SEO WORLD NEWS

Every Now and then, you’ll see one of the flickr popular photos be of some beautiful and scantly clad female. So on Saturday I thought to myself, “You know, I bet that would be a great niche - Finding all the hot flickr babes and creating a photo blog.”

The first domain I thought of that would be perfect for this endeavor was flickerbabes.com. I immediately typed the URL into my browser and BEHOLD! Someone already had the idea and is doing a damn good job.

On the one hand, I’m a little bummed that I didn’t think of it first. But on the other hand, I’m glad they are doing a great job on the blog! I like looking at beautiful woman - so I joined the other 18530 people and subscribed.

It looks like Google will be rolling out an increase in Gmail and shared storage today. If they go with pricing of $1 per year, and require Google Pay to do it: it’s absolutely genius.

Regardless of the pricing, they are integrating the photo sharing into the shared storage. That will drive the community building effort of G-flickr Picasa Web Album. The more a user uploads to Google, the less likely that user is to leave and the more likely that user is to use incremental Google Services. Once they get all their users payment information, they’ll be in a position to challenge Paypal. Once photos are uploaded, how hard is it going to be to push and integrate Orkut?

It’s a very smart move. The real question is why does it take Yahoo and Microsoft so long to think of this shit? Why are they never first with any great ideas?

Google’s mission: All your base are belong to us.

Update: It looks like they decided to go with $20 a year. This is a huge mistake in my estimation. They should charge $1 and require that the customer sign up for Google Pay (or whatever it’s called). A $19 customer acquisition cost for a payment service is fantastic. Moreover, with storage prices at around $20 / 100 gigs and dropping, and other Google Grid considerations, charging $20 per year makes no cents.

Here’s an Interesting Look at the new Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Here’s a favorite topic of greywolf: Wikipedia in Google.

From the NYT Top list from the last 30 days, we searched for the top 15 terms in Google:

Here are the results:

1. harry potter
Wikipedia: 4
2. sex
Wikipedia: 2
3. china
Wikipedia: 1 +2
4. immigration
Wikipedia: 4
5. india
Wikipedia: 1
6. iraq
Wiki: 1+2
7. health
Yahoo: 2, 8, 9
Dmoz: 5
Wiki: none
8. college
NYtimes: 1
Wiki: 2
9. school
Wiki:1
10. education
Wiki:2
Yahoo: 4
NYtimes: 5
11. recipes
none.
12. bush
Wiki: 1+2
13. cancer
Wiki: 2
14. art
Wiki: 2
15. korea
Wiki: 2+3
Yahoo: 7

The wikipedia came in

1st: 5 times
2nd: 7 times
3rd: 1 time
4th: 2 times
None: 2 times

Now, we have heard that Wikipedia is developing a search engine.

If the wikipedia partners with Firefox or otherwise is able to successfully push their search engine, will Google have to rethink its dependence on the wikipedia? Is this a similar paradigm to IBM and MsDOS?

The housing bubble has already started to deflate – but we have a long way to go until we hit bottom. Housing prices are so out of line with their investment values that we’re due for one of the hardest and biggest financial corrections in the history of the world. We could go into more detail here, but these two sites do a good job at explaining exactly what is going on with the housing bubble.

It’s not a question of IF we’re going to have a correction, but whether it’s going to be a sudden plunge or a prolonged correction as there was in Japan:

Prices were highest in Tokyo’s Ginza district in 1989, with some fetching over US$1.5 million per square meter ($139,000 per square foot), and only slightly less in other areas of Tokyo. By 2004, prime “A” property in Tokyo’s financial districts were less than 1/100th of their peak, and Tokyo’s residential homes were 1/10th of their peak, but still managed to be listed as the most expensive real estate in the world. Some US$20 trillion (1999 dollars) was wiped out with the combined collapse of the real estate market and the Tokyo stock market.’

The time after the bubble’s collapse, which occurred gradually rather than catastrophically, is known as the “lost decade” in Japan.

 

I recently had a chat with someone where I (hopefully) convinced him not to buy a house. He’s looking to put $80,000 down on a $400,000 house with mortgage and tax payments of $2500 per month. He can rent an identical home for $1650 per month. That means that instead of risking his $80k investment on Real Estate at bubble prices he could:

Put that $80k into a savings account
Earn 5% ($333 per month in interest).
Protect the principle

If he applies that interest towards his rent, his monthly payments will be $1316 ($1650 - $333) vs. $2500. Clearly, it makes no sense to buy right now.

Now is the time to unload those investment properties. Now is the time to take a cash position. Now is the time to be a property renter rather than an owner. If you are leveraged, it’s time to sell before you really get hurt.

The reason I’m even posting about this is because primarily we deal with making money on SEO Black Hat. The last thing I want is for you to work your ass off and make tons of money, only to squander it at the peak a bubble.

On September 27th, or a little before then, I’ll be traveling to Amsterdam for the Webmaster Access Show with my wife.

Being the cheap bastard that I am, I would really prefer not to pay the $150 each to get into the show. So, if someone would like to pick up the tab ($300), or can get comp tickets, I’ll set aside a dinner meeting for you in Amsterdam. At the dinner, we can discuss web strategies, SEO, link baiting, making money online, or whatever else you want to talk about.

Additionally, I want to make sure I’m invited to all the best industry parties while I’m there; so if you’re having an industry party, make sure you contact me, send me an invite and put me on the guest list.

The freedom to travel is one of the really great benefits to making money online.

This Wednesday, I’m headed over to the UK for 3 weeks. First stop: London followed by my first trip to Ireland. Then it’s back to Panama for a couple of weeks.

After Webmaster Access, we’re going to Munich for Oktoberfest through October 7th.

Then to:
Prague
Budapest (Updated to include)
Vienna
Florence
Millan
Genoa
Monaco
Paris
Snowboarding in Switzerland
Madrid
Portugal

I’ve already been to Rome or we would head there while in Italy. Now, we’re aiming at arriving in Switzerland by early November for a few weeks of fun on the slopes.

Here’s a layout of what I’m thinking:

Any advice, tips or “you have to check this out” would be greatly appreciated. My wife loves hitting the clubs, so pointers on the better parties and clubs along with when the best days to go would be awesome.

I didn’t make it to SES, but via aaron wall I found Frank Schilling’s Keynote Speech - and it was Awesome. It’s an Hour video, but well worth the watch.

Frank Said he’s “A lot like the people in this room” and I think he’s right. Well, he’s at least a like like the people in the room I’m in now. I could see myself making a similar speech in a similar tone; hopefully he doesn’t take this the wrong way, but Frank’s a lot like me.

Another SES highlight that’s making the rounds is Grey Wolf’s powerpoint presentation on paid links: it’s also worth a look. Most everyone who’s anyone in SEO knows that paid links work. Now it seems clear that Google sees Buying and selling links as “Black Hat SEO”. In light of this seemingly steadfast attitude of casting the entire competent SEO community as blackhats, we will probably be expanding our coverage of the paid link market and best outline more best / worst practices for buying and selling links.

I got this email from Christine Daukas a few minutes after a signup to the SEO Black Hat Forums:

My name is Christine Daukas and I just received a very alarming email
from Pay Pal stating that I subscribed something from you and your
company for $100.00 Stop Now! I am a student teacher and the $100.00
that you are “steling” from me will cause my checking account to be
overdrawn> I am very very angry put the money back into my account
now!
Christine Daukas

 

I replied to Christine Daukas:

Christine Daukas,

Your account was probably phished. It wasn’t done by me.

Be sure to change your papal and email passwords and, in the future, be more careful.

Please forward the paypal receipt to me and I’ll take care of it today.

 

Christine Daukas didn’t forward the receipt. However, since it was a very recent transaction and I wanted to get it off my plate, I went into paypal, was able to see it on the front page and reversed it in about 2 minutes.

Then Christine Daukas sends me back this email:

Don’t have the audacity to tell me to “be more careful” ass wipe. Make
sure that you confirm your transactions.

 

Odd way of saying thank you – don’t you think?

The freedom to travel is one of the really great benefits to making money online.

This Wednesday, I’m headed over to the UK for 3 weeks. First stop: London followed by my first trip to Ireland. Then it’s back to Panama for a couple of weeks.

After Webmaster Access, we’re going to Munich for Oktoberfest through October 7th.

Then to:
Prague
Vienna
Florence
Millan
Genoa
Monaco
Paris
Snowboarding in Switzerland
Madrid
Portugal

I’ve already been to Rome or we would head there while in Italy. Now, we’re aiming at arriving in Switzerland by early November for a few weeks of fun on the slopes.

Here’s a layout of what I’m thinking:

Any advice, tips or “you have to check this out” would be greatly appreciated. My wife love hitting the clubs, so pointers on the better parties and clubs along with when the best days to go would be awesome.