pilkster.com

Google has basically admitted they have lost by asking users to dob in anyone buying or selling links so they can have a nice clean set of search results to hang their paid advertising off (adwords). If they are going to penalise every site that buys or sells links then they are going to have to penalise a very large proportion of the interweb!

I can imagine all the Indian SEO companies gearing up their adverts now for the ’services’ section of DP – ‘We will report your top 20 competitors for buying or selling paid links – only $50!’ It’s has to be cheaper to burn your rivals down than to build yourself up.

Quadzilla is already welcoming the new legions

If adwords isn’t full of false promises then I don’t know what is. Squeeze as much bullshit as you can about some crappy product into 70 characters. Even their QS makes you optimise your landing pages in a similar way to a doorway page from 1995. The REALLY hypocritical thing is what happens when you type ‘buy links’ into Google…. and then get faced with a pageful of crap results framed by adverts trying to SELL you paid links.

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Watchout WordPress users, the BlackHats are coming!!

As you may or may not know I have several friends who are involved in BlackHat SEO and they have been showing particular interest in the progress of Themey, my WordPress theme site. I had a little think about the potential for WP in the blackhat arena, and the things that can be done with it are very worrysome. The potential includes (but is in no way limited to):

• Using your domain, server and IP address to send bulk email.
• Using your server and IP address to spam other bloggers with comment and trackback spam promoting their latest PPC campaign (Pills, Porn and Casino).
• Using your site to pass PageRank (PR) to their PPC site.

If you are interested in the way that spammers could use your site for evil you can find more details (including an example site showing a method of user-agent based PR spam) in my Security Vulnerability post at Themey.

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Nothing massive going on today, I just wanted to give a bit of a plug to the new iPhone WordPress theme released earlier today. It’s quite groovy. One day I will finally get around to knocking out a theme for this blog All suggestions welcome.

In other news today my 103bees keyword report for this week shows that ‘ beef sausages in australia’ is a search term that lead some poor soul to my blog. If that was you, then sorry.

Watch out for some interesting stuff about longtail and misspelled keyword lists coming soon. If you can’t wait then I suggest you go read Pete’s blog on making massive keyword lists. I’ve got a few things to add so when he gets his lazy marketing backside back to MSN the two of us might put some more tips together for you guys. One pointer before I go; if you need a massive keyword list go ask a blackhat for help (thx SEOidiot).

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This summer I have been training for my Surf Life Saving Australia Bronze Medallion with a squad at Narrabeen Beach surf club.

On Thursday we went to Manly surf club and joined up with Manly Bronze Squad for our written exam and practical tests in first aid, CPR, signals, radio operation etc. We all breathed a sigh of relief as everyone passed the tests, and focused on the skills test on Sunday.

On Saturday I went to the club for our regular training session to find that the conditions were quite tough. Yesterday (Sunday) they were even tougher! The Manly guys came to our beach to do the water test, their faces were a picture when they arrived and saw the size of the swell

We all managed to pass the tests (except Joss from Manly was unfortunatly hospitalised whilst trying to carry out a board rescue) .The run-swim-run was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do! Three months ago when we started training I wouldn’t have been fit enough to complete it.

Joining up with the surf club has been great for me – I have got fitter, become safe in the water, learnt some useful first aid skills, and most importantly made some great new friends. I’m looking forward to my first day in the uniform out on patrol. Watch out for the pics of me in my purple budgie smugglers coming soon

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