Another Monsanto Controversy

There are few companies as controversial as Monsanto (Donald Rumsfeld anyone?).  Some accuse the company of nothing short of murder and others claim their innocence with just as much passion.   I ran across this story about the GM seeds and their effect in India. 

Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.

Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts – and no income.

So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.

There are arguments to be made on both sides but I think the one thing that can’t be argued is that the poor and desperate have and will be used as guinea pigs because there is no one to protect them and thus no real downside from a monetary standpoint.  (When drugs expire in a pharmacy and deemed not safe for Americans, they are removed from the shelves and sent back to be sold to the 3rd world countries).   Monsanto and companies like it are completely protected regardless of whether they are wrong or right.  And with total protection comes recklessness as there are no consequences…

SEO: Image Alt Tag Keyword Stuffing

Gotta love image alt tag stuffing.  How did this ever sound like a good idea to these cheaters?

And if you take the time to read some of the text, they not only stuff every sentence with keywords but it’s impossible to read through without taking a knife to your wrist.  How can you put up crap like that and be happy?  I hope these guys are raking in the dough because that’s the only way you could possibly justify crap like that.

Tell Google what you think of them.

SEO Cheater of the Day

Yes, it’s been awhile since my last cheater…had an associate send me a cheater today.    Note, that Google is not able to detect this cheating…again and again we find this to be true.   There will come a time where the public will demand better results from Google but where is Google’s motivation without competition?

Hidden text across the top of the page and note the bottom section.  The bottom section is borderline cheating and only there for the search engines.  Do us all a favor and Report the bastards. 

Report an SEO Cheater to Google
http://www.google.com/search?q=web+site+design+san+diego&hl=en&start=40&sa=N

A couple of random things

Ran across some interesting things lately:

• Brett throws up a lovefest over AlterBridge.  It’s Creed minus Scott Stapp. 
•  Parcells will interview Jeff Ireland for the GM job with Miami.  ouch!  big loss for the boys.
• I got an insider tip on a new contest by Vizio.  The site isn’t really up yet and voting doesn’t start till Jan 7th…but if you want a sneak preview check it out. 
• What’s with the cell phone commercial selling the “Venus” phone to guys?  I can’t remember who does the commercial but as a guy I don’t want to own a phone called ‘Venus”. 
• And of course the New Knight Rider car vs. Kitt
• Can’t wait to see Rambo on Jan 25th.

Google won’t Act

I’ve grown very frustrated with Google over a website that has the #1 ranking on a search phrase that I’m going after for another company.  The website that is sitting at #1 is using hidden text and using repeated words…for example they would be hiding “repeated words repeated words repeated words” 

not even trying to make it look like that text is there for any other reason.  I am not posting the link because I don’t want to help them out anymore.  It’s been four months and I’ve reported them to Google…but they do nothing.  It’s just really frustrating.  Additionally, the site is broken and plainly reads “Server Error in ‘/’ Application.”

I don’t have an answer here…just wanted to vent my frustrations and see if anyone has had a similar experience with Google.  A little competition for Google would do wonders for their product.

I’ve already posted them as cheaters in a previous post. 

SEO Cheaters…these bastards

Sometimes I come across websites that just blatantly cheat and today I found one.  These seo cheaters tried to be clever but it’s easy to find by viewing the source. 

Here’s what you are looking for:

<div id=”Layer12″ style=”position: absolute; left: -825px; top: -865px;

Then they try to hide it even further by adding this:

width: 610px; height: 511px; z-index: 12; visibility: visible”

 Sure it’s visible.  Just show me where?  So report these bastards to Google and get them banned.

Search query is san diego real estate and the resulting page is http://www.google.com/search?q=san+diego+real+estate&hl=en&start=10&sa=N

Once again Google has rewarded these cheaters with a nice ranking considering the competitive nature of their biz.

SEO Cheater of the Day

 These guys almost got away with it.   They just have a little hidden text on the top of their website.  Someone might say “it’s only 3 words.”  But, it’s the principle…you are cheating on purpose and now all my readers and Google know as well. 

As always, report these cheaters to Google.

search phrase is boston real estate and the search page is:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=boston+real+estate

unfortunately, google has these cheaters at #3 in the results.  let’s all applaud Google for a job well done.

SEO Cheater of the Day

Wow.  These bastards are blatantly cheating with little regard for the rules.  Of course, I figured they were cheating right away with all that extra space at the bottom of the page.  But, i had no idea it was this bad.  There is tons of hidden text on that page. 

It is surprising how many sites still employ this technique to achieve rankings…and the biggest problem is that Google isn’t catching them.  For all of Google’s scare tactics, it’s becoming obvious to me that they can’t catch websites cheating.  Yeah..  Yeah.  I have read all of the warnings from Google and the other so called SEO experts out there but the reality is that websites who cheat consistently get high rankings. 

Time and time again, I find websites ranked very high who are using simple cheating tactics.  Google it’s time to clean up your search results or perhaps people will turn to a search engine who can. 

As always, report these cheaters to Google.

http://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+mortgage&hl=en&start=20&sa=N

new york mortgage

SEO Cheater of the Day

I know it’s been awhile since I did one of these but here you go people.  Check out the cheaters!

Whenever I see a dark background on a website that clearly has some type of optimization going on, I immediately look for hidden text…and about 25% of the time it’s there.  Case in point. 

First the text at the top of the page is very questionable and that in itself might set off Google at some point.  Second, look at the bottom of the page.  You will find hidden text and key phrases between the sitemap link and their copyright.  That’s enough to report to Google. 

Report the Cheaters:

To Google

Search phrase is “denver web design”

and here is the link http://www.google.com/search?q=denver+web+design&hl=en&start=10&sa=N

Amazingly, these idiots are on the top of the 2nd page of results…if this keeps up it’s going to be very hard to convince people not to cheat.

Be careful how you use your Description Tag

Don’t do what these morons are doing.  You can view the source and see there description tag…but it’s even worse when you look at the search result page.

Use some common sense in trying to achieve rankings.