Hangout Topics: Digg Deindexed, Big Brother, The FTC, Taxes, & SEO
Digg Deindexed
The buzz has started on all the big blogs as to whether it’s about Google Reader or not. So far it looks like they just had a ton of thin and useless content without enough links. Let’s see how this one plays out.
*Update: Digg has been reindexed.
Google Sets
Even though it was discontinued as a project, it is still live in Google Drive’s spreadsheet. There are instructions posted here so you can recreate this for yourself: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/11/google-sets-still-available.html
It’s particularly interesting that this has been integrated into Google Drive. It means they have to be sending your private data somewhere to pull the sets. This can be taken a step further and used as a tool, type in a few of your keywords and see what are in those sets. Chances are you will see everything with similar link profiles for medium-sized terms. It’s a great data mining tool now, especially if you belong to link networks.
Because we don’t want Big Brother spying on us, we are leaving Google Drive. You should too, just in case you have a footprint about your sites in Google Drive. Why help them at this point? We knew they were acting somewhat like Big Brother with Gmail years ago; tests in the past have shown sharing an otherwise unlinked URL through a Gmail message was crawled and indexed.
Authorship
A piece of news came across my feed, and two lines caught my attention. This is from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/matt-cutts-on-whats-needed-for-seo-success-in-2013-and-beyond-live-blogging/60903/
Matt’s response: Reputation will matter more and more as we move forward. Over time, we (Google) will be caring more about identity and social. He’s also saying it would be great to see commenters on blogs who have authority to get credit for that also. Matt is recommending implementing authorship on your site.
Matt: mentions that there are FTC legislation against “sock puppet” accounts and that there are checks and balances to make sure ghost postings aren’t allowed under an authority account.
Google is basically giving up on the spam war and leaving it to the government and courts. Duplicate content issues are to be resolved by filing DMCA removal requests. Anonymous sites (without authorship) will get lower CTR and eventually won’t rank at the top. Google will not take responsibility for fake Google Plus accounts and they are already saying this is the FTC’s responsibility.
Compare it to RCS – real companies have paid actors as doctors on commercials. They have a disclaimer, and we will look into the disclaimer route. But, Google needs the fake accounts right now because that means more active users on Google+, which nobody is using. Bing is now playing with authorship with Facebook, too. The bottom line is stop being anonymous. Prepare your ark for the authorship flood.
Internet Tax
The Marketplace Fairness Act is rumored to be attached to a Senate budget resolution, forcing a vote on internet taxation today. Keep an eye on this one. The Internet Tax Freedom Act will expire in November 2014. Some sources are saying this act would reverse affiliate nexus laws passed in 9 states and actually help affiliates. Hopefully this won’t be another ‘pass the law to find what’s in it’ situations.
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