Last night on Wednesday the 28th Marcus Crane, a personal friend was killed in a horrific car accident in Santa Rosa. Marcus was a very generous outgoing person who was loved by many. I can still remember the first time I met the guy, a guy who always lit up the room. I have been hunting for a picture to post, but cant find one now. I will post one later.
Monthly Archives: December 2006
Cloaking – When have you gone too far?
Posted by Aaron Shear
on December 19, 2006
No comments
There are some interesting conversations going on in a few of the boards about Cloaking. Yes if you read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, you will clearly see if you show Google different data than what a user see’s this is a clear violation.
I personally believe that you need to read between the lines on this. If the content is the same and you want to provide an excellent experience based upon what type of users is hitting your page. I would use browser based detection. For example, if you have a fancy flash based version of your site and a low bandwidth version of your site this is a simple way to provide a better service.
Correct me if I am wrong but if we took this further and broke the users based on bandwidth, browser capability and accessibility you could potentially solve many issues. For example, if a user came to the site with a lower amount of bandwidth you could potentially show smaller images and possibly less results on a given page to make the experience bearable. This could be taken into account when providing complex advertising which may increase load-time significantly. Thus from a cost point of view, if you are spidered lets say a million times a day by Googlebot, can you afford the processing time taken to generate ads to user who will never click on them?
The big question is, how do you present content to search engines when you charge for subscriptions? I typically would recommend something that goes like this:
1). Show a snippet of the data to the search engine and user. Yes, having less content will hinder your rankings, but you will be safe.
2). This may be considered risky, but you could detect either if it’s a search engine or not and provide all of the content to the search engine and if a user clicks on the listing show the content to the user as well. Now you could cookie that user and if they browse let’s say more than 15 articles change the view back to a preview, pay to see more. This is very grey lined, but to me it’s still providing the same data while allowing you to charge for a subscription. If you are worried about the 15 pages, just add advertising to the free pages allowing you to monetize that traffic. It would be great to hear from the Search Quality Teams to see if they agree. I will try and ask the next time I see them.
Blog Tag Game
Posted by Aaron Shear
on December 14, 2006
2 comments
Yesterday I was inducted into the blog tag game, which sounds like fun. The basic concept is to write a post about yourself and list five things that people commonly do not know about you. Then tag 5 other bloggers with the same task. I was tagged by Avinash Kaushik, who was tagged by Dave Gale and Jeff Pulver invented this game. It seems to be spreading quickly. So I will give it a shot.
I have chosen to pass this torch onto the following fellow bloggers. Adam Lasnik, Joseph Morin, Jessica Bowman, Joe Duck, Scott Boyd
So here goes, five things you may not know about me
1). I started my career out in IT, of all things. I was that guy who ran around fixing your desktop and server problems and made fun of you for not knowing how to use your mouse. Or for every problem you had I would tell you to simply reboot your computer.
I am well past done from an IT point of view, and have a high respect for the folks who stayed in the industry.
2). At one point in my career I decided that I was sick of computers and decided to attend a culinary school. I love to cook I love to eat, but I HATE to clean! Thus all of the fancy pots and pans that require immense amount of care after use turned me off very quickly. I have a high regard for chefs and prep cooks, they work so hard to make so little. If you ever have a chance to compliment the kitchen staff on their work, do it, they really love it. Most cooks will rarely hear a compliment from a patron in their careers.
3). I love house music and techno, once I am out of the office I love to go out and hit the dance clubs. It is usually the highlight of any of my European trips to stop at an underground dance club that has a deafening amount of sound coming out of it. Most American house artists are years behind Europe in this scene, hopefully it will pick up over time.
4). Sorry Avinash I am going to steal you number 4 and list my Meyers Briggs score. I am an ISFP, Introvert Sensing Feeling Perceiving. Which most people are shocked to see the (I), since I can turn a switch on and become a strong (E) Extroverted on a seconds notice. But it wears me down over time. I am also a borderline Sensor/Intuitive type; I share multiple characteristics between both but slightly stronger Sensing. I am a very strong Feeler; I spend a lot of time reacting to people based upon their emotions.
When I encounter silent engineering types I am not sure how to deal with them since they commonly display little to no emotion. At this point I have to switch on the strong E and practically beat the emotion out of them so I know how to strike interest.
5). I was adopted at birth, yes my parents made sure that I knew from the moment I could understand. I also have met my biological mother after my 18th birthday, which she sent me a birthday card to introduce her-self to me.
Re-invigorate the center of your business
Posted by Aaron Shear
on December 13, 2006
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Andy Beal wrote this amazing article about 5 great steps to adding a Million dollars in revenue to your business next year. This article sparked a thought about focusing on the first thing you started with on your site. Most business’ make the mistake of adding new services, products and features without spending much time on the original spark that made your business what it is.
It could be as simple as changing the look and feel of this part, making the site a little more sticky by adding some cool toyish versions of the same thing. For example, what if you sold clothing on your site? Everyone has the same old category structure, where you can drill down to that pair of jeans you want in your size. What if you tried something old, a manikin of sorts but better yet a person wearing a certain style? Thus suggesting a whole package!
You could essentially still have the same old boring navigation, but at the same time you can invoke a sense of “cool” to your shopping experience. The Gap does a pretty good job of this and I really like their new site. The Gap is also a great site to see how you can screw up SEO at a whole new level. They really need help, and I remember seeing a job posting for an SEO, who did they hire?
Remember DHTML can always save you from your Ajax and Javascript nightmares! Think, Invent and make sure your design is accessible, a simple motto to live by.
Use Peanut Butter to remove gum out of clothes myth?
Posted by Aaron Shear
on December 12, 2006
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One of my jackets was knocked off a coat rack and then stepped on with a piece of gum. I went to good old Google for advice, and found all of these articles that said use peanut butter to get the gum out. My gut reaction to this was my jacket will be ruined. But low and behold it works, I can’t believe it.
This is so weird I thought I needed to share it. What will it be next? Ice cream to remove stains? 
Epinions is giving a ton of cash away
Posted by Aaron Shear
on December 11, 2006
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I was thrilled to hear today that Epinions is giving away cash prizes for its authors, 78 in total so not only do you get paid for what you write already but if you are fast you may be able to get a great cash prize. I just got an email that Elvisdo won $1,000 today for writing reviews.
SEO’s with too much time on their hands?
Posted by Aaron Shear
on December 8, 2006
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We are definitely seeing a trend of the strange hitting this industry, not as if it wasn’t strange enough before.
First it started off with the Sexy SEO of the month at The Men of SEO.
I am sure I am missing some, but next was the Vanessa Fox Nude post on David Naylor’s Blog
Then today I see, Matt Cutts Devours Babies on Thread Watch, with the ultimate picture in the comments.
Are we at the new low? How far can we go?
Cool New SEO Toolbar
Posted by Aaron Shear
on December 8, 2006
No comments
So I have been a huge fan of the SEO Tools that Aaron Wall has on seobook.com, it gives you a lot of information right at your finger tips. But I am recently impressed by the release of a new toolbar which can easily show you ranking information about your keywords with a touch of a button and even more importantly a detail of what’s going on behind the page.
It has a Status feature that will show you potential problems with you web server, size of your page and how long it took to load. I have been asking for a tool like this for years, this is great stuff.
Plus it has the normal data that I use day to day, links from all engines in a touch of a button.
But what is really cool, especially for people with sites in multiple countries, Network Data. Finally I can see what data center I am hitting on my own sites. For anyone with large websites you know how hard it can be sometimes to figure out what data center you are hitting. Is it NY? Is it SF? Especially when the data is different, this is a consistent problem for a lot of us.
Check it out it’s from SEO Inc, and make up your own mind, but I think it’s a hit.
The Xbox 360 HD DVD Player Works on the Mac!
Posted by Aaron Shear
on December 7, 2006
No comments
So how cool is this, not only for $200 you can have HD-DVD on you home theatre. But the drive out of the box is compatible with OS-X, you just need to get a player to read the files. It also works with XP, but you need these drivers to make it work.
I just got this thing last night and the quality is incredible. I am excited that Netflix has HD Dvd’s in stock.
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