Akismetting Spam Is Good SEO

Matt Mullenweg recently published a great little article over on the official Akismet blog where he shares three reasons why eliminating spam is good SEO for your site. There are three things you definitely don’t want to encounter when running a blog and that is:

1. Undermineing Your Sites SEO
2. Attracting More Spammers
3. Damaging Your Reputation

I wanted to also bring to light a new technique that these comment spammers are using which I discovered through Growmap.com. Apparently, spammers are taking bits and pieces of already published comments and re purposing them into their own comment. This means their content is generally on topic and makes it harder to distinguish than a random, off the wall comment. According to Growmap, Akismet flagged a few of these comments for them so it’s good to see the spam catcher on the ball but I’m willing to bet a few novice bloggers will be publishing these as legit comments. How well has Akismet worked on your blog?

What Lies Beneath Social Media?

As a Performancing reader, you probably blog. You probably have social networking profiles, too, with several friends and groups. Most likely, you are on Twitter, and you exchange short messages with friends and contacts. What are these web apps anyway? They’re social media, right? But what’s underneath social media?

I’d say we have social networks as the foundation of social media. By a social “network” I don’t mean Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace. Those are actually just the mediums that facilitate social networking. Social networks are actual people who know each other, and who talk to each other. In the olden days, people networked by writing letters, posting on bulletin boards, and calling on the telephone. People even met face to face (imagine that!). Later on, we had online services, email, IRC, forums, and the like. Of course, email is a staple, and has become a de facto standard in communicating online.

This is a realization I just had quite recently. Maybe as someone whose job involves social media, I get engrossed in using these online applications everyday that I don’t realize the foundations that are more important. I only see skin-deep. I usually become so focused on using the application rather than connecting with the other people who use the app. I’m no longer socially networking. But I’m just using the social networking app.

This is important, as I’ve also looked into social media apps I’ve used before, but have changed and evolved through the years. Take for instance ICQ. It was the first ever IM client and network I used, back in the ’90s. Now it’s evolved into some sort of social networking, blogging and online dating site. This makes me wonder what of Twitter? What of WordPress? What Facebook and MySpace? Five years down the road, we would probably see a different social media landscape.

But still the social networks would remain the same. People you know would still be people you know. Friends should still be friends (unless, of course, they are only friends by convenience, meaning you are friends because of shared social media apps). By then, perhaps the most basic social mediums would be those that survive the test of time. Like the good old telephone call. Or postcards. Or email.

And maybe one day, we would all get to meet face to face. How’s that for social media?

Google Analytics API Now Available To Developers

Google recently announced that the Google Analytics Data Export API which was in beta is now currently available to all developers. The API provides read-only access to your analytics data. On top of that, any data which is available through the standard analytics interface is available through this API meaning you could create your own desktop application to monitor your site versus using your browser. Now that the API is available to all, it will be interesting to see various widgets, gadgets, and applications spring up which allow you to easily keep tabs on your data in not so traditional ways.

For more information check out the official analytics blog post.

Are You Filtering TinyURLs?

With only 140 characters to get your point across on Twitter, thank goodness for services that create TinyURLs. However, I’m starting to notice at least on my blog that commenter’s are linking to things using these types of links. While TinyURL.com does allow you to create a special URL which contains the ability to preview where the link is going to go before you arrive their, all it takes these days to have your PC compromised is one click. I’ve started to remove those URLs from the comments made on my blog. Have you noticed the same trend? If so, are you allowing TinyURLs to be published on your blog or are you removing them?

Brand Equity and Mascots?

WHen I built my blog in 2006 it was completely by accident that I stuck to some sort of branding in the form of an insect (the title of my blog is “A Bugged Life”). Four template changes later, I’ve managed to keep this brand and it’s been known by the local community. I’ve contemplated on going crazy with the idea by building a full mascot outfit of a huge cute bug which can be displaced during new media events. Mugs, tees, stickers — yeah you get the idea.

What sort of personal branding have you done as a blogger to enhance your equity in other spheres apart from the online space? Have you gone crazy with the idea or are you happy with the way your blog is now? Is your blog ubiquitous, allowing it to take on many shapes even off the Internet?

I write this in reference to the resurrection of UK’s Ask Jeeves — based on surveys, despite Jeeves’ departure from the Internet in 2006, he still brings forth a lot of brand recall as “Jeeves” is easier and more fondly remembered than a corporate logo.

Will Twitter names and accounts become commodities?

It used to be that good domains sold for a premium. Now, with celebrities getting on the Twitter bandwagon, they’re getting much attention from us lesser mortals. @aplusk, for instance (which is Ashton Kutcher) has broken the 1 Million follower mark. Other celebrities, have significant followings, too, such as @oprah with 500 thousand plus, and even @mrskutcher, with 700 thousand plus.

Arguably, the number of followers is not as significant as the quality. But then again, this only goes to show that on Twitter, branding would come in important at one time or another. And this means that like domains, Twitter usernames or accounts are probably going to be the next big commodity for domainers to buy, hoard, and potentially sell later on.

Good .COM domains sell for top dollar. Sure, regular ones sell for a little over six bucks, but premium ones can go for millions, like business.com, sex.com, casino.com, and other short, identifiable domains. Big blogs have been known to be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

How about Twitter names? Will twitter name squatting be an issue? Twitter’s terms of service does stipulate that they reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.

How about Twitter accounts? Can you build up a good Twitter stream and then sell it after a few months or years? Or will microblogging lose its magic now that it’s no longer a niche thing, but something mainstream?

Jonathan Bailey Launches CopyrightFail.com

Jonathan Bailey who has been a longtime contributor to Performancing.com, especially within the Legal section of the Performancing forums has launched a brand new sister site called CopyrightFail.com. The site aims to be a collection of links, quotes, images, and other tidbits of information showcasing copyright stupidity from across the web. Jonathan does a great job with PlagiarismToday.com and I expect his CopyrightFail blog to be a success considering the amount of stupidity that exists around the subject.

On the topic of copyrighting, be sure to check out our own Copyright Management Service.

Content scraping is one of the biggest headaches a blogger faces. Once you hit that publish button, your articles are prone to automatic copying and republishing by not-so-trustworthy websites who do not link back. Some of these scrapers even earn from your hard work by slapping on some advertisements, text links or affiliate links on their own sites, as if it were their own.

The Performancing Copyright Management Service does the hard work for you. Our copyright experts will track down websites, blogs, forums and other sites that infringe on your rights as a publisher. We will then give you a comprehensive report with suggested courses of action. If you choose to, we can also act on these violations on your behalf, by initiating takedown notices and making sure your original content stays where it should–on your blog! Price includes initial consultation, tracking, initial report and appropriate action on three (3) infringing sites.

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Brian Clark Releases Outsourcing Report

Brian Clark who operates Copyblogger.com released a report he calls The Outsourcing Conspiracy. While much has been said regarding Tim Ferris and his 4-hour work week, the other side of the story doesn’t seem to have had much attention. Too many people believe that you can do very little and just outsource the rest but thanks to this report, you get a down to earth reality check regarding the costs involved with outsourcing, legal ramifications, how to get FREE help, the myths involved with outsourcing, and finally, how people like Brian Clark and others got started without outsourcing.

The report is free and you don’t need to give them an email address to download it. Make sure you have a PDF viewer installed on your computer as the report is in PDF format.

Is Twitter’s thousand-per-day follower limit really a problem?

I must admit to being a little perplexed by some of the reactions to Twitter imposing a thousand-per-day limit on the number of people users can follow.

Perhaps that suggests that I’m not a power user, and it certainly means that I’m not employing any celebrity or monetary tactics to improve my count (though if a charity benefits, I won’t complain much).

I do get that it’s something else that’s causing an issue for Twitter developers, particularly those involved with auto-follow apps. Thing is, I don’t really agree with auto-following people. To me, that implies that the Twitter users are blindly reciprocating just because they feel they ought to.

Now, I have recently subscribed to the viewpoint that it is good to reciprocate follows – however I do so manually. Granted, I only get a handful of new followers each day at present so it’s no great problem, but it does mean I have a better chance at weeding out spammers from the outset.

I just can’t get my head around the concept that anyone getting over one thousand follows per day can possibly keep up following them all back. There must come a point where reciprocating becomes meaningless?

I don’t really have an answer to this (there probably isn’t one) but I’d be interested to hear your views.

As a closing note, though, I do find it all rather daft when I read certain users calling Twitter’s actions “corrupt” and likening them to the Iranian government. It’s definitely time to tweet less about Twitter and more about life itself.

Keep On Top Of Trends With TrendPedia

With everything that takes place on the web, keeping track of trends can be a tough process. Although Google provides a Trend search of their own, TrendPedia looks to have its place in the trend search market. The front page of TrendPedia showcases the hottest trends from the previous month as well as popular trends from the previous week.

At the top of the site, you are provided three text fields which will add combine all three trend searches into a comparable graph chart. In my test drive, I compared MovableType, WordPress, and LiveJournal.

For whatever reason, I could not get any trend results for MovableType. For LiveJournal and WordPress, the chart showcases WordPress in the lead with 68% of articles around WordPress with 32% dedicated to LiveJournal. Search results for each trend are shown in their own tab at the bottom of the site and consists mostly of blog posts. This means you can use TrendPedia to get a grasp on blogs staying abreast of the latest trends.

I think Google Trends has a nicer interface and a cleaner way of presenting the information but I find TrendPedia cool because of the mentions of blog post in the search results. At any rate, it’s nice to have more than one site in this market.