Stop HR 3261 (SOPA) and S 968 (PIPA) Internet Blacklist Bills

Congress needs to hear from you, or these dangerous bills will pass – they have tremendous lobbying dollars behind them, from large corporations reportedly hoping to prop up outdated, anti-consumer business models at the expense of the very fabric of the Internet — recklessly unleashing a tsunami of take-down notices and litigation, and a Pandora’s jar of “chilling effects” and other unintended (or perhaps intended?) consequences.

Please let your Members of Congress know you OPPOSE H.R. 3621 “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and S. 968 “Protect IP Act” (PIPA):

• Phone, yes phone your Member of Congress! (House) (Senate)
• EFF Congressional Emailer – Oppose Internet Blacklisting (SOPA & PIPA)
• OpenCongress Congressional Emailer – Oppose SOPA
• Generic Congressional Emailer (You’ll need your Zip+4)

Learn more about SOPA, Protect IP (PIPA), and Internet Blacklisting:

• Growing Chorus of Opposition to SOPA
• Open Letter against SOPA from 83 Prominent Internet Engineers
• Why SOPA and Protect IP (PIPA) are Bad, Bad Ideas (Techdirt)
• SOPA News (Google News)
• SOPA Wikipedia entry
• SOPA FAQ (CNET)

Internet Giants Consider Blackout Against SOPA!

Where does your Member of Congress stand on SOPA? (Project SOPA Opera)

Opponents of SOPA: Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, Zynga, EFF, ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX)

Supporters of SOPA: RIAA, MPAA, News Corporation, VISA, Mastercard, Pfizer, Comcast, Time Warner, ABC, Nike, Walmart, Dow Chemical, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Lamar Smith (R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI)

For over the past few years there have been thousands of business and individuals trying to figure out a way to make ripoffreport.com links about them not rank high on Google and other search engines. Reputation management was and still is the most common solution for having these nasty links rank lower. Reputation management firms like Reputation.com (Reputation Defender) and ReputationArmor.com (Reputation Armor) use social media, profiles, blog posts, domain names, press releases, fresh content and search engine optimization to basically bury (hide) the negative links deeper within search engine result pages.

Read The Full Story: http://www.seofriendly.com/hacking-ripoff-report-reputation-management-style/ 

Up until a few weeks ago there was another way to remove ripoff reports from search engines completely, that is until RipoffReport.com and it’s owner Ed Magedson discovered a glitch in there own website that was allowing extremely internet savvy computer geeks and “black hat” reputation management firms to insert a small string of html code in the name and title fields of the website when creating an account. This code was not visible to ripoff report and the code was a simple “noindex” code that told search engines like Google not to allow the page with this code on it to appear on search engines at all.

 Read It Here: http://www.seofriendly.com/hacking-ripoff-report-reputation-management-style/

Hacking RipOffReport.com

For over the past few years there have been thousands of business and individuals trying to figure out a way to make ripoffreport.com links about them not rank high on Google and other search engines. Reputation management was and still is the most common solution for having these nasty links rank lower. Reputation management firms like Reputation.com (Reputation Defender) and ReputationArmor.com (Reputation Armor) use social media, profiles, blog posts, domain names, press releases, fresh content and search engine optimization to basically bury (hide) the negative links deeper within search engine result pages.

Up until a few weeks ago there was another way to remove ripoff reports from search engines completely, that is until RipoffReport.com and it’s owner Ed Magedson discovered a glitch in there own website that was allowing extremely internet savvy computer geeks and “black hat” reputation management firms to insert a small string of html code in the name and title fields of the website when creating an account. This code was not visible to ripoff report and the code was a simple “noindex” code that told search engines like Google not to allow the page with this code on it to appear on search engines at all.

Here is an example of the code:
meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”

In order for this code to work you had to make an account at ripoff report and go to your account profile where you manage your name and location. You could simply copy & paste that code behind your display name field. After this, the last step was to make a comment on the ripoff report you wanted to disappear. Within a few days (up to 30), when Google “Re-Crawled” that page, they would see the code telling them not to index it and presto the ripoff report was off the search engine.

Reputation management firms and SEO firms were offering a service that claims to “Remove RipOff Reports” completely from search engines within 30 days or less. Businesses pay thousands of dollars to have these links removed and buried and normally thousands of dollars is warranted because it takes a lot of content, work, and money to actually bury a bad link as strong as RipOff Report. However, the “code injection method” only took a few minutes to implement and was very easy to do. Firms offering this service were making a killing! The service fees were basically 100% profit.

Now all of the people that signed up for this type of service involving the “magic fix” are back in line waiting for anther way to remove the ripoff links about them, thanks to the bug being fixed by Ed Magedson and his team of Consumer Advocate Crusaders. 

Not only are all the ripoff reports about people that used the “code injection” back, they are ranking stronger than ever!

Looks like it is back to good old reputation management techniques for firms like Reputation Armor and Reputation.com!

ReputationArmor.com commented to us about the code and said they were unaware of such a code and have never used it, also saying that had they known about it they would have been tempted to use it on behalf off their clients. Reputation Armor says they use good quality content and search engine optimization methods to out rank negative links for clients and such “quick fixes” are in most cases short-term anyway.

A Reputation.com (Reputation Defender) representative from the sales dept. named “KC” or “Casey”, stated he was not aware of such a code and went on to say: “We use a Blunt force approach, where we use positive content, there is no technology to make ripoff reports disappear like that, that I am aware of.”

Although this sales representative was unaware of such tactics, we were unable to reach anyone in the department to answer that question. We called at 9:30 AM EST and that was too early for the West Coast reputation firm to have someone more qualified for us to talk with.

We discover this bug from an email sent to us from a client of a Reputation Firm that used the tactic and is now looking for a similar solution. There seem to be a lot of these firms’ clients looking for answers. In no way are we stating that Reputation Armor or Reputation.com used this code or even knew about it, we cite them because of their strong presence in the Reputation Management industry.

If you have any information on the “Bug” or if you represent RipOff Report we would love to hear more about this. Please leave a comment and tell us the scoop!

Well it looks like Google is doing some Google ToolBar PageRank Updates. A lot of my domains have see some positive changes today, however this one (seofriendly) dropped from PR3 to PR1… No big deal. Google toolbar PR does NOT necessarily correlate with how high you rank or how much traffic you get.

It seems like it has been months if not a year since Google did  huge pagerank update. Many of my sites get pagerank updates each month it seems, so I am always interested in seeing a major update like I am seeing today.

Anyone else seeing any major changes?

Angry Birds

You just knew Angry birds would be here, it’s on every top app list on the net and with good reason. It’s easily on of the most fun, most addictive games on the Market, and playing Angry Birds on the 10-inch Xoom screen is nothing but pure pleasure.

TouchDown

This is the tablet optimized version of TouchDown. TouchDown gets your Email, Contacts, Calendar and Tasks from your corporate Exchange server, and gives you a single tabbed view. TouchDown lets you interact with your exchange account on a tablet device in a unique and integrated way, allowing you to manipulate your emails, contacts, calendar, tasks and Notes from a single application, allowing you to switch between them using tabs on the top of the screen.

Google Earth

Hovering over your house and browsing different places around the world is a treat on the Xoom with Google Earth. The app works beautifully on tablets as to be expected by the Google development team.

Words With Friends

Shortly before the Xoom’s February 24 release date, Zynga’s immensely popular game Words With Friends debuted on Android’s devices. The Scrabble-like game, which is free, is much better suited to the tablet form factor than on any smartphone. Battle other wordsmiths in the living room or match your skills against a random stranger in another part of the globe.

IMDB

Browse the latest trailers, review movies and tv information on the Honeycomb enabled IMDB App. It’s had over 1 million downloads from the Android Market and a solid 4.5/5 average review, I think that says it all. Browsing the reviews, you can see tablet users giving positive experiences with app.

Pulse News Reader

One of the most popular Android apps, Pulse news reader is honeycomb tablet ready.A beautiful application that makes reading news fun and engaging. Pulse takes your favorite news websites and blogs and transforms them into a colorful and interactive mosaic. Tap on a news article to see a clean and elegant view of the story. Sharing it via Facebook, Twitter and Email is as easy as two taps.

FatBooth – Fat Booth!

Let us not forget the ever so popular Fat Booth App! Kids and adults love the Fat Booth app which allows you to turn a face shot of yourself or friends in to a “fat” version! You can see what you would look like with an extra 60+ pounds on you!

LIST YOUR FAVORITE APP AS A COMMENT!

Hiring an SEO Company can be a daunting task, especially since there are hundreds if not thousands of companies online that offer SEO services. How do you know which SEO company will actually deliver results? Which one is overcharging? Which ones are scams? It can be hard to answer these questions on your own, so we will be featuring a trusted SEO each month that we believe to be worth looking in to.

SEO Company Of The Month: DotShot – DotShot.com

DotShot.com is a smaller yet very affordable SEO Service that offers SEO Packages starting at $99 per month and also has packages that cost $299-$499 per month. For larger clients with more competitive keywords they have custom pricing.

The DotShot SEO Service was founded in 2003 by a small group of search engine marketing professionals with over 10 years of experience in online marketing and search engine optimization.

The name DotShot is a spin off of “Hot Shot” and the name DotShot is referring to making your company an internet hot shot or maybe the SEO Firm is saying they are SEO Hot Shots? Either way DotShot shared some of there client success stories with us and they have delivered some impressive results for their clients.

They have delivered top 10 results for hundreds of keywords and hundreds of clients. The DotShot team manages dozens of high profile clients and hundreds of small businesses Monthly SEO Campaigns.

Their SEO Packages are very attractive and affordable. Their “Grow” package is the most poplar and purportedly most effective. At $299 per month with a recommended 12 month term the “Grow” package is designed to deliver top ranking for 1-3 keywords and help brand your business on social networks. Each package includes link building campaigns that will generate quality backlinks for your site at a pace that is acceptable by Google.

Other packages include the popular $99 per month SEO package that packs a punch for smaller companies and local search results.

To learn more about the DotShot SEO Company and the SEO Service they offer visit them online:

www.DotShot.com
Phone: 1-800-989-1172

Google’s corporate history page has a pretty strong background on Google, starting from when Larry met Sergey at Stanford right up to present day. In 1995 Larry Page met Sergey Brin at Stanford.

By January of 1996, Larry and Sergey had begun collaboration on a search engine called BackRub, named for its unique ability to analyze the “back links” pointing to a given website. Larry, who had always enjoyed tinkering with machinery and had gained some notoriety for building a working printer out of Lego™ bricks, took on the task of creating a new kind of server environment that used low-end PCs instead of big expensive machines. Afflicted by the perennial shortage of cash common to graduate students everywhere, the pair took to haunting the department’s loading docks in hopes of tracking down newly arrived computers that they could borrow for their network.

A year later, their unique approach to link analysis was earning BackRub a growing reputation among those who had seen it. Buzz about the new search technology began to build as word spread around campus.

In 1998, Google was launched. Sergey tried to shop their PageRank technology, but nobody was interested in buying or licensing their search technology at that time.

Email: Google launched Gmail on March 31, 2004, offering search email search and gigabytes of storage space.

Google went public at $85 a share on August 19, 2004 and its first trade was at 11:56 am ET at $100.01.

Google News: Google News launched in beta in September 2002. On September 6, 2006, Google announced an expanded Google News Archive Search that goes back over 200 years.

Google Book Search: On October 6, 2004, Google launched Google Book Search.

Maps: On October 27, 2004, Google bought Keyhole. On February 8, 2005, Google launched Google Maps.

Google Scholar: On November 18, 2004, Google launched Google Scholar, an academic search program.

Analytics: On March 29, 2005, Google bought Urchin, a website traffic analytics company. Google renamed the service Google Analytics.

Google Blog Search: On September 14, 2005, Google announced Google Blog Search.

Google Base: On November 15, 2005, Google announced the launch of Google Base, a database of uploaded information describing online or offline content, products, or services.

Radio ads: Google bought dMarc Broadcasting on January 17, 2006.

Google Video: On January 6, 2006, Google announced Google Video.

Google Universal Search: On May 16, 2007 Google began mixing many of their vertical results into their organic search results.

Office productivity software: on March 9, 2006, Google bought Writely, an online collaborative document creating and editing software product.

Calendar: on April 14, 2006, Google launched Google Calendar, which allows you to share calendars with multiple editors and include calendars in web pages.

Checkout: On June 29, 2006, Google launched Google Checkout, a way to store your personal transaction related information online.

Google continues to add valuable services and now has tons of free tools like Google Voice, Gmail, Google Places, Google Profiles, Google This, Google That!

Recently Google changed it’s long time policy on only allowing 2 links from a single domain name to appear in the top search results. This is good news for Reputation Management Companies and Big Brands.

In fact, Google is giving some company keywords a whole lot of first page real estate. A search for “apple” pops up 6 pages from the apple.com site.

This change will help brands and reputation management firms control what is shown on the first page of Google results.

Andy Beal Told Me: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/08/google-reputation-management-just-got-easier.html 

For those of you who like to see what Google thnks about your website popularity, the Google PageRank update has started! Today at about 7 AM EST I noticed many of our domains were getting an increase in Pagerank. So far it looks like the update will put a smile on a few peoples faces.

We recently posted a Google PageRank predictive schedule and we suspected an update before April 10th. It is not the end of the world if your site does not increase in PR or decreases in PR, these updates (Good or Bad) will most likely not change your web traffic stats.

Happy PageRank Day!

We have a lot of webmasters ask the big PR questions very frequently: When is the next Google PageRank Update?

The truth is no one knows exactly when the next PageRank update by Google will actually take place. Based off of their past updates I created the unofficial Google PageRank Update Schedule. The “schedual” is my estimate on when the next PageRank update will take place.

PageRank Update Schedual:

Google PageRank Update  -   December 31, 2009 – January 10, 2010
First PageRank Update      -    March 31, – April 10, 2010
Second PageRank Update  -  June 31, 2010 – July 10, 2010
Third PageRank Update    -    December 31, 2010 – January 10, 2011

What is pagerank? PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web (Per Google). Google calculates that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes (Links) that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote (Linking To You) determines how important the vote (Link) itself is. Google calculates a page’s importance from hw many pages and what pages link to it.

PageRank is a scale of 0-10

Post a comment and let us know when you think the next updat will be or tell us when your site was last updated!