Her current site was old, not showing in the results, and she’d lost track of the original web designer.

So, after a few emails, phone calls and meetings, she signed a contract for $1500 down and about 6k over 6 months, after which she assumed she would have a new optimized website, they would part ways. What she got though, was something completely different.

(The fact that the end product had duplicate title and description tags throughout the site is neither here nor there, and whether a “good job’ was done on the SEO is pretty irrelevant at this point, but I thought it should be said here.)

In the spring, after making over $5k in payments since December, she could no longer pay his $550 “maintenance” charge, and wanted to cancel anything ongoing. Plus, she claimed, she never got any form submissions or phone calls, and she was really disappointed.

At this point, after a couple of emails and a phone call, he tells her that it will cost $3150 to both “finish”, and for him to then “give her all the files”.

Also, since she wasn’t paying anymore, and (he says) she owes him money), he told her that if she didn’t pay, was “taking the site down” as of July 1st!

Now (late June) there’s a disagreement that can’t be rectified, so she needs to do something quick, and that’s when she phoned me, after being referred.

Unfortunately, I eventually found out that she doesn’t own her domain anymore, and that he had stolen it.

How did this happen?
First he explained that he could not use her Yahoo small business account for hosting because they were awful (I agree and she needed to transfer it to another host.

That means that he simply needed to change her DNS settings a.k.a name servers to change hosts.

That made sense to her, and she didn’t understand all this technical stuff anyway, so she gave him all her usernames and passwords for “web stuff” that she knew of, to make the transition easier.

Next, however, is where this guy crossed the line in my opinion…

Her web host was Yahoo, but she had purchased her domain name from them too, which made Yahoo (Melbourne IT) her registrAR too. (You probably see where this one’s going…)

He told her he needed to “get it off Yahoo” (which I’ve said often enough but in doing so, he apparently changed the registAR too, over to one of his own control.

When changing the registrAR, you get an option to keep the same contact details or enter new ones, and he also changed the registrANT as well, as of 12/2008, so he owns it. That’s like having a contractor come in to drywall your basement, and they change the house into their name instead of yours on the deed!

Of course, he was extra sneaky by also adding “Privacy Protection”, so there’s no easily seen public record. The registrant just shows as proxied@Dreamhost etc. but it’s clear what happened.

Contacting Dreamhost was pointless, because it was a done deal, and they’ve NEVER HEARD OF HER AND WILL NOT TALK TO US.

Well, July 1st, this guy has removed the domain from his host, and there’s an empty index folder. we can’t change DNS, because she no longer owns it. We changed domain names, and she now has to get a lawyer involved.

My Recommendation?
I believe this guy is guilty of theft by fraud, and I told her to attempt to file a report with the Portland Police, and to please tell me what they say. I also recommended that she contact a lawyer to sue this guy.

At this point we’re getting her up with a new domain name, but don’t let this happen to you! Be 100% sure you know all this stuff about your domain name.

I’ll update this post with more details as they unfold…

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!

Search was not really “revolutionized” or “changed as we knew it”, and most users have absorbed the subtle addition without even noticing.

Likewise, “personalization” has been assimilated into Googles search with only search industry professionals even noticing or caring.

Then, (what seems like ages ago), Google began implementing local results into the serps if the user searched with a geographic term, such as “dry cleaners Portland”, and just over a year ago changed from showing just three, to showing a full 10 local results.

Just a few weeks ago, Google began “determining your intent” to search locally even if you REALLY did not intend to. That means that a search for “dry cleaners” began showing the local maps results whether you wanted them to or not, and again, most end users really didn’t even notice.

This week another seismic shift took place, although in their usual fashion, Google is rolling it in very subtly, and the casual user may not even notice. They’ve added a “Show Options” link above your search results.

After hitting that link, there are a whole host of ways to filter the search results, and this is really a better implementation of “universal search”, in my opinion.

One of the new options would be of most interest to search marketers, called the Wonder Wheel, and this video takes a look at it more closely…

I just looked them up, and this is a $63 box of chocolate! Wow, what a nice gift! Sad, but I have no idea who it’s from because there was no gift card included…
I called the company and left a voicemail, trying to find out where they came from.

Anyway, they really are as good as they look!

Birthday Chocolates

“So there’s really no “over optimization” penalty or anything considered “evil” about manipulating page rank exactly as you wish? Even if it’s just for funneling the link juice exactly where you want?

Matt told me that, yes it was “okay”, and he even agreed with me that it was one of the last available “Advanced SEO tactics”, and at the time, I commented here about his answer.

In 2008, there were discussions all over the web about it’s use, and in June of that year, I recommended using nofollow in my article “Further Beyond the top 10 SEO factors”

If you still don’t know how Google PageRank and their passing of “link juice” works, then this post may not make much sense to you. However, assuming that you DO understand the process, here are a couple of facts I’ve been considering.

• Every webpage can “pass along” approximately 86% of its available page rank through links on that page.
• The less links there are on a page, the more link juice there is available to pass on to each of the other links.
• Adding rel=nofollow to a link means Google stops passing PageRank to that link
• Other links that ARE followed, therefore get more “juice”
• Controlling the flow of your link juice helps your site and can help others you might link to

Assuming you buy into this whole “no follow” thing, (which I do wholeheartedly), then the logical recommendation made by most advanced search engine marketers is to ensure that ALL unimportant links on a page are no followed.

Generally, these are thinks like your privacy policy, security information, contact pages, customer / client logins, shopping cart “buy” buttons, and other irrelevant text phrases.

What If?
Taking this a step further, let’s say you have a page that’s a Google PR2, and it’s been around for years. If you include your header, your footer and your menu, lets assume you have 20 links on that page.

If 86 percent of that PageRank 2 is passed along to those 20 links, that doesn’t leave very much to go towards the two or three “important” links that you might have in your body text, does it?

However, suppose you were to nofollow almost everything? i’m talking about all the links in the header, all the links in the footer, and all of your navigation too. What if you limit your “followed” links to just a couple in the body text? Wouldn’t you then effectively be getting the maximum benefit out of that page? In essence, aren’t you then “juicing” every last drop of PR?

Jumping ahead almost 2 full years , the nofollow tag has become the subject of many longwinded discussions covering everything from “What is the purpose of the nofollow tag in the first place?” to whether its use is advantageous or not. My short answers?

It was originally conceived to combat pointless blog comment spam, yes it is very useful to sculpt your PageRank.

NoFollowize WordPress
In the WordPress community there have been various no follow and dofollow plug-ins, and all were developed with the the sole intention of giving the blog owner more control over where they pour their juice. Unfortunately, none of them really offered the sort of “total control” I was after.

Rather than just “dofollowing” various comments, it would be really cool if I could have this control over every link on any page selectively.

It’s this line of thought that led to the development of the ultimate no follow plug-in for WordPress, which will be available for testing anytime now.

Here’s a screenshot of the new panel appearing on every edit page.

At this point, we’re in final testing, and I’m trying to decide on the name – either NoFollowizer or Link Juicer. Can you cast a vote here?

Just like many of my issues with them so far, it’s completely inconsistent from market to market, so their support department seems to know nothing about it.

Anyone hosting their own domain somewhere, yet having Comcast as an ISP is continually being forced to jump through new hoops in order to send mail from their own domain.

Until now these hoops have been to verify your outgoing mail settings and change your SMTP port to 587 (or another port for your local market).

Now there’s another inconsistent change that’s not affecting everyone.

As a Portland web host we have three mail servers that our clients use,  and for the past three days, all users that are on our #1 server are unable to send mail to other Comcast addresses.

To make matters worse, Comcast is then misreporting the problem, sending the end user a link, where their page says that their mail server is “blocked as spam”. (For the record, this mail server is not on any spam blacklists at this time).

So, now we are forced to explain to each complaining customer that this is some sort of problem or mistake on Comcasts end, AND we then have to explain that Comcast is also showing them incorrect information.

I have verified that even when you change to port 587 for your outgoing mail server, if the address you are sending to is another Comcast address, then the mail bounces back with this message -

<actualnameremoved@comcast.net>:
Connected to 76.96.62.116 but greeting failed.
Remote host said: 554 IMTA02.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast 208.70.160.19 Comcast block for spam. Please see http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/BL000000

This message says that our mail server (208.70.160.19) has contacted the Comcast mail server, who is blocking the message as spam. WRONG.

Visiting the help.comcast link is of no use to the end user, but as the server administrator I was able to follow the directions and submit our removal request at www.comcastsupport.com/rbl as directed.

Imagine my surprise when I got this e-mail back -

Thank you for contacting Comcast Customer Security Assurance. We have received and reviewed your RBL removal request.

Below each IP address you submitted in your request, we have included the result of our research. Please do not reply to this message.
208.70.160.19

Your request for IP block removal has been denied for the following reason:

- You have been blocked from emailing the Comcast network because we have determined that you are sending email from a dynamic/residential IP within the Comcast domain.

Comcast does not allow subscribers to send email from a mail server other than smtp.comcast.net. All mail should be sent through Comcast’s mail server.

For information on configuring your machine to use smtp.comcast.net, please follow the link below.
http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/BL002

If you need to run your own mail server, please contact our Commercial Services organization at support_biz@cable.comcast.com

Sincerely,
Comcast Customer Security Assurance

Did you note the bolded statement that “Comcast does not allow subscribers to send email from a mail server other than smtp.comcast.net” ?

If that’s really a policy, then why is only ONE of our mail servers affected, and then, only for mail which is sent to other Comcast email addresses?

Do you suppose this is just a mistake by a server administrator who misunderstood the direction he was given?

Or, do you think they were really told to block all outgoing mail from any servers other than their own, and that the change outbound port 25 to 597 fix will no longer work soon?

If you are suddenly having this problem here is a workaround to fix it:

Open your e-mail program and change your outgoing mail server from mail.yourdomain.com. (Screenshots are from Outlook 2007, another nightmare)

Change Outgoing SMTP – smtp.comcast.net and go to “Advanced”

Be sure to CHECK THE BOX (or leave checked) – My outgoing Server requires Authentication”

Then change to “Verify using” and type in your comcast username and pw

BUT WAIT – THERES MORE
In order to get this working, you MUST ALSO change your outgoing computer port to 587 – So I THINK they’ll be screwing this up too.

WTF is going on, Comcast?

The presentation is taking place at

• 420 NW 2nd St, Corvallis, OR 97330
• 12 noon to 1:30pm

I’ve prepared a presentation on a few essential SEO basics, but after gauging the room for SEO knowledge I plan to quickly shift to a more advanced presentation.

My hope is that most of the attendees will already “get” the SEO stuff, and we can do some real time site reviews,  maybe demonstrating the functionality and time-saving aspects of my SEO review tool.

Here’s a map to get there but I have no idea how someone might sign up to attend, or even to find out anything more about this group! If you’re interested in going, you’ll have to email me I guess!

I just did a search for Corvallis Etailers Association and find absolutely nothing other than a quick twitter post I made a few days ago.

Huh – sounds like they should have a presentation about marketing 101 next month

Even when its operating at what seems to be optimal capacity, it’s definitely slower than it was back in late 2008.

Frequently I will lose my connection for one to two minutes at a time, then it mysteriously comes back.

My 9 and 12-year-old boys are pretty adept now at powering down and rebooting the Comcast modem and my router, to get back online pretty quickly, but it’s become quite tedious.

Under the “new faster service” my wireless router is also not operating well. Apparently, it’s too old for their “recommended firmware upgrade”, so instead of getting 12mbs like I used to, would the new Comcast change I never get more than 5mbs, even when it’s working.

After all of the problems I’ve had over the years with Comcast, and having to deal with the games Comcast plays with people’s email, I’m finally now trying an alternative that’s recently become available here in Portland called Wimax from Clear.

I’m picking up my modem this week, and I’ll be reporting back as to how it works. I may keep the both, because Comcast works fine 90% of the time and it’s pretty fast.

Well, in my case, the service wasn’t available. in my neighborhood. When I went to get qualified, it was only offering me “mobile” . Too bad for me…

However, if Clear can keep a consistent connection, then I might just be fine with the 6 mbs downloads.

If you’re interested in seeing if WiMAX is available at your home or business, let me know, I’ve got a partner that can help you out.

They can process an order for you and get you up and running in days. Just fill out the form below, to check availability and service offerings.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

When I looked at the website of this new client, I did have just the slightest hesitation when I saw that he was an Internet marketer, however it never occurred to me that he could be a complete idiot.

To all those who are now inconvenienced for the next two days, with all hotmail, microsoft and MSN mail bouncing back undeliverable, I apologize, and rest assured that he is gone.

The user has been summarily dismissed from the system, his account has been suspended, there is no FTP access, no database access, no opportunity to come get any of his files, and no second chance of any sort. They are gone.

I’ve written before about the fact that you absolutely positively must use a third-party mail service to ensure not only delivery of your e-mail, but to ensure compliance with the rules and regulations governing spam.

I recommend one of these two services, both with free trials:

• Constant Contact
• I-Contact

For what it’s worth, the problem was not actually on our end, but in the middle, with one of Portland’s primary bandwith providers making a stupid mistake. i know that’s of little consolation, but it’s the truth.

Tuesday afternoon about 4:45, our primary bandwith provider (Time Warner) made an unannounced and incorrect change to their system, causing not only web and mail servers to go down for PDXTC, but for nearly all of their Portland customers.

While we do have an alternative bandwidth provider for cases like this, they (apparently) have been unable to accommodate the traffic levels, since several local hosting companies have placed a huge load on them due to this Time Warner outage.

We realize the inconvenience this has caused, we apologize, and we are working diligently with Time Warner and yet another provider to achieve a speedy resolution, and prevent this from happening again.