Marketing Hipster

I already mentioned in a previous post that like many others out there, Marketing Hipster has been inundated with spam comments recently. Even though Akismet is doing a fabulous job catching them, I have been amazed at the sheer numbers I have been getting over the last week or two. I was thinking what could be done to stop comment spam.

My first idea was to equip my computer with a powerful laser that could pinpoint these spammers IP address and my laser would travel through phone and cable wires right up to their computer and fry their computers, toast them! Yea, laser… Oh but before that would happen, I would take over their computers and have a picture come up on their screens with a picture of me with a big smile on my face and giving them the finger. I then woke up from fantasy land and thought that maybe a more realistic idea was in order.

Now I believe there are only two main reasons why spammers use comments on blogs to promote their wares. First off, at the off chance that someone would see their link and click on it, very unlikely, but still a chance. The much larger reason is for the search engines to see the link and give the spammers web sites better visibility in the search engines. If this is the case, why not take this opportunity away from the spammers? Why couldn’t Google create a spam site that bloggers could submit a copy of the spam to them and then Google could ban their sites from it’s search engine? They already do this for SEO.

Without any visibility, their web sites are out of business. I know this seems rather simple, but sometimes the simplest ideas are the best ones. Why wouldn’t this work? Let me know your thoughts.

Technorati Tags: spam comments, search engines, spammers, Google

Has anyone heard that Google has removed or revised their motto of “Do No Evil”? The reason I am asking is it seems that there has been several news of note lately that would seem to go against their do no evil motto. For example, Google’s decision to censor content in China, the news that Google bullied NC officials to get unprecedented tax breaks for their new computer center and now that they will only be offering it’s new anti-piracy tools for YouTube to only companies that have distribution deals with the top online video-sharing service.

“One media industry source likened YouTube’s policy to a ‘mafia shakedown.’”

Doing no evil gets complicated when millions upon billions of dollars are on the line, eh there Sergey and Larry?

Technorati Tags: Google, YouTube

Is it me or does it seem like there has been a lot of fights between bloggers lately? The most recent one involves Andy Beal vs. Jeremy Zawodny. Jeremy posted a story complaining about how Andy was running a contest for people to join Andy’s MyBlogLog community. A winner would win a Microsoft Zune. Jeremy who works at Yahoo and who also now owns MyBlogLog believed Andy was spamming. Andy fired back with a story of his own where he was unhappy to say the least. I also recommend reading the comments on both stories as they are interesting and tells even more of the story.

I think there are points on both sides of this issue to tell you the truth. Though I think what Andy was most upset about was how Jeremy went about posting his story without contacting Andy and discussing this issue before he posted the story. I do not know Jeremy personally, but I did have the opportunity to work with Andy for a couple of years. There is no-one I know in the SEO industry who is a bigger advocate of doing SEO the right way and to even accuse Andy of spamming is just absolutely out of character.

Either Jeremy broke the golden rule which was don’t write angry or he was just looking to get some attention in the community. I hope you are enjoying the attention, Jeremy.

Technorati Tags: Andy Beal, Jeremy Zawodny, MyBlogLog, spamming, SEO

A co-worker and I were interviewed for a story that has been posted on the E-commerce Times today about the recent announcement from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, that he will be launching a wiki search engine called Wikiasari. There is nothing truly ground breaking here, but I was proud of my off the cuff (Cord Silverstein) description of “People Powered Search”. I am already copywriting that so don’t even think about it.
What are your thoughts? Could a search engine truly be Wiki powered and be credible? Could it be a true competitor to the mighty Google?

Technorati Tags: E-commerce Times, Wikipedia, Cord Silverstein