- LifeStyle Lift's Fake Reviews: Andrew Shotland wrote a great post about LIfeStyle Lift, a cosmetic surgery company in need of a serious brand facelift themselves after being exposed for ordering employees to write fake reviews. Ethics aside, LifeStyle Lift is a great example of how costly such shady practices can be for a brand when they get caught. Now, even after paying a $300,000 fine, LifeStyle Lift still has their fare share SERP cleanup to do around their brand.
- Checkbook Journalism: Gawker Founder Nick Denton said “We don’t seek to do good. We may inadvertently do good. We may inadvertently commit journalism. That is not the institutional intention.” Whether you agree with Denton's approach, or the idea of incentivizing writers and news sources with page view compensation, at the very least, Gawker Media's approach to news is an interesting one.
- Google's Microsoft Moment: Just over a week ago, Matt Cutts gave a lengthy response to a great post made by Anil Dash about Google's culture. And though it remains to be seen whether or not Obama's antitrust cop, Christine Varney, will pursue antitrust actions against Google, each post offers an interesting perspective on how the present is a critical time for Google to prescribe to their 'don't be evil' mantra.
- Anonymous TechCrunch Post on Search Regulation: With a scathing review of the search industry TechCrunch's guest author sparked quite a bit of controversy the other week. But regardless of whether or not you are of Michael Gray's opinion, it is hard to read this post without numerous objections. This is why the author of the anonymous post deserves the uniquely German honor of 'Deutschebag of the Week.' Ein herzliches Dankeschön!
- 5 Search Tools you May Not Know About: I enjoyed using the Bing-vs-Google tool when first I discovered it. And now, after reading Matt McGhee's post in Search Engine Land, I have a handful of other nifty SEO tools to add to my SEOmoz tool set. Not the least interesting of which is SearchMuffin, which shows Google SERPs in any city, regardless of what location you are searching from.
- Perform Better with AdSense: In a detailed blog post that is informative for both newbie and experienced AdSense partners, Smashing Magazine outlines just about everything you would ever need to know about AdSense. This is a particularly great Saturday morning read for anyone looking to increase AdSense revenue to their website or blog.
- Sharing Links: Inside Facebook reported using AddtoAny data that Facebook is the most popular way to share links on the web. According to this data, 24% of all links shared on the web are shared though Facebook. In other words, according to AddtoAny, more links are shared through Facebook than are shared on Twitter and e-mail combined.
- URL Shorteners and Affiliate Programs: Amazon has stopped giving affiliate commissions on visits via Twitter and Facebook, but where should the line in the sand be drawn? In his post, Dave Naylor talks about the subject of affiliate commission on URL shorteners.
- The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship: Jay Goltz of the New York Times addresses the sobering realities of starting a business through the story of an electrical engineer turned CEO in Chicago who loses it all. This story offers an interesting, and timely juxtaposition to yesterday's news of Amazon's blockbuster acquisition of Zappos.
- Google Autocannibalism: A ridiculous yet amusing concept that outlines an autocannibalistic model where Google could be made to eat itself. Get money, buy stock. Get money, buy stock. Ahhh... I see, it's so simple. It's in the computer.
- Google Mini Appliance: Michael Cottam outlines his frustrations with Google's webserver in a post that proclaims the appliances are overpriced, short lived, and little more than disposable search engines. And thanks to Michael's reminder at the end of his post, we now know what to link to.
- Forecasting ROI for SEO: If you like flow charts or you have a management team that cares what kind of return you are getting on your SEO spend, the diagrams in Gab Goldenberg's post do a great job of outlining how to calculate ROI on your SEO.
- AdWords Demographic Bidding: AdWords is now enabling advertisers to control ad spend based on user demographic data. Several hoops have to be jumped through to implement GA tracking codes, but there is now an AdWords interface that allows for demographic bidding.
- 30 Non Google ways to get traffic to your website: From shopping search engines to Yahoo Answers, SEOptimize illustrates that there are more than a few ways to drive traffic to your website other than traditional SEO.
- Death of London Startups: Paul Carr's post in The Guardian talks about how the geek trip Robert Scoble, Craig Newmark, Sarah Lacy and others made trip to London breathed ephemeral life into a dying startup culture. But in dramatic fashion, Carr concludes that the London startup scene is dead. Is this true? Any thoughts on this from our friends across the pond?
- Employers Should Not Give Bonuses: I had strong initial objections to Alfie Cohn's article. But the New York Times author (ear muffs, Rand, ear muffs.) offers some compelling reasons as to why rewards will likely not lead to higher performance.
- The Psychology of Restaurant Menus: Last month Jeff Sexton of FutureNow wrote a post where he took examples of real world billboards and described how marketers could incorporate effective billboard tactics into online banner ad creation. Liz Kay's post in the Baltimore Sun about what advertisers and consumers can learn from the manipulation of restaurant menus is a similarly interesting read.
- And last, but certainly not least, there were some great entries on YouMoz over the last couple weeks. From MichaelC breaking down dynamic landing pages to Roadies addressing brand management through the example of United Airlines, there was a wide array of interesting posts. Keep 'em coming this week!!! We are always looking for standout posts to promote to the main blog.
- Dynamic Landing Pages: Optimizing for Natural Search by MichaelC
- 7 Reasons Why You Should NOT Use Google Analytics by Nicki Hicks
- Choosing Your Brand -- Two Case Studies of Different Methods by Raaboo
- SEOmoz: It's like a Digital Florida by Ciaran
- Dear United, Here's Your Chance for Awesome Reputation Management by Roadies
Have an article or blog post that would be great for next week's post? If so, send me a direct message on Twitter or tweet about it and include @samniccolls in your tweet.
Thanks for the round-up, Sam. It's always a good test for followers of the industry to see how many articles one has actually read by the time the round-up comes out. It has definitely helped me to look in the right places for the info.
Also, I wouldn't have been sad if you put more pictures in your post today, but I won't open that can of worms again. :D
Interesting take on the London start-up scene. Most of the people I have been talking to recently have seen things looking up in the last couple of months. Unfortunately the "London knows how to party" thing might be a little true. I'm coming off three nights in a row. But I have been speaking to a bunch of people who have just closed funding rounds or who are actually (gasp) profitable. I admit to not being as plugged into the web2.0 London start-up 'pre-revenue' crowd as I could be, but the guys I know who have revenue say much the same as most other non-internet business owners - you have to work hard for the business right now, but it is out there.
I admit to not really liking the tone of the article - which mainly seemed to be complaining of being hungover and the trip not having focussed on start-ups as much as he would have liked. The only real criticisms were a fairly vague comment about Spotify and the last.fm founders leaving. I'm sure there would be a few positive stories that could have been included alongside those.
If there *is* a grain of truth to it, I'd like to know if and how it's different in the valley and in Seattle and NY and what London is doing wrong (i.e. if the point is that London is under-performing rather than a more general web2.0 funding malaise).
Paul's take on the startup scene was altered somewhat I believe by the Guardian discontinuing his column (although he spun it as fired) and his starting at TechCrunch, which is more sensationalism journalism.
I've flirted around the startup scene in London, but being a corporate inhouse type its not really my scene (they always ask ME for money!) and I think we're as succesfull/bad as USA, sometimes better due to London/UK being a "concentrated" scene - events such as Twestival started to kick off in london - so yes we know how to party, drink and work!
On a more serious note - there's a heck of a lot of serious startups that just dont flirt with publicity in london - firms in SEO, Analytics etc - just not "facebook" - perhaps thats sensible....
Nice work with the round up, Sam, starting to make it your own :)
Just a tip though - italics is hard to read for an entire page.
The Anil Dash story Google's Microsoft Moment was an excellent read. I love this quote: "Is Google evil? It doesn't matter."
That is the core message for me. Googlers have to be aware that although they themselves may not have 'changed', the perception of Google has shifted substantially...
Sam, I know of at least one useful story from this week that was not on your list, thereby invalidating everything you wrote, and filling me with rage. RAGE!
Seriously, I like your spin on this, and I missed that SEL post. Love SearchMuffin.
searchmuffin got me all excited, till I realised that it was US cities only. I could really do with a pan european version of this tool...
howsabout it muffiners?
MOGmartin
Thumbs up for that alone.
Love the Bing vs. Google tool - LOVE IT! - and also enjoy searchmuffin. Thanks for sharing these!!
I love posts like this; keep 'em coming.
Jay Goltz of the New York Times addresses the sobering realities of starting a business through the story of an electrical engineer turned CEO solarhotwatersystem.net in Chicago who loses it all. This story offers an interesting, and timely juxtaposition to yesterday's news of Amazon's blockbuster acquisition of Zappos
Great post Sam!
Very nice layout and so much useful information.
Keep it up~
why is there a nofollow on Anonymous TechCrunch Post on Search Regulation: ?
I would tend to bet that was a copy & paste issue. I did the same thing once. I copied a link from somewhere else, pasted it into the post and didn't view the HTML to see it was nofollowed. DOH!
Jen is right. It was an unintentional copy / paste job. Michael Gray, however, In the first paragraph of his post, has a more interesting reason for why he nofollowed the link to the anonymous TechCrunch article.
I personally am not making the claim that the anonymous post was 'crunchbait.' But it certainly did garner a lot of links and attention, and we are still talking about it.
Whatever your take is on the issue, Michael's perspective is at least an interesting one
https://www.wolf-howl.com/ideas/crunchbait-sucker/
Good spot - I love to see how the moz externally and internally links out. You can learn a lot just from this.
Sam...just love your work...it's so easy to miss the good stuff and nice to know we can rely on you to cover the core content...as well as the quirky. Well done and keep em coming...and can you ask the SearchMuffin guys to take it global?
i read about that surgery it seems they were like "hey go put on your skirt and make some more posts as satisfied customers"
i really want to make a collaberative wayway for seos to share tools
are the majority of them web based?
do you have to pay?
im thinking of a toolbox portal for seos (well another one)
The 5 red chili peppers image stand for "extra hot topics"? I liked best Rebecca's star rating system, it was simpler to understand what to read first imho. The difference between top stories and hot topics isn't so clear but everyone knows that 4 stars are better than 3 :D
Great list of articles Sam. Even though my little YOUmoz post about CAPTCHA didn't make your list, I still think you're okay.
I now have a d'oh of the week for next week: me not including your post about CAPTCHA among the YOUmoz posts. It was a terrific read, both interesting and informative.
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/captchas-affect-on-conversion-rates.