I recently got one on one of my sites because I made the mistake of outsourcing the link building to some bombay badboys in India. 3 months later my site got banned…They had been keywording stuffing the hell out of it!!! mainly on blogs and forum posts. My own fault for not keeping an eye on them but my point is NEGATIVE SEO DOES WORK!!!!

After getting over the intial devastation of losing around £75k per month in revenue I turned the situation around and now I am employing them to negative SEO on my competitors (only ones that have gone out of their way to cause me real problems may I add).

This situation is getting ridicolous.Behind the calm exterior Im
sure there some chaos going on inside Google. The bottom line is
neagtive SEO does work. Google have opened the floodgates on this now and are backpeddaling. The quicker they get a disavow solution in place the better.

It seems the gossip around the blogesphere is mixed, many think Schmit did a good job at deflection the accusations and many more think Google is going to be facing an official inquiry by the FTC shortly.  My personal belief is that Google will come up with a proposal to self-regulate because they definitely don’t want the government dictating what they can do.

Forbes had a good article that was mostly against Google and some of the statements were very powerful, like this one:

The grand disconnect at the Google hearing was that Google was oblivious to the concern that they represented their business as non-threatening with no competitive conflict of interest in order to gain content owners trust and business, the bait, and then they violated that trust by flipping their business model mid-game and switching to be the most serious competitive threat these companies could face – all while publicly denying that they are now competitors at all.

Full article here http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcleland/2011/09/22/googles-bait-switch-deception-exposed-at-hearing/

This whole bait and switch conspiracy might be a tad far-reaching but there are lots of factual examples to back it up.  I think Google would be smart to make a move to bury this whole thing before it reaches the general population because soon the pitch-forks will come out.

Read the full submission by Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp here.

There is already many websites out there selling this service.  Here are the promises made by one of them.

• All +1’s come from people with a google account that has been verified by phone (Phone Verified Accounts)
• All +1’s come from real people. No bots are being used!
• All +1’s are being given by manually going to your website and clicking the +1 button It’s untraceble because the +1′s are being given from different IP’s
• All +1’s are given dripped over a couple of days so it looks natural

Can Small Business Do Their Own SEO?

An honest look at the reality many small business owners face when deciding to go the DIY route!

Google – Matt Cutts Debunking Graphic

Very funny!  Must be true.

?

?

The answer is GOOGLE!!! These keywords are very expensive, so less organic results equals more clicks and more money in Google’s pockets.

I do realize this could just be some testing but if it is a sign of things to come,  my feeling is it will translate into a very poor user experience…

In Search

– Google will face some more heavy anti-trust lawsuits and will start to back-off on their greed factor.  Google has now pushed organic (natural) listings down past the fold, squeezing out  online directories and information providers (weather and sports score sites) and have implemented ads right inside emails.

They are so aggressive in their quest to earn another few billion that soon, everyday folks will start realizing that they might not be the best search alternative.   The big question is, can a new search engine or one of the older ones step-up and do something that will help the mainstream searchers switch over?  I predict that besides the rough ride Google might have with anti-trust issues they will remain dominant and retain most of their market share.

In Tech

– Apple will come out with an iPad Lite or iPad Jr. – iPads have been very popular but they sure are big!  I think Apple will have an option for a smaller more compact iPad this year.  My guess is the new version will have a 7.7 inch screen so it will be roughly 20% smaller.

Other Stuff

– A terrorist attack in the USA will succeed on a much smaller scale than 9/11.  I predict something like a bombing in the downtown core of  a major US city in CA or NY.  My guess is that many plots over the last few years have been foiled but the crazy, sick terrorists will continue trying.

– The US government will announce increased rebates for purchasers of electric cars.  The current rebate of $7,500 will be increased to at least $8,000 and maybe as high as $10,000.  The USA and in fact all of North America needs to start ending its love affair with fossil fuels and electric cars are a big part of this solution.

– Similar to the above I predict a breakthrough this year in electric car batteries that will allow for a 25% increase in travel distances and a similar decrease in charging times.

Long Term Prediction

– This one might come across as more science fiction than science but I predict by the year 2050 we will be utilizing solar and lightning power for 90% of the worlds energy needs.

Actually many of my test searches have been getting an interesting page like below:

Now that is a what I call stealth results!  But seriously, how are they going to decide who is in the 7 Google Places spots?  With those being the only listings on the first page, how long till they are selling these for $1000’s a month.  When is a new search engine going to step up and show organic results again?  I understand the concept of a ‘level playing field’ but dropping a nuclear bomb on the land to level it, is not really fair in my opinion.