Question: What does a woman faking an orgasm have in common with web masters buying fake Google PageRank text links?

Answer: They both get screwed at the end

The famous movie scene from When Harry met Sally with Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in a dinner is etched in every man’s mind as stark reminder that if a woman wants to make a guy think he is the ultimate lover, she can easily do it. There is a new breed of cyberspace fakers out there that want you to believe you are getting a good deal by buying a high PageRank text link from their site. The problem is, it’s very easy to fake PageRank and you may be the next fool buying a fake PageRank link. Although Google came out strong against sites openly advertising and selling text links, the message is still not getting through. People continue buy paid text links as the word about Google link driven algorithm is reaching the masses.
Google knocked down the PageRank of many sites selling PR or selling paid blog post reviews in October 2007. The publishing sites selling paid reviews on Payperpost.com and Reviewme.com got hit especially hard with PageRank drops and in some cases a complete wipe out of their PageRank.

Buying Google PR

Web masters had been buying links with high Google PageRank since around 2002 to gain higher PR and also higher ranking. Although Google had changed their algorithms many times over the years to decrease the importance of the Google PageRank in their ranking score and give higher weight to other factors such as links from authority sites and inbound anchor text, the PR is still an important consideration for many website owners pursuing high rankings. If you take a look at the top ranking sites for even moderately competitive terms you will find the average Google PageRank of the top 10 sites is still around 4-5, which is pretty high. These days it’s becoming harder and harder to obtain paid links that are flying under the Google paid link detection radar and when this happens opportunity knocks on the doors of fly-by-night operators.

Faking Google PageRank

What makes the situation even worse is sites pretending to sell links on high PR sites are using nothing more than simple 301 redirects, which can be easily replicated by anybody. There are a few ways a fake Google PageRank can be achieved. All methods require server side scripting to detect if the page being requested is a human or robot. We can find out if the page requestor is human or robot by checking for the user agent specification in the request header of the request or the IP address where the request is originating from.

The code in PHP would look something like this to detect the Googlebot and than redirect it to a page with high PR page, in this example MSN.com.

<?php
if (strstr($_SERVER[’HTTP_USER_AGENT’], “Googlebot”)) {
header(”HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);

// Insert the site whose PR you want to fake
header(”Location: http://www.msn.com/“);
exit;
}
else {
// Insert the URL of your real site here
header(”Location: http://www.myrealsite.com/“);
exit;
};
?>

How to detect fake PageRank

The simplest method to detect fake PR is to check the Google cached version of the page. You can do this by entering the URL into the Google search box and hitting enter. The search results should display the same URL as the one you have entered into the search box. If the PageRank is fake Google will return a different URL in the search results.

The Google cache command can also be used the same way. Enter cache:www.possiblefakeprsite.com into the Google search box and if the site’s PageRank is real you will see an identical version of the page displayed otherwise you may get a page not found message from Google or a completely different page altogether.

Fake Google PR example

There will always be people who are looking for opportunities to profit from other people’s lack of knowledge and experience and the SEO field is no exception. I have noticed recently several Google Adwords content ads and other sites promoting these scum bags selling fake PR text links. I have just found a new ad promising a PR6 link on iWebTool’s Page Rank Prediction page, how ironic is this. Well, it’s not really ironic at all, if you think about it a little bit. Where do you find the best audience for this type of services? Of course on sites that put together a few simple scripts to check PageRank or predict future PageRank.

Here is our innocent looking ad promising a PR 6 link for $19 a year. A deal really, if the PageRank was real.

The site behind the ad is http://www.spaceadvocate.com/. The site could be gone by the time you read this, so I have created a screen shot.

Here is the screen shot from the Google cache command cache:http://www.spaceadvocate.com/. As you can see Google knows nothing about this page. In other cases you may find a page that is indexed by Google, but it will be different from the original one.

Here is a Google search that may turn up a few more fake PageRank sellers. These are typical template based sites so it’s easy to find “foot prints” left behind by PageRank fakers. Consider yourself being warned, the PR fakers are out there.

Technorati : fake google pagerank, fake pr, faking pagerank, google, pagerank

Just got an email yesterday from Parked.com announcing a new no “keyword arbitrage” policy Yahoo is sowing down their throat which in short means if publishers of Yahoo based parking domains will no longer be able to send visitors to their parked domans from Google, MSN or other low quality traffic sources such as pop-up exit type of traffic.

Dear Parked.com customers,
We were notified today by Yahoo that all Yahoo based parking companies, including Parked.com, must begin enforcing the no arbitrage/no paid traffic general provision. As a reminder, Section 2 Subsection g. in the Parked.com Terms of Service states:

“All other types of traffic including bought traffic, traffic driven by PPC campaigns, traffic directed from hyperlinks are not permitted. If your traffic originates from any sources other than type-in and search engine traffic, you will not be entitled to payment as per this Agreement. Regular checks are carried out and we reserve the right to suspend any domain from our Service at any time, on our sole discretion, if we reasonably believe that you have violated this Agreement; for example, if we suspect that the traffic on your domain is bought, generated or redirected in any way that contravenes these terms and conditions.”

For more information please see http://www.parked.com/tos/.Accordingly, all arbitrage must stop effective 1pm PST on Thursday, February 14, 2008. Even though arbitrage will no longer be allowed, all accounts will still be paid.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact your account manager.
We thank you for your business and continued support.
Parked.com

The whole thing doesn’t surprise me, but the timing of the announcement by Yahoo is more than a coincidence. As Microsoft is twisting Yahoo’s arm in a battle to gain control of the company after Yahoo’s management had flatly rejected a buyout offer by Microsoft, Yahoo is trying to show its advertisers it’s serious about the quality of the visitor traffic it’s sending to their sites. Keyword arbitrage had been very good to many domainers, even those who got late into the game. The sentiment on Dnforum.com about the announcement varies a great deal from being called an outright attack on free trade to a more moderate view that what’s good for arbitragers may not be so good for Yahoo advertisers and it’s time for domainers to develop websites, instead of ripping Yahoo advertisers off.

I personally think Yahoo wanted to take this step for a long time now, but the voices of Yahoo advertisers screaming PPC fraud were drowned out by Yahoo shareholders applauding Yahoo’s relatively decent stock performance until about a year ago.

Technorati : Yahoo!, arbitrage, domain parking, ppc

SEO is one of many markets where getting some straight answers on how much a particular service is worth is hard to find. What is a reasonable fee SEOs should charge for getting your site to the top 10 results on Google for example? While most SEO companies prefer to charge monthly maintenance contract fees or large setup fees initially and a small monthly fee, in our opinion measurable results speak louder than well polished monthly status reports. Once you talk to a few reputable SEO companies and request a quote, you will see wildly different search engine optimization pricing and contract terms. Sometimes the total costs can vary by as much 50%-10,000%. How is an average website owner supposed to make sense of all the pricing options and SEO guarantees?

Well, let’s start with some fundamentals about how SEO company’s determine pricing for their SEO services

1. Most SEOs will spend some time analyzing your site and come with a keyword list of about 5 to 10 target phrases unless you already have a specific keyword list.
2. They will check your site’s age, ranking, Google PageRank and current link popularity.
3. They will take a look the competition and the search engine results landscape for the chosen keywords. They will get answers to things like how old the sites are in the top 10 results, how many back links they have, what’s the average Google PageRank of the top 10-20 sites and many other important metrics.
4. Next they will determine if the target keywords has low competition, moderate competition, or very high competition. They will use the keywords in quotes, enter the Google search commands for checking anchor text competition (allinanchor) and title tag competition (allintitle).

Based on where your site currently ranks in the search results can have a very important affect on the SEO pricing. Lifting a website to the first page results of Google from say number 500 is a lot tougher than moving it from the 50th position to the top 10.

As a webmaster paying for SEO services you only care about seeing your site in the top 10 and not so much about how your site gets there, but from a search engine optimization company’s perspective it’s very important to take into consideration all the above variables.

Still, there are some guidelines you should use in gauging whether or not your are over paying for SEO services. One very telling research method is running the Google Traffic Estimator Tool using your target keywords. We believe in letting the pay-per-click market determine how much you should pay for SEO services. Here is a quick example. Using the Google Traffic Estimator Tool take a look at the results for the keyword “golf shoes”. What you will notice is that this keyword can cost Google Adwords advertisers between $720 - $1,200 a day to be in the number 1 to 2 in the sponsored results. Let’s take the low end of the spectrum and multiply 30 days X $720 = $21,600 a month in advertising costs just for this one keyword. So how much a SEO should charge for getting a natural top 10 ranking on Google for this keyword? How about $259,200?

By doing some home work with the Google Traffic Estimator Tool and taking a look at the exact phrase competition for “golf shoes” on Google you would be a lot better equipped to sort out who can offer you the best SEO services and pricing.

Technorati : seo, seo services

People tend to forget that behind every visit to your site there is a human being and whether you like it or not they will form their own opinion of your website in just 10-15 seconds. I know I can spot a real gem when I see one on any subject matter. Since my work involves a lot of research of some type, finding information fast is crucial to what I do. Every site has a certain characteristics that tells you within the first few second if you are on the right place or just wasting your time. I don’t know how many times a day I hit the back button on my browser window to bail out of sites that offer nothing useful or it’s not the answer I am looking for.

Is it the fault of the search engines that they didn’t pull out of their billion page index the 10 best sites that match my query? I would like to blame Google for missed hits and irrelevant search results, but than again what am I thinking, Google is just a bunch of networked supper computers that are as the dumb as my kitchen table without the search logic that’s built into them.

So, despite the best search algorithms Google, Yahoo and MSN will miss the boat more often than not.

As SEOs we see our job as gently nudging the search engines in the directions of our clients sites for the keywords they want to be on the first page for. The real trick of SEO is to figure our which one of the 100 or so factors Google will give the most weight to, and concentrating our efforts on those.

Our guaranteed SEO relies on the past experiences to gauge which link popularity or on page SEO tweaks will give us the biggest bang for the buck. Since we only get paid if actually push our SEO clients’ site to the top 10 on Google we can’t waste our resources on techniques that only achieve marginal results.

From our experience so far this is what works for sites on Google that are on the second page of the SERPs or lower for moderately competitive keywords, that’s about 100,000 result or less for the exact keyword phrase (meaning keywords in quotes like this “seo software”).

Content Optimization:

1. Create unique title tags for each page and match title with the content’s target keyword phrases
2. Review and optimize the internal linking scheme and current anchor texts
3. Add a site map if it’s missing
4. Encourage the owner of the set up a blog
5. Update the existing content with some fresh new pages and link to them

Link Building:

1. Write at least 2-3 new articles and distribute them to the top 5 ezine sites. You should consider Ezinearticles.com, Articlecity.com and Articlealley.com
2. Add the site to DMOZ.org and the Yahoo directory if not already listed. The Yahoo listing is pricey at $299 per year, but well worth it.
3. Find 5-10 niche or regional directories that matches the site’s content and submit. Submission costs range from Free to $200 per listing.
4. Buy/Secure 20-40 new one-way permanent links from sites with a minimum of PR 3 that are least 50% related. Expect to pay $15-$25 for each link.
5. Buy/Secure 5 top quality permanent links from authority domains that are closely related to the target site. Expect to pay $300-$500 per link.

Of course keep in mind there are always exceptions and a great deal depends on the keywords’ competitiveness. If you have done any SEO, you should already know there is a big difference between lifting a site to the top from say number 100 on Google for a keyword phrase like “home loans” vs. “Florida term life insurance”.

My question to all you new webmasters is, why do you think you need to submit your new website to the search engines? Google, Yahoo and MSN and are all crawler based search engines, which means they find and index websites following links.

So please forget about signing up for services promising to get you listed on Google, Yahoo and MSN in 48 hours. What you need a simple link to your new site from a blog, a directory, a friend’s site or any web page that gets crawled regularly by the search engines.

Save some money and headaches and post a comment on this post with your new website URL and I guarantee your site gets indexed within a few days in all the top search engines.

This is free website review offered to websites with quality content. If your site is under construction or largely made up of affiliate links without any useful content, please don’t expect a favorable review.

We are pleased to announce the release of our mini beginner SEO guide called “Spoon-Fed SEO for GrownUps”. We decided to go with this tounge in cheek title as it emphasizes the complexities inherent in search engine marketing. Most people new to internet marketing have no idea what search engines are about or how they even earn a profit online.

After talking to many of our new SEO clients and SEO users there was a need for something that ties everything together nicely from A to Z in the SEO world. We have focused a bit on how to make good use of the SEO Studio tools to help webmasters speed up some mundane repetitive tasks in search engine optimization such as rank checking, back link analysis. Seasoned SEOs know 80% of all SEO efforts is connected with some type of external popularity building whether it’s link building through directory submissions, link buying, article distribution or viral marketing. This is where we feel new webmasters need the most help and we hope our SEO guide won’t disappoint you.

Learn SEO the easy way. Download or read online Spoon-Fed SEO for GrownUps

I have just received an email announcing the retirement of the bCentral small business directory. In its place Microsoft is planning to launch the Microsoft Small Business Directory.

"On May 18th 2007 Microsoft will retire its Submit It! service. The service's site preparation, directory submittal, and reporting tools will be decommissioned. To help you transition away from the service, we are giving you a limited period of free access to Submit It’s site preparation, submittal, and reporting tools. In addition, existing Submit It! customers are being offered a way to retain their Small Business Directory listings, for free, through 2008." 

This obscure directory had been around for years and I can only applaud Microsoft doing away with it. Other than SEO companies I don't even khow anyone who knows or heard about this directory. It rarely if ever shows up in search results even on MSN, so the only value it was serving is giving a cheap one-way links to those who were too lazy or skilled enough to find really good links with topical relevance. The whole Submit It Directory submittal, and site preparation and reporting tools are also getting the axe. Submission tools lived out their useful shelf life years ago, it's about time Microsoft gets the point as well. We have made our own SEO Studio submission tool free years ago in all editions of SEO Studio, it's a complete waste of time except for a few obscure international engines that are non-crawler based. 

We are pleased to announce the launch of our new Internet directory called Root Directory.org. Root Directory submissions are going to be reviewed by our editorial stuff and we'll be aiming to create a well balanced directory of high quality links while ensuring your website gets maximum exposure through search engine friendly links . Take advantage of our FREE directory submission offer in exchange for a link back to the the Root Directory.

Yahoo will be phasing out the Overture keyword tool and perhaps making room for a new keyword search tool based on their new Panama advertising platform in the near future. The Overture keyword tool has been up and down for a few days now, but as of this morning it seems all regional versions of the Overture keyword inventory tool are also dead.

In a thread over at Webmasterworld someone claims to have talked with Yahoo representatives and they have given assurances they will fix the problem as early as today. If you rely heavily on the Overture keyword inventory data you have a few options although most of these options have some type of costs associated with them. Some of the best keyword research tools include Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Keywords Analyzer and Wordze.

The only free keyword tool available without creating an account is the Google external keyword tool. Unfortunately the Google external keyword tool only gives a search volume indicator instead of the actual search volume in numbers.

Update Feb, 02, 2007

The overture keyword invertory tool is still alive at this address http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, although it shows the previous month's results from December 2006. This may mean December 2006 was the last update for this popular keyword tool.

Also, a new Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool and KeywordDiscovery research tool has been released to the Overture keyword tool decommissioning.