Comments for Geekness - closer to the world

Comment on Renew my Flickr Pro Account? by Reto

Reto — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:34:47 +0000

But then they are not YOUR Photos anymore …

Comment on Living Without Flash (Experiment) by CoCaman

CoCaman — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 19:58:15 +0000

True! Deactivated

Comment on Living Without Flash (Experiment) by nicam

nicam — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 19:26:45 +0000

I guess you already know but i’ll say it anyways:

you can disable flash in about:plugins in chrome

Comment on Living Without Flash (Experiment) by John Eadie

John Eadie — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 18:46:36 +0000

Noble, but you’ll give in sooner or later. I’ve done worse – now resorting to W7 (with cygwin) for trouble-free sound & such. Hate to say it out loud. Adobe has always been even worse than Microsoft. Used to sell their stuff, via Frame Technology.

Comment on Google Android Market Launches Stats by Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:06:23 +0000

[...] [...]

Comment on “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” – Additional Information by mjaniec

mjaniec — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:48:51 +0000

In his book “The power of Pull” David Siegel suggests that search engines are not in business of providing relevant search results since it would limit their ad selling possibilities.

It is much better for them to sell ads to people who did not find what they were looking for…

Comment on NYTimes: The Dirty Little Secrets of Search by Robert

Robert — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 01:00:38 +0000

Yes, since 2007, hacked sites get used a lot for manipulating search engines. One reason is that PR7 (well ranked well trusted) sites aren’t necessarily more secure than PR0 sites but certainly more valuable for web-spam. At first, it was really blatant. Ridiculous keyword spam leading to drive-bys or trojans on .EDU/.GOV sites. But you see a lot less now, and I seriously doubt the reason is a rise of security consciousness of webmasters. When you spam “Free Pr0n install codec” the webmaster hears about it. If you quietly sell PR7 links, you escape notice. Like everything in SEO, it’s an arms race, and it always gets more intricate and subtle.

An example is how the links were embedded using PHP. The PHP snippet is in your version of the code, but your server executes it and replaces it with the links. Unless you wrap it in a comment or they include a comment, there’s no way for an outside visitor to look at your source code and know those links came from TNX. They look like you selected and wrote the links yourself. Which is the point of course. Anyway, notice how that is a significant evolution from the “LinksToYou” sort of obvious, static page. Too easy for LinksToYou guys to get caught. So here you see link-swapping evolving with this PHP trick.

Comment on Google Account 2-Step Verification by Tweets that mention Google Account 2-Step Verification – Geekness - closer to the world -- Topsy.com

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:49:43 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Stachelbeeri and Corsin Camichel, Manuel Merz. Manuel Merz said: RT @cocaman: Google Account 2-Step Verification http://goo.gl/fb/sgooA [...]

Comment on “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” – Additional Information by Robert

Robert — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:12:54 +0000

Those are arguments I’ve heard for 10 years. “all should be fair in SEO”. “Gaming search engines improves result quality”. “A search naming an item must be an intent to buy it.” I find those claims to be highly improbable, and in fact, I never hear them from anyone, except those who profit by getting somebody exposed in search engines. However I hear a great deal from Real Users exhausted by all the web-pollution. One was doing costumery and spent an hour searching for shoe styling circa 1870. Clearly not intent to buy. No query refinement would yield anything but Zappos affiliates – 200 results deep. This is what happens when “All’s fair in SEO”. And it definitely makes search worse.

In a civilized society, the answer to “skullduggery” is not “everyone else do skullduggery too”. We don’t need a web of non-legitimate links, commercial or not.

That’s just my opinion.

Comment on “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” – Additional Information by Jean Guy

Jean Guy — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:40:48 +0000

Thanks for the entry. I read the article and, of course, immediately came by to visit you.

Comment on “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” – Additional Information by slug1

slug1 — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 04:11:28 +0000

thanks for your honesty and candor corsin
its refreshing to hear the ‘actual story’

Comment on “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” – Additional Information by Vin

Vin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:54:29 +0000

well said.

Comment on “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” – Additional Information by Andre

Andre — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:45:49 +0000

Matt Cutts is a self-righteous douche. Large organizations commonly do and have been doing for a long time exactly what JCPenney does and Google looks the other way. The only reason JCPenney’s got slapped down is because of the Times article. I’m an SEO guy and in my limited scope, I see the tops of the SERPs dominated by large organizations who are obviously participating in exactly the schemes described by the times. I dutifully send spam complaints to Google, but nothing ever happens.

Comment on “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” – Additional Information by Sam Steiner

Sam Steiner — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 11:47:53 +0000

Thanks. It seems they don’t let people register for new accounts these days because they have reached their server limits and want to keep the service free. Would have been exactly what I would have needed it seems.

Shouldn’t such a service also think of how to finance it’s costs? Sometimes I think idealistic developers (“it has to be free”) are a bit naive when it comes to providing for the service’s needs. It does cost!

Comment on “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search” – Additional Information by CoCaman

CoCaman — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 11:41:29 +0000

Hey Sam

I use http://www.private-ranking.de/ for this task. Once a year they publish a report over the whole year. See here. And once a week they update your keyword-rankings: