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Link To Full Story: www.nytimes.com

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“The key is to roll the campaign out slowly,” he said as he nibbled at seared duck foie gras. “A lot of companies are in a rush. They want as many links as we can get them as fast as possible. But Google will spot that. It will flag a Web site that goes from zero links to a few hundred in a week.”

The hardest part about the link-selling business, he explained, is signing up deep-pocketed mainstream clients. Lots of them, it seems, are afraid they’ll get caught. Another difficulty is finding quality sites to post links. Whoever set up the JCPenney.com campaign, he said, relied on some really low-rent, spammy sites — the kind with low PageRanks, as Google calls its patented measure of a site’s quality. The higher the PageRank, the more “Google juice” a site offers others to which it is linked.

“The sites that TNX uses mostly have low PageRanks,” Mr. Stevens said.

Link To Full Story: searchengineland.com

Shared by JohnH
Exactly! It's getting weird. Anyone else think the Yelp pages aren't scoring as well since they declined to be purchased? Does your personal search history become part of the HotPot algorithm? Will my browser retargeting be informed by which stores I checked into? In the McLuhan sense, What does all this flip into? Like the freedom of a car flipping into frozen freeways. Will mobile local flip into an automatic checkin that shows the store clerk my net worth? Take away the clever game mechanics and secret sauces and what's left is a reification of all things human. You are a potential sale. End of story.

Where’s The Problem?

Tonight at the NBA basketball game in Portland between the hometown Trail Blazers and the Orlando Magic, Google is launching a Hotpot Jackpot competition. The idea, Google says, is “to encourage Portlanders to start rating the places they know and share them with friends and family.” Here’s how Google explains it:

Everyone over the age of 18 who lives within a 50-mile radius of Portland can participate, and the top five raters at the end of the competition will win dinner for 10 at any restaurant in Portland, courtesy of Google.

In other words, Google is offering incentives for reviews. In addition to the dinners-for-10 above (the Grand Prize), there are 25 dinners for up to four people being awarded (First Prize) and 100 debit cards valued at $100 each (Second Prize).

In all, the prizes have a combined value of up to $13,750.

The irony is that Google recently changed its reviews policy, specifically telling small business owners they can’t offer incentives to get more reviews:

Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. Even if well-intentioned, a conflict of interest can undermine the trust in a review. In addition, we do not accept reviews written for money or other incentives. Please also do not post reviews on behalf of others or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with the place you are reviewing.

(emphasis is mine)

So, if Google doesn’t accept reviews that are written for incentives … what will it do with all the reviews that are written about Portland businesses in an attempt to win a free, 10-person dinner at any restaurant in the city? Or a dinner for four? Or a $100 debit card?

Link To Full Story: searchengineland.com

“Hello, My name is Stanley with DecorMyEyes.com,” the post began. “I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement.”

It’s all part of a sales strategy, he said. Online chatter about DecorMyEyes, even furious online chatter, pushed the site higher in Google search results, which led to greater sales. He closed with a sardonic expression of gratitude: “I never had the amount of traffic I have now since my 1st complaint. I am in heaven.”

That would sound like schoolyard taunting but for this fact: The post is two years old. Between then and now, hundreds of additional tirades have been tacked to Get Satisfaction, ComplaintsBoard.com, ConsumerAffairs.com and sites like them.

Link To Full Story: internet marketing: Frequently tagged products at Amazon.com

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Link To Full Story: www.seobook.com

I think the reasons they do it are likely 3 or 4 fold

• they want to make SEO unpredictable & unreliable (which ultimately means less resources are spent on SEO & the results are overall less manipulated)
• they want to force businesses (who just stocked up on inventory) to enter the AdWords game in a big way
• by making changes to the core relevancy algorithms (and having the market discuss those) they can slide in more self promotion via their vertical search services without it drawing much anti-trust scrutiny
• the holidays are when conversion rates are the highest, so if they want to make changes to seek additional yield it is the best time to do it, and the holidays give them an excuse to offer specials or beta tests of various sorts