Hobo Seo Blog
Welcome to Hobo search engine optimisation blog in the UK….
Welcome to Hobo search engine optimisation blog in the UK….
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Graphic by Elliance – First sourced at Search Engine Land
Is anyone else seeing a Google Toolbar Pagerank update? I have TPR on pages from @ April 26 2012. This coincides with the latest Google PANDA and Google PENGUIN update in April 2012. I am definitely seeing toolbar pr update on internal pages.
If you are interested in Google Pagerank….. looks like there has been an update. Pagerank is not the be and end all of ranking in Google obviously.
Thanks to Anthony Shapley for the tip.
Quick Negative SEO alert tip……
This won’t work for everybody but it worked for me (or rather, I happened across this simple method). But if you have a blog yourself, this might help you.
It appears somebody is doing some negative seo ‘attack’ on the Hobo site as of recently….
I wouldn’t have known this quickly, but for looking at Technorati.
Google Alerts isn’t really that good for links alerts these days and the basic wordpress incoming links feature is pretty much useless.
Keep an eye on Technorati (remember that?) – they seem to throw up spammy blogs linking to your site before just about anything else. Not all blogs will be in Technorati, of course, but it’s something to check for recent blog links to your site and it’s free….Let me know if you’re using any other methods.


UPDATED APRIL 2012
NOW TRACKS GOOGLE, BING, KEYWORDS, REFERRERS & 404 Pages.
Marty just updated our simple WordPress plugin we made a few years ago – which you can install on self-hosted WordPress blogs. It nows also tracks the crawling activity of BingBot, as well as GoogleBot, and it will also tell you which keywords were used to find your site.
We tested it with the most recent version of WordPress – and it’s designed to alert you when Google finds a new site you’ve launched – and to track when Google (and Bing) visits the rest of your pages.
Download it here (FREE – no gimmicks).
You do not need to subscribe – and it’s a BETA – if it cuts the mustard we’ll add it to WordPress.com – Note – this plugin is NOT designed to work with Wp Super Cache.

Plug it in and it will work out of the box. Leave it for a while and you can review the data it collects.

Now you can see how often Bing and Google visits your site… and which pages are crawled the most often.

It logs each visit….

If you want – you can check for broken links based on the urls these bots are attempting to access

we were just playing about at this stage – so we decided to add a keyword logger….

and it will show you where your referrers are originating from….

It should do what it says on the tin. It will log when Google visits your site, and show you which pages Googlebot is crawling. This plugin will (if you configure it to do so) will email you when Google finds your blog.
To Install
Disclaimer – Please Read
This simple plugin is free to do with what you want. It is easy to install and activate, but check out the SETTINGS page to make sure it is configured properly. When you uninstall this plugin, it will wipe the data it has accrued from the database. We have no plans to port this to Joomla or Drupal as some folk asked.
As with all free plugins, use at your own risk - and backup everything before using it. We accept no responsibility if something goes wrong. It works on all the sites we tested it on. It’s released as a beta, so we expect a few wrinkles, and any feedback is very welcome.
HOPE YOU FIND IT USEFUL
Fact 1. The UK is now in recession. You may be thinking of employing a seo company to help you optimise your site. You might even think about searching Google for “best seo company” (if you don’t know any better)…..
Fact 2 – Google just applied the Penguin update to its natural listings.
There are lots of seo companies in the UK – but this is one serp Google isn’t showing local results for.
I’ll leave you to be the judge on the quality of this results page (I’ve not heard of most of them), but do we in the UK really need such an international line-up for this term?
Are these the best results Google can deliver for UK searchers?
That’s right…. riddled with US companies for a start. Way to kick the UK when it’s down. It’s not even US seo companies I have come to respect after ten years in marketing that appear in these listings.
That set of results either serves to offer such low quality organic results people search on sponsored ads, or blatantly transfer revenue from the UK to the US. That’s no conspiracy theory – I’m just saying what that page serves, in my opinion, wether or not Google is ‘broke’ at the moment.
It’s a strange thing – because we know Google can create localised results at the drop of a hat when it wants to…..
SECOND – I’ve moaned about Topseos before so I will let somebody else have a go…..
Topseos gets two rankings in that result above…..
It is frankly a disservice to the seo industry that that shite (I did mean to say “site” but that actually works just as well….) has got away with (in my opinion) massive (near duplicate) press release spam about questionable (some say fake) seo company ‘rankings’ – and ranks for ANYTHING after Google’s recent ‘over-optimisation’ penalty.
Strange. Is that an indication how much search engines care’s about the reputation of the seo industry? Then again – does any search engine really care if you hire a crap seo company or even a company that will scam you?
Apparently there were those who complained about Google’s results – so an ‘over-optimisation’ penalty was needed. I wonder if complaints are up or down since the Penguin was applied….
The penguin update was supposed to:
“level the playing field”
…reward good sites and good content. Reward natural link profiles…… ummmm.
REALLY?.
THIRD. Check out the cutting edge on page seo employed by one of the winners in the top ten…… well done to them!

….and I thought Dave Naylor’s grammar was shite (there’s that word again).
Did Google turn Pagerank off or something?
I’m just asking – as Pagerank – on it’s own – would probably produce better results than that this and a lot of the searches everybody else is complaining about.
There’s even an online petition to Google to REVERSE the recent algorithm changes some think they are so bad. You can even tell Google if you think your site was unfairly penalised.
There’s a lot of ‘unnatural link warnings’ going about….. problem is – the sites with unnatural link penalties are being replaced with sites with unnatural link profiles….
Strange times.
To be fair – Bing’s results are ropey as well for this term – wasn’t Bing just telling us about good seo for bing and the importance of good editorial links not long ago? I expect Google to be better, though – even when I am drinking the Kool-Aid.
It’s ironic to compete for something like ‘best seo company’ in search engines, you might very well need to employ the same tactics that will eventually lead to penalties further down the line. Use that for an analogy of every other valuable key term, if you want to.
…. it’s almost as if search engines invite you to break the rules to compete before they slap a penalty on you….
…strange that, isn’t it.
A lot of strange going on at the moment, it seems.
[Google Drive is not available in the UK at the moment. But - it's 'coming'.]
Where will you choose to store your life in the cloud? Dropbox (aff) or Google Drive?
NOTE – The following chart says Dropbox had 2 GB free storage as it did – but Dropbox now offers 5GB of free space now same as Google.

Maybe start with the privacy policies of the two favourites – Dropbox and Google Drive:
By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, “your stuff”). You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below.
or
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.
To be impartial… both privacy policies (and Microsoft (Skydrive) and Apple (ICloud) cloud storage offerings privacy policies) can be interpreted to be very different or pretty similar. Discussion here.
Using cloud storage services creates a dilemma applicable to much of the Web. We have to give up some privacy and rights to do all the cool stuff we want to do. If I want to use Google and Facebook’s services, I have to accept that the companies can access that data at will and could give it to the Feds, if pressed. Basically, if you don’t want to give companies access to your data, don’t sign up. Venturebeat
Food for thought: Dropbox isn’t tracking and recording everything else you do, though. Dropbox isn’t broke, either by the way. In fact – Dropbox is amazing and always has been. I will be keeping my life on Dropbox for now. I keep my photos and music in ICloud for the moment.
*I couldn’t find the original creator of that comparison chart or I would have credited it.
** I have used my old affiliate code for dropbox although all I get if you sign up is free space (and I am actually maxed out). Last month though I got a bonus upgrade for passing this code about.

Google has a name for the new update it released earlier in the week – PENGUIN.
Penguin was supposed to target ‘webspam’, but in fact, nuked a lot of other types of websites, and apparently, a lot of websites that have not been involved in any ‘link-schemes’, for instance.
Read this first though:
My advice to people worried has been this. The update launched on April 24. Look at your search-related traffic from Google immediately after that date. Do you see a major drop compared with a day or two before? If so, you were probably hit by Penguin. See a rise in traffic? You probably benefited from Penguin. See no change? Then it really had no impact on you. SEL
If your website lost rankings on April 24, or disappeared altogether, and you think you have been hard done by …… you can tell Google here.
A LOT of webmasters are, well, no less than OUTRAGED, at what Google has done this month.
There are MANY complaints on the actual post from from Google about the Penguin Update, (although it’s usually only complaints you hear about as actually telling people you are winning in Google is not usually the best tactic)!
Here’s one:
I built a public benefit website that for 8 years has helped thousands and thousands of addicts find addiction treatment for free… We were able to provide the service through the industry paying for featured status for their centers in our directory of treatment centers… Harvard’s addiction hospital links to us, as well as a number of super picky super high quality websites… A few years back I started to notice crap links pointing at the site… Then Panda came and the site lost half it’s traffic… We submitted reinclusion requests, we sent notices for sites to remove links to us and informed Google, and now this! Now our site is nowhere to be found, and competitors (who are no doubt paying link companies to take down certain competitors thanks to the algorithms changes) have won! Well done Google… You took a true public benefit site out of the rankings (one with a database of treatment centers more complete than the U.S. government’s), and replaced it with referral sites (of course, the exact-keyword match .com) and individual treatment centers that charge people in dire need of help (and usually broke) scores of thousands of dollars for treatment, because they can afford to bring down the real good-guys that have been helping people for years by pointing links at them. Well done Google.
One can help feeling that with all these changes in Google over the last few years, that Google is at war with smaller sites that try to make a living in Google natural listings, and indeed, results they are testing where there are almost NO NATURAL LISTINGS, that Google’s main aim is to force more people into using Google Adwords (where Google makes all it’s profit).
Time will tell if this is a waste of time or not, or another fishing trip for Google Sea Lions.
I’ve added a note about the actual search for “Website Lost Rankings In Google” on our new Facebook page

That’s a quote btw from possibly the hottest forum on the web at the moment…..(EDIT – about the Google Penguin Update or Google Webspam update, as it turned out, that affected A LOT of webmasters – not just the type Google would label webspammers).
Google has dropped the nuke
…. from a ‘webspammer‘ (?) i don’t know – although I don’t know him or her and I would hate to ‘label’ anyone… For all I know it could be a Google employee – as Google just posted it’s rolling out an algo update which will ‘level the playing field’:
Probably not, though.
If Google didn’t win the war today…. they certainly dropped a nuke on a particular battlefield of it.
this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods (GOOGLE)
After checking their rankings (aff) I assume, the forum posters went on to elaborate how this algorithm is treating them:
Here we go again. This has gone from an attack to a massacre.
I have always thought if you want to know if Google is winning the war against webspam, as labelled by Google itself – you listen to the people doing it – and a lot of them are talking. Actually – it’s pretty clear it’s NOT just ‘webspammers’ as GOOGLE labelled them, that are getting hit.
It is way to early to decide if these guys are the experienced ones or not, of course.
I think they may have rolled this change out now in the UK. Almost all of my site have been wiped out!
there’s more
I got hosed bad too, about 4 hours ago.
and more
If these SERP changes I’m seeing hold, we are gong to need to turn off that “profanity” filter because this is a blood bath!
and more
Bah, will this madness never end. The fallout from this algorithm change is shaping up to be pretty messy
and more
A ton of my sites have just tanked big time…….in fact rankings in a lot of my niches have taken drastic changes. My days as an internet marketer look to be numbered….
and
I think my days as an internet marketer are numbered too.
It goes on and on – read the forum posts for more. I don’t want to nick ALL the forum content.
I also think some of these webmasters and/or being a bit hard on themselves. If you can spam – you can probably market a site in Google, without spamming (if that’s what they have been up to).
I found this comment interesting when the discussion moved to how Google had tracked them down…..
it has to be how many domains link to the same 10, 50, 100, or 1000 or more domains. These are link schemes, doesn’t matter what the anchor is.
It appears a certain type of linkbuilding will be less effective from this point on.
I can’t see anybody going to the hassle of building a private network letting inexperienced webmasters into it…. so it probably just got a lot more expensive, too.
So did white hat seo btw. A LOT more expensive.
NO.
And even before white hat seo everywhere scream hallelujah and start partying…. consider this:
I see a site no1 in Google on TONS of the same EXACT MATCH keyword anchor text - ranking on ZERO diversity – ZERO organic links – all the same keywords – the only difference?
The links are from real sites.
THAT’s a problem Google cannot blame on ‘webspammers’. That’s a problem Google invited by the way it actually works to rank pages, and has done since it started.
So in a lot of ways – it’s still the same as it ever was.
White hats still have lots to complain about by the looks of it, for now.
Google evolves. Spam evolves. Google evolves. Spam evolves.
Though I don’t know how spammers (and no, I am not talking about anyone in particular) can have the stamina to keep up, especially if Google intends this to be the first of a few nukes…. the fear will be enough to put a lot of them of for a while, that’s for sure.
The fallout cloud is rising…. it’s probably going to take time to settle on the web, so it’s too early to say what the final result of all this will be…
One of my next posts may be about this next comment….
soon it will be nothing but name brands because they are the only ones who can really create buzz and backlinks “naturally” - seriously, who the F wants to link to my los angeles personal injury website… no one gives a sh!t
Indubitably.
The reports will be in shortly….. no doubt.
Can a competitor hurt your site by pointing lots of links at it….. this is very interesting.
Dan apparently annoyed a few people….

and they decided to use his site as an example how NEGATIVE SEO can actually work to destroy a website rankings….Dan spotted his rankings take a nosedive, – EDIT – Dan got a message from Google about unnatural links…..
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/m/#!topic/webmasters/Azfly-iRtLs
the person who had a problem with his liaison with Matt Cutts decided to make an example of him…..
Pixelgrinder and I conducted a little experiment on whether negative seo was possible in the current climate – we felt it was important to know whether it was possible for a site to be negatively affected completely by outside influences. We carried out a massive scrapebox blast on two sites to ensure an accurate result.
http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2369-case-study-negative-seo-results/
You can see the results of this activity below:
Can a competitor hurt your rankings with NEGATIVE SEO?
Dan commented:
Both sites have received “unatural links” messages in Webmaster Tools. Neither site has had a “link building” campaign ever. By using 3rd party tools (e.g. Majestic) I can see a lot of unnatural links pointing at both sites, but I didn’t put those links there.
Someone in the forum mentioned:
Also if you look at the changes Google has made to their guidelines, it paints another picture again.
“Can competitors harm ranking? There’s nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.” Then, in November, it got “slightly” modified… just a TINY fraction too:
“Can competitors harm ranking? There’s ALMOST nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.”
Wow, what a difference one word can make! So hang on, saying “almost nothing” means “can”, no matter which way you spin it. Then on March 14th, they caved.
“Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.” -http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl= In case you missed it, the key difference is in that first line:en&answer=66356 You can see it’s changed from “nothing” to “almost nothing” to “perfect political answer”
So – can a competitor hurt your rankings? On their own? Or do you need to be doing other things as well….?
Tell me someone who has heard of Google, and who IS NOT trying to rank higher….. ?
Where does this leave us if negative seo is alive and well?
Scary times indeed – you now seem to HAVE to keep an eye on the types of links you have pointing at your site, ESPECIALLY if you are actively promoting your site on top of this – I know this only too well, too.
I would say this test has proved to be a test Positive. Keyterm: SEO Book
Check Date Rank URL FoundApr 18, 2012 —- Position 41
Mar 28, 2012 —- Position 3
Mar 26, 2012 —- Position 3
Mar 23, 2012 —- Position 3
Mar 22, 2012 —- Position 3
Mar 21, 2012 —- Position 8
Mar 20, 2012 —- Position 8
So – the blackhats think this Negative SEO example has been successful.
Dan was kind enough to leave a response i the comments…..
Hi Shaun. Unfortunately, this “test” hasn’t yielded anything yet. Two SERPs they claim to have moved are [seo] and [seo book]. For [seo] I didn’t get any referrals (nearly zero) from this SERP until March 22, right after they started. Spiked all the way up to page 1 about 4 days in, held up for a few days, then dropped back down to a lower position. Probably higher than it was before still, since I am getting a handful of referrals per day now.
Verdict: Negative SEO Fail. Possibly the opposite of the intended result since I got traffic I never got before. Still am getting more.
For [seo book] they drove it up from the middle of page 1 (5-9 is pretty normal, page 2 is not unusual) all the way to #2, then it dropped down to #3.
I moved the site from Rackspace Managed to Rackspace Cloud last week, because the old server literally could not handle the latest WordPress.
Unfortunately, the theme I’ve been using since 2007 broke on the WP upgrade, and I had to deploy a new theme, more or less chosen at random because I was running out of time. Which changed run-of-site internal links from [seo book] to [Home]. Last time I did that it dropped to page 4 within a week. In this case, it’s dropped to page 3.
It’s possible that the drop was not more dramatic, because the “negative SEO” linking is actually providing some ranking boost. Verdict: Inconclusive, but I will gladly take your even-money bets that it will be back on page 1 in a week or so.

If you work in search marketing, unless you have been living under a rock, you’ll be no doubt aware of the hundreds of thousands of webmaster messages that Google sent out basically telling people Google knows about your crap links and it’s going to do something about it.
Well, a lot of chatter in webmaster forums at the moment is saying it’s started.
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links
Dear site owner or webmaster, We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results. If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely,Google Search Quality Team.
Google sent a lot of these “Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links” messages out to a LOT of website owners recently – and there’s a lot of noise around the web.
THIS SIGNALS A BIG CHANGE IN HOW GOOGLE REACTS TO YOUR LINK BUILDING EFFORTS. The short answer is IF you are linkbuilding using low quality and inexperienced methods….Google is now organised enough to start slapping you about a bit.
Google even said recently links can’t **hurt** you, that toxic links don’t really exist, but what’s clear, is that your website CAN have a toxic link profile. It’s clearly all about YOUR INTENT. If your intent was to rank high in Google for particular keywords…. I think that’s enough for Google, these days, to sink your site.
Beware overdoing any of the following…..
Is linkbuilding dead? No. But it just got a LOT more risky.
This advice is not new – it’s just that much more important now.
Too much anchor text and little brand signal? If your anchor text profile looks like this:

…expect some ranking woes over the next 6 months…..
Tip
If your site is in Google Webmaster Tools – check for a warning message. You will have about 3 weeks to sort this. If you see your rankings take a nosedive – something is toxic about your link profile.
I don’t usually recommend using GWT especially if you are up to anything a bit grey…I thought the recent changes to Google’s Privacy policy (possibly illegal in the EU) may be the Patriot Act of Search Marketing - effectively giving Google permission to REALLY investigate what you do across ALL it’s products - but if your site is suffering, GWT may be the only way out at the moment, unless you want a LONG wait at the bottom of Google.
Light at the end of the tunnel? Once you clean up your profile and get back into Google’s circle of trust, perhaps you have a clean start and a chance to do it a bit differently this time? Especially, if Google is going to actually take action on your competitors who are spamming worse than you…. time wil tell on that one.
If you do get a Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links message:
For now you should probably concentrate on building links with brand signals like simple website addresses and/or your brand name, while paying particular attention to the QUALITY of the site you are getting links from.
I am certainly ONLY marketing my site via CONTENT CREATION, for instance. Social links DO NOT pass the same amount of link power as traditional links especially from very trusted websites…. but they are getting more important, and the more people who see your site, the more chance there is of picking up natural links…..
Manipulating anchor text is very risky now….
Linkbuilding Strategies & Opinion from the Hobo archive….
It’s worth remembering it’s not just links – or either, your LINK PROFILE as a whole – that make your site lose rankings in Google. Chances are – if you are running a new affiliate site, for instance, with little domain authority, Google isn’t going to rank you very high in it’s search results pages at all – NO MATTER how good and original your content is.
I didn’t even mention Google Panda or the most recent massive fluctuations in Google, which a LOT of webmasters are being very vocal about in the forums….
maybe next time…..
Interesting times indeed
Apparently, Bing UK is very similar to Google UK when it comes to SEO, if this post from Bing is anything to go by.
Funny how they dont’ mention the obvious number 1 ranking tip for Bing…..

Yes…. you just buy an exact match domain and pump some links at it.
Rocket science.
I like Bing. And to be fair, it took Google long enough to (kind-of) sort this sort of low quality exact match stuff (Yahoo was HORRENDOUS at dealing with this)…..but an seo post about Bing seo is not complete without pointing out the blatantly obvious ‘seo’ that ranks – as above.
EDIT - actually the more I read that post on the Bing Blog the more I think it’s a bit bollocks – it would have been a good general seo post – a few years ago, maybe, but….keyword density? Really?