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Looking at the rest of the top search results for Christmas is like getting into a time machine that takes you back to a bizarro 2001 in which every single web surfer is a sucker. There are "Hot Links!" and "Fun Things to Do." What we see is the ad hoc, de facto social network formed by people who type Christmas into a search engine. And man, that network is like MySpace for your great aunt who has too many cats. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Dec 20, 2011 - 16 comments

Start a home business, get rich quick, win financial freedom! If you watch late-night TV, you've heard it all before. But what's the story behind these slick pitchmen and their dubious schemes? Enter The Salty Droid, your ornery metal guide to the corrupt underworld of scam-marketing scum. This charmingly acerbic bot (owned and operated by mild-mannered Chicago dog-lover Jason Michael Jones [inter-view, long talk + transcript]) is a valiant crusader against the vile con-men who bankrupt the elderly and the desperate with beautiful lies. Exposed so far: A shadowy "Syndicate" of frauduct-pushing personality cults polluting the media with blogspam and woo-woo talking points. Boiler rooms in the Utah desert where telemarketers farm credit from easy targets with cunning, probing scripts [PDF]. Powerful politicians bought wholesale. Believers left to die in fraudulent new-age vision quests. It's a soul-crushing beat, enough to make one feel like a regular catcher-bot in the digital rye. But somebody's got to do it -- preferably someone with plasma nunchucks and titanium skin.
posted by Rhaomi on Aug 31, 2011 - 47 comments

"Schema ...provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google and Yahoo! rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages. " [more inside]
posted by 00dimitri00 on Jun 2, 2011 - 20 comments

Age of the Algorithm. In the age of the algorithm, you can get just about anything you think you want, learn everything you think you need to know, by clicking on a link or typing a few words into a search bar. On SEO, content farms, old media, and 'online sweatshops.' (From Maisonneuve.)
posted by shakespeherian on May 11, 2011 - 20 comments

A quick google search for "free wordpress themes" returns quite a number of varied results. The author of Why You Should Never Search For Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else does a quick run-down of which of the first 10 results are genuine, trustable sites, vs. how which carry themes full of malicious code. The results aren't good.
posted by Hackworth on Jan 23, 2011 - 52 comments

How (crowd) curation is making a comeback in search and how Facebook is using it to "remake whole industries."
posted by kliuless on Jan 16, 2011 - 27 comments

How to pander to social media sites with bland shitty "comics" as pioneered by The Oatmeal.
posted by buriednexttoyou on Oct 15, 2010 - 73 comments

Google Is Butchering The Written Word, or “How to Buy PEX Tubing Online” [more inside]
posted by blasdelf on Apr 6, 2010 - 64 comments

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, goes beta. Cribbed from live.com, the layout for bing is... strangely familiar. Early reviews are mixed, with mixed results, mostly noting that the results less useful than google, especially when it comes to google.
posted by boo_radley on Jun 1, 2009 - 173 comments

The SEO Rapper (a.k.a. The Poetic Prophet) spits rhymes on such topics as Design Coding, Link Building, Paid Search, and Conversion Closing for all your marketing campaign and web design needs.
posted by dhammond on Mar 27, 2008 - 9 comments

MakeMyLogoBigger Cream is a clinically proven formula which embiggens your logo, gets rid of annoying whitespace, adds SEO magic crystals and reams of powerful marketing text! See Also.
posted by deern the headlice on Oct 30, 2007 - 21 comments

If Google was designed for Google.
posted by armoured-ant on Oct 16, 2007 - 36 comments

DMOZ Editor(s) seeking extortion for continued inclusion is putting further smudge on the "volunteer" directory. Seems lots of folks have had their hands out over inclusion in the DMOZ, so why hasn't a business been built out of it? Is Best of the Web positioning itself as Google Bait?
posted by FlamingBore on Aug 28, 2007 - 12 comments

Google delists bmw.de. Google employee Matt Cutts reports on the removal of BMW's German web site from Google's index as a punishment for using webspam techniques to increase its search engine ranking. Webmasters and search engine optimizers discuss the issue at WebmasterWorld (no subscription necessary, just follow the link on the page) with a predictable mix of attaboys and dismay at Google's power.
posted by grouse on Feb 6, 2006 - 32 comments

Who gives, who gets... and surprise, Google is on top. I always figured that the search engines had a symbiotic relationship, but playing with this Search Engine Decoder to actually see it is far more entertaining. And, I'd never heard of Overture, but it seems like all the big boys pay them for content. The Decoder is hosted by Search This, which "[provides] search engine optimization and web marketing strategies for the everyday web designer." I guess that's a few of us...
posted by pineapple on Nov 16, 2003 - 12 comments

Amazon spamming search engines? Looking around for reviews on Cooper tires, I came across 2 links in the top 20 search results on Google for sites that look legitimate, but are actually redirect pages to Amazon.com (which doesn't even sell auto tires!). What's going on here? Since when is it legitimate for large corporations to spam search engines!??
posted by yarf on Dec 21, 2001 - 43 comments