Using Gmail As A Spam Filter

I have no love of web-based email. Years ago when I had MSN dial-up, Microsoft made the anti-consumer decision to block POP Mail and force its users to use Hotmail instead. I had about eight more months on my MSN contract, and Microsoft indicated that the fee for early termination was, well, almost as much as the balance of the contract. (If you want to know the point in time when I decided to give Microsoft as little of my money as humanly possible, that would be it.)

I also used Yahoo! mail for a number of years, particularly when I was on vacation. I would use it to pull email from my POP server, without deleting the originals such that they could be downloaded when I returned home. But its atrocious spam filtering led me to abandon that idea. The idea of paying them a premium to (possibly) keep a web-based email account usable, with a spam filter of unknown quality? Not appealing.

I haven't been paying much attention to Gmail, beyond noting that it does have decent spam filtering, but I read something today that may cause me to take a second look - apparently I can route my email through Gmail, taking full advantage of its spam filter, while continuing to download my email and continuing to use my own email addresses.

Google Approved!

For all of Google's virtues, it sometimes astonishes me how certain types of spam elude its filters.

"Xanax Lethal Dose From Google Approved Pharmacy"? Um... leaving aside for the moment my skepticism¹ that the endorsement is genuine, that's not quite what I was looking for.
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1. In case I actually need to spell it out for anybody, I have no doubt that the endorsement is fake. I am surprised, though, that Google doesn't filter for such abusive uses of its trademark.

Buying Links to Succeed in Google

I've been reading quite a few SEO (search engine optimization) blogs this past month, to try to get some insight into what is presently involved in promoting a new or existing site. As I expected, there are no great disclosures. Somebody new to search engines will probably find a lot of good stuff, but somebody who has been even peripherally involved will likely find little new. That's the way it works - nobody wants to give away any secrets before everybody else already knows them.

But maybe it's not that simple. Maybe, at least in terms of "white hat" SEO, there really aren't any secrets. As I wrote some time ago, more than ever, it's all about the links. What's the one thing you can find on virtually any SEO website? Bitter complaints about how horrible Google is for its attempts to devalue "paid links" and perhaps even to punish sites who secretly buy or sell them.

Historically there was a lot of search engine optimization work to be done on any given webpage - and that remains true. There are some large sites which are horribly optimized for search engines. But most sites that are interested in the optimization tricks that used to help propel sites to the top no longer need a consultant to help them - it's pretty basic, by-the-numbers stuff, and most web design software does a pretty good job of prompting people to fill it in, as do the most popular CMS systems. At the same time, search engines have become much better at analyzing on-page content, and manipulation of various on-page tags and titles has much less impact than in the past. A search engine optimization service can recommend changes and improvements, but that's no longer likely to produce much of an improvement in a site's Google ranking.

So what do they do instead? They buy links. In the past this was pretty lazy, and you have probably seen examples of sites which include a set of wildly off-topic links in the page footer. Now it is done more stealthily, and the SEO's use tools to try to find on-topic pages which carry authority in Google, with few or no other paid links on the page. I don't mean to diminish the time it takes for SEO's to identify possible places to buy links, to negotiate prices, to structure links and anchor text to reduce the chance that Google will recognize the links as paid, etc., but Google is correct that this type of linking distorts the accuracy of its algorithms - that's its sole purpose. When Google's anti-spam guru, Matt Cutts, suggested that paid links include a "rel=nofollow" tag, an instruction to search engine robots not to follow the link, the uproar made plain that these links are not about generating natural traffic (people who find them and follow them), but are about boosting search engine performance. (You can get a pretty good overview here.)

Some of the criticism have been clever. One depicted how Google might want celebrity endorsements to appear in TV or print ads - with big red translucent boxes placed over the product, labeled "rel=nofollow". It misses the point, though, as anybody who has given celebrity endorsements any thought knows that the celebrity is paid for the endorsement. Also, the purpose of the ad is to directly generate interest in the product. A paid link is not meant to look like an ad, and isn't about the direct promotion of the linked website. Another complains that to tag paid links would violate Google's rules against cloaking, an objection which suggests that the speaker is either disingenuous or doesn't know what cloaking (presenting different content to different sets of people, or to search engine robots) is.

Another snipes at Google, stating that if they were any good at detecting paid links they wouldn't be making such a big deal about them - a critique that perhaps runs both ways. If this group of noisome SEO's were adept at more than buying links, they would shrug at Google's policy announcement and start emphasizing their other tools. Also, rather than saying "Ignore Google, because they can't tell", they would be advising their clients to plan for a future where Google will quickly identify and discount most or all paid links. Perhaps these SEO's are making big bucks promoting "flash in the pan" sites which don't need to look toward the future, but everybody else needs to be asking, "Where will this promotional technique lead me in a year, two years, five years, or longer?" If your goal is long-term growth and a tactic will potentially make your site suspect in Google's algorithms - and it's generally accepted that Google puts a lot of weight on a site's "trustworthiness" score - that's a big risk to be taking.

I do agree with some of the criticisms, including how difficult it is for new, quality sites to get noticed, how "link baiting" (producing content designed to generate high levels of natural linking) actually results in a lot of content of questionable quality, and a lot of time and money wasted on failed efforts (most attempts to "link bait" fail). Some of the directories deemed "quality" by Google, so as to justify their accepting paid links without differentiation from unpaid links, include very low-quality pay-for-inclusion links. (See., e.g., Yahoo.) I expect that the SEO's are correct, that a lot of smaller webmasters are more selective than Yahoo when they accept paid links for their sites.

The funny thing about some of these guys is that the thing they seem best at promoting is themselves and each other, or selling access to private forums or tools which will supposedly help the little guy get ahead. Some even comment at times about how no sensible SEO would work for anybody else, because they can make so much more money promoting their own sites. (And boy, some of them are absolute royalty when it comes to self-promotion.)

Does This Mean Ted Stevens Was Right?

Take a look at the first illustration in this description of Google Gears:

These are the gears that power the tubes!

Does this vindicate Ted Stevens? (Is it a little joke at his expense? A coincidence based on computer terminology?)

Buy Links For Traffic, Not PageRank

I recently commented on what I see as Google's effect on natural linking. Long story short: With Internet users choosing search engines over directories, and Google's efforts to minimize the prominence of spam websites in their search results, natural linking has plummeted making it very difficult to get new "natural" links to a website, particularly a new website. A big work-around that many SEM (Search Engine Marketing) firms have used has been to purchase links on other websites. While historically these consultants preferred the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as on-page optimization (changes you make to your own site) has matured it has become difficult to significantly affect a website's ranking merely by cleaning up its code, adding proper tags, and engaging in other on-site techniques. SEM includes off-site marketing techniques including advertising. Paid links are a form of advertising which, although not as in-your-face as many other types of ads, have proved quite effective in website promotion.

Purchasing links provides two big advantages: being able to control the placement of the link, and being able to control the anchor text.

A natural link is apt to look something like this: Example.com - The leading example website on the Internet.

A paid link may look no different, but often different anchor text will be used: The Best Example Websites - Example websites from Example.com.

By purchasing placement on a prominent location on a website, choosing the anchor text, and choosing the portion of the site to which the link is directed (e.g., to a subdirectory on a particular topic, as opposed to the main index page), an SEM consultant can provide both natural traffic to the desired webpage (people clicking the link) and improved search engine performance. Google, for example, will traditionally see a link on a high-ranking webpage and, paid or not, give the target site credit for having earned that link. The more quality links a site earns, the better it performs. Paid links can be very lucrative for those who sell them, and they are sold in various forms by websites such as Forbes (one-page themed mini-sites) and Lawyers Weekly (see the anchor text, "Michigan Auto Accident Attorneys").

But now according to Google's anti-spam guru Matt Cutts, Google wants to change the rules of the game. It wants its spiders to be able to determine whether a link is natural (added by a webmaster out of the goodness of his heart) or paid, and it wants to discount the value of paid links - perhaps entirely.

As long as we’re talking about links, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to talk about a simple litmus test for paid links and how to tell if a paid link violates search engines’ quality guidelines. If you want to sell a link, you should at least provide machine-readable disclosure for paid links by making your link in a way that doesn’t affect search engines. There’s a ton of ways to do that. For example, you could make a paid link go through a redirect where the redirect url is robot’ed out using robots.txt. You could also use the rel=nofollow attribute. I’ve said as much many times before, but I wanted to give a heads-up because Google is going to be looking at paid links more closely in the future.

This has some of the big names in SEO/SEM up in arms:

The more I think about it the more I realize why Google doesn't like the various flavors of paid links. It has nothing to do with organic search relevancy. The problem is that Google wants to broker all ad deals, and many forms of paid links are more efficient than AdWords is. If that news gets out, AdWords and Google crumble.

* * *

People game Digg, draft stories for specific trusted editors, suggest stories to popular blogs, buy reviews on blogs, create products or ideas with marketing baked in, link nepotistically, etc. There are a lot of cheap and affordable ways to reach early adopters.
Editorial and social relationships have far more value than Google realize, and Matt Cutts's recent outbursts are just a hint at how Google is losing their dominant control over the web. And they deserve to, because...

The Web Doesn't Want to be Controlled

I agree that paid links can be much more effective than advertising. I received an excellent free link a few months ago which created an incredible spike in traffic to a subsection of my site, all by people reading an article and clicking the link provided. If I were able to identify webmasters with similar traffic who were willing to sell me links at a reasonable price, I would take them up on it even if I knew that Google would never see or credit the link because it was an incredibly effective source of traffic.

I disagree, however, that Google is going after paid links to build or maintain a monopoly. Google has no problem with websites getting natural links of the type I enjoyed. It has no problem with webmasters buying similar links, provided the link is identified as sponsored to both website users and to search engine spiders. Google's own AdSense links are not even identified by most spiders as they are usually served with javascript, and they are redirected such that they provide no benefit to the advertiser in search engine results.

I suspect that part of the vehement reaction to this new policy is that it take the juice out of one of the biggest SEM tools presently available, the paid link. A lot of SEM professionals have spent a great deal of time and energy identifying how to structure paid links, where they can be acquired, cultivating relationships with webmasters who sell links, negotiating price, and building website promotion models which are largely centered on dozens, hundreds or even thousands of paid links. If Google takes that away, the current leading alternative is "link baiting" - writing blog entries or articles specifically designed to generate natural links as well as traffic through social media sites - but, despite what its biggest proponents suggest, link baiting does not work well for all topics and sites. For a lot of customers, until another trick comes along, they may find that their SEM consultant can do little more than broker ad deals and manage their ad campaigns.

Google and the other search engines still need to consider their role in the death of natural linking (at least, as it existed when they built their algorithms which still value that type of link over pretty much any other). But SEM consultants need to take some responsibility for the apparent forthcoming demise of paid links. When link building was first recognized as valuable, it was achieved by convincing webmasters "This site is good enough for you to link to." Then it became, "You don't think it's good enough, but President Jackson would like you to reconsider."

Paid links are simply another form of advertising. Google has no problem with their being used to generate direct traffic. I don't see why a website backed by deep pockets should be able to buy itself better position in search engine results by buying links that would not come naturally, and I think that the search engines have every right to differentiate between natural links and those which are actually ads.

Google and Privacy

I think they could go a bit further without losing valuable data, but it's a start.

The search engine ... said it would destroy huge tracts of identifying information it holds on internet searches. Information such as who made what search and when is kept "for as long as useful" but under the new policy, all identifying data will be erased after 18-24 months.

When Everybody Wants To Work For You....

There's no way to sort out the applications without being arbitrary.

TalkLeft observes that Google is (as usual) hiring, but sets very high standards for applicants.

Memo to Google: Think outside the box. Rather than look for people who can sell your product, look for people who can enhance your product.

What you need are people who can separate the wheat from the chaff and find the best, not the most, of the web. Don't ask people to apply for specific jobs. Just let them take the test and then devise an algorithm to decide which job they're most suited for. The results would probably astound you.

Do people still "think outside the box"? (It was at least six years ago that I heard somebody quip that anybody who describes themselves as 'thinking outside the box' is certain to be stuck way inside the box.) But enough about boxes... she has a point. But it probably doesn't matter.

Google seems to pride itself on its highly degreed workforce, and that's not likely to change. Holding an advanced degree is not incompatible with being creative, and to the extent that Google values creativity it should be able to find many creative individuals within its applicant pool despite requiring advanced degrees and experience.

But there is still something to be said for recognizing that there are other valuable aspects to job applicants, beyond their academic credentials, and that sometimes those other factors should take a more prominent role in the hiring process. That's not just true for Google, but for pretty much any employer. Often the academic credential is used as an artificial means of narrowing a candidate pool, simply because there would otherwise be too many job applications to reasonably process. But it seems rare for companies to question if those academic qualifications are truly the best measure of qualification for the job.

Understanding Trademark Law

So if I understand this correctly, it's okay to talk about the yahoos at Google, but not to mention the Googles at Yahoo!.

Don't Say "Vexatious" - She May Sue You

Have you heard about the psychologist who is suing Google because it kicked her out of the AdSense program after she clicked on ads in violation of the program policies? (She's also suing Yahoo!, but I'm not sure that the basis of the suit has been made public.) Somebody at GeekVillage did some digging and learned that this isn't her first lawsuit.... My favorite calendar entry: 9/2/2001 - Petitioner's Motion For Reinstatement Petition For Writ Of Mandamus Directed To The Florida Bar And Motion [To] The Rotten, Corrupt And Incompetent Supreme Court Of Florida For Reinstatement Are Hereby Denied. Somebody else emailed her and, like any sensible person with a case pending before a court, she replied.

Over at WebmasterWorld, it is speculated that this may reflect a teensy bit of résumé padding.

What A Nefarious Scheme - How Dare They Include, Er, Exclude Me!

I know not all publishers are happy with Google's plan to digitize books, but...

Rather than compiling a list of her company's 1,200 titles ("a waste of my staff's time"), Rienner fired off an angry letter to CEO Schmidt. Google responded with a letter agreeing not to copy any of her books. Rienner is unmollified. She worries that she will be cut out of some future digital moneymaking opportunity. "Books are my unique content," she says. "I'm sure the smart people at Google are busy dreaming up all kinds of ways to make money off them.

[eyeroll]

A quality law firm website?

You shouldn't assume that yesterday's boilerplate law firm website, which you probably already overvalue, will maintain its search engine performance or get the best price through Google's "pay per click" AdWords service unless you pay some attention to quality. There are aspects of quality you may expect - adding content to the site helps. If all you have is the web designer's initial boilerplate, think about adding some original material.

It is safe to assume that your site already has a "contact us" feature of some sort - consider a "contact us" page. Does your site have a privacy policy? What about external links - I'm not suggesting that you send your visitors off to other websites or your competitors, but apparently this is now factored into your site's algorithmically determined quality so you may wish to consider adding some links to legal reference sites, government offices, courts, or other similar resources your visitors might find useful.

Telemarketers Are So Special....

I don't think I've gone a day this week without being hit by a telemarketer offering online promotion of my legal practice. The latest one said that they have a special technique which gets their clients' sites listed above all the other listings in Google. (Because AdWords is such a big secret.)

If these companies are so good at online promotion, why are they using telemarketers? And if these companies are so good at law firm promotion, why do they have so many practice areas available in my "territory"? "You want personal injury? No? How about family law? Criminal defense? Employment discrimination?" Well, no, I really don't.

Blaming Google

In an article that tries to blame Google for the decline of literacy in society, Edward Tenner writes:

Many students seem to lack the skills to structure their searches so they can find useful information quickly. In 2002, graduate students at Tel Aviv University were asked to find on the Web, with no time limit, a picture of the Mona Lisa; the complete text of either "Robinson Crusoe" or "David Copperfield"; and a recipe for apple pie accompanied by a photograph. Only 15 percent succeeded at all three assignments.

Today, Google may have expedited such tasks, but the malaise remains.

Actually, Google makes it easy.

The Mona Lisa.
Robinson Crusoe and David Copperfield.
Apple Pie.

More owners of free high-quality content should learn the tradecraft of tweaking their sites to improve search engine rankings.

Spoken like somebody who knows nothing about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), or how hard it can be to "rank" for a commercially competitive keyword.