolfBalls.com on their blog. Not only does that post provide direct links, one one of the links is a deep link with
targeted anchor text.

The blog post about GolfBalls.com contains the following passage:

In addition, Google Checkout helps make it even easier for consumers to find us when they search for items like Titleist Pro V1 Golf Balls by displaying the Google Checkout badge next to our search results.

They talk about searching for an item, and instead point that link at a product page on GolfBalls.com. That is like me telling you to search Google for something then dropping an eBay affiliate link in the post.

If Google does something like that it is a co-brand cross promotion, and all is well. If I do something like that it is an attempt to manipulate Google and/or a spammy link buy.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying I would do it differently than Google is doing it. I would just like to remind Google engineers that they would call me as a spammer if I did the same things they do to make their business model work.'

From the page:

"Universal Search Optimization Strategies

The focus on personalization and universal search requires more emphasis on social media SEO strategies because of user interest in creating content and the vast amounts of new multimedia content created daily on the Web. Marketers are beginning to drive traffic via social networking sites, and these efforts are known to enhance search engine optimization campaigns. Strategies include creating multimedia content such as blogs, videos and podcasts, and then getting them listed on social search sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon..."

This showed me just how much of my personal online activity Googlebar has been tracking, and inspired me to shut off some its features - and never turn this one on!

From the page: "Officially ODP is a product and under complete control of the AOL Search business unit."

Boy, does that explain a few things!

From the page: 'Talk about a new secret Google penalty is heating up over at Webmaster World forums, with some users complaining of a 30 spot ranking drop in just one day.

The thread starts with a poster upset over a sudden ranking drop, "I just got my site rank #31 on its own domain name and bunch of keywords/phrases I usually watch were bumped from #1 to "precisely #31. Those #2 through #10 are sort of all over the map but generally within the first 60 results."'