The Chinese Domain Name Scam.

I first came across these three years ago, so this is hardly new. Plus there’s already plenty of information on the internet about these scams already. Thing is I started getting a few more of these recently so that means they’re obviously doing the rounds again. That’s why I decided to write this post again as a fresh new warning to those who may not be familiar with the type of scams involved.

The format of the Chinese Domain Scam is simple; you receive correspondence from someone claiming to represent some domain registration agency somewhere in Asia, China or Hong Kong usually:

Dear Manager/CEO/Director/Whatever

We are a domain registration company based in China/Hong Kong/Asia…. (more…)

…And lo, the grateful townspeople watched as Windows XP struck a match, lit a half-smoked cigar, tipped his hat and rode off into the sunset. Roll credits, cue theme music by Ennio Morricone…

You know it’s funny how things change. When XP first arrived on the scene I’d recently just finished a Windows networking course. I was used to working with Windows 2000, 98 and NT4. XP, with its shiny new look and Fisher Price Start bar didn’t appeal to me, nor did the OS itself when I started using it. After Service Pack 2 things started to settle down and I began to appreciate its merits more and more.

The greatest improvement XP provided was its plug and play functionality. Back when I started off in the internet cafe business, my first business, the majority of client computers were still running Windows 98. Windows 98 SE was a lovely OS for its time but as technology moved on its shortcomings were becoming more and more apparent. At the time floppy discs were still the most common media but then every so often a customer would arrive with a USB stick or a digital camera and a good portion of time was wasted installing drivers, rebooting the computers and generally battling to get 98 to recognise the devices we all now take for granted. Simply being able to plug in a USB device and not have to muck around in device manager and reboot every two minutes was an enormous plus for XP.

I’ve been running XP myself for five years and can use it blindfolded. I’ve implemented numerous XP networks with ease and repaired countless XP systems in several languages including Polish, Russian, German, Norwegian, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic. Yes, Arabic; I know XP so well I can literally use it backwards. (more…)

Although Google Instant doesn’t have any direct impact on SEO and search results, one thing that did occur to me when I first used it was how much it would exacerbate any bad publicity a person or company might have. Particularly now, when search engines are constantly monitoring content from highly active, up-to-the-minute social sites like Twitter, changes in suggested searches can be quite swift and can seem to come out of nowhere.

How to become Google’s number one “drunken moron”.

One recent and topical example is that of Ireland’s current leader (though indicators suggest not for very long) Brian Cowen. Ireland, whilst having a large diaspora throughout the world, is a small island nation of 4.2 million with limited global influence when compared with Britain or the United States. Those living outside the Emerald Isle probably would never have heard of Brian Cowen until a couple of weeks ago. So, if you don’t know who he is already, all you need know for this example is that he recently became the centre of controversy over whether or not he was drunk whilst appearing, incoherent and slurring his speech, on a nationally broadcast radio interview to discuss the economy. The result was an already abysmal approval rating, 18% in July 2010 [source] dropping further to 11% by the end of September [source] following the scandal.
(To compare, George W Bush’s lowest, the lowest of any US President, was a comparatively-high 19%.)

In other words, this was a political and public relations meltdown and it would be hard to imagine how it could be made any worse. Enter Google Instant.

Let’s imagine, in the above example, that I was searching for “Brian Cowen DCU speech”, but by the time I type in “Brian Cowen” I can already see the autosuggestion field with “Brian Cowen Drunk” and related queries, and when I type in the D that seals the deal and I get dozens of results automatically for “Brian Cowen Drunk” appearing in the main Google search results.

Now, as far as the world’s most popular search engine is concerned, the name Brian Cowen is permanently affixed to the word drunk and worse still, the search term has gone viral. Suddenly a man who, lets be honest, most of the world didn’t even know existed the week previous, became a viral phenomenon appearing on sites like the hugely popular tongue-in-cheek news aggregator Fark (playing the drunken Irish stereotype angle) as well as countless Tweets, blog posts and YouTube videos.

Now I might sound like I’m contradicting some of the points I made in my last post about Instant, having already said that generally people, when they have their minds set on finding a specific piece of information, are unlikely to get distracted when Google suggests something else. Thing is, if ever there was something that just might distract the searcher it’s a funny video or nice juicy scandal. And as for both rolled into one, well…

So, getting back to the DCU speech example, whilst the end result will invariably be that I’ll continue my search and eventually find the speech I was looking for, there’s a also very high chance it will be after I watch the parody YouTube video.

This should serve as a dire warning for anyone who still doubts the power of social media. Firstly, companies should be acutely aware of how much influence social media has on search engines in general and Google results in particular. Secondly, that it is these very trends which now also dictate much of the content in the mainstream media. Television is prime example. When stuck for material or content researchers will often go online to find out what is popular and “trending”. The result? The man hardly anybody outside Ireland ever heard of is now famous throughout America as a “drunken moron” thanks to Jay Leno.

Thus begins a vicious circle as the Jay Leno video appears on YouTube (a Google-owned company) and also goes viral. With millions searching for the video “Brian Cowen Jay Leno” becomes a top Instant search term shortly after, and the wheels of Cowen’s PR nightmare keep on turning.

Brian Cowen’s name currently appears top of all results on Google.ie for the term “drunken moron”. He appears on all but the last result on page one and continues to appear throughout the results, right up to page 63 out of 66 result pages. He also tops results on Google.co.uk and elsewhere. Now, knowing what we now do about Google’s Instant/autocomplete technology, we can predict a strong possibility that Google Instant will autosuggest the term “drunken moron” every time someone searches for the name “Brian Cowen” and display those results in real time.

It’s part of the Irish character to find incidents like this hilarious, even when, in fact especially when, they have potentially-disasterous consequences. Right now it’s not only make-or-break time for Ireland, but for Europe as a whole, and the ECB and the IMF are watching developments closely. Ireland, with a crippled economy and a dysfunctional banking system, has already had several negative bond rating readjustments and is desperately trying to assuage jittery foreign investors. Having a leader who dominates Google search results for the term “Drunken Moron” isn’t going to help matters. In other words, Google, and the web in general, has become instrumental in destruction of Cowen’s political career.

Reputation management for Businesses

For companies, rather than individuals, the issue becomes even more dangerous. It can be bad enough with autocomplete, whereby someone typing in searches for “Joe Bloggs” or “Acme Airlines” might see autosuggested terms like “Joe Bloggs scam” or “Acme Airlines ripoff” but now imagine the person can also see the results of those search terms and read their content in real time – not good.

Very few companies will ever experience the sort of PRmageddon that BP or Toyota did this year, but that doesn’t mean companies should ignore their online reputation. Signing up to Google Alerts is strongly recommend, so as to be notified of new content containing your name or the name of your company so you can be ready to stamp out any dangerous sparks before they become wildfires.

Of course, Instant or not, whatever’s out there, both the positive and the negative, people are going to find it anyway. And to reiterate the point I made last time regarding Instant and SEO, the search engine hasn’t changed and the information on it hasn’t changed, just the interface is changed, making it easier, and faster, for people to find that information.

Therefore the methods used to counter negative press online haven’t changed either; that is to proactively deal with negative press whilst continuing to build your search engine and local search footprint. The game is speeded up now, however, so your company will need to speed up too, or risk being overwhelmed by the web’s ever-changing landscape.

Brionglóid Media can help your company overcome these sorts of issues, as part of an ongoing web maintenance contract. We can help monitor review sites (e.g. Trip Advisor), Local search sites (i.e. Google Places, Bing Local), social networks, blogs, forums and other online communities and, if necessary, engage with customers on your company’s behalf to help mediate disputes or counter libellous claims against your business. We can also help you to diminish the Google search result ranking of articles or pages which may have negative implications for your company and replace them with more desirable articles and press releases, working to positively promote your business online. For more information please contact us today and we can begin an online PR campaign tailored to your specific needs.

Google Instant & Search Results

In the previous post I gave an introduction to Google Instant and talked about the technology and how it works. This time I want to talk more about how Instant predicts people’s search habits and what effect it will have on those habits and on your business’s website traffic. Finally I want to mention a little bit on Google Instant SEO and debunk many of the myths and misrepresentations that surround Google’s novel search engine enhancement.

So I guess the first thing people will want to know is; what about all those bloggers who’ve been saying that Google Instant marks the end of SEO and online marketing? In a word – bull.

So why say it? Well, clearly these bloggers know the value of link-bait. In the same way scandals and controversy helps sell newspapers, saying something alarmist or controversial is always a sure-fire way to get people to read, comment on and link to your blog post.

Big Names – Big Brands
One of their most alarmist comments is that Google are now “suddenly” giving more weight to large corporations in search. This is complete and other BS. The fact of the matter is Google Instant doesn’t mark the end of SEO any more than the introduction of autocomplete did.

A is for:

B is for:

The above tables show examples of Google Instant/autocomplete information (September 2010). There you will see the big brands & big names based on the most popular searches. No real surprises there (well other than the revelation that so many of my fellow countrymen are still interested in Big Brother).

Yes, when you search you do see a predilection towards big brands and big names, primarily large Internet companies or large retailers and chain stores, as well as airlines, banks, telcos and so on, but that predilection originates with all of us. Google are merely reflecting our own search trends back at us. In other words they’re giving the people what they want. And what they want, clearly, is to buy things, bank online, book flights online, play games online, talk to friends online or check the news, sport and weather. Go to any internet café on the planet and this is exactly what you will see people doing.

In fact, back when I used to own an internet cafe I used to check which were the most popular sites with customers as logged by my Smoothwall firewall/proxy server. When I compared them with those of a friend of mine who ran another cafe the results were virtually identical. Google released their autocomplete functions just I was exiting the net cafe business, however I did have the time to check the logs of both cafes against the Google suggestions and, once again, they were virtually identical. Since Instant and autocomplete are one and the same this is basically solid proof, if ever any was needed, that the results that are generated by Instant are based solely on which sites are the most popular with searchers and not, as some have hinted, motivated by any covert agreement between Google and its advertisers to gain a higher ranking.

Still don’t believe me? Ok, try it for yourself, open two tabs and search for the same thing, one tab with Instant enabled and the other disabled. Because Amazon’s dominating the A’s let’s see if they perform any different on Instant than they would normally. “Books” (I used Google.com US for this) bring up as the top two, books.google.com and Amazon. “Bookshop” brings up a company called “Bookshop Santa Cruz.” However as I honed in on the location, “bookshop [name of town/city - wherever you live]” the results began to change and update themselves according to my searches. When I had my my full search term typed in the bar I then compared my search with that of “regular” Google and – hey whadya know! – they were the exact same. The same companies dominated the top results for the same search term in both regular and Instant.

So whilst Instant uses autocomplete information to help facilitate the search and changes the look and feel of the search engine functionality, the final results for any given search term remain unchanged. Therefore if you’ve already conducted a comprehensive online marketing campaign, with the emphasis on SEO and local search/maps, then you have absolutely nothing to fear from Google Instant.

How will Google Instant change how people search?
Another common anti-Instant argument I’ve heard is that, by providing people with ready-made search terms people will be more likely to go with those search terms than use their own. This simple isn’t true. If the suggested search term is identical to what the person was searching for in the first place – which is all a case of predicting probabilities as far as the search engine is concerned – then that person will, of course, go for the suggested search term. But if Instant throws up suggestions that are contrary to what the user is looking for, they will naturally be ignored.

Think about it; if I’m looking for “Paris Hotels”, and I’ve just typed in “Paris H” the odds are very high that I’m going to continue typing my search term and I’m not going to be swayed by recommended links to sites about Paris Hilton. But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I start searching for Paris Hotels and do click on the link to Paris Hilton, one has to wonder how committed I was to booking a hotel in Paris in the first place. It begins to look very much like I’m surfing, rather than searching.

It works the other way too. Say I’m a zoology student researching “Amazonian tapir population decline”. How likely am I, when Google Instant suggests it, to forget about my research paper and buy Dan Browne and Harry Potter books on Amazon instead? Not very.

So, whilst Google Instant does make it easier for people to access the most popular sites and content online it does not mean people are suddenly going to forget what they’re looking for. What it will do, however, is help prevent people from accessing sites they didn’t mean to, therefore improving bounce and conversion rates.

Whilst there have been massive improvements in search over the years, they’re still not all that good at understanding exactly what information we want. Google still doesn’t really know what we want so it guesses based upon what other people have wanted in the past. This helps anyone trying to conduct a search because, whilst they know the answer they want, they may not necessarily know how to best phrase the search query in order to find it. Instant now not only shows suggestions of what people have searched for in the past, it also shows the results in real time. So the user can see whether the search was successful or not. The result is that people find exactly what they want faster and easier and the likelihood of people accidentally accessing sites unrelated to their search term is greatly reduced.

Of course it’s not going to stop false landings completely, as anyone who’s accidentally landed on this page searching for Amazonian tapir population numbers can probably attest. (I aim to please, try here)

How to increase traffic with Google Instant.
Contrary to what the doomsayers say, Instant exposes even greater scope with which to connect directly with search engine users. Most people still don’t understand what a search engine actually does and fewer still understand how search engines actually work. They just know that if they type the name of the company they’re looking for it brings up the company automatically so they don’t have to mess around with all that fiddly www-dot stuff. They also tend to view Google as the oracle of the web, rather than understanding how it crawls sites and indexes content and keywords, they tend to ask it questions; “How do I do this?”, “where can I buy X in region Y?” and so forth. Google has only the most limited understanding of what words and search terms mean, so although it has a better track record than most search engines, it will none the less frequently show results that are irrelevant to what the person was looking for.

There are two reasons why this happens. The first is because the person used a bad or vague search term. This problem will be greatly reduced by Google Instant’s improved autosuggest feature, thus greatly increasing the chances that they will eventually find that which they seek. The second reason the user cannot find a relevant page is because a page relevant to their chosen search term simply doesn’t exist. This problem has also been reduced a lot due to specific question and answer sites like eHow and Yahoo Answers filling in many pre-existing gaps, but it still happens quite often.

Now imagine there’s a Google Instant search term that’s already out there, that’s related to your business or niche, but that there’s no answer or content to satisfy it? There are obviously a lot of people searching for that term, but that demand is going unsatisfied and all the potential is lost. So, rather than trying to go after saturated search terms that your competitors are already ranking high for, why not go all-out to secure this specific search term? Google’s Zeitgiest and Insights pages are a good place to start looking for those terms. Bear in mind, though, there are many words and phrases which Google automatically censor from Instant results.

So, whilst there’s still a long, long way to go before we reach the Star Trek level when we can just say, “computer, how do we do this?” or “show me all the files related to that” and the computer responds appropriately, Instant does serve as a good stop-gap solution by making it easier to match the queries made by users with the content they desire. You won’t have to wait long for other search engines, most noteably Bing, to follow Google’s lead, and for suggestive search to become the new standard.

Google Instant search optimization.
So how do you optimize your business website for Instant-type search? Well, getting back to the “bookshop [town]” example I reccommend, firstly, that your business concentrates heavily on local search, particularly Google Places, Facebook Places, Bing Local and the emerging trends in geo-tagging social networks like Foursquare.

Local search is becoming ever more important these days and geotagging is another rising trend. Search for any busines + location combination on Google, e.g. “Hotel London” or “Restaurant Paris” and the first thing you will notice is that, top of the results are lists of businesses on Google Places complete with maps of their location. Naturally you’ll want to be right at the top and marked on those maps. You’ll also want to ensure that your organisation keeps a very close eye on your listings and deals proactively with any negative comments so as to resolve disputes before they escalate. That way you can rank high on Google and also enjoy high customer feedback.

Other than that the rules of good SEO still apply and have not changed not even slightly. As discussed in the bookshop example the end results of a search for a given term or keyword are identical whether Instant is enabled or not. So you will need to ensure that your site exibits the charactaristics of quality web design, that it is properly designed, coded and easy to navigate. This way not only is it easy for people to find what they’re looking for, it makes it easier for search engine spiders to crawl and index your site also. You should also provide a sitemap for your users and an XML sitemap of your site to help search engines, like Google, index your site’s content more easily. Finally be sure, also, that your site does not have any flash-based navigation or contains frames.

If you are not sure you can always contact us for a consultation. You may also be interested in our link-building services.

Here are three great Firefox add-ons which I use quite regularly, one for assistance in design and development of web pages, one for for checking search engine rankings and other SEO-related information and finally one for helping to keep my browsing more secure.

Web Developer
The Firefox Web Developer Toolbar is an indespensible tool for web designers or developers.
It boasts a broad range of options such as enabling or disabling Cookies, Java or Javascript, CSS elements, forms, images and various other page elements. You can also view and highlight various HTML and CSS elements, edit them or validate them, as well as your site’s feed and check whether your site meets W3C accessability standards. Other features include a small screen rendering function to help get an idea how your site might look on a mobile device. With a huge amount of tools and information at your fingertips its the ideal tool for studying pages, tweaking CMS or blog templates, checking for errors or indeed any other web design/development task one can concieve of.

The Web Developer toolbar runs on Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Firefox, in addition to other Gecko-based browsers such as Seamonkey and Flock. A version of the Web Developer Toolbar for Chrome is now also available.

Search Status
The Search Status toolbar is ideal for SEOs or indeed anyone with an interest in their website’s search engine ranking. Available for both Firefox and Seamonkey it shows both the Google page rank of each visited page and can also display the rankings of Alexa, Complete and mozRank. There are also options to view backlinks from Google and Yahoo site explorer, indexed pages on Google and Yahoo/Bing, check the site on Archive.org, view WhoIs information, meta tag information and more.

Noscript
Installing the Noscript add-on for Firefox (or Gecko-compatible browsers) is a great way to keep your browsing safe, secure and private. Noscript blocks various scripts which may be dangerous such as Java, Javascript and Flash and the security vunerabilities which might result from them. You can then easily disable the protection for trusted sites such as your email account or other regular sites.

This is an update, of sorts, to my earlier post on free Photoshop alternatives.

Pixlr is a free, online image editor that allows you to upload files for editing directly through your browser, make edits, apply filters and other Photoshop-type tasks before saving the file back down to your computer.

Though not quite as powerful as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, it’s well worth bookmarking, especially for emergencies, like when on the road and away from one’s computer, it’s the ideal app for quick edits.

Internet Explorer 6 was the default browser bundled with Windows XP and has been around for nine years now. Since then there have been two new iterations of IE; IE7 in 2006 copying Opera and Firefox with the introduction of tabbed browsing, and IE8, released last year.

As more and more people upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 7 is beginning to loose ground and Internet Explorer 6 has begun its slow slip into obscurity.

I am writing this on behalf of all the designers and developers out there who wish to speed up the process.

Back at the beginning of IE6’s life cycle rival browsers like Firefox and Opera didn’t have a fraction of the amount of users they have today. As IE6’s rate of adoption increased, however, so too did the adoption rate of these new rival browsers, as many people jumped ship and never returned – much to Microsoft’s annoyance.

(In fact the company often went to some rather sneaky lengths to protect its market share.)

In addition to its long history of security flaws which didn’t provide a back door, so much as a wide open front door, to hackers, IE6 was also a web designers nightmare. For one it had issues displaying .png files correctly plus a whole host of CSS styling issues, such as its own unique interpretation of positioning rules.

In short, the browser didn’t always display pages the way it was supposed to. So whenever somebody designed a website and wrote the code to proper international web standards, the result, when viewed in the Microsoft browser, often looked terrible. This meant that web designers (including yours truly) often had little choice but to design separate stylesheets just so the design would look “correct” in the broken browser.

As for web developers… the poor people, they have suffered so much for too long.

The good news for those in the industry, now that Google has officially dropped support for IE6, is that the rest of the world is bound to follow suit. Apple are halfway there already and ongoing issues with Flash also mean that Adobe would undoubtedly be more than happy to dump the browser too. In other words, Internet Explorer 6 has become the new floppy disc drive.
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I got this email this morning, it looks almost identical to Twitter emails except for the fact that the account I received it on does not have a Twitter account connected to it. Bit of a dead giveaway that, but still, it’s quite convincing.

The email says:

Hello, Twitter-er!

You have 2 (or more) unread message(s) from Twitter System.

With a URL underneath, which, in the body of a HTML email, appears to be directed to Twitter, but is in fact directing someplace else. This isn’t new, obviously, there have been emails like this around for years, for Facebook, for online banks, for Paypal and eBay – for every service you can imagine, the idea being to either:

A: Get your Username & Password – especially for financial services like Paypal.

B: Get your Credit Card number & related details.

C: Get you to click on a link that will download malware to infect your computer.

D: All of the above.

Whether it’s a phishing attack or a malware attack the results can be equally devastating so always take precautions. In many email clients all it takes is to hover over any hyperlinks to see where they point to. Worst case scenario you can always right click and copy the URL to the clipboard and then paste it into notepad. This way you’ll know for certain whether the hyperlink in the email is really pointing where it says it is.

Even this can be misleading however. Depending on the font used it can be difficult to distinguish from the real URL and a spoofed one, observe:

www.paypal.com – Paypal.com as normal.

Paypa1.com – Paypa1 (number one) in Times New Roman

PaypaI.com – PaypaI (capital i) in Arial

There’s a million other variants one can do with any number of legitimate websites.

So, if you’re still paranoid – congratulations, you should be! – then you can always look at some of these URL malware scanners to see if there are any nasty surprises lurking in the links of your emails.

Having a good virus and firewall protection layer and ensuring that these programs are regularly updated will help protect you from these sorts of attacks. As will ensuring that you also regularly update and patch your email client, browser and operating system.

Vigilance and common sense, however, is the only true protection – so always remember the five golden rules:

1. If you’re not sure where the link goes don’t click on it.
2. If you’re not sure what an attachment is don’t open it.
3. If you receive unsolicited* (spam) email don’t ever reply to it
4. Unless your email client or antivirus program already has an automatic email attachments scanning feature, always download and scan attachments first before opening them

and finally

5. If the email comes from a known contact with links/attachments but with very brief and often baffling and grammatically-questionable text, e.g. “hey u – check this out!” always contact that person and ask whether he/she really sent it or not.

If they reply and say they never sent it then that person’s computer is infected with a virus which has most likely sent itself out to every one of their contacts already. This can be very devastating not just for the security and privacy of a business, but for its reputation too. So if you do suspect you’ve received such a virus be sure to tactfully inform them of that fact, as the sooner they’re made aware of it the better.

Be aware that whilst many spam emails pretend to have an opt-out link at the bottom these are often used to verify that your email address is correct and clicking on them will only result in more spam. It can be hard to tell, sometimes, because you may also be receiving legitimate ezines/newsletters that you subscribed to but have since forgotten about. When in doubt, look the company/organisation up on Google and if you’re still not sure, you can always just flag the emails as spam.

Read more about how to prevent phish emails & spam.

Free Windows Media Player Alternatives

The Klite Codec Pack is a collection of all major media codecs and also includes an excellent, standalone media player called Media Player Classic. As its name suggests Media Player Classic is designed to look like an older version of Windows Media Player. It is a very lightweight media player meaning it is quick to launch and takes up little in the way of system resources. MPC plays all major video and audio files and is also capable of playing DVD video files.

VLC Media Player is another free, high-quality media player. The player is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and many other operating systems besides. Like MPC, it is far more lightweight than Windows Media Player and can play all major audio and video files as well as the ability to directly play DVDs.

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In today’s world protecting your privacy, security and your confidential and financial data is paramount.

Many computers come off the shelf with trial periods of major brand anti-virus suites installed, usually McAffee or Norton. These software suites may offer a degree of protection however once the trial period expires they tend to not just merely nag you, but try to actively terrify you into buying the full version.

It’s enough to make you afraid to get out of bed in the morning.

Thing is there are many antivirus programs out there which don’t cost a thing and, in many cases, offer superior protection to boot. (more…)