As the title suggests, I have resigned from ADP, Inc. and will remain on hand for transitional efforts through February 6, 2009. My time spent with ADP has been incredibly enlightening. From the highs of successful projects to the automotive industry’s role in our economy, I have met a number of wonderful people and learned a wealth of knowledge.

Those who have known me a while likely know that I have co-founded two SEO firms in the past. Rather than start up another firm this time, I’m going to back to a simpler time of consulting on organic SEO and project management.

Thankfully too, I am fully booked and unable to accept any new contract work or opportunities. This is a very, very good opportunity both to exit ADP and make the most of a new and exciting opportunity. There may be more details in coming months, too.

I’ve opted to rewrite this entire post. It was perhaps too personal for an SEO blog – and too open ended to be used constructively.

This past Saturday afternoon I decided to disconnect and head North with nothing more than a duffel bag and a few too many Red Bulls. The whole point was gain some clarity as well as a new perspective of things. I drove through a few areas and saw a couple of things that meant something to me sentimentally.

It wasn’t intended to this dramatic retreat. I think the first rendition of this post made it seem that way though. I was just out to clear my head a bit.

And it worked. Wonders. I had to text message my brother and email my mother a few times to make sure I was going to the right places – but aside from that, the disconnection held up.

I feel like this week is an important one for me and those who know me… And clearing my head really allowed me to realize what was most important relative to those topics.

Refreshed, I offer you these tidbits of advice…
1.) Check the forecast. I had no idea it’d snow so much
2.) Red Bulls are not water. Consuming them in abundance develops serious cases of the shakes
3.) Bring a variety of CDs. The radio in the car doesn’t work much at all, so I had 2 cds repeating
4.) When you see snowmobile races on a lake, you’re too far North.
5.) You’ve spent too much time in the car if you dance and get giddy to songs like this

As the post title suggests I’m talking about uSocial. Specifically, uSocial.net. I’m not sure what they prefer to go by and we won’t know too much more until they launch on December 1st. When I hope you choose not to do business with them.

Emails from Serena Adamson at uSocial.net

I was contacted early Monday by Serena Adamson, the Publicity & Marketing Manager for uSocial.net. She emailed me about a joint venture opportunity where I would effectively pimp uSocial.net in exchange for some affiliate commissions.

It makes sense, provided that you didn’t take time to learn about me before pitching me. It was just last week that I ranted on ethics and social conversations, right?

Okay, fine.

So I took the bait looking to hear more about this wonderful proposal. The response I got back was both appauling and frustrating. Social Media Marketing is for some reason seen as a relative to Search Engine Marketing. I don’t buy that other than for the value of link generation – but that’s another topic for another time.

Rather than post Serena’s entire reply, here are two parts I want to highlight. The emphasis placed on certain sections are all my doing.

uSocial.net is a traffic generation company who provides our clients with high-quality traffic at a cost that cannot be compared with PPC, banner advertising and most other forms of traditional paid traffic generation. We manipulate social bookmarking sites like Digg and provide our client’s content on these sites with paid votes, enabling them to quickly and easily reach the front page of these sites and in turn, receive a flood of traffic. On average with our clients in testing, we have been able to provide over 100,000 unique visitors in 24 hours with an investment which upon launch will cost clients between $200-$300 USD with Digg, and around $100-$150 with StumbleUpon and Propeller. However, we have experienced up to 220,000 unique visitors in 24 hours. And unlike cheap paid hits sites, this is all quality, unique traffic coming from social bookmarking sites.

…

While most people can see the extreme value in investing in votes for sites like Digg, many are apprehensive about using such services as in the past it has resulted in their social bookmarking accounts being closed, or their site being banned from these sites. With uSocial this is a thing of the past for clients as we submit their content for them as well as place paid votes on it, meaning the risks involved in such practices are now a thing of the past.

Normally I would just fire off an irate reply, but I decided to see how far I could get Serena to go here. I asked her openly if I could blog about uSocial.net here on my blog with the intentions of raising awareness to the service, the launch of it, and its impact on the space. Word for word, that was my request.

Serena was all for it.

What About Ethics?

It’s no secret that Digg (and other communities) have taken strong stands against those in violation of the terms of service. Accounts have been banned. Sites have been effectively excluded. While some can rightfully get upset about how they’ve gone about doing that, Kevin Rose and the rest of Digg are trying to make the entire community a better place.

Enter the topic of ethics.

Don’t get me wrong. I could use some extra money just as much as the next guy. I’ll still favor ethics over a quick buck any day.

But these guys have a trademarked tag line of Get votes. Get traffic. Get Paid.

It sounds like one of those “Get Listing in 3,457,286 Search Engines -GUARANTEED” claims of bullshit.

Whatever happened to transparency? Why can’t they just say with no degree of uncertainty – that they’re spamming the shit out of social networks, polluting the user communities and gaming what is shown as the most popular stories?

Another thing. On their About Us Page they display their email addresses as an image with the following disclaimer:

You won’t be able to click the addresses above as we’ve made it an image to prevent those naughty spam-bots getting a hold of it, so we ask that you simply type it manually into whatever email program you currently use.

Right, because you’re all about the reduction of spam on the ‘net. I hope no one posts your email addresses of contact@usocial.net or affiliates@usocial.net anywhere else for those bots to find.

Sorry, it’s just unethical. I may not care if they didn’t try to dismiss the “risks involved” to site owners. You and I both know that someone will hire them in an flash and pay up for their services, and eventually get burned.

Secretive Social Bookmarking Ninjas

In the link building and search engine marketing space, ninja has become synonymous with Jim Boykin‘s firm, We Build Pages, an organization that has Jim fighting to preserve their image in the honor of ethical marketing.

uSocial.net claims to have “Secretive Social Bookmarking Ninjas”. As if ninjas alone conjures up images of massive, fumbling thugs who do nothing but stand out like a sore thumb.

When you decide to use uSocial to generate traffic for your website, sales page or product, we use our extensive network of secretive Social Bookmarking Ninjas to generate as many votes as you’d like for your website or content on social bookmarking sites Digg, StumbleUpon and Propeller. This will result in your website or page being shown on the much sought after front  page of these social networking portals and inevitably lead to a flood of traffic to your site…

More on the ninjas can be seen in their FAQ section:

Who votes for my submission on the social bookmarking sites?
We have our own network of Social Bookmarking Ninjas who are all employees of uSocial. Whereas our competitors rely on other Internet users to vote on content for them, which is not only unreliable but can result in some disgruntled social bookmarking site users giving negative votes, our worldwide employees are all screened and their voting monitored to ensure that the greatest possible amount of your votes are delivered to you, as well as being delivered on-time.

Flaunting Their Success in the FAQs

One visit to their FAQ page reveals that they’re openly gaming Digg and others. Remember the whole account deletion subject? Check this FAQ out:

Am I doing something illegal when using your vote-buying service?
No. While social bookmarking sites don’t like people buying votes on their sites, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing it. Sites like Digg forbid you buying votes as part of their terms and service and they can close your account as a result of you purchasing votes, though we have already served tens of thousands of votes and as yet, not one of our users has reported to us their account has been closed.

They then go on to casually address the risk they’ve already sold you against:

Is is possible my social bookmarking account could be banned if I buy uSocial votes? Unfortunately yes, this is possible as several of the sites we use forbid it as part of their terms of service, however we have already tested thousands of votes over dozens of accounts and as yet, no account has been closed due to the secretive and advanced methods of vote generation we use.

Protect Social Communities

The great thing about social communities online is that they tend to police themselves pretty well. I hope if nothing else, some of the more conscious members of these networks can help spread the word about uSocial and be on the lookout for their continued spamming when the company officially launches on December 1st.

If you happen across something you think is suspect, keep an eye on it and those involved with the item’s promotion. It’s pretty clear that uSocial has a network of ninjas into the hundreds.

Parting Shots

uSocial.net also touts their incredible charity program saying that they want to have a positive impact on the world they’re polluting. Awesome. It’s time to use their own words against them. “..thank you for supporting us and in turn, supporting a positive change in this world. Do your part — help us make a change!”

Help me make a change here. Let’s rid quality sites and communities of these slimy characters.

It doesn’t matter how large or small the group is… It’s simply tough for me to get used to.

I was sitting around a bar Monday night with Eddy, Hunter and Matt before we went over to the Cambridge SEO Meetup Group’s event where I was speaking. Once they convinced me that a stiff Sapphire and Tonic may do me some good, I was good to go.

At the end of the night I was more than happy to have been there. Attendees engaged in conversation and proactively gave one another suggestions and feedback. it was exactly what an SEO meetup is all about. But, I still worried about not having brought enough information, insight or perspective for folks to appreciate.

I just went back to the meetup page though and saw some of these comments…

“ Excellent speaker. Real world experience that relates to what I do on a daily basis. ”
Todd Greenwood

“ I thought the presentation by Eric Lander was informative and certainly worthwhile. I am new to the SEO space so some of the allusions to php coding was a bit above my head, but I actually got most of the content. I also liked the interaction with the audience. I learned a lot from the questions being asked and liked the relaxed and open atmosphere of the meeting. ”
Claude Pelanne

“ The speaker was excellent. He dismissed some old myths about how to do SEO and told us clearly how to modify our web sites to generate more business.
Jerry Shapiro

“ Another excellent meeting and discussion. The speaker was excellent and full of unique insights. The ensuing discussions resulted in some excellent knowledge sharing and fruitful interaction. The networking component was excellent with good exchange of contacts and information. ”
Kiril Stefan Alexandrov

“ It was my first time, and being someone who is just getting to know SEO it was great! I took a ton of notes so that I could read more about the things that I did not know. The open forum was great because real world problems were discussed and advice was given from the guest speaker and the more experienced audience. Overall, I thought it was a great meeting. Well orchestrated. ”
Joshua Brown

Seriously guys? I owe you a tremendous amount of thanks.  Last Monday night was exactly what I needed on so many levels. Anytime you’d like for us Rhode Islanders to join you again, you let us know. :)

I’ll be there. Likely with a hearty crew of my ADP search team. If you’re planning to attend, hit me up with an email or comment so I know to look for you and say hi.

I was reminded of how passionate I can become when I was speaking Monday night. I said a few things that in may have rubbed people the wrong way. While my first inclination was to apologize – I opted not to.

That’s because ethical practices are becoming more important to me. There’s no excuse for search marketers to continually trick, game or mislead resources in the industry for the sake of being successful.

You either know your shit, or you don’t.

I will admit that I don’t know much. I wield findings, opinions and assumptions based on my 9 years in the space when challenged and often hope to be countered. I love that conversation because it’s engaging, fruitful and in many cases, eye opening.

We’re all learning. We’re all trying to be innovative. It’s that drive to become better that creates the competitiveness and passion that we all find inside of us. I just tend to be really, really competitive.

Sadly though, criticism often gets tossed aside in fear of it really being constructive. That’s what happened Monday night. We as early adopters of this marketing vertical need to get past that. We all deserve to be in the mindset where we can share thoughts and opinions constructively.

In the situation I mentioned above, an attendee of the event said that he and colleagues were frequently adding multiple, positive reviews to their clients’ businesses in Google Local, Yelp and other resources.

Seriously… What the fuck are you thinking? Local search and the integration of socially contributed information is the foundation for enhanced listings. Maps, images, videos and alternative media are all being served up because it improves the user experience of those performing a search query.

But for your clients, it matters more that they benefit from bogus reviews in an effort to beat out competing sites – even if their products and services are inferior. Please.

Rather than have a conversation in the moment though, this person opted for a defensive track. It’s unfortunate because with the size of the group, we really could’ve had a great time with the topic. I’m not saying that review driven sites can’t be used as part of a marketing plan… Just learn how to do things ethically.

Motivate your client to encourage honest reviews. Help them to become more engaged in online conversations. Don’t take it upon yourself to pollute the legitimate reviews in a vertical or niche because it’s convenient and you can profit from it. It’s just pathetic. You should know better. And it reminds me yet again as to why this industry needs some sort of standards.

The key to this whole thing is innovation. No one in the space will innovate on their own. It takes time, effort and being open minded to truly break through to the next big thing.  But being innovative doesn’t mean you have to game the system with risky or shady practices.

I mean… If you have to cheat the game to compete… Maybe it’s time to play a different game.

Preface
On Tuesday October 7, 2008, I spoke at the Search Marketing Expo East (“SMX East”) event at the Javits Center in New York City.  The panel I was part of discussed Enhanced Listings, and my topic in particular was the Google Sitelinks program.

Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable live blogged the session, and his coverage of the panel is available here.

Finally, as a disclaimer of sorts – I’d like to address the naming of Project Big Water. On the morning of October 7th, my research into the Google Sitelinks program was dubbed “Project Big Water” by industry friends who also shared excellent examples with me to research. Since that day, BigWatah.com has launched, and, Brent D. Payne blogged on Marketing Pilgrim about Big Watah and this effectively unrelated event here.

And with that housekeeping out of the way, lets talk Google Sitelinks.

Google Sitelinks: An Introduction

Google Sitelinks.  What are they? They’re a series of links that Google will display underneathth the first organic search result. You’re probably very familiar with Sitelinks visually – so lets start with Google’s example from the Webmaster Central help center.

Again, this visual is probably quite familiar to you.  But before we begin to dissect these links, lets take a closer look at why Google displays these links to users.

Why does Google offer Sitelinks?

It is my belief that Google chooses to display Sitelinks for a few reasons:

Help users navigate your site: I’ll start with this bullet point because it comes straight out of the  Webmasters/Site Owners Help section. It’s also quite sensible for Google, as their primary concern should be a high quality search experience. Sitelinks will help you to find what you’re after more quickly and easily by eliminating clicks.

To help refine search queries: I’ll venture out on a limb here and say that most people searching Google are lazy. So lazy in fact, that we’ll jump at an opportunity to type less than we already do, even if it means we don’t find what we’re after right away.  Enter Sitelinks. A simple branded query for something like “disney” will allow a searcher to simply click their way onto popular topics and site sections like vacations, Mickey Mouse, or perhaps the Disney Store. Google is interpreting your search and producing immediate refinements based on what they believe to be most useful to you.Here’s an example that I used in my panel presentation for a Google search result on “honda“:

I think the above example is great because it shows us how a brand name like Honda can be interpreted in so many ways. Most consumers will probably be after Honda’s cars, trucks and SUVs — so it’s no surprise to see Automobiles as the number one link.  It’s not unrealistic though to think someone may just lazily search for “Honda” when wanting to check out something about their racing teams, off road vehicles, investor relations, etc.

To link to important pages: Compounding on the previous bullet point, you will often see Sitelinks for the most important pages of a web site.  Why? In addition to being popular resources, important pages are useful and help to improve the search experience.  On smaller web sites you will often find Sitelinks that line up with conventional pages such as the “about us”, “contact information”, “driving directions”, “store locator”, etc.

When do Google Sitelinks Display?

Everyone wants to know how to get Sitelinks to appear for their site. But first, we must look into when they will appear… And that question of “when?” can easily be answered… When one site dominates a search query. We’re talking about sites that are so far in first place, second place couldn’t touch them with all the SEO and backlinks in the world. Unless it was me consulting for them.

In other words, its entirely possible to have Sitelinks display for queries that are not done for brand names.  Since the Sitelinks program debuted in the summer of 2006, more and more non-branded SERPS contain Sitelinks.  All indications are that Google will continue this trend as they look to improve the quality of their search results.

My favorite SERP to demonstrate this is for “video games” where GameSpot is simply killing it with each of the major consoles itemized.  Someone in their SEO department deserves a vacation.

Other times you may see Sitelinks in the SERPs may include important people’s names and proprietary phrases. As an aside, I found it cool that Matt Cutts doesn’t get any Sitelink love but Jonathan Hochman and Stephan Spencer both do.

[Puts on Tin Foil Hat...]

You know what else I think contributes to Sitelinks? Analytical data. Not exclusively Google Analytics, either. I’m talking Google Toolbar data. General usage statistics. Common clickthrough paths. All of those things.

If Google knows that 3,000 people a day are conducting the same search query, clicking through to the same pages in the same sequential order all before exiting a site… Wouldn’t it make sense for them to include a Sitelink to the final destination page?  Of course it would.  And Google has more than enough data to put those paths together.

Theoretical? Of course. But certainly possible.

Fundamentals of Google Sitelinks

Okay, its time to take a deeper dive into the elements at play when Sitelinks are determined and displayed.

The first and most annoying is the fact about the Sitelinks program is that it is an entirely automated system.  You can’t enable Sitelinks.  They’ll either be there, or they won’t be. All of my research has shown that there is a search volume threshold that helps trigger when Sitelinks display.

We need to realize that Sitelinks uses an entirely independent algorithm than the traditional organic search results.  Early indications were that order of Sitelinks was determined by the internal page strength of the pages included in the program. While I certainly believe that internal page strength is a factor involved, it’s certainly not alone.

Another quirk about Sitelinks is that they’ll always display in the same order. You have no editorial control to shift them around at all.

If you want to have any influence at all on your Sitelinks, you’ll want to get your site verified and included into your Google Webmaster Tools account. You may not be able to shift the ordering around or trigger when Sitelinks will or will not display – but you will have some tuning available as I’ll cover later.

The last piece involved here is your own creativity and ingenuity. You can easily drive yourself crazy trying to determine why your Sitelinks behave the way they do… But take it all with a grain of salt.  This is still a very new program with regards to optimization techniques – and it will take a lot of testing to get it right.

Google Sitelinks and Google Webmaster Central

As mentioned above, you’ll need to get your site verified with Google’s Webmaster Central if you hope to influence the Sitelinks displayed for any domain. Once you have done that, you can access your Sitelinks panel through the following navigation:

Once you’re inside that area, things get a little funny on you.  I’ll cover some of the nuances though in the next section…

Frustrations & Quirks with Google Sitelinks

Controlling and Blocking Sitelinks: With the Sitelinks program, there’s no inclusion model Google simply spiders your content, runs your site through an algorithm and pushes out a list of Sitelinks if they deem you worthy. So in that aspect, there is already very little control.

It’s possible though that the Sitelinks Google suggests are ones that you do not want displayed.  For this purpose, Google does allow you to block Sitelinks from appearing in the search results.  I’ve come across a number of cases where this was particulary useful, including here on my own blog.  Many times there is simply content you do not want promoted with the perceived level of authority that a Sitelink carries.

So.. Blocking Sitelinks is easy, right?  Sure it is. Just click on the “Block” link and as Google says, that link will be blocked from appearing for 90 days.

Once you’ve blocked URLs, the blocking period will reset to another 90 days every time you visit the Sitelinks page in your Webmaster Tools account.

No joke. that proves to be problematic when you’re running tests in an agency style environment because there’s no way to check in on one site, see what’s blocked and then leave. There needs to be more editorial control here and I think it’s a very weak assumption for Google to just increase the blocks to 90 days again and again.  You can easily choose to unblock URLs too with just a click inside the Sitelinks panel.

Time frame for Blocks to Stop Displaying: Also, the blocks are not instantaneous.  Test cases that I have run show that there’s an average of about 12 to 14 days before blocks are reflected in the search results.  I’d assume that time frame will shorten up as more people begin using the Sitelinks program… But for now, it is what it is.

Three to Eight Sitelinks: That’s the total number of links that will display in the search results. If you have an active inventory of more than 8 Sitelinks appearing in Google’s Webmaster Tools – start blocking out as needed to make sure the top 8 there are the ones you really want to be used.

You can always block out more, too.  You don’t need to fill up all 8 slots. You do need to maintain at least three unblocked Sitelink URLs though.  Any less than that and the system will stop displaying your Sitelinks alltogether.

Case Sensitivity: Another quirk with Sitelinks is their inability to maintain character case in links.  Everyone is familiar with Apple and their iPhones, iPods, ITunes and so on… But check out how Google displays their Sitelinks:

Getting New Content into Sitelinks: Ready to be discouraged? For the sites inside of my testing group, the newest content showing up in the Sitelinks was more than 7 weeks old.  That’s horrifying for sites (including blogs, in particular) that thrive on current events and stories.

Google Sitelinks: Best Practices

Sitelinks is simply an enhanced type of search result.  Therefore, the standard SEO variables are in play here, with a heavy emphasis on links – both internal and external links.

You’ll want to make sure you structure your content in a typical manner. Stick to content themes and employ the SEO101 approach.  You’ll want to use headings where appropriate to organize content on pages and pay close attention to providing clear and concise page titles.

Since link popularity and page strength are both important factors in the Sitelinks algorithm, be sure to measure links using the Webmaster Central tools. As is the case with most Google SEO, the more links – the better.  Just be careful not to rely too heavily on any one type of link or anchor text.  Subtle variations seem to help Google understand the importance of Sitelink candidates.

If you care about your Sitelinks – never 301 and existing Sitelink.  In three seperate case studies that I ran earlier this summer – all three sites lost the Sitelink URLs (old, and new).  One of those sites had been showing 7 Sitelinks, and one 301 somehow shut down all of the Sitelinks in a few weeks time with no other changes having been made.

Google Sitelinks & XML Sitemaps

Kate Morris detailed a test that she had run where the priority supplied in an XML sitemap actually influenced the ordering of pages in the Sitelinks program.

Like Matt McGee, I’ve never found XML Sitemaps to be much of a help at all.  But, I can understand how (or at least why) Google would be open to considering this data for shifting Sitelinks around.

I haven’t had a chance to test this out myself yet – but I do have a test planned for the next few weeks.

Using Social Media Tagging to Score Google Sitelinks

One of the posts here on my blog that I needed to block was a blog post about someone.  That post had a number of people tagged too.  In less than a month that entry shot up to the top of my Sitelinks which caused some concern.

It’s not that it was bad content – it’s just not that important to users who are looking for me by name.

In researching the backlinks on that particular post, I found that Technorati was carrying major influence since many of the backlinks were reported on www.technorati.com in addition to the various sub-domains of technorati.com including feed.technorati.com, search.technorati.com and others.

Other social media sites that used tagging to help create a massive amount of backlinks include Friendfeed, Twitter and MyBlogLog.

Questions? Comments?

Admittedly, the topic of Google Sitelinks can be a bit dry and plain.  When used correctly though, Sitelinks can really improve upon Google’s user experience while also providing more opportunities for search marketers.

But – this is still a very new program in the sense that Webmaster Central control is only a few months old. If you have any questions on this program, I’ll certainly do my best to help out. Leave a comment below so we can help to grow this resource out for more users to benefit from.

The SEMNE event was originally slated to have Vanessa Fox‘s panel of Using Marketing to Enhance Your Search Traffic. Vanessa will be unable to make it due to the passing of a family member though, and our thoughts are with Vanessa during what’s certainly a difficult time.

Tonight’s presentation of Using Marketing to Enhance Your Search Traffic will discuss how marketing can (and should) be used to enhance your search engine traffic. With speakers Chris Elwell, Dawn Briggs and Robert Jackson – I’m really looking forward to tonight’s event.

If you’re in the NY Metro Area or Connecticut and can make the drive, I’d love to meet up and talk search with you. Here’s the complete event details…

Trumbull Marriott Merritt Parkway
180 Hawley Lane
Trumbull, CT 06611
(203) 378-1400
Get directions

6:30PM-9:00PM

Speakers

• Chris Elwell of Third Door Media
• Dawn Briggs of Business.com
• Robert Jackson of Hochman Consultants

Admission
Admission is free to SEMNE Members and $49 for non-members.

Online Registration
Online registration is available for this event.

Thanks to the SEMNE Crew
As always, much thanks goes out to Pauline Kerbici and Jill Whalen, the co-founders of SEMNE – as well as Jonathan Hochman who helps with the CT based events and coordination.

The Last SEMNE Event: Getting Into Google
I haven’t had a chance to make it to many of the events since we bought our corporate membership, but I have found them to be very rewarding on a number of levels.

The last event I attended was back in May of 2007 and it featured Dan Crow, Director of Crawl Systems for Google. SEMNE has a complete write up of that event including a photo of Brandy up there. Jill also had a write up in High Rankings that’s worth a read.

I’ll try to get a full post recapping tonight’s event on the blog in the next day or so.

Don’t froget to find me if you’re going!

Talk about proactive brand management, right?

I can’t steal any credit here. I spoke with Scott Polk earlier today as he prepared to have a phone call with Derek Ball, CEO of Tynt. Derek was interested in what Scott had to say, and based on the research and efforts that Scott (as well as many others) provided – Derek and Tynt were prepared to respond thoroughly.

Before diving in too far, I’d like to draw your attention to a few resources, cited accordingly:

• Derek’s comment on my first blog post (available here)

Hi Eric and crew. Eric, you’ve put a lot of energy and concern in your posting and I want you to know that we are listening and not trying to be a huge thorn in your side. We’ve been thinking through many of the points that you (and others) have raised to our attention. I’ve written a more detailed response on our blog for those who are interested at http://tynt.wordpress.com/ . From your comments I fear that Tynt in its beta effort has already registered so deeply negative in your mind that I do not know if we can win you back, but I do want to let you know that we want to be valuable and useful members of this community and would welcome input on how you believe we can do this.

• Derek Ball’s comment to the Sphinn Community

Hey everyone.  We’ve put some of our thoughts from Tynt on our blog.  If you are interested, please check out http://tynt.wordpress.com/

• And of course, Derek’s complete response to the SEO community. In the interest of space, please read Derek’s full post on their blog. Click here to open it up in a new window and not lose your place. :)

First, A Note of Thanks & Appreciation

First off, I need to thank everyone who read and weighed in on this issue. My approach was rushed as more information became available – and I know that it was not a great representation of me or my full take on Tynt’s intentions.

I apologize for that.

Reputation Management in Action

In our little niche industry, “reputation management” typically refers to pushing out some negative listings and promoting positive information. That’s skewed because of our professional background though and I want to recognize Derek and others at Tynt for being proactive. They not only responded quickly, but they were willing to listen to what we had to say.

Tynt may still cause concern for many content owners, but the fact that they’re willing to listen and provide resources for us to accomplish what we’re after is commendable.

I think it’s great that Derek not only commented here on my blog, on Sphinn and on the Tynt Blog; he actually took time out on extremely short notice to work with Scott and schedule a call where concerns could be aired.

A Review of My Core Issues with Tynt

Tynt replicates your site and does so in order to allow it’s users to markup your page visually.  Whether users add notes or clipart-like graphics, or simply cover things up… It’s all fair game.  Since they’re actually visiting tynted.net when they do this, it doesn’t affect the general visitor to my domain.  I get that.

Unfortunately, search engines do not.  Or at least have not.  Not yet, anyway.

In my original post I referenced a Google Search for “site:tynted.net” (quotes removed). At the time I mentioned that there were results being served up from Apple Insider in those search results, too. If you click on the screenshot I provided you’ll notice that in addition to being indexed, the pages on www.appleinsider.com.tynted.net also had their content cached.

And that’s a problem for me and other site owners.

When a user accesses a domain on tynted.net, they’re effectively having the visual overlay of Tynt appear over the page they’re browsing. The content on the sourced domain is still being served up by the fully qualified domain being viewed.

If you review Google’s Cache of pages indexed though (such as this one from Apple Insider) you will see that the text from the sourced page is now, in the eyes of Google, owned by Tynted.net.

This creates opportunities for confusion, as site owners now have to battle tynted.net as original soruces of content and information. I know that it’s unlikely that a site as large as Apple Insider would be effected, but that doesn’t create any less of a risk for them or other, more vulnerable content publishers.

Now, Derek speaks a bit to this point in the post on Tynt’s Blog:

…we have been very publicly accused of being ‘content-thieves’ and scraping content from other sites, storing it in our own systems, and serving it up for our own benefit and revenue. When the Tynt plug-in is used, we only ever visit the original site and all Tynt content is simply layered on top of the existing site…

That is incorrect. Once the text cached Google believes the content is indeed that of tynted.net subdomains. While Derek may not have realized it, Google is absorbing the content as if it were served up by Tynt as the cached version of pages show.

It’s worth noting too that last night images, css files, robots.txt files (thanks to Rae for pointing this out) and even webmaster’s sitemaps (ex: domain.com/sitemap.xml) were all able to be served up through Tynt.

Michael Gray Weighs in on Copyrights, incrediBILL Takes a Stand

Everyone in the search marketing space knows Michael Gray. I found one of his Twitter updates earlier this evening to be quite telling:

heh @tynt points for reaching out and trying to fix things http://is.gd/2vCh but I think you are wrong

My personal stance on Tynt is still a bit undecided as I can see the pros and cons of the service. Michael however carries a lot of influence and his opinions are not only respected – but also believed in by many unwilling to form judgment of their own.

Michael continues with two more updates (one in response to muunkky who disliked my approach in my previous post):

Update #2 — if there are any copyright lawyers following get in touch w me I actually have a full legal copyright on some sites be fun 2 see what happen

Update #3 — @muunkky showing copyrighted material without permission on a domain they own

His argument is simple and powerful. If site content is held under copyright, what legal abilities exist for Tynt to replicate that and permit markup on their own site?

If you’re familiar with Brett Tabke‘s WebmasterWorld you are likely familiar with incrediBill (Twitter, WMW Profile), the moderator of the Search Engine Spider Identification Forum and Cloaking Forum. Bill published a post on his blog called Exploring The Tynted Web which featured statements including the following…

Many webmasters take their livelihoods and reputations very seriously and don’t like being [expletive] with so there needs to be a way to detect the use of Tynt and or a way to opt-out of Tynt before this happens or it could get very ugly.

All very telling of his stance.

I remain surprised that Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Land and others have not discussed this topic yet.

What I Believe Tynt Needs to Do

There are many folks out there who are unwavering in their criticisms and concerns of Tynt. I applaud those people for holding onto their values and defending their stance.

For Tynt though, the time is now. As an emerging brand, company and service – Tynt will forever be challenged by this in a socially driven space.

It’s up to Derek and others at Tyne to make the right decisions moving forward.  The key for Tynt is to move on with this same approach by being proactive, responsive and willing to listen.  Assuming they do this with the same open mindset demonstrated in the past 24 hours, I’m confident they will find more success.

They will need to get the right people involved though.  Also, there’s a risk/reward with being engaged with critics and industry representatives. Being all of those things can take an incredible amount of time, money and planning.

I hope that Tynt understands this.  Based on some personal emails exchanged with Derek Bell, again, I will say that I am confident in their abilities.

My Opinion of the Response?

I openly applaud Derek and Tynt for being responsive to the concerns and criticisms at hand.  At the same time, I applaud Michael Gray, Edward Lewis, Scott Polk, incrediBILL, Rae Hoffman and everyone else who has weighed in on this discussion in the past 24 hours.

But, I simply cannot form any immediate opinion of Derek’s response. To do so now would be taking things out of context. Tynt, to their credit, is a BETA service at this time and restricted to a particular number of users for testing purposes. I will observe, quite closely, everything Tynt is up to.

But to further form an opinion now (as I did last night) would be unfair.

Follow The Tynt Twitter Discussions

Here’s a list of the people I have seen weigh in on the Tynt conversations on Twitter:

• brianrutledge
• derekball
• ericlander
• graywolf
• iancheung
• incrediBILL
• jonkelly
• kristyann
• martinbowling
• melaniephung
• mosquitohawk
• muunkky
• netmeg
• pageoneresults
• scottpolk
• sugarrae
• toddmintz
• todomallorca
• tonyadam
• tynt
• visualfuture

Apologies if I missed anyone.

You can always use Summize to search for tynt, but keep in mind that protected feeds like mine will not appear in those results.

The trouble is, Tynt is a straight up invasion of site owner content.  They’re re-purposing all of your hard work and letting anyone – yes, ANYONE – go in there and mark things up as they’d like.

Like many others concerned about Tynt, I’m testing out various ways to block them in their quest to steal your content, photos and media.

Block Tynt on an Apache Server

With many thanks to incrediBILL, Scott Polk and Edward Lewis, there is an IP range that you can block to help protect your site from being Tynt’d. You’ll need to add the following to your .htaccess file, as David Burke provides:

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^204\.244\.109\.(2(4[0-7]))$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^204\.244\.120\.(1(7[6-9]|8[0-3]))$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [F]

The above effectively kills any access Tynt’s IP range has to your site. Pretty nifty, and certainly more comprehensive than some of the original blocks I was performing. The blocks I had were all based on referral string and/or specific IP addresses. The gentlemen listed above researched things further to arrive at a complete range to block.

SEO Consultants Gets Creative in Blocking Tynt

If you want to see how far you can take things, Edward Lewis has opted to protect www.seoconsultants.com. Just take a look at the 404 page he’s serving up to anyone trying to index www.seoconsultants.com.tynted.net

Tynt is on Twitter

If you’re interested in trying out tynt, I’d suggest you check out nothing further than tynt’s profile on Twitter.  In a rich case of layering on some BS, here’s tynt’s justification / claim to fame:

Tynt lets you put contextual relevance and dialog on web pages for sharing and interaction.

“Contextual relevance” ? I may be on a series of rants here with my blog, but you have to be kidding me.  Look what I can do to the tynt homepage if I’d like!

Tynt’s Questionable Example of Tynt in Action

Thanks to Jon Kelly for posting this and making me realize just how poorly represented the value of Tynt is.  If you check out the page on Tynt.com called “What is It?” you’ll see the following screenshot (click to enlarge).

Screenshot of the What is Tynt? Page on Tynt.com. Click for larger version.

Tynted.net URLs Being Indexed

If you’re working for Apple Insider, I’m sorry – because you’re getting royally screwed right now with all the content tynted.net is stealing.  Take a look at this search results for site: tynted.net on Google.

For reference, there are now 146 results for “appleinsider.com.tynted.net” too.

Tynt and Tynted.net Refuse to Be Blocked

What can I tell you now? You can’t use an .htaccess to block your site from being served up through tynted.net.  They’re using a dynamic range of IPs, so any IP blocks you use is temporary at best.  Likewise, you cannot block the referral source as that too has been bypassed.

And, since Tynt and Tynted.net are not spiders, they’re not actively listening to anything you place in your robots.txt file as well.

Sorry Tynt, I’m not Going Out of My Way

On Twitter, Jeremy Luebke [@JeremyLuebke] provided a possible fix as a Twitter reply to me:

@EricLander Also do a search for proxy hijack solution. THere is one where you cloak a noindex tag to everyone but SEs

(Thanks for permission to republish, as well as for the reply!)

While that could be one possible solution, I believe that most site owners are not going to be prepared or skilled enough to implement such a fix. There needs to be a clear opt-out of this service for *any* webmaster not wishing to have their sites tynt’d.

Are You With Tynt?

If so, please read everything here and correct me if I’m wrong. I hate what you’re doing and you deserve to be up front with webmasters regarding their content and protection. Please contact me if I’m wrong with the above. I’d like to give you an open opportunity to say your piece on this, too.

For reference, here are the folks listed on the Tynt About Us Page:

• Derek Ball (CEO)
• Dayton Foster (COO)
• Kerri Knull (VP Business Development)
• Allan Mackenzie (Executive Chairman, Board of Directors)
• Brian Craig (Director, Board of Directors)
• Guy Kawasaki
• Dr. Steven Woods
• Chris Brahm
• Mark Silva
• Paul Perez
• Kelly Graves
• Serge Klimoff

Hopefully someone from the above list is tracking their Google Alerts and can respond back to us…

Additional thanks to Edward Lewis and Scott Polk for their time in researching this matter further.