I just found out that a YouTube Strike is is on my video channel, and that certainly can’t be good!

Over the past few months I’ve been using a simple embed code from YouTube to share the videos over at SEO Automatic, and it’s been easy enough.

Today however, I attempted to put something up that I didn’t want to be fully public, and I found out that my account is flagged with a “strike”, and has been since December of 2008.

What is a YouTube Strike?

Apparently, it’s the beginning of the end of your account, where they start to take away services gradually. at this point, I have “strike one”!

The cause for my YouTube Strike was a stupid 2008 feud with Peak Studios, and I made the mistake of using their name in the title of my rebuttal video which I uploaded to YouTube.

Fair enough it’s a strike right down the center of the plate, and the offending video was removed. but that was back in 2008 – Shouldn’t I get two more strikes?

I found out about this You Tube strike by trying to set the privacy settings on a video to “Unlisted” and seeing that my option was greyed out.

I followed the link to “learn more” hoping to see why it was greyed out -

but that simply told me how to verify that I have a strike – leading me in a circle, and still no way to resolve the issue or to get a strike removed.

(I wonder if they hired someone from Microsoft to head the “lead user in circles” department?)

How Do I Remove a YouTube Strike?

Just like removing unwanted Google Analyitics accounts, there’s no solution yet that I know of, but when I find out how to “appeal to the umpire” for a removal of of this YouTube Strike, I’ll post the answer,   unless someone else can recommend something?

Here’s where to appeal for You Tube Strike removal

For now though, all I want to do is use a YouTube private URL for a video, without having to use a third party player.

***Update***
Within 24 hours of posting this, I got a second strike, but this time I did see an email notification.

First, last night, Peak Studios made this comment at YouTube

Then, a few hours later, I got this email from Google / YouTube

Dear shendison:

We have disabled the following material as a result of a third-party notification from peak studios INC claiming that this material is infringing:

Proof of Fake Google Reviews

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_DFcU7uHQY

This is the second copyright strike against your account. A single additional claim against your account will result in the termination of your account. To avoid this, delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube’s copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If one of your postings has been misidentified as infringing, you may submit a counter-notification. Information about this process is in our Help Center.

Then, came this final sentence -

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material was disabled due to mistake or misidentification may be liable for damages.

Sincerely, The YouTube Team

So, my count is 0 and 2, and for the record, Google, I’m *not* representing that the material was disabled due to mistake or misidentification and I will attempt to remove my YouTube Strike by following the appeals process in the help center.

Inside of Google Webmaster Tools, there is an option called “Fetch As Googlebot” that is supposed to go crawl that page and return what it sees.

Until this moment, I’ve never had much use for this, but that’s not the case now!

I discovered a problem when a website which had been hacked and then fixed was still showing the polluted snippet in the description on the results page.

A client reported seeing pharmaceuticals mentioned on their listing on a SERPS page (never good) and I repeated the search, saw the same thing, then visited the page to view the source. I verified that yes, the page is clean, and there’s no drugs mentioned there….

Normally there’s no way to get Google to update the cache faster unless you link to it, but I decided to update the XML site map anyway, and decided to take a shot at “Fetch as Googlebot” figuring that it couldn’t hurt.

What I found, surprised me…

Was Google not “fetching” this live? Was it pulling some outdated version of the page?  I thought for sure that the site was clean, so either Google is pulling from cache, or the site isn’t really fixed, right?

I decided to do a quick test by changing some words in a blog post on my own site, and then I did a quick fetch.

I went to Google Webmaster Tools – Chose to Fetch as Googlebot – and yes, Google DID fetch it live!

So, this is the dilemma… Is the site still hacked? Is there something really insidious that makes it look okay to us, but not to others?

Obviously something is wrong, but what is it?

I’m posting this now without a solution, because I DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER – but as I look into it further I’ll update this post.

In the meantime,  got any ideas?

For the record –

• There are no warnings about Malware in Google WMT
• “view source” showing correct title tag etc., and no WP info
• Visiting the site though a proxy shows it’s fine too
• The server response code thrown back by the URL is a 200 OK

***Update – July 9th,  9 am***

Ok, so this site is NOT WordPress, but thanks to @blafrance we think we’re on the right track after he sent me a link to the WordPress Pharma hack -

While we exhibit none of the same afflictions, the end result is the same – a hack visible only to the search engines.

Last night their programmer found some malicious code in a .php file that he removed, but it’s still fetching the bad info.  Here’s the code in it’s entirety, although not much help…

***Update July 10, 2010***

The solution was of course that the site was still hacked, and there was another piece of malicious code like what is shown above in the header file.

I think the most interesting and scary thing about this pharma hack was that it did not affect every page.  It’s going to become harder and harder to protect yourself…

Yesterday Google released a more Bingish looking version of its homepage (what comes next, daily photos?) that has a new font, brighter colors, more earning potential for them, and probably more earning potential for you too.

After hitting the now more visible “More” link, there’s a new menu that you can’t possibly miss.

Lest you have any doubt, this is not purely about user experience, and it’s also a way to get more page views to Google’s pages, and sell more advertising.

That’s probably a good thing, and well placed PPC image and video ads will likely pay off big for advertisers and Google, but I’m really not sure I like it as a user yet.

While I don’t necessarily hate it, it does take some getting used to. And why an “Everything” tab? Why not a “Web Pages” tab?

Anyway, regardless, Google knows what’s good for us, and whether I like it or not, it’s here.

I do think they should add the Google Wonder Wheel to the main menu – I love that thing – but it’s now buried deeper in the bottom left than it was when I made this video…

One of our mail servers has again been added to a spam blacklist, meaning that we are banned from sending e-mail, undoubtedly due to one of our hosting customers who has been sending bulk e-mail.

Technically, we can still send, but the users at Yahoo, MSN, and dozens of other providers will temporarily not accept mail from that mail servers IP address.

With several mail servers, only a portion of our users are affected, but it still stinks, and to that, all I can say is that I’m sorry – again.  We’ve “fixed” it by proving to the blacklists that we are a web host,  and by taking appropriate steps against the offender for our removal from the list. We now just have to wait, and for some domains, it may take up to 48 hours to clear up. Ugh.

As the battle against spammers wages on, you have to understand that bulk email can be defined by nearly ANYONE, and in some cases, no matter how unjustified, spam fascists are taking over the entire internet in an effort to “protect” us.

I hate spam as much as the next guy, but I HAVE to be able to send out emails. Unfortunately, people complaining to their ISPs and web hosts ABOUT spam they receive, are exactly what’s driving things to get more and more difficult for the business that needs to be able to SEND mail and have the reply come back to our own domain!

Remember, if you are a business that sends bulk email to friends, subscribers, or clients, then you should be using a third party service or you run the risk of losing your hosting account not only with us, but with anyone.

Just like the first time this happened, once we get things squared away, the offending user had their hosting account permanently suspended and removed from our system.

But that’s VERY small consolation to the dozens or perhaps hundreds of people that are affected today, and likely part of tomorrow, and are unable to send e-mails to many domains.

Business NEEDS reliable email, and anything less is simply unacceptable, but what can you do?

Change Hosts
If you’re on a shared webhosting plan, then you not only share your Web server with other domains, but you share your mail server as well.

This means that when the mail server gets banned, everybody on the server is unable to send e-mail to certain domains until the web host gets the IP address cleared.

Worse, even when the web host reacts quickly, fully resolving all the issues immediately, the larger providers like MSN and Yahoo can take up to 48 hours to allow your mail to come through again.

Although it happens infrequently, not being able to send e-mail is an intolerable situation, but you need a solution. Changing web hosts is one answer, but it’s only a temporary fix.

Get a Dedicated Server
If you change hosts into another shared environment, I practically guarantee that you ARE going to face the same situation, and there’s just no way around it. By upgrading to a dedicated server, YOU become the only one using it, and if your IP gets banned, you can look internally at the cause. However, for most websites this is overkill, and for the small business, the $100 per month or more can be excessive.

Get Your Own Server
Far more common is to bring your email in-house and own your own mail server. While your web visitors need instant access and high bandwidth, mail servers don’t, and it’s a simple matter of buying some hardware and making some DNS changes to your domain.

The computers can easily be run in your office environment, delivering it to users desktops and cell phones through Microsoft Exchange Server, or many other options.

Besides email, having your own server can lead to shared files, calendars, storage, backups, and a whole world of computing you may never have thought you needed, but it’s probably worth a conversation with your own computer support people for plenty of alternatives.

Use The Big Boys
Another option is to *not* send from your own domain, but instead send mail only from your ISP. That’s really what they prefer anyway, and why your home outgoing emails are getting blocked by Comcast and Qwest when people try to send mail from their own domains. They want to stop spam, so their users will stop complaining to them.

But those addresses look unprofessional. Most consumers simply won’t trust email that comes from mycompany@myisp.com or Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo, but hey, at least your mail will probably get there.

Don’t forget though, that as people reply, then YOU may be on the receiving end of this “spam protection” but it’s for your own good, really!

Use the Google Cloud
For the small business owner that cannot afford their own dedicated server, we are now strongly recommending that they move e-mail entirely off of our hosting platform, and into the Google mail environment.

It’s a big step, but we understand that email is the lifeblood of many operations, and there’s simply nothing that can be done to prevent idiots ruining it for the rest of us.

for families, groups, non-profits, schools etc. Google offers a free service, and for businesses, they charge $50 per year per user. Since it’s probably the best and most affordable alternative for nearly anyone, I decided to change a domain over and see how it went. I used Google Apps Standard, and I could upgrade to the Premium business plan at any time.

By going here for Standard edition, or here for Premium, you can begin their trial, and test it out.

There are a TON of reasons that Google docs can be beneficial, and I use them all the time, but I was still a little nervous about making the switch. This was the first time I had to “put all of my eggs in Google’s basket” unless you count my day to day existence which seems to revolve around their search rankings

Here’s an 8 minute video outlining the process, including changing the settings inside your Hsphere hosting account for our Portland hosting…

Google is all over the map in the way it displays search results,  but it looks like  SEO, web-hosting, and web design are not!

Well, technically they’re still  “on the map”  but the map is not showing up any more in Google searches.

Yes, in case you missed the news,  Google local map results are not being shown any more for web designers, for search marketing firms,  or web hosting.

Why?
It’s still unclear, and to my knowledge, there’s been no definitive explanation from Google.

As a local webhost / search marketer / developer, I’d like to point out that this sort of… well…  sucks to be singled out, and to me it makes no sense.

A Little History for Beginners
Google introduced local map results into the mix quite a while ago, and they’ve changed when and how they display several times.

After PPC ads came along, searching for a local business showed like this -

About two years ago, they started showing a map, and either one or three results, when someone did a search that included a geographic target.

Then in January of 2008, they dramatically tripled the front page real estate to show TEN results,  although late last year they knocked that number back to just seven.

(photos source)

Obviously this had the effect of pushing the organic search results even further down the page, below the PPC ads and below the map results, effectively making the number one organic spot appear in what is really the 14th position.

The entire web marketing industry changed for local businesses, and a new niche was born, with a different set of ranking factors almost completely unrelated to typical SEO.

What’s Happening Now?
Nearly two months ago, November 2009, they began to make some more changes, and then suddenly were not showing ANY map results for “web design” when a city name was included.

This was followed quickly by Web hosting, and they have now removed the map results from all SEO, and Internet marketing services type phrases too! Huh.

On December 14th Brian, a Google employee noted on another thread -

…it looks like a lot of the recent search examples on this thread have to do with web design, SEO, and other services of that sort.

It’s possible that instead of being related to the original issue, Google.com doesn’t bring up map results for these types of searches because the search term doesn’t show much local intent.

Oh really? There’s no local intent on a search for Portland web host?  Puh-lease.

On December 31, a Google employee caused quite a stir when he said this:

Today, we’re intentionally showing less local results for web design / SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn’t display local listings today.

We believe this is an accurate representation of user intent. In some cases, we do show local listings, however (as NSNA/php-er noted) [web design in bellingham].

I’m sure some of you feel we should be displaying local results for queries like [Web Design Vancouver]. I understand that concern, but based on our understanding of our users, we feel this is the right decision for now.

But using “In” Counts?
Before Joel from Google replied, someone pointed out that using the word “in” does trigger the maps, but Joel didn’t address that at all.

Yes, it seems that by using the word “in”  – a word that has pretty much been accepted as an SEO stop word – users will trigger these drastic result changes.

Will it’s use just affect Google maps, or will having “in” in your title tags now factor higher in organic listings?

Perhaps that too,  will be industry specific? sure would be nice to get a list of those industries? Unreal.

Is this Fair?
They don’t need to be “fair”, or even reasonable!  Google can do whatever they want, and in this case, it sounds like they want just tell us “thanks and goodbye“.

If someone searches for “plumber Portland” or any one of hundreds of other products or services, they’re going to see local map results, but for Portland web hosting, they’re not. That’s just the way it is.

The fact that this could happen to any industry tomorrow is what’s the most frustrating, and does seem a bit unfair – not so much to us, the “evil industry”, but to the public, who rely on our interpretation and expertise?  What are we, as industry professionals supposed to tell clients?

Over the past year, we’ve been seeing local businesses pretty much ignore the organics, in favor of local efforts, but maybe they should just put  “in”  before every city name in their title tags?

I Think Google is Being Arrogant
In 2007,  I was at the Search Engine Strategies Local conference in Los Angeles, and during a Q&A, I asked John Hanke, the Director at Google Maps:  “Besides having an address near the center of the zip code, what factors determine ranking in local search?

Rather than give me anything useful, he appeared almost shocked that I would ask such a thing, and he actually said he “wasn’t there to give away  Google algorithm secrets”! (Not even at SES?)

I was stunned, and some members of the audience (who seemed to be mostly advertising executives and PPC managers) laughed at my stupid question.

Today, there is a wealth of local search information and search knowledge like you can’t believe. The entire industry is making Google gazilionaires,  and they want to treat us like this?

Frankly, I think that Google is simply spitting in the face of the very industry that helped build them up in the first place.

The Teaching Moment
the word, “it”  – a word that most SEO’s have long treated as just an SEO stop word, is now going to trigger these DRASTIC changes.

However, This fact only applies to some industries, and that list is subject to change, although there IS no list you can see.

Got it?

Just like the weather here in Oregon, if you don’t like the way Google search works today,  just wait a while because you can bet it’s going to change again, and probably soon.

Note – In complete irony, this Monday’s snail mail contained a window decal and a letter from Google maps stating that I was a “favorite place” -  which is now pretty much pointless!

Before Google’s announcement that the speed at which your site loads for visitors “matters”, we’d all heard it said repeatedly that it did NOT matter for organic rankings, but that it may someday, and it seems that day arrived early last month.

When I rolled out the SEO Automatic review, I chose to include the checking of site compression, and showing file sizes, even though the collective wisdom of the SEO industry was that your page load time was only a factor for your Google Adwords Quality Score, and for the user experience, but it was not an organic ranking factor.

At Pubcon last month, in my web hosting presentation, I talked for the third year in a row about speeding up your website. My logic was that what’s good for visitors was good for the search engines, and nobody wanted to sit around and wait for a page to load.

Near the end of my slides, I said I was predicting Google would make page speed a factor very soon, and the very next afternoon, the announcement was made by Matt Cutts that they now were. Am I a heretic? Hardly – others had been saying the same thing for a while already.

So, now that speed “officially” matters, Google is further stressing the importance by adding info to Google Webmaster Tools, and here’s a 4 minute video I made showing you what they’ve done, and their Firefox tools as well.

There were a few changes at Google this month which I’ve been pointing out to clients, so I’m posting them here too.

I added the month to my title, because I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of these types of game changers as time goes on.

You & I See Different Search Results
On December 4, while I was in Los Angeles at an Affiliate Convention session, a rumble went through the crowd after someone shouted out “Hey, Google is showing personalized results to everyone whether they’re signed in or not”!

Now there are search industry pundits that think it’s a good thing, those that think it’s a bad thing, and those that think that it really doesn’t matter but there’s no denying that it changes the game.

All end users will now see more varied search results than someone else. Even though this has already been taking place for a while based on their IP location and Google data center differences, now, those differences will become even more substantial based on their browsing history.

(Is it based on the whole IP address? Is it just per browser? Is there a machine or CPU ID? I don’t yet know – do you?)

Real Time Search
The personalized results change was overshadowed in the media by some big announcements on December 7th, primarily about their new real time search.

It’s hard to replicate on demand, because it only shows up for highly active topics, like a search fopr “Obama Speech” in the couple of days following one, or search for a news event as one is happening,  like “winter solstice 2009″  you’ll see an actual moving/scrolling section of the latest news and Twitter Tweets in what’s practically real time.

Do you think this will add to the current noise level in social media and news?  I sure do, and I call it a “game changer” because of all the auto posting that will now undoubtedly be put on steroids, in anticipation of this expanding further.

Google Goggles
Take a photo with your cell phone, and Google will tell you what it is.  Cool for the Eiffel Tower, but is seems to have pretty creepy potential issues for that woman sitting alone in a bar, isn’t it?  Check out their short video…

Wherever you fall on the potential privacy issues,  I do think that the technology is going to be a game changer as it continues to evolve.

Keeping You on Google Properties
Google is delivering more and more information to users without then needing to leave the results page. Lokk at a search for your favorite football team as an example, where you can see the score, their leading rusher, and the date and opponent for their next game without clicking through.

(Do you think this is a fair representation of what Rupert Murdoch is concerned with? You can see the image from the NY Times, and the info coming from the Atlanta Journal Constitution)

*** Update – 4pm ****

Oops – Looks like this last item below was just  more browser monkey business – AdWare – called “Browser Highlighter”, on my computer.   I guess I jumped to conclusions,  but with so many other Google changes this month, it really didn’t surprise me all that much!

Selling the Front Page
Just this minute, I’m seeing color Ebay ads on the front page, while I’m not even signed in to Google.

Is it a sponsored ad? No…  Is it a pay for placement? Pay for inclusion? Is is Pay Per Action, where Google gets a piece if a sale is made?  Who knows?

So, in addition to PPC ads, we’re now going to see this sort of paid result, further moving the organic SERPS lower on the priority list and in some cases, well below the fold.

Where’s Amazon, and can they bid against Ebay?  I wonder how long it will be before there are other brand banners, perhaps even larger? Will they be doing the same thing inside Google’s Wonder wheel?

I guess we’ll be finding out soon, as Google continues to change the game for everyone, consumers and marketers alike….

Doing a search the other day I was stunned to see a new interface from Google showing me tabbed results, with other relevant search phrases lined up across the top.

I had been using a brand new laptop, so I walked over to my main computer to get a screen shot, and  I wasn’t able to re-create them.  I went back to the laptop, did a search, and *poof*  they were gone.

A couple of days later,  Iman from Train Signal noticed it too, and he managed to get a a couple of screenshots up.

Assuming that this display of SERPS becomes the norm, this is going to cause search marketers to rethink what phrases they optimize for and what phrases they bid on via PPC.

For our own sites, I’ve always focused my organic efforts on phrases which had the highest frequency of search.  Gearing content and inbound links for those highest volume phrases seemed like it offered the most bang for the buck.

It was the same thing for PPC really, and by looking at the “impressions” column in Google Ad Words, we know what words are searched for the most frequently, and we could adjust our bids accordingly.

Now though, in showing us these terms, Google is giving us more food for thought.

But Where Are These Terms Coming From?
Savvy marketers have been poking around Google’s “Wonder Wheel” for some time now, because it really gives you good insight into the logic behind what Google believes is relevant.  (Here’s a short Wonder Wheel video I made a few months back)

In thinking about it, I had assumed that these related tabs were coming from the same place as the Wonder Wheel terms, but I can see that’s not the case by doing the same search that Iman did.

As you can see, NONE of the phrases are the same, which leaves me to wonder what’s really driving these  relationships of supposedly “related terms”?

They’re not coming from the highest volume searches according to Googles keyword tool either.  Despite playing with the match type, I couldn’t get a similar set of results to come up at all.

If they’re not from the keyword tool, and they’re not from the Wonder Wheel,  I thought they might be coming from the Google Suggest feature, which has been a REALLY great way to do some keyword brainstorming, but nope, that’s not the case either.

What’s the Point of the Tabs?
I have to wonder, what is Google’s motivation for putting these tabbed links up there in the first place?

Will they really be showing end users the most relevant results or will they just be hoping to show more niche searches to get their ad revenue up?

Some on the web are speculating that Google is simply trying to monetize every aspect of search,  that they’re trying monopolize online shopping, and maybe that they’re becoming the worlds largest super affiliate.

I’ll leave it to people far smarter than I am to figure out the inner workings of where this information is coming from, but it won’t surprise me if it turns out they have something to do with how well advertised the phrases are, with high search volume and a higher CPC.

Wherever they’re coming from, these related search term tabs are going to be right in everyone’s face, and should dramatically increase the use of these related searches by consumers and by marketers, as we look for new opportunities to target, both organically and via PPC.

While browsing through the stats of some (very poorly maintained) sites of our own, I found one that had zero traffic for quite a few weeks. Visiting the site, I saw no site, and just a “Cannot connect to database” error.

A glance at the toolbar showed me a PR zero, and indexed pages in Google (site:domain.com) brought up nothing but a few wp-content pages that should have been blocked by a robots file anyway. Sigh.

Further investigation revealed that we had a corrupted database, and by restoring a WP database backup from a Gmail account dedicated to backups, we had the site back pretty quickly.

A few months ago, the site was a PR3 with decent traffic, and now, it was a PR0 with practically no pages in the index. Bummer.

What Did I Do?
Inside Google Webmaster Tools, I went to Site Reconsideration on the top left, then “Request Reconsideration” in the center of the next page.

Here’s what I wrote:
We lost our database on this rarely attended WordPress site, and although we had traffic and PageRank, now the only indexed pages are ones that don’t even belong there, like /wp-admin pages. We’ve done nothing wrong, just left ourselves hanging in the wind too long with no pages there. Might we get reincluded please? PageRank back too?
Thank you for your consideration…

How Did it Work?
I’ll have to let you know. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and it will be back?

I was just mid-session on Google Webmaster tools, when I clicked on a link and saw the message – “that page no longer exists”.  Huh?

I went back to my home page for WMT, and that too was a bad link. Weird. So, i went to my IGoogle home Page, went back into Google Webmaster Tools, and “wham” everything was different!

Apparently, I had now been forced into their “new look and feel” that until this moment, had only been an option.

As I was exploring the menu on the left, trying to get back to where I was, I saw a new option that made my heart skip a beat – Could it be?

 Yep, sure enough, I clicked the link called “change of address” under the site configuration menu,  and was taken to a new screen for -  you guessed it – MOVING DOMAIN NAMES.

This feature was LONG overdue, and I think I first started wishing for it back in 2006, after doing eeverything “right” and still getting a site dinged after changing domain names.

At some point, I asked for it at a  Webmaster Tools conference session (either SMX Advanced or maybe Pubcon) and my request actually got a round of applause!

Anyway, I still don’t really like the new WMT interface, but with this improvement, it’s a lot easier to take… Thank you again, Google!