Just got this interesting email. Can some SEO experts tell me what to think about this email in my comments?

Curious about the part of email where it says "Click here to see the notice posted on Google.com." If you click on that link it just takes you to a google search but there is no notice posted on Google.com. In fact, I've never seen a notice on google about a sites trust. Is this some sort of trick?

best j

SEO Service <admin@seoserviceinc.com> to jason@ date Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 1:19 PM subject Google ranking consultation

1:19 PM (18 minutes ago)

Reply

"avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links"

A link pointing to www.jewelrypayless.com was found at the following location on your site:

http://mahalo.com/Earrings

The site www.jewelrypayless.com is considered a "bad neighborhood" due to copyright infringement and spamming. It is now being penalized by Google according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Click here to see the notice posted on Google.com.

You know you're on to something really big when the SEO's polluting the web make you public enemy #1... IN A T-SHIRT!!!

Note: I'll be wearing this to my next fireside chat with Danny Sullivan for sure!

{saving time by hartichocked via CC }

I get these great emails and IMs from Web 2.0 folks all the time. As I've said before some services are designed for the top .001% of the market and some are designed for the "the market." That's one of the things I learned a lot about while at Graduate school (also known as my 12 months @ AOL LLC). There is a very large market out there for internet services and that market is filled with folks who want simple, easy to use services that they trust.

Mahalo was designed for those folks. If you love submitted stories to digg, load TechMeme 12x day, and have over ten Facebook applications installed you're probably not the target market for these simple services--and that's totally cool! Some folks are cutting edge, few folks are bleeding edge, and most folks are just getting on with their life.

Anyway, here's today's IM that made me really smile:

• Hey, thought you might like a quick perspective I heard yesterday. Talking to a local friend of mine (40-50) who takes a lot of holidays and was complaining about how hard it is to find good travel on Google (hotels, destinations etc SEOd to death).
  
  I showed him Mahalo and he was blown away... he was wondering if he could pay money for it or something. He was amazed something so useful was free to use. He was really happy to save, literally, hours of painful Google research for his next few trips.
  
  so you know you're doing something right when the typical 'man on the street' is excited for Mahalo and adds it to his bookmarks.
  

Couple of important points in this anecdote:

1. Human's curating search can save other humans a LOT of time.
2. Certain verticals benefit more from human curation: travel, products, news, and health come to mind.
3. When people love a service they bookmark it. That's the Holy Grail of product design, getting someone to bookmark your service.
4. People do pay for the service Mahalo provides for free currently: they pay for it with THEIR time. They pay for by asking their loved ones or employees to do research. We save folks a LOT of time and money, and if you create a service that does that you're going to have an impact.

Anyway, I love these stories... so, if you want to conduct a little experiment forget about the hype around human search, SEO, and my public persona--that's all meaningless. Sit one of your friends or family members down and show them one of our search results next to Google, Yahoo, or Ask and watch the magic happen.

If I had not have done tons of market research in this fashion (including with out in-house testing lab) I would not have even started Mahalo (let alone raised capital to go after this market). At this point in my career I put my faith not in what A-List bloggers and pundits think, I put my faith in my I see in user labs. Pundits don't know jack about the market, the MARKET knows about the market (and you can include me in that pundit list... if you consider me a pundit).

Hope everyone is having a great weekend... I'm suffering with a throbbing jaw and mouth sores. Pass the vicodin.



{ vicodin by prodigal via CC }

Special guests: Andy Beard, Michael Grey, Brian Provost, and Allen Stern.

Hello everyone, Tyler here -- back again with another exciting episode for your viewing and listening pleasure.

In this episode, Jason gets feedback on Mahalo from four formidable figures in the SEO industry; an industry that Mahalo aims to make irrelevant. Is reasoned debate possible in a roundtable with such polarized participants? Watch or listen to CalacanisCast 29 Beta to find out.

*Joining the Cast crew is Conrad Quilty-Harper, who you may recognize from his quality work at engadget.com


download: audio [mp3] video [mp4] iPod [mp4]
subscribe: iTunes | audio
view: transcripts
contact: cast [at] calacanis.com

Show Notes
0:21 - London: NMK Forum, Mike Butcher, Mahalo Greenhouse
5:06 - First Impressions of Mahalo: human search vs. SEO, the shaka and warning symbols
13:12 - Dodge Viper
27:34 - Domains by proxy
32:57 - Squidoo and SEO
54:12 - Lets make a bet
60:01 - Wikipedia's relationship with Mahalo

The great thing about mixing it up with the SEO crowd is that they prove your point over and over and over again... first they tried to kidnap my search result on Google, now they are buying adwords to attack Mahalo (do a search for Mahalo.com on Google and you'll see ads like the one below).

The more SEOs fight you the more you know you're doing the right thing for the average web user. SEO is going to be looked at as a footnote in the history of the internet and search--a time we'll want to forget.

For more childish SEO behavoir check here.

Looks like Neil is doing an OK job so far of increasing the search traffic to Calacanis.com over the past two weeks. He's only been able to push about 10% of the changes he wants to do to the Blogsmith software (the amazing software my blog runs off of--and that we sold to AOL) and my blog, but the results are solid so far: a 21% increase according to Niel.

Now, we don't know that this result is:

a) sustainable
b) because of the changes he made

I could be going up because Google likes my site more because so many folks have been linking to me in the past month. The Fatblogging.com (TM) movement and the payperpost wackos have both sent me hundreds of links during the same time period. Thoughts on this Neil?

That being said, I think Neil will be able to increase my traffic when he does all of his changes, and my position has always been that ALTHOUGH SEO can work in the short term it is NOT a good long-term strategy. The best long term strategy is to just make great content in my mind--BUT I COULD BE WRONG.

All of these changes Neil makes would have cost me $10-20,000 in consulting fees with an SEO firm from what I understand (correct me here if I am wrong), and these kind of changes do NOTHING for the reputation of you site. They get you a quick, free hit of traffic.

If you're a site owner I still maintain you're better off putting that $10-20k into hiring a great writer to do original research, video, audio, photos, services, etc. to help people.

All that being said.... I must admit that the SEO crack hit feels good. I can't wait to smoke the rest of Neil's SEO crack and watch my stats go through the roof for things like HIIT training and HDMI cables--of course, it makes me feel very, very dirty.

Neil: You said you would explain the changes... would you do a followup post about the two or three changes you made and why they worked? Also, I'd love to hear Google, Ask, Yahoo and Microsoft search folks comment on what we're doing.

This is an important discussion for our industry and I thank Neil for taking the time to explain his changes and educate me. Also, thanks for the Blogsmith team--Gavin, Alex, and Brian--for helping out. Side note/Plug: Alex and Gavin has an amazing side project called Emurse.com that I'm hoping they ask me to join the board of if they ever blow it out.

This video is so cheesy you have to think it's a fake... but I don't think it is. (Hat Tip)

The SEO folks got really pissed off at me for saying "SEO is bulls@#t." last year, but the truth is that 90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesman. These are guys in really bad suits trying to get really naive people to sign long-term contracts. These clients typically make horrible products and don't deserve traffic--that's why they're not getting it organically so they hire the slimebuckets to game the system for them.

Note: There are some whitehat SEO firms out there I know, but frankly the whitehat SEO companies are simply doing solid web design so I don't consider them SEO at all. SEO is a tainted term and it means "gaming the system" to 90% of us.

Now, if you make great content, keep your page design clean, and stick with it you're gonna do just fine in the rankings. Don't smoke the SEO-crack... you'll just wind up chasing your tail as digg and Google closes the tiny SEO loopholes and put your domain on the black list.

PS - And to the SEO idiots trying to "take over my SeRP" on Google you're proving my point exactly. Grow up.. the only thing you're ever going to prove by trying to game my SeRP is that you're low-class idiots.

PSS - This whole gaming of digg/Netscape/MySpace is being called SMO--social media optimization. That's the worst thing I've ever heard of. Anyone who hires an SMO firm is an idiot. The whole point of social media is TO BE REAL NOT FAKE!!! Just be yourself and participate... that's all it takes (and note, participation is not just putting in your own links, it's voting/commenting on/submitting other people's content too!).