Google changes inbound link policies

All hail Lord Google! For the Almighty Lord Google of the web has cited inbound links will be changed. No more are the days of links to your website. Now you must be disavow  all inbound links, or face the wrath of the almighty Google.

Most people are scrambling to no end to deal with Google's new insane policy. I'm not worried though because Along for the Ride! will not be affected. How so, you ask?

In 2008, when I started designing the system, I spent considerable time thinking about the link a structure and where it needed to be for future reference. In my design process, I had already anticipated that Google will try to downplay all free traffic sources and would try to move towards a "pay to play" model.

I believe this move, by Google, is designed to do only one thing - push people to pay Google for traffic.  In essence Google is engaging in legalized extortion. Anybody that wants traffic to their website must pay Google for it and all free sources of traffic will be penalized. Furthermore, if you use any free sources of traffic, you will also be penalized. In my opinion, this is nothing more then Google's misogynistic insidious greed at work.

While I am NOT a fan of Microsoft but I have to agree with them on this one point, Google seems hell bent to scroogle everyone, or at least anyone who did not anticipate Google's insipidous greed.

Now for the actual details of why Along for the Ride! is immune from this latest change. Its very simple, the Along for the Ride! link structure uses nofollow for its web directory listings only and dofollow for its members with emphasis of relevancy on membership.

But the heart of Along for the Ride! has always been Its traffic sharing system, which revolves around the widget. The widget is pure java script and is immune to Google and their insane policies. The web directory was actually an afterthought to help me keep track of all of my members that ran the widget.

That's right, the web directory was an afterthought. Nonetheless, when I designed the web directory, I wanted something humans could enjoy. Even though my entire system revolved around my traffic sharing concept, I wanted something that looked nice and felt welcoming. Unlike Google, where page after page is nothing but a boring and monolithic white, with the Along for the Ride! web directory, the pages are randomly different pastel colors that are easy on the eyes and help to distinguish separate pages.  I even spend time making sure the pastel colors are very mild and soothing.

The widget though is where I really spent time thinking about design, color, and layout. While Google is so obsessed with everything above the fold, I am not. My logs and my records show clicks from the widget illustrate clearly that it performs well anywhere on the web page. As long as the widget is visible, location does not matter. Whether at the top or the bottom of the page, its performance is equally well.

I think the reason the widget performs so well because I spent so much time making its design look so appealing and different from anything else on the Internet. I believe its uniqueness is why it does so well. Again, I wanted to focus on the human readers, not web spiders.

While Google and its insane policies are irrelevant to me, I do care about the members of my traffic sharing system and web directory. While I am appreciative to those that do run the widget, its does not bother me that most people listed in the web directory will not run the widget, because the blogs listed are there for the uniqueness of their content. Furthermore, I am not bothered by the many people who decide not to run sponsored links. I'm simply appreciative that they're running the widget at all.

Google maybe out to take over the world but I am not. My goal has always been and will continue to be, to provide a free and nice traffic sharing system and web directory.

Join me and come Along for the Ride!

AdBrite closing

First CMFads, then Adgitize, and now a major player in the advertising world - AdBrite is closing it doors.  Ironically, AdBrite had some serious cash going into it.  As a start up, it had $1.1 million invested in them.  They were actually the closest real competitor AdSense really had.

Here's the official notice from AdBrite:

Dear adBrite Publisher,

Over the last few weeks, adBrite and its management have been evaluating the go-forward plan for the business. Given market conditions and certain financial liabilities, in working with our lenders, we have decided to cease operations on Feb 1, 2013. 

This is a difficult decision for all of us at adBrite. However, after much deliberation this seems to be the best course of action despite the impact it will have on all the employees, clients and partners who helped build this business. There will be a team in place as needed to assist with winding down. Thank you for being part of the adBrite community. 

The adBrite Team.

This actually was a bit of a surprise as I really didn't think they would fold so easily. Sheesh, I remember watching AdBrite open its doors and was one of its first publishers.  I have to admit, I will miss this advertiser as they did do a very good job and their pay-outs were quite nice.

I personally believe the economy and the over-the-top taxes have had their impact with many businesses and sadly, AdBrite is another victim of the bureaucratic stupidity rampant in Washington right now.

Along for the Ride! will be five years old this April. Nothing lasts forever I guess... I'm just glad AFTR is still doing so well.  I suppose seeing a company like AdBrite collapse and fold under has made me think about the longevity of AFTR as I've had to make the same decisions AdBrite did in closing its doors.

Its never easy throwing in the towel...  I wish the best for all of AdBrite's employees.

Authority by default

Here is a scam that's hard to describe and even harder to stop.  I've spent the last several days reading and researching this to get an accurate name for it.  I haven't found one that even applies to the situation.  Its bit and pieces of several scams rolled into one.

This scam is a form of hijacking.  The best way to explain it is to demonstrate it.  Let's start with the below image:

This looks like the "Along for the Ride!" web site, doesn't it. Look a little closer... Look at the url.  Pay close attention to the domain name. Who the blazes is northwestmarketingdirect.com and why is AFTR's content showing up under their domain and not my own?

Did they hack my secure sever? A close inspection showed the server was NOT hacked...

Are they coping my content to their server? After looking at the my server's logs, that's not the case.

Did they hijack my domain server? Yet again, no hacking detected and no signs of tampering.  My domain servers are secured and locked...

So why is my content under their domain name?  This is where things get real messy.  Not only is northwestmarketingdirect.com displaying my content, but its indexed in the search engines with my content...

Hence, they are claiming my content as their own with what I call "Authority by default."  Some SEO experts call this SEO hijacking, but the method used here doesn't fit that at all.  The below image of a Google search illustrates this:

As you can see from the image, Google has their domain name with my content.  It ain't over yet as this mess gets worse.  After contacting my domain registrar, hosting service provider and the search engines, there is nothing I can do legally.

Read it again, there is nothing I can do legally.  My copyrighted content is being stolen and I can do nothing about it.  Before anything can be done legally, I have to prove malicious intent on the part of the owners of northwestmarketingdirect.com. One would think that it would be enough to see the a domain with content the originating owner did not authorize or give permission for would be enough.

It doesn't work that way because of the way this scam is perpetrated.

Now lets look into how this scam is actually done.  Its actually very simple to do and requires no hardware or advanced knowledge.  All you need to do is buy a domain name.

Yes, its actually that easy.  Buy a domain name.  Once you've bought your brand new domain name, you'll be able to use a domain manager for your registrar to configure your domain.  Here is where the scam takes place.

All that needs to be done is point the newly created domain to an IP address.  Lets demonstrate this by example of a very popular site, whitehouse.gov. I chose this example simply because only an idiot would actually try to scam the White House and if Google got a call from the Secret Service, they would not put out a letter telling the Secret Service they (Google) was going to do nothing, like they gave me.

The current IP address of the White House web site is 173.223.104.110, which rotates often. Now let's say someone creates a domain called obama-house.org and configures the DNS to point to 173.223.104.110. You now have both domain names pointing to the same IP address.  This is perfectly legal and many companies do this with their domains, like sears.net and sears.org.

Because there is nothing illegal about this and permission is NOT required to do this, the scam now begins to take shape. Now all the owners of obama-house.org have to do is put a little money into search engine listings and back links.  The result will be that the original domain will start to loose placement in the search engines, yet the scam domain will inherit all page rank and placements. Hence, the scam domain takes authority by default as the original domain can no longer be found in a search.  At this point, the actual content owner now has to prove its their content.

Here's the kicker, because of having to prove malicious intent, all the scam domain owner has to say is something like this, "My apologies for the inconvenience, my DNS server was inappropriately configured.  The problem has been resolved." That's it and the original domain owner is left with a mess to clean up while the scammer simply plug in another IP address to a popular site and repeat.

The original owner now has a damaged reputation, brand and unranked web site that can't be found in the search engine.  This could also translate into lose of advertisers and profit.

I'm sure by now you're asking what payoff the scammer is going to get from this.  If the scammer pulls this off, they'll get your page rank, search engine placement, and authority by default of your content.  If your site had a front page listing, that could be big money once they scammer redirects the domain to their intended content.

It take years to build a good page rank and listing placement with quality back links.  For this scam, years turn into only a few months...

Thankfully, there is something you can do to stop this.  A couple of line in your Apache .htaccess breaks the whole scam and give you protection from this type of theft. I'm sure other servers have similar ways, but I only know Apache's as LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) servers are most common.

Two lines as your first rule in your .htacces are all you need to stop this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^DOMAIN.*

RewriteRule .* URL [R=301,L]

These lines need to go under the "RewriteEngine on" line.  Here is what mine looks like:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^tsswd\.net.*

RewriteRule .* http://tsswd.net [R=301,L]

This works because in Apache, the %{HOST_NAME} variable is the domain name the visitor put in their browser or the one they clicked on. So what these lines are doing is checking if the URL coming into your site equals your domain name, if not then use a force (permanent) redirect that tells browser and (especially) search engines that non-matching domain is invalid.

The scam is now busted and your domain shows up as it should.  The scammer is left with their domain name being ripped out of the search engines and your content, work, page rank, and site are still yours.

For me, northwestmarketingdirect.com will soon be a broken domain relegated to the garbage bin.  Along for the Ride! and its contents are safe and it only took a few seconds to do.

Got the blog going

Well, I have this thing up and running fairly well... Adding the AFTR widget was easier then I expected. I used the Add "HTML/Javascript" gadget with the code from the Widgets page for the 800 wide version. Its seems to fit well with the layout I've chosen.

Migrating from my custom software to Blogger wasn't as difficult as I expected, save one area - the meta tags. I have yet to get the meta tags for Title, Description, Author, and Keywords working without editing the template by hand and completely screwing it up. This one has been absolutely frustrating to no end. I've been building web sites for over ten years and given my level of frustration, I can only imagine what a true novice blogger feels. It really does open the door wide for WordPress, TypePad or some other platform.

I've read several ways to add the meta tags by hand, but I really don't want to go that way as it can be a real pain and seriouly limits the use of templates. Going the manual way means adding the meta tags back in every time changes are made to the layout. Thats just not a good way to go, especially for beginners. One would have thought that Google would have used the proper metrics since they are a search engine. In all honesty, it seems Google is self defeating its own system.

In the interim, I've programmed the AFTR spider to pull the meta data from a blog's RSS. While its not the best way to go, its significantly better then trying to figure out Blogger's crazy mechanics. I personally am not interested in becoming an expert in "Blogger Babble" and its probably safe to assume neither are most of Blogger's users....