Anyone who knows me knows I am a rugby NUT and an All Blacks tragic. So I’ve been following the Rugby World Cup action very closely over the past few weeks. The thing is, I’m finding this particular RWC season to be almost unbearable from a media perspective.

First it was the media coverage following the All Black’s 41 to 10 win over Tonga. The New Zealand media were bad enough, claiming the All Blacks played poorly and that the 41 point victory wasn’t decisive enough.  Which prompted me to ask Twitter:

“If a 31 point win margin *fails as a decisive victory* then how many freaking points did the #allblacks need to win by?”

Then there was the Wall Street Journal piece, written by someone who clearly doesn’t know anything about rugby (“New Zealand – nicknamed the All Blacks due to their attire” – REALLY?), claiming that the All Blacks “failed to inspire” and that “the win wasn’t sufficient to reassure fans”.

Of course, there have been the expected digs at the All Blacks team by the Australian media, about how they were going to choke, just like the last World Cup and Aussie television news anchors having a good old chuckle at the done-to-death sheep / Israel Dagg jokes wheeled out by the sports reporters. Commentators Andrew Slack and Ken Sutcliffe for Channel Nine in Australia clearly find it difficult to hold back their bias when it comes to their coverage of Wallabies matches. But in my opinion, there is a clearly defined line between light-hearted fun poking and outright racist commentary.

Today, New Zealand’s TV3 stepped over that line, in my opinion. With their One Eyed Kiwi Commentary of today’s game between the All Blacks and the Wallabies, I think 3News have sullied New Zealand rugby with their offensive, juvenile and racist pre-match banter. I wanted the All Blacks to win as much as anybody, but that promoted commentary was simply embarrassing.

Think I’m over-reacting? Here are some extracts:

• “Well here we go… the big one, the All Blacks totally dismembering our Aussie cousins from across the ditch and marching on to hand a hiding to the limpet mine-carrying nation in the final.”
• “Refresh your browser occasionally. We’ll warn you when video is up with the words ‘VIDEO UP’ (even an Aussie could follow that)”.
• “…here’s some friendly folly fire at the convicts from the island.“
• “The first Wallaby has been seen inspecting Eden Park.” (accompanied by the picture above of a giant convict carrying a rugby ball and chain).
• “What do you call an Aussie with half a brain? Gifted.”

And on it goes, with more crude anti-Australian jokes thrown into the mix. Based on his tweets, the content appears to have been written by a post-grad journalism student called Michael Oliver who is apparently about to be employed by TV3.

Now my main problem with this is not so much the content, as juvenile as it is. You can see this type of immature trolling on Twitter or Facebook about any big sporting event. No, my problem with this lies in the way it is presented on the 3News web site. It is published as *official* RWC content. There is no banner or byline indicating this content is written by a guest blogger or a student. The content is simply presented as endorsed coverage of what is likely the most important game of the World Cup, on the site of the official media sponsor covering the event.

I am concerned that the content will be viewed as offensive, if not outright racist and by allowing it to be published, TV3 is endorsing those views. As an Australian, I was quite offended, even though I (mostly) live in New Zealand and am a hugely vocal supporter of the All Blacks. I can only imagine how Wallabies supporters would feel upon reading that. And the petty limpet mine (Rainbow Warrier) reference is really quite a controversial and dangerous topic to bring up with so many French media representatives in NZ right now.

What’s worse is how proud the author is of his field day approach:

@mj_oliver : I’m manning tonight’s live updates for 3News.co.nz. We’re gunning for the most parochial commentary known to human kind. #RWC2011 Link to tweet

@mj_oliver: Sanctioned trolling. I love my future job. http://www.3news.co.nz/One-eyed-Kiwi-VIDEO-LIVE-UPDATES-All-Blacks-Vs-Australia-semifinal-2-RWC-2011–highlights/tabid/1534/articleID/229706/Default.aspx Link to tweet

With millions of international viewers studying New Zealand closely right now, can TV3 really afford to be seen as endorsing such potentially racist drivel? I don’t think so.

TV3 have a very strict policy when it comes to comments left on their site:

• No comments that seek to cause offence on the grounds of race, sex, sexuality, religion, age or ethinicity will be tolerated
• No comments that are obscene, offensive, pornographic, vulgar, profane, indecent or otherwise illegal
• No comments that are defamatory in nature

Right. But that apparently doesn’t apply to their own contributors?

I left the very first comment on the page, politely expressing my concerns, but for some reason, @3newsnz seems to be only publishing positive comments. When I tweeted Mr Oliver about this, he claimed he didn’t have control over comments.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your comments. And unlike the team at 3News, I’ll actually publish them.

POSTSCRIPT 1: Since I started writing this blog post, TV3 have put up a pseudo disclaimer in red text on the page. It reads:

“Thanks for tuning in to tonight’s completely biased commentary. It was all in good fun, and no offence to our friends across the ditch was intended. The Wallabies weren’t allowed to play, and that’s entirely due to their opposition being on another level.”

Yeah, that’ll fix everything.

I regularly use a tool that I think is super useful but one of my colleagues believes it is bogus. The tool is Alexa.com, have you heard of it? The site seems to show really good audience demographic data and I’ve used it quite often to give clients visitor statistics and a ball-park value for their web sites and their competitors.

The site has been around a long time and I’ve shown my friend the reports I’ve generated, but he said that the data is exaggerated. After talking with my colleague, I’m concerned about whether I should be using it. What’s your opinion of Alexa?

Bruce

Hi Bruce

I’m with your colleague on Alexa – I am not a fan. In my opinion, the information they provide is completely skewed and inaccurate because of the way they gather their data and install their toolbar. Sure they’ve been around since 1996 and sure, they’re owned by Amazon but that’s about as impressive as the stats get I’m afraid. You might want to read these past articles about Alexa:

If You Cite Compete or Alexa For Anything Besides Making Fun of Them, You’re a Moron

3 Reasons Why Alexa Sucks (And They Know It!)

Alexa Says YouTube is Now Bigger Than Google. Alexa is Useless.

Why is Alexa Still Relevant?

My view isn’t just based on these articles either. I downloaded the Alexa Toolbar and reviewed it for several years before discounting it. In my opinion, you’re better off installing Google Analytics and generating more accurate statistical reports for your clients.

Kalena

———————————————–

Struggling to get better search rankings? Download our Free SEO Lesson. No catch!

CAUTION: Rant Ahead

I was alerted to the Promote JS! site today by a programmer pondering the benefits and tweeting to ask about the SEO logic behind the idea.

Basically, Promote JS! is a cause born out of the JSConf held in April this year. The idea is for JavaScript programmers to spread the word about Mozilla’s JavaScript Developer Center via the use of links to try and improve Mozilla’s Google ranking for searches relating to JavaScript documentation.

A noble cause right? Maybe. However the implementation is inherently flawed in several ways:

1) First of all, the site provides a banner for web site owners and bloggers to place on their sites.  The banner uses a script which creates a link to a different page of the Developer Center at every refresh so you can choose the destination link of your choice. This method is just plain silly, in my opinion. They’ve taken a noble idea and tried to implement it using link farm tactics. A series of identical banners with nearly identical link code smells very much like an affiliate program to Googlebot. Their code has basically created an affiliate link farm which is likely to be filtered out by Google’s ranking algorithm, potentially doing more harm than good to the Developer Center’s link popularity.

2)  The alt tag for the banner is stuffed with multiple JavaScript related keywords. Keyword stuffed tags of any kind can easily be detected and ignored by Google’s ranking filter. There’s just no need to shove multiple keyword repetitions in there.

3) Developer Andrew Hedges had written a blog post about Promote JS! questioning the value of linking to multiple sub pages of the JavaScript Developer Center and suggesting perhaps everyone should link to their home page instead. He cc’d me on his tweet asking for SEO advice and inviting comments on his post. My response is that people should link to ANY page in the Developer Center that they want to promote! If their blog post talks about APIs, they should link to the API documentation. If they were impressed by a particular javascript tutorial, they should link directly to that tutorial.

The whole point of the PageRank algorithm is to attribute relevancy weight based on inbound links to specific pages. It’s not about the top level domain. If everyone points to the home page, the inner pages – those containing the most valuable, useful content – won’t rank as well. For a web site to rank well for a wide number of keywords, you need to spread the link juice, not channel it to a single page. You have to trust Google’s own system of rewarding good content – they have a zillion brains working on this full time.

4) Andrew had also tweaked the Promote JS! code somewhat to create a banner that generated a random link at every refresh. In my opinion, this method is also flawed. Link popularity is based around the acquisition of trusted, related, inbound links to a page. If links appear and disappear to a page, that’s hardly trustworthy, right? Google won’t be counting your links as trusted. They are looking for solid, stable links from directly related topic pages.

This is another reason why it makes sense to link to specific inner pages at the JavaScript Developer Center, based on your specific blog post topic/s. If your blog post talks about JavaScript drop down menus and it points to the documentation specifically about those, the TrustRank of that page goes up, as does the eventual ranking potential for related search queries.

Promote JS! shouldn’t be creating link farms to promote the value of the JavaScript Developer Center.  They should simply be encouraging developers to use logical linking strategies as recommended by Google to promote great content. Either that or convince Mozilla to make their JavaScript documentation more search engine friendly!

I’m sure there’ll be developers out there who disagree with me and that’s fine. I don’t know how long the Promote JS! site has been live, but it doesn’t have a Google PR, so it’s either too young or hasn’t built up any TrustRank. Make of that what you will.

A staff member here sent me a screengrab from a Google search he had made and pointed out one of the Sponsored Links / AdWords ads at the top of the page (see screen grab below) . He had conducted a search for *cheap glasses new zealand* and Google displayed a range of organic and paid results on the SERP.

Here’s a screengrab of the original search page showing the top 3 sponsored results:

When my colleague clicked on the 3rd Sponsored Link on the page, it took him to a 404 Error Page. Thinking that the URL was simply malformed and he could find what he needed from the home page, he stripped the tracking URL down to the top level domain and refreshed the page. Again, he was taken to a 404 Error Page.

At first I thought perhaps the site was offline temporarily or simply not loading in his browser so I asked him to send me the destination URL from the ad so I could try.

Because I have the Google Toolbar installed, when I tried to view the same broken link, instead of a standard 404 error, I received a Google error page stating: “Oops! This link appears to be broken. Did you mean: www.­lessforspecs.­co.­nz?”

Aha! Mystery solved. The advertiser Less for Specs had accidently used dot com in their destination URL instead of .co.nz. Turns out, the dot com site doesn’t even exist, which is probably for the best as they would have been paying to send traffic to their competitor’s site if it did.

Normally, the AdWords system detects malformed destination URLs and either doesn’t approve the ad or sends you an alert very quickly and pauses the ad for you. However, for whatever reason (perhaps the dot com site did exist at one point), the ad was allowed to go live.

An identical search today doesn’t trigger the same ad, so perhaps the problem is resolved. Maybe Google alerted them of the problem. Perhaps the mistake was made by a 3rd party agency managing the site’s PPC campaign. But who knows how many people clicked on the link and were taken to a 404 error page before it was fixed? Who knows how many dollars the mistake cost the advertiser in click costs in the meantime?

Now, I don’t mean to single out Less For Specs. I’ve seen similar errors in Pay Per Click ads by many companies over the years, heck, I’ve made them myself. But seeing this example reminded me that we should be taking more care with our PPC campaigns in order to get the best value for money out of them.

Here’s a list of common PREVENTABLE errors I’ve seen in PPC ads:

• Malformed destination URLs.
• Incorrect or misleading display URLs.
• Destination URLs leading to a *this page is under construction* placeholder.
• Forgetting to pause a PPC campaign during a scheduled site outage (I have to admit guilt on this one!)
• Moving a domain but forgetting to redirect PPC landing pages.
• Not knowing about an unscheduled site outage for 48 hours.
• Spelling or grammatical errors within ads.
• Sexist, racist or otherwise ignorant ad wording.

Yes, some PPC systems such as AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter have built in checks to prevent dumb user errors, but they’re not bullet proof. Dumbass happens. Just don’t let it happen to you.

Every time I spot a Google representative at a Search Conference in Australia or New Zealand, I take the opportunity to ask them publicly “Where the bloody hell is my Google Checkout merchant account?” So far, the answer has ALWAYS been the same: “We can’t give you any information about that”.

This year’s SMX Sydney conference was no different. Frederick Vallaeys, Product Evangelist for Google Adwords came to Australia to hold a session about the new Google AdWords ad formats. After listening patiently to Frederick, I raised my hand to ask a question and was handed the mic.

“When are you going to make Google Checkout available to merchants in Australia and New Zealand?”

An expectant hush came over the room. Frederick thought carefully for a moment and then said “I’ll have to get back to you on that. Please come and see me at the end of the session”.

Finally! I thought. Somebody who can give me a straight answer or put me in touch with someone who can give me a straight answer.

After the session, I packed up my laptop and headed up to the table of speakers. And…. Frederick was gone. Thankfully, Greg Grothaus from Google’s web spam team was still there and somewhat reluctantly took my card to give to Frederick. On the back I wrote my burning question. Again.

So fast forward two weeks after the conference. I received an email from Frederick with the subject line: Google Checkout in Australia. “Promising!” I told myself. But alas, his email read:

“Greg passed on your card to me. I believe you asked about Google Checkout coming to Australia?

Consumers in Australia can already use Checkout to pay for things. As for allowing Australian merchants to accept payments by Checkout, we don’t have any timelines we can share about that.

Sorry I can’t provide you with a more specific answer…

Frederick”

We don’t have any timelines we can share about that. WTF does that mean? Does that mean you DON’T know? Does it mean you DO know but aren’t willing to tell me? Does it mean an announcement is imminent? Does it mean you don’t really give a toss about Australia and New Zealand as they aren’t big enough markets to justify merchant accounts?

Look, I don’t complain about Google very often. Marvellous company. Brilliant people. Handy little search tool. I’m delighted that Frederick took the time to answer me personally. BUT, surely somebody, somewhere in the Googleplex can give me and other AU/NZ merchants in waiting a straight answer about this matter? It’s been 3 years since I began asking.

Where the bloody hell are ya, Google Checkout?

[Editor Update 1 : If you're an Aussie or Kiwi merchant and would like to know where the bloody hell YOUR  Google Checkout account is, please comment on this post, or better still, make your feelings known to Google Down Under on Twitter and copy me in via @kalena]

[Editor Update 2 : Thanks to those of you who contacted Google Down Under to ask about Google Checkout for merchants Down Under. I've had a response from them: "...we want paid apps for devs too but it takes a while to roll this out, we don't have a timeline for this yet". Aaaaarrrggghhh! ]

It all began last week when Read Write Web, (a very popular blog based here in New Zealand), published a post about Facebook’s new partnership with AOL called FB Wants to Be Your One True Login.

Apparently the post started ranking in the top Google SERPs for *facebook login*. Nothing wrong with that so far, it makes perfect sense given the post title and TrustRank the site has built up in Google.

BUT, all these strange and inappropriately angry comments with excessive use of exclamation marks began appearing on the RWW post.

Comments like this:

“When can we log in?”

“I don’t like the new facebook. Why fix something that isn’t broken. this really sucks..”

“I just want to log in to Facebook – what with the red color and all?”

“Quit this crap and let me sign in!

“All I wanted to do was LOG IN TO MY FACE BOOK ACCOUNT! I don’t like this new way! “If it an’t broke why fix it?”

“Can we log into face book? This is crazy I want to get all my info off and be done with this.”

“How do you get in?”

“I just want to get into my Facebook page.”

“This is such a mess I can’t do a thing on my facebook . The changes you have made are ridiculous,I can’t even login!!!!!I am very upset!!!”

“I was just learning,why would you mess it up?”

“All I want to do is log in, this sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“The new facebook sucks> NOW LET ME IN.”

RWW staff were confused at first, but then it dawned on them. Instead of bookmarking Facebook.com or entering www.facebook.com in their browser address bar like anyone with half a brain, all these commenters were apparently typing *facebook login* into Google whenever they wanted to login to Facebook and then clicking randomly on one of the results. The RWW post just happened to be the one they clicked on.

Having arrived at the Read Write Web post about Facebook, they somehow thought it WAS the *new* Facebook, despite the completely different color, design and the very clear Read Write Web heading at the top of the page. Not only did they think they were AT Facebook, but these commenters, in their hundreds, somehow managed to ignore the post itself, work out how to comment ON the post and leave their inappropriate rants about how much the hated the *new* Facebook. Except for one commenter, who claimed he liked the new design.

As the hours wore on and the page rose even higher in the Google results for *facebook login*, the comments became even more inappropriately angry and amusing:

“I WANT THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK THIS SHIT IS WACK!!!!!”

“I am going to delete my account (IF I CAN EVER LOG IN) as this SUCKS BIG TIME ! If this does not get back to NORMAL you are going to lose a lot of folks who hate this and as you can see from all the comments they think it sucks too !!! facebook was great for connecting with old friends …now, NOT SO MUCH. SO HOW DO I LOG IN?”

“Bring me back old facebook this is sheet”

“I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK PAGE , IN FACT I HAVE STARTED TO VISIT IT LESS, BECAUSE IT IS A HASSLE”

“Who’s idea was this?? Hope he’s not too big to fire cause he just LOST a bunch of faithful users. Chances are it’ll never be the same as it was before….cya”

“I’m going back to my f*ckin space u ass holes have to f*ck up a good this !!!!! dumn asses

To add to the hilarity, a Facebook user called Laraine (bless her heart), found a new way for Facebook users to solve their *problem*:

“For those of you that want to get in face book now just go to Bing..put in face book and search (or it will pop up) hit on face book login and it takes you  to your password page…i did it…. if this ever gets back to normal I will use the address bar from now on…..”

Read Write Web added a big bold paragraph to the original post stating *This site is not Facebook* and wrote a new post addressing the issue called We’re Still Not Facebook, but they continued to be bombarded with flames. It’s a little something I like to call The Walmart Effect.

There are two morals to this story:

1) There should be some type of study done on the correlation between IQ and the use of exclamation marks.

2) You need to design your web site and your software for the lowest common denominator.

I’m reminded of Damian Conway’s fantastic presentation at Webstock Web 2.Overwhelming – 22 Ways to Frustrate Your Visitors where he amusingly drilled into us that the majority of our web site users are NOT geeks, they’re NOT tech savvy and as this example shows, Dumb User Errors (DUE) are terrifyingly commonplace.

Make your stuff embarrassingly easy to use, because Dumb Happens.

I have come across a company that guarantees placement in the top 7 of Google local business results within 60 days or they give the money back.  Does this sound kosher to you?

They charge a one-time set up fee of $50 and $49 a month.  Is there a way that you could tell me to do that?  I know they submit to a lot of search engines.  Is this a fraud?  The company is Geo Listing Service out of Las Vegas.

Thank you for your help.

Best,
Lois
————————————–

Hi Lois

It’s just a scam. You can get a site listed in Google Local for free by making sure your business is listed in Google Maps.

More info here:

Google Local Business Center

Google Maps Local Business Help

Just to wind ‘em up, ask this Vegas mob why you should pay for a service that’s provided free by Google and watch them back-pedal. Better still, share the results with us in the comments!

The email announced that the recipient had been granted a free upgrade to Velocity Gold, the Gold level membership of Virgin Blue’s frequent flyer programme for a period of one year. The email went on to describe perks available to Gold members when travelling including:

• Free Lounge membership, so you can catch up on work, relax and escape the airport crowds.
• Priority check-in.
• Up to 32kg of checked baggage at no cost.
• Two personalised baggage tags

No reason for the unexpected upgrade was given, apart from “you came so close to making it on your own”, suggesting that the recipient’s Velocity points for the past 12 months came close to the number required to qualify for Gold status. Except they didn’t. At least not in my case. Not even close. You normally need to reach 50,000 points to qualify.

My husband received the same email, as did many others, judging by the discussion on Twitter shortly thereafter.

Still, it was a delightful surprise. Feeling chuffed, I click on a link within the email to an explanation of Velocity Gold. ONOZ. It led to a bizarre error message stating that the whole thing had been a terrible mistake:

Friday the 13th strike
Oops! Due to an error, you may have received an email regarding a Gold upgrade by mistake. Please disregard the free upgrade communication. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Virgin Blue is yet to offer any explanation for the error, apart from a single tweet blaming the email screw up on Friday the 13th. The backlash on Twitter so far has been brutal. Result? Gold Standard Marketing FAIL.

What do you think? Should Virgin Blue honour their original offer? Or is their Friday 13th excuse enough? Please add your comments below.

UPDATE 1: According to @bengrubb, Virgin Blue is blaming an IT glitch for the problem.

UPDATE 2: I created a new hash tag on Twitter for the incident called #velocitygate and it seems to have taken off.

UPDATE 3: Not sure when it went up, but the Velocity Rewards site now features an apology front and center of their home page. It’s a step in the right direction:

UPDATE 4: According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald today (17 November), the email glitch was human error, pure and simple and accompanied by tears of panic as it was posted out to over 1 million recipients by mistake. No action will be taken by Australian Competition and Consumer Commission over the glitch and if Velocity members still have an issue, they are being advised to contact the airline directly. Drama over, move along please, nothing to see here.

]]> http://www.ask-kalena.com/social-media/dumbass-of-the-week-virgin-blue/feed/ 22 http://www.ask-kalena.com/seo/thank-you-derek-powazek-but/ http://www.ask-kalena.com/seo/thank-you-derek-powazek-but/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:28:31 +0000 Kalena Jordan http://www.ask-kalena.com/?p=1371 So last week, Derek, you decided that Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) was worthless and persons who perform SEO were evildoers.

Not surprisingly, the SEO industry was outraged. Some bared their teeth and responded in kind. Others tried to reason with you and calmly deconstruct your criticisms.  All of us were offended on some level and felt the need to defend the industry, me included.

This week, you seem to have had second thoughts about your rant and you’ve posted an apology of sorts on your blog. This is to be commended Derek, thank you and I’m pleased you finally seem to understand why you were wrong to isolate an industry. BUT, you tarnish the apology by accusing us of being too defensive and not doing enough to clean up the industry.

You say:

“I ask the good SEOs: What are you doing to clean up your industry? Perhaps if you did more, you wouldn’t have to endure the regular bleats of frustration from people like me.”

As Shari Thurow and Jill Whalen state in the comment thread, we write articles. We speak at conferences. We publish blogs and newsletters that educate webmasters about *good* SEO.

I run this (unpaid) agony aunt column answering newbie questions about anything search engine related. My latest post even warns a reader against taking up the services of a scammer (calling himself an SEO) claiming to be able to put a site onto the first page of Google within 24 hours.

I tutor students in 44 countries in SEO via an online educational institution that I founded specifically to educate confused webmasters. And yes, web design, usability and copywriting are featured as key components.

In other words, we’re doing our best.

Derek, you end your *apology* with:

“If someone tells you that your hair is green, the only reason to get defensive is if it’s true.”

Another reason to come to the defense of our industry is when it is wrongly labelled. If we didn’t care about our industry’s reputation we wouldn’t bother to try and correct assumptions and stop the spread of misinformation, right?

As one commenter stated in the *apology* thread,  we felt we needed to clean up YOUR view of the SEO practitioners out there so it didn’t propagate the myth that SEO is evil. It’s just another way we’re trying to clean up our industry as a whole, as you are suggesting.

What more would you have us do?

Dear Kalena…

I have question on a service that somebody offered me, optimization for organic search results, 24-48 hours first page on Google.

They are a local company and he offerered me to come to his office to fill a form and to answer my questions, he also mentioned that he will not make any changes on my website just he will work to attract the engines to find us for specific key words.

Now, with all I learned so far SEO takes time so what is this guy doing to bring me to the top being so sure and giving me his office address?

Thanks
Asher

P.S. He didn’t want to be specific on the technical part which I understand a little bit since that’s how he makes a living.

Hi Asher

Actually, he didn’t want to be specific on the technical part because he is a scammer trying to rip you off.

Be wary of anyone who won’t tell you the methodology they plan to use. There is absolutely NO reason for secrets in SEO, unless you’re doing something dodgy. Organic optimization is not possible without changing your web site. Let me repeat that. Organic search engine optimization is NOT POSSIBLE without changing your web site.

It sounds like this guy is talking about using Google AdWords to attract traffic to your site but not wanting to tell you this. Run far, far away from him. Or better still, ask him to email you a full technical breakdown of how he is going to place your site on the first page of Google within 24 hours and then forward it to me for giggles.