WhosTalkin.com is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations surrounding the topics that they care about most. Whether it be your favorite sport, favorite food, celebrity, or your company’s brand name; Whostalkin.com can help you join in on the conversations that you care about most.

Joe Hall asked me to beta test the system and aside from a few minor issues my first impressions are very positive.

The Interface and Controls

Top marks for making this simple and intuitive. Steve Krug would approve. My first choices are limited to a single search box, which gathers results from all their sources.

You can then drill down results by each source, listed on the left. These range from Twitter, Technorati to Bloglines and YouTube. Simple enough. My only complaint here would be the need to operate two scrollbars, one for the menu and another for the results. Even with the site at full screen, the design is limited by a fixed height. It would be good if scrolling could be limited to one controller only.

The Results

A quick vanity search on “Nick Wilsdon” produced 210 results. Although I monitor this search in Google Alerts, there were several new results for me here. To be fair to Google Alerts, my free account only returns results to a certain depth.

WhosTalkin should have an advantage over GoogleAlerts by querying the sites direct, but this advantage will depend entirely on the quality of each API. If they manage to provide a more comprehensive picture without charging, it will do very well. Clearly this could become another useful tool for ORM monitoring.

Other Features

The WhosTalkin team are considering or already working on a range of paid subscription services to compliment the free system. On their list are plugins for WordPress, iGoogle and Firefox. The must-have function for me is RSS feeds for selected searches.

With a hat tip towards my industry collegue Brian Carter, adding feeds from WhosTalkin.com and Google Alerts into your iGoogle desktop would make an excellent D.I.Y. monitoring tool.

Overall this is an excellent mash-up and will prove useful to anyone monitoring their online reputation. There’s still room in the market for ORM search engines, provided they return better results than their competitors. WhosTalkin.com seems to be succeeding on this point.

You can follow the progress of WhosTalkin on their blog. They don’t have a launch date at the moment, beyond “very soon” but Joe is open to beta test requests on the system.

Technorati Tags: ORM, Reputation Management, Search Engines, Social Search, WhosTalkin

However if you are planning on hitting Vegas next week, I’d like to meet you so here’s a list of the available out-of-hours events to date. I’ll try and keep this page updated but make sure to follow Joseph Morin (PubCon Evangelist) on Twitter for all late breaking party & events info.

PurposeInc FightClub

• What: PurposeInc have arranged a unique training session with Coach Shaun Tompkins, trainer of Randy Couture, the 5 X Heavyweight Champion of the world.
• When: Tuesday Nov 11th: 2:15-3:30 pm
• Where: Xtreme Couture Gym. 10 minute cab ride from Treasure Island
• RSVP Required? The event will cost $149 and you can sign-up here.

In-House Marketers Meetup

• What: Dan Perry has kindly organised an unofficial social event for in-house SEO/SEM marketers.
• When: Tuesday Nov 11th: Time TBA
• Where: Looking like the Isla Mexican Kitchen at Treasure Island Hotel. There are 90 types of Tequila and the average meal is around $30.
• RSVP Required? Yes it would be helpful to know the numbers interested in attending. Leave a note on Dan’s blog to indicate you’re interested.

SEOmoz Search Spam/Wherewolf Party

• What: SEOmoz are hosting a game of “Wherewolf” the popular card-based conference game. Great fun last year, well after everyone finally learnt the rules.
• When: Wednesday Nov 12th: 7:00-9:00 pm
• Where: Conference Hall
• RSVP Required? Yes you need to email the industy’s most famous SEOmom Gillian. Unfortunately it looks like the event is now full and no longer accepting reservations. As Rand points out below, there are still places left but act fast!

Late Night @High Limit Room Bar at Mirage

• What: Dr. David Klein from PurposeInc has pulled some strings and got us entry into one of the most exclusive bars in Vegas. Read his post.
• When: Wednesday Nov 12th: Midnight - until late
• Where: High Limit Room Bar @ Mirage Resort and Casino
• RSVP Required? None required but you might like to drop a note onto David’s post so he has an idea of numbers attending.

WebmasterRadio.fm Search Bash Sponsored by Microsoft

• What: Those crazy guys at every SEO’s favouriteinternet radio station are hosting a party for all PubCon attendees.
• When: Thursday November 13. 6:30-9:00 pm
• Where: Rain In The Desert (The Palms Casino Resort), 4321 W. Flamingo Rd. (review)
• RSVP Required?: Yes, sign-up required at SearchBash.com. SearchBash parties are open to all PubCon conference attendees but remember to bring your conference badge.

PurposeInc Charity Poker Night

• What: PurposeInc’s poker night was a great event last year and very well attended. Beginner or pro - come and experience a little Vegas at the poker table. Read the post.
• When: Thursday November 13. 9:00 pm
• Where: Venetian Hotel Casino, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd.
• RSVP Required? Yes, sign-up here. Remember to register online at the Venetian Hotel Casino before the night and bring your $150 buy-in fee.

Bonus Tip

Remember to sign-up at Blog4tix.com for the chance to review Vegas shows for free.

Enter Blog4Tix and Bloggers Night Out! Our mission is simple: to get bloggers full access to review big time Vegas shows. You sign up for Blog4Tix, pick out a show you would like to attend, get a free ticket and you can write a review of the show for your blog. You get free content, and the show gets press - WIN-WIN!

Update: Make sure you check out the PurposeInc schedual as well. It contains several other small networking events running over the PubCon week.

Technorati Tags: Dan Perry, David Klein, Joseph Morin, Poker, PubCon, PurposeInc, Randy Couture, SEOmoz, Shaun Tompkins, WebmasterRadio

What is a Proxy IP?

There are computers that allow anyone to connect to the web through them, i.e. they can be used as a gateway to the internet. Some of these computers are deliberately left open or run as commercial services while others are left open by accident through poor server administration. The Proxy IP is the address of that computer.

Why Do We Need to Use Proxy IPs?

Several reasons. Maybe you are carrying out multilingual marketing and wish to test your website or PPC advertising from the perspective of visitors outside your country. You may even want to ensure that your material is not available, for example blocking poker advertising from US visitors due to current legislation. Sometimes you just want to test on an IP outside your local company network, to ensure the public have the experience you expect.

Where do we get a Proxy IP?

There are many sources for Proxy IPs, some free and some commercial. As with most things, you get what you pay for. If you need a reliable and safe Proxy IP then it maybe better to find a company who can sell you this service. Otherwise you can pick up a free one. My recommendation for free proxies is PublicProxyServers.com or Samair.ru, you can see a sample of their list below:

You can browse the available proxies by country to find the one you want. All proxies are listed in the following format: IP Address:Port Number. Using the first example above, 211.157.114.53 is the IP address and 8080 is the Port Number. Leave this window open and open a new window to enter the details into Firefox.

How to Use The Proxy in Firefox?

In Firefox go to Tools > Options and then click the Advanced tab.

Under the Network tab, in the Connection section, click the Settings button.

Make a note somewhere of your current settings. We’ll want to be able to change these back once we finish using the proxy.

Click the option for Manual proxy configuration. In the box HTTP Proxy enter our Proxy IP address we noted earlier and put the Port Number next to it. Click OK and return to your browser.

Testing the Proxy

Sometimes a listed Proxy IP does not work. It may have been closed or the computer is currently unavailable. This is the disadvantage in using free proxies. If you can’t get any page or the connection seems too slow, repeat the steps with a new Proxy IP address until it works.

Once you can get any page to load, visit whatismyipaddress.com and see if your IP and location has changed. This is how other websites will now view you while browsing the internet through this other computer.

Important Warning: Please Read.

You must be aware of one key point when using a Proxy IP. All data that you send and receive can be intercepted by that computer and stored. Blackhat Hackers (Crackers) have been known to set up proxy servers simply to catch sensitive details and passwords from users. So remember the following two rules:

1. Never enter important passwords, credit card details or visit your online banking while connected to a proxy. Keep in mind that someone can be watching your traffic.

2. Always change back to your default connection when you have finished your session. It’s easy to forget you’re connected through a proxy. Simply reverse the steps above.

Of course paid proxy services from reputable companies will offer a greater level of security but always be aware of these issues when connecting through a proxy.

Bonus Tip

Got to grips with the basics? Download the FoxyProxy plugin for Firefox. This plugin will manage all your favourite Proxy IPs and lets you switch between them from your toolbar. You can categorise your proxies by geographic location, performance or online identity. It even provides automatic proxy switching, based on URL rules or time intervals.

** 27 Jan 2007 by Ingorrr one of the artists who make their work under a Creative Commons license at Flickr - thank you!

Technorati Tags: Geolocation, How-to, IP Proxy, Proxies, Proxy, Tutorial

Alamo Rent A Car and their sister company’s, National Car Rental and Enterprise Rent-A-Car will not let me hire a car from them. I fill out their form, explaining that I live in Russia, using their locator to select Los Angeles Intl Airport (LAX) as both the pick up and drop off point. What do I get told? That they have “sold out” of available vehicles and a suggestion that I try the same search with their one of their partner companies. Searches which all return the same result.

First I thought it must be the dates. It’s almost understandable that Alamo, National and Enterprise have all their cars booked at that time. I try another date. Any dates. Turns out they don’t have a car for me anytime. My suspicions are confirmed when I change the form to tell them I live in the UK. Suddenly the page is flooded with results. I feel like Bruce Lee, in the famous scene from “Fist of Fury” when he’s told No Dogs or Chinese are allowed into the park. Grrrrr.

So why do these company’s not wish to do business with Russians? Was it the Georgian invasion? Are they secret Republicans that approve of McCain’s hardline attitude towards Russia? Enquiring minds wish to know?

Seriously though it shows that Alamo, National and Enterprise need to take a good look at user experiences on their sites. It maybe a bug or maybe by the question “Where do you live?” they really want to know which country you want the car in. Either way, they have blocked any Russian tourists from renting their cars.

So what’s the lesson here? Testing is everything. If you are serving a global audience then always check your system from the perspective of that user. Use a Proxy IP from that country too, just in case the company’s server admins have blocked access and not told anyone. Resolving an issue like this can bring in significant revenue for the company, for example 12m Russian tourists travelled abroad this year alone. I wonder how many of them had the same experience as me?

Update 03/11/08: I’ve been contacted by National Rent a Car. They agree that their computer system has a bug at the moment but they promise it will be fixed shortly. I’m glad this post helped. They also offered to take my rental order over the telephone which was nice, so +1 on their ORM monitoring and customer response.

Technorati Tags: Alamo, Alamo Rent A Car, Enterprise, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National, National Car Rental, Russia

There are 169 granted patents in all, with 10 in there for Exaflop. A little more than one third focus primarily upon search indexing algorithms, and almost two thirds were developed in-house rather than acquired.

Advertising Patents (15)
Design Patents (11)
Duplicate Content Patents (4)
Email and Messaging Patents (6)
Event Modeling Patents (3)
Game Patents (1)
Hardware Patents (10)
Image and Video Patents (14)
Large File Space Indexing Patents (8)
Medical Patents (1)
Modeling and Mapping Patents (11)
Multiple Database Indexing (3)
Phrase-Based Indexing Patents (3)
Radio Patents (7)
Search Indexing Patents (48)
Security Patents (3)
Social Networking (1)
Software Patents (1)
Voice Search Patents (2)
Voting Patents (1)
Wireless and Mobile Patents (6)
Total (159)

Although there is no guarantee that these factors are currently implimented at Google, they are a factual source of information and can point to future updates or even just areas which Google are interested in. Bill “Patent King” Slawski regularly breaks down these patents into bite-sized chunks over at his blog, so keep an eye on his site.

Key Relevance

Key Relevance has assembled an impressive team of experienced search engine marketers. Key Relevance is unique in the industry in that their search experts have an average of over TEN years online marketing experience. Read here for more information.

Technorati Tags: Bill Slawski, Key Relevance, KeyRelevance, Patent, Patents

Don’t worry if you’re new to poker. The number of players combined with some very understanding and helpful dealers meant that no-one felt left out. The unofficial scorecard is the number of free drinks you manage to get off the waitresses, my total of 3 wasn’t as embarrasing as some. heh. Dan Perry managed to walk off with the prize money of $3195, playing against Shoemoney in the final.

Entry to the competition is free but you’ll need to put up $150 to play. That is paid before the event starts. More information here.

PurposeInc has also organised a FightClub for the PubCon event, where you can get some instruction from Shawn Tompkins, trainer of Randy Couture, the 5 X Heavyweight Champion of the world. Randy by the way, will be defending his title against Brock Lesnar on the Saturday night after Pubcon.

The event is open to anyone who has anything to do with PubCon, will cost $150 and you can sign-up now See you there.

Technorati Tags: Brock Lesnar, Poker, PubCon, PurposeInc, Shawn Tompkins, UFC

The URL in our sitemap is in the format:

http://www.domain.com/index.html?whatever=value

The problem with Googlebot is that even though that is the URL we put in the sitemap, it doesn’t use that URL to make the request - it contracts it down to:

http://www.domain.com/?whatever=value

So our server sees this ‘incorrect’ URL, issues a 301 with the ‘correct’ URL (that has the index.html bit in it), but then Googlebot doesn’t follow that URL faithfully and again tries to request the URL without index.html in the path. So our server again issues a 301 redirect, with the correct URL and here we go off on our infinite loop. So no wonder we get the error message:

URLs not followed.... [sitemap] contained too many redirects.

John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google Zürich replies:

In this case it actually is something that we’re doing — we strip “/index.html” from URLs because that’s generally irrelevant and only makes the URL longer and look more complicated to the user. We do this when processing the URLs in your Sitemap file so if you *need* to have “/index.html” in the URLs, they generally won’t work like that. At the moment, there is no solution for using these URLs in Sitemap files if you need to have “/index.html” in them. I would generally recommend dropping the “/index.html” part, but I realize that this is sometimes not easily done.

That said, we will still crawl the website normally, so if those URLs are reachable through a normal web crawl, we’ll still find and index them normally.

Useful advice there for anyone putting together a sitemap and wondering why Google was throwing an error on URLs requiring a default filename. I assume this would also apply to the other “default” page names such as index.html index.htm index.cgi index.pl index.php index.xhtml, index.asp and perhaps default.html etc.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Webmaster Groups, JohnMu, Sitemaps

What is the current listing status for www.davidnaylor.co.uk/?

This site is not currently listed as suspicious.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 29 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 09/18/2008, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days.

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, www.davidnaylor.co.uk/ did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

OK, so we assume Google did not see Dave’s site as compromised. This would explain why Dave did not get any warning messages from Webmaster Central. Both that system and SERPGuard work on the Google Safe Browsing API and without a positive listing of DaveNaylor.co.uk - neither would have reason to send out an alert.

According to Dave Naylor’s latest blog post, his site appears to have suffered a text-book hack.

While I was in the meeting Becky texted me to say they had found something Patrick at Blogstorm ( I’m not linking out just in case I pass bad karma) and Josh from JaeWeb, had spotted an issue. It was spot on, the server had been comprised and the site was cloaking links to google of antidepressant drugs and we had a fake adsense code injected into the blog.

Patrick Altoft discovered a useful way of detecting compromises in your blog, by setting up Google Alerts on key terms. I imagine one of these searches revealed the cloaked pages that Dave had unknowingly served to Google.

The real advantage of Patrick’s technique, is that it might be able to catch this kind of compromise before the site makes it onto Google’s blacklists. I’ve always assumed that SERP penalties would only be applied after the site is listed by Google as being compromised.

So the real question here is why would Google apply a penalty without first listing DaveNaylor.co.uk? Is this a case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing? ie. are malware/phishing penalties applied irrespective of the Safe Browsing list? Or does Google not consider this incident malware/phishing related?

There are still a lot of unanswered questions for me with this incident. I look forward to Dave revealing more about the hack and any feedback Google can give on why he was penalised but not listed? If the Safe Browsing project is to have any use to webmasters, we should know it accurately reflects Google’s opinion of the site.

Technorati Tags: Dave Naylor, Google, Hacking, malware, phishing, Safe Browsing API, Security

I don’t know if this is official Google policy but it seems an excellent idea to me and a novel way to reach out to webmasters and SEO/SEMs who follow John’s updates. If nothing else, it’s a notable use of Twitter as a company brand building tool and an interesting experiment in 140 character Q&A sessions.

Questions & Answers

I’ll be updating this post as more questions and answers appear. John’s offer is open to everyone so grab the opportunity and head over to Twitter

Pierre Far: What’s the value of a nofollowed link in the eyes of Google’s algorithm? (status link)

JohnMu: Nofollow is for “ignorable” links. Recent ex: site with many URLs blocked with meta robots, nofollows help us to crawl better. (status link)

NickWilsdon: What is an acceptable number of IBLs to get from the “wrong” geographic area or language? i.e. UK/English site + Chinese links? (status link)

JohnMu: An old site of mine got many Chinese links - no problem. Within reason, they’re just links. Perhaps put a translation up? (status link)

PatrickAltoft: Will you be removing these urls, people are concerned their feeds are being indexed (I know robots.txt blocks) http://bit.ly/1b6Dyu (status link)

JohnMu: I’ll pass that on, thanks for bringing it up! (status link)

AndyBeard: Can an old, out of date XML sitemap prevent a site from being fully indexed? (status link)

JohnMu: If you know that the XML Sitemap is outdated, then fix it :). We use the Sitemap for hints, but we still crawl normally. (status link)

NickWilsdon: Beyond the user experience issue, can having broken links and 404’s negatively impact a site’s overall ranking in Google? (status link)

JohnMu: Having 404s should not affect ranking, but it can affect crawling (wasted crawls trying to reach 404s instead of good content) (status link)

mvandemar: Not too long ago Matt announced that a bunch of penalties had expired in Google… do all penalties expire? (status link)

JohnMu: For some penalties it makes sense to expire (eg when the things really have no impact anymore). Fixing issues is faster though:) (status link)

Not that many questions this week but John seems happy to do this again next Friday. Make sure you’re following his account here before then.

John’s welcome to clarify in the comments but I’d assume he’s looking for more practical questions on sites and indexing issues. I’m not sure how fair it is to throw Google policy questions at him, especially in a rapid-fire environment like Twitter. This is a useful opportunity to question a Google employee who answers literally hundreds of webmaster questions each week.

I look forward to seeing how this develops.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Webmaster Help, John Mueller, JohnMu, Twitter

PAD Submission Tips

The PAD system does makes the submission process simpler but you can save yourself even more time by purchasing a copy of PromoSoft (affiliate link). This software will not only auto-submit the software but comes with 800+ directories. Take it from someone who has done this job manually, $95 is a no-brainer on the time it saves you.

Although automatic submission saves you time, you shouldn’t rely on it exclusively. I like to use the Pareto principle or 80-20 rule as my rule of thumb; 20% or less of the sites will bring in 80% of your traffic. Use PromoSoft to submit your PAD files to the bulk of software sites but deal with the highest traffic sites by hand. Make sure you take advantage of the extra features these sites offer and optimise your listing details in these places. For example, some let you upload additional screenshots or offer fast/premier inclusion for a fee.

As with any paid marketing, it is important to track the ROI. Make unique copies of your installation file by adding a code or sitename to the filename. Joost has released a Google Analytics plugin for WordPress which will let you track these downloads or follow Google’s manual instructions here.

What to Build?

The plan is to create a useful or entertaining application for your site users, which is also on-topic for your site theme. For example, a paintball venue might give away a small program that allows users to calculate settings on their paintball gun. Make it more useful by developing it for their mobile phone as a small Java application, perfect for when they are outside on the field.

Another example could be an application for a poker site, that works out the odds for different poker hands. How about a countdown clock for a real estate forum, which lets users know when they are moving into their dream home? Or a WordPress plugin for real estate webmasters? Managing a political site? How about a game which lets you throw pies at the Presidential candidates or makes them fight each other, Kung-Fu style.

Free software is just another form of linkbait. If you put the same creative thinking behind it, you’ll gain considerable mileage on the technique.

This extra mileage can come from placing the application on your website for download and featuring it in newsletters or mailouts. Not only can you submit this to PAD sites but you can use the application as an aid for your general link building efforts.

Your link builders can approach authority sites in your niche and ask them to feature the application. Original and good quality applications within the same niche will be useful for their user base so they usually welcome the content. In fact, they will often feature this kind of content off the back of their own research.

Extra mileage can come in the form of version updates. Once you have built the software, adding a new feature can be very quick and cost effective. If you are commissioning this project, make sure you get the raw source code (uncompiled). Using PromoSoft (affiliate link) you can release a new version of the software with one-click. After the distribution has been set up, it’s easy to update the software at all your chosen software directories.

Many software directories feature new releases on their front pages and RSS feeds. Each new release will get an instant flood of fresh links. Useful when you need to get your site quickly spidered. For example, I often time releases when internal URLs have been redirected or new content added.

If you are unable to think of useful updates to your application then simply put a suggestion email address on your site. Your users will do the thinking for you and let you know what they would find useful. You’ll even get extra points for interacting with your site community.

What Not to Build?

Don’t try this technique with screensavers or toolbars. These have been done to death and don’t get accepted by the quality software directories. Be aware that buggy software that crashes itself or the user’s machine may cause an online reputation problem. Test the uninstall function well. Many top software sites allow user comments, don’t let a poor application reflect badly for your brand.

Your brand can also be badly affected by adding adware/spyware to your application, as well as getting the program removed and blacklisted within many directories. Don’t get greedy and add these to the mix. Don’t build a toolbar using third-party software which may contain this kind of code.

In conclusion, a solid and useful application will bring in hundreds of links over many years. Consider carefully what that is worth to you. The best use of this technique is when the business nutures a piece of software for years, upgrading it occasionally. If you find the tool useful, there is a good chance others within your niche will too.

If you need some advice on linkbait development feel free to ask in the comments. In my opinion this is one of the best link building techniques out there.

Technorati Tags: Link Building, Linkbait, PAD, Software