Black hat peer-to-peer

If you've ever heard the term 'SEO' bandied about you're likely familiar with the concept of 'black hat' and 'white hat' SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
The good guys wear the white hats - and the bad guys don't.
Just as I expect a whole industry of 'twitter follower optimisation' snake oil salesmen to rock up at brands' doorsteps any day now, so I am fearful of an emerging new style of peer-to-peer corrupters: Those who spam your friends in your name.
We saw an example yesterday on Twitter - albeit (according to the coder behind Twifficiency) by mistake.
Twifficiency was (is?) one of the many borrowers of twitter's API to tell the user something about the way they use twitter - their effectiveness/reach/influence/rank whatever... (image, Lee Marvin via Cinebeats)
This particular version rewarded the visitor with a % score for putting their username into the magic box. The trouble is, Twifficiency then, under the cover of the obfuscating small-print of the Twitter 'allow/deny' screen (below), automatically tweeted that score with an invitation to all your followers to try theirs.
The convention has been to ask for further approval before granting permission to share - often via a tweet which you get to edit, approve and then decide whether or not to share with your peers: White Hat. White Hat doesn't hide behind obfuscation.
The black hat get out clause here is (see below) "access and update your data on twitter".
This apparently can be translated as meaning: "Tweet as if you were me, tweet what you like, and whenever."
If you wear a black hat.
If you wear a white one you know that wouldn't be very nice. You wouldn't like that to happen to yourself. So you don't do it to others. Social beings feel this and know this.
Passing yourself off as someone else to gain benefit has another name in law. Fraud. Not nice is it?
Twifficiency is a benign case. But it's not hard to imagine how less scrupulous developers could exploit the frailties of human nature by making 'you' tweet no end of scurrilous and self-serving content.
It's not good enough to lay the blame on the human desire to hear good stuff about yourself, as some have.
Those that blame ego (why do you want to know how popular/influential etc you are, anyway?) are likely the same people who never google themselves and claim to have zero shared performance anxiety or fear of public speaking.
If you meet one be sure to share the last of my stash of rocking horse shit with them.

Now, we don't want to suggest young James Cunningham did anything more serious than fail in his duty to fellow twitter users yesterday. Next time around, James, take a look at what others do - perhaps learn a few best practice lessons, then try again. We'll forgive a mistake - we've all made them.
Twitter is open. It's API is open. Which means there are doorways open to abuse.
What we have to do in response to this is become ever better at crap detection, at sharing warnings, and at defending the community against those who would more deliberately take advantage.
Let's start with defining what Black Hat Peer To Peer is:

1. Attempting to pass yourself off as another person, in order to access that other person's social graph
2. Hiding behind the small print instead of doing the right thing
3. Using automation to acquire friends/followers
4. Automating the process of dumping those followers who don't follow you back
5. Sending unsolicited and irrelevant commercial messages to users based on shoddy algorithms (if based an anything at all?!)

...er that's mine for now - can you think of examples?

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The threat of SEO to the real-time web

Image via Wikipedia

The brochure, the news report, the press release, the 'professional' communication. They all have something in common - they lack a human voice.

I have often railed against this particular form of insanity (ie when we wish to communicate with humans, so many orgs choose to do so by massaging out the humanity from their messages).

On the Internet this form of received professional speak got replaced (for a large chunk of folks, you know the ones, the 'internet marketers') by a new form of stilted inhuman syntax - writing for seo.

'Don't repeat key words more than 'x' times, do place your keywords in order 'y', don't, do, don't, do.

Don't be flawed, don't be natural. Don't write like you think, don't write like you feel. Don't be human.

And then the real-time web: Lower effort to post. Lower effort to connect. Lower barriers to revealing ourselves. Lower barriers to less guarded spontaneity. Oliver Cromwell would approve.(pictured)

As one of the founders put it: "the trouble with Twitter is that with it you run the risk of revealing the real you."

That risk is the risk you have to take if you care to connect with other humans.

It is a risk that seo drives out.

Now that google is prioritising the real time web in its returns it was inevitable that the SEO pros would wade in.

'Order your 140chars thusly', they will ordain. And I will studiously ignore them.

I am part of a real time web - a very human part. Part of the real time web (as it emerges as the eighth mass media) is its ability for us to become not only the connections, but also the way in which the connections are formed.

Focusing on seo in tweets interrupts that.

It'll fool the automota. But if you aren't worth connecting with no amount of pro-seo styled tweeting will mask this to the humans behind the accounts.

In the old world of site-as-destination there was value in 'driving traffic'. In the new world of user-as-destination the only value is in creating real, enduring human connection.

Only humans, expressing themselves through authentic human voice, can do this.

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Less focus on SEO, more on the point-worthy

Why do we spend so much time focusing on search engine optimisation when perhaps we should be looking at content optimisation?

Time and again I hear how good seo will improve our page rank, will bring us crowds and cover us in gold. And I'm sure it has a role to play.

But the internet is about people pointing at stuff that they feel is worthy of their advocacy. And one thing is for sure: No one points at seo.

Seo is no purple cow (seth godin). But your content and services can be.

Content, as Cory Doctorow put it so well, is to give us something to spark up conversations. It is what people of shared interests want to talk about. Which is why it inspires us to point at it, raising a flag that we are ready to engage in a conversation about it (the simple url links in twitter write this large.

So if you want more relevant visitors, give them better unique things to talk about.

One point-worthy thing a month that no-one else has contributed has so much more value than a 1000 press-releases that can be found in manifold other locations on the web. People might find your version of the press release – but why would they point at you, rather than the other x thousands?

It is the role of media brands to present something point-worthy, something you can't find elsewhere, something that is hard for anyone else to do. Focus on that.

Layer some good seo on that and you may find more relevant people willing to point at you. But don't put the cart before the horse.

Where did you learn to hop?

My daughter wanted to show me a special trick. She's 3. "Watch me daddy!". And she starts hopping on one foot.
I hadn't seen her do that before.
"Well done," says I. "Where did you learn to do that?"
"On my foot."
Quite.
I'm sure there's a lesson for meaning, context, logic and therefore search and seo in that somewhere.

Google doesn't know what you're looking for.

Google puts 'your' brand up for sale

If the news that the community of users owns your brand is only just sinking in, try this for a
size. Google is now going to allow other people (rivals) to bid on 'your' brand's key words in the UK. Via WebWire
According to the report anyone will be able to bid on trademarked names (just as has been the case in the US since 2004).
There's a bit of a panic being raised over on this story about it. Most of the concern is about how this will add complexity to the seo sales world. My heart bleeds.
What about the poor old consumer - looks to me like this carries the risk of creating yet another hurdle between us and getting the return we actually want.
If I search for Nike I'm not looking for Adidas.

Optimise this MoFo!

...as Sean Warwick delicately put it in the original headline for this post on MediaLifeCrisis (retained in the link name).
Really powerful analysis of how seo is the art of disappearing up your own arse. I knew there was good reason for why I think of SEO as the new spam. Sean nails it.
Deserves a wider audience - so please go read and comment.

Search is male

SEO is the new spam. Actually, it's worse!

SEO is the new spam. Actually, it's worse.

It's worse because if I receive some god-awful missive about penile disfunction via email I can simply delete, block sender etc. It is annoying because I've been broadcast at.

SEO is worse because it targets me and makes me part of its deception. I perform the act that brings the spam to me when I enter my search terms.

It's another example of what I call pseudo engagement.

How so? If I mention the I-phone on this blog (apologies I-phone wannabees...) I will receive a certain number of additional visits to this article from people who are interested in the I-phone - not on my tirade against SEO!

So SEO helped you find what you wanted, how exactly?

SEO of the machine kind may deliver increased traffic but if it's gathered in a mercenary 'acquire-at-all-costs' way it's really just a poor man's broadcast - another way of acquiring eyeballs that just aren't interested.

The engines need some human help - community advice, ratings etc. I know what I want. The search engine doesn't.

Irony: I tried searching for this article to reference in this post. I used almost the exact title of it "google doesn't know what you're looking for". It took me three search attempts on google and on this blog's google-powered search! Only when I changed the term 'you're' to 'you are' did I find it.

How does your SEO fit? How fit is your SEO?

How NOT to do search

I liked this post for the real life example (poor Nike!) it offers.

AND it's got a great link to this SEO tool to help with keyword research.

Anyway - the mistakes big brands make with search are (according to writer Wil Reynolds, and detailed in his article):

1. Missing out on the long tail: Search daddy Danny Sullivan says: "Typically, big brands want to target the big unbranded terms like "tennis rackets," "golf clubs," or "running shoes." I do recommend that they target such terms as a way to position their brand in the minds of people who are searching. But they often miss terms like "golf club reviews" or "women's trail running shoes." Typically, these long-tail terms are the ones that convert best.

2. All-Flash sites with no alternative.

3. Not reinforcing search query results on landing page.

4. Not developing a descriptive meta description tag.

5. Making things 'cool' rather than easy to find.

6. Driving a user with a very specific query to the homepage - a waste of pay-per-click budgets

7. News flash—you can't pay to be No. 1 on Google anymore. An algorithm that decides how well your landing page matches with the user's search mission will affect where you rank (along with your cost per click, and other factors). Yahoo is apparently going this route as well.

8. Flash sites adversely impact natural search rankings

9. Flash sites do poorly on froogle

10. Great tools are a mistake without investment to drive traffic to them