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 Was it pulling some outdated version of the page?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…

We have a client that has been using OS commerce forever, and we have a good number of links established to the various sections of their e-commerce store. For various reasons, they are looking for a new e-commerce system, and appear to have settled on what I’ll call (for now) Product X.

Several weeks ago, I had a short phone call with product X, and they answered all my questions, and seemed to be able to accomodate our needs. With only a couple of small reservations, I gave it my stamp of approval for the client.

Last week however, my client and I had a phone call together, where she explained a few shortcomings -things that may have been slightly misrepresented in my phone call with the sales department.

Although Product X told me that they COULD host a WordPress blog, apparently they cannot, so they recommended they put their 250+ pages into a subdomain.

My response? But they told me they could! OK, fine, not a deal breaker, and we can just move the blog to a subdomain, and then 301 everything. There may be an initial hit to some of the rankings, but they should bounce back.

Now here’s where it gets really sticky -

This new cart provider claims to only be able to make a maximum of “about a hundred”  URLs into 301 redirects. Huh?!?

Furthermore, if those URLs are not visited EACH and EVERY 30 days, then the redirect ceases to function, and turns into… what? I’m not sure – maybe a 404 error?.  (This would have been a nice feature to include in my old article “How to Make a Crappy Content Management System, wouldn’t it?)

Although that seems incredibly stupid a bit odd, there are several reasons why the client still believes this to be their best choice platforms, and it looks like the decision has already been made.

Since my goal is to retain rankings through this process, my proposed “solution” to the dilemma was to start a new subdomain, then host THAT with the new cart vendor, retaining the main domain on our own host, where we can 301 anything as we see fit.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Plus, as an added benefit, it would also solved the problem of having to move and redirect the blog , and it seems on the surface to be the best of both worlds.

This morning though, I got an email from their marketign manager (who originally hired us) and after sending her my response, I asked permission to use it in a post, and she consented.

Here’s the entire text, including my response, and I hope you’ll weigh in with your thoughts.

Scott,

I found some chatter about subdomains. CV3 said they can set up the web shopping area as a subdomain, but I worry how that will effect those
pages based on what I have read. Based on this, I am leaning towards just moving the whole site and not creating a subdomain.

[name removed]

Next was pasted all of the following text, assumedly taken from a forum somewhere – with my responses added in…

Be careful of all this bad info people are giving you! It does matter….here’s how it works….Google and other Search Engines consider Subdomains entirely new websites….

[Scott says:] Yes, they do consider them “separate” domains, but there’s no harm done ther…

so any subdomain will have a PR of 0.

[Scott says:] Well yes, to begin, but so will ANY new url. Google assigns PR (Page Rank) to a page, and not to a domain, and that’s the purpose of the 301 redirect – it passes the PR.

Subdomains are useful for blogs and such.

[Scott says:] I agree entirely, but I do consider “…and such” to include shopping carts.

1. My website all ready have page rank
2. Now I want create some more section in details. Should I go for sub domain or sub folder? Which one is better?
Creating sections should be done in Folders

[Scott says:] No argument here, and typically, if given a choice, its best to grow your site in themed or silo’d folders

3. My another question is did my present page rank will follow in all my sub domain or I have to promote individually all sub domains and what is
case in case of sub folder ?
Nope….the only way to pass page rank to the subdomain is through a link.

[Scott says:] – a link AND using 301’s for all the old URL’s for all the old links to pass PR

What you thing which is easy to remember sub domain or sub folder from the point of view of visitor?
It all depends on what the site is….but most people only remember main domains…and are confused about subdomains….most people remember
sites with www. at the beginning.

[Scott says:] Tru ‘nuff – but not a big deal to me…

I’d recommend using sub folders. if you have been working on the SEO of your root domain creating back links and all that kinda thing then create a sub domain the effects on your root domain won’t carry over to your sub domain. i unfortunately found this out the hard way

Subdomains over Folders
Subdomains are inexpensive and allow you to target the exact keyword you’re looking for. If I wanted to target the keyword ‘web hosting’, I
could add a sub domain to my site making it web-hosting.monetizers.com. The search engines will see the keyword ‘web hosting’ and factor that
into the SEO Ranking equation – almost as if you owned a domain such as web-hosting.com (this is because the bots see the first part of the url
as the most important section). The negative (and a big one at that) is many SEO experts are using this to spam search engine results.

[Scott says:] Yeah, that was true back in 2007 – Spammers used subdomains a lot will but this is pretty old news and it doesn’t work anymore anyway. The engines are far smarter, and aren’t going to brand you a spammer just for using a subdomain.

It’s speculated that search engines are and will be giving this less weight to reduce the amount of spam in their results.

[Scott says:] – If by “…giving this less weight” they mean subdomains, I disagree and would say that’s not true at all.

Domain names are still important, so it would be better to purchase a domain name such as web-hosting.com (everyone seems to forget about the
-!) rather than create a subdomain.

[Scott says:] A separate domain name is another option, but the subdomain would be on THEIR server at the cart host.

Subdomains do NOT receive any benefit (such as pr) from their parent domain.

[Scott says:] I disagree with that – It’s my belief that a subdomain does get some authority from the main domain with Google, Alexa, or anyone that matters, right out of the gate. If I were building a new business, and had the option of using http://myname.cnn.com or http://myname.com I would happily opt for being a subdomain of CNN, assuming I didn’t have the potential to ever lose the subdomain ownership down the road. In your case, since you own the parent domain, you’re safe.

Also a negative is that subdomains sit on the same IP address, so if one site’s IP gets blacklisted, so do all the rest!

[Scott says:] The subdomain will sit on their server, and with a static IP and SSL certificate there will be no other domains on the IP address.

And last, a subdomain makes it easy to forget that engines see it as a separate site; this means that you may end up placing more then 4 links
between sites and end up penalized for cross linking! A very costly SEO mistake!

[Scott says:] No search engine would be stupid enough to penalize someone for linking to their own shopping car – but – if they did, the negative publicity / buzz it could generate would be awesome Imagine the links we could get!

Folders over Sub-Domains
Folders are the way to go if you want to leverage the power of your site (PR, Inbound links,etc). Cross linking is not an issue with folders as
they are with subdomains.

[Scott says:] In a typical situation, I agree

New Domain vs Subdomain
Both a new domain and a sub domain start off the same. New domains usually have a different IP address and are given high priority on some
engines (at lease for a couple of weeks). Better to stick with a new domain name.

[Scott says:] But in our case, the subdomain would be hosted at the cart host, so it would be a different IP.

In summary: Stay away from sub domains, folders if you want to leverage your ranking and a new site if you want to really target keywords.

[Scott says:] My summary would be that permanent severe ranking damage could be done to the whole site if it gets entirely moved to their hosting without 100% completion of 301 redirects for every page, and every blog post on the site. If they can make that happen, with actual 301 redirects, then I’d vote to try it. If they can’t though, then I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

There was then a bit more text added -

Smart Traffic SEO Tip #37 – Creating a subdomain or a folder?
Subdomain vs. Subfolder, Subdomain.site.com OR site.com/subfolder
A few key facts regarding subdomains and subfolders.
Subdomains:
* Represented in the URL by the characters after “http://” and the ones before “.site.com”
* Are viewed by Search Engines as totally unique sites independent of the parent domain.
* Site Authority (in other words, the ability for the site and its subsequent pages to rank in the search engines) is not passed down from the parent domain.

Subfolders:
* Represented in the URL by the characters after “.site.com/” and before “filename.html”.
* Are viewed by Search Engines as a subdirectory within a site.
* Site Authority is passed down from the main domain.

Based on the above facts, Subdomains are viewed by search engines as totally unique sites independent of the parent domain and the site
authority is not passed down from the parent domain. This means creating subdomains requires greater quality of content to support its own and in
order for them to rank, it requires a lot of promotion and link building efforts.

Between the two, it is advisable to use Subfolders rather than Subdomains. Use subdomains only when the given topic has extensive
content which requires separate navigation and design. Make sure that the subdomain is of great enough quality that it will acquire links and
stand on its own.

So now, my question to the SEO community is this… What do you think?

Besides finding a different e-commerce platform, (one that can handle hosting WP and performing true 301 redirects) what would you advise?

Relevant factors:

• 1100 pages indexed
• 6500 backlinks in Yahoo
• 200 of the 1100 pages are in the blog

I believe that far less harm will come from moving just the actual products into a new subdomain than the harm that might come from moving everything  - especially given the lack of 301 redirects!

This has been the most technologically devastating week of my life, and I consider myself extremely fortunate. Why “fortunate”?  Because I had good backups and only lost two days of my life, instead of suffering permanent damage.

After two days of “fixing”, things are pretty much back to normal, but the time lost over the past three weeks for me, for two others on my team, and for several server admins and web developers is simply astounding. I suppose “wiped out” is a gross exaggeration, but it felt like it, and it could have been a catastrophe without great backups.

Computer Problems Are Not New To Me
Ever since puting my fingers on the keys of a Radio shack TRS-80, I’ve come across nearly every problem imaginable, from power outages causing dataloss, to all of the Windows insanity we’ve experienced in versions 3.x, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7.

I’ve had viruses, hardware failures and plenty of human errors, but by the end of around 2002, after five years of doing computer service and networking for a living, I had learned enough about my fragile existence to implement some very efficient and workable backup systems.

After 2002, when I began focusing on Internet marketing and web hosting, and working almost exclusively online, I also had my share of trials and tribulations, and instead of managing just a few websites, we began dealing with dozens, then hundreds, and then thousands.

I think it’s safe to say that it’s been 7 or 8 years since I’ve actually had an active virus or serious problem like this on any computer  - (other than my kids, who will download anything!)

But I Got Pwned
For those that aren’t aware, there is an annual contest called Pwn2Own that goes on every year. This years contest was held on March 24th, and the “winners” were announced on March 26th, 2010.

Someone in that contest discovered a security hole that allowed script injection through Internet Explorer 8. This meant that simply by visiting a webpage, the user could have their computer used for mnearly anything the hacker desired.

The versatility of this injection has no bounds, and heres a video of the harmless starting of the Windows calculator that was initiated simply by visiting a  webpage.

Using this particular exploit, these cybervandals can deliver ANY virus or trojan that they want top, which can make your computer do anything at all.

From wiping your files,  to installing a keylogger, or even turn your computer into a zombie spam machine, there’s pretty much nothing they can’t do – nothing.

Who’s Responsible?
Microsoft knew about this hole the very day it was announced, and presumably began working on a fix, but it took nearly 6 weeks, and they didn’t patch it until June 8th, a FULL 6 WEEKS after it was made public.  (By contrast, Firefox was patched in 8 days, and Safari was done in 14 days.)

Hackers are able to mobilize a lot faster than Microsoft, and on approximately May 25th, using this particular exploit, I was infected with a brand new virus by visiting a web page in IE 8.

I’m not going to link to the virus, or mention the name because there are dozens of variations now, and it would be pointless,  but as a result of that that first trojan, heres what slowly and insidiously happened to me over the course of the past three weeks:

• Stole FTP usernames and passwords
• Spread over network computers
• Stole a credit card number and charged
• Turned a machine into a spam zombie
• Added my email address to dozens of mailing lists – maybe hundreds
• My personal IP address was blacklisted on three spam lists
• Over 40 websites on various servers were hacked

It wasn’t until this past Friday, when the hacked pages started returning AGAIN to certain websites where I KNEW the FTP access had been changed, that I realized I had a much bigger problem – there was an active keylogger on my main machine. Aaggghhh!

What’s a Keylogger?
As the name implies, a keylogger logs your keystrokes and sends them back to the mother ship where sophisticated software algorithms (or vodka swilling jackasses) determine whether they’re credit cards, usernames, passwords or whatever else, then puts them to good evil use.

Thoughout the ordeal, multiple other viruses and trojans were added to our systems, and although they were usually caught immediately, the undetected root problem of  an open “back door” remained, and there was nothing I could do to get rid of it without formatting and reinstalling.

Before you criticize me for not using what YOU consider to be the “best products” for protection, I’m going to point out that not only did I get it, but so did 7 people I know personally – including two of whom work for me. Each of those 7 people had what they felt was completely “updated and effective protection”.

What’s the moral of the story?
Besides the obvious, which is to use good real-time protection, keep it updated, and keep good backups, my only solution is to plan my vacation for first week of April each year, right after the Pwn2Own winners are announced.

Seriously, short of not using a computer, there’s NOTHING you can do to protect yourself, so keep your systems cleaned and scanned, and on a regular basis, when you KNOW your system is clean, change your FTP passwords to something highly secure, and keep them on PAPER – not in a file on your computer or saved in your FTP software. Being lazy (like I was) can cause you to do hours upon hours of work.

Either that or… use Macs?

There’s a set of “requirements” called Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) that was developed by the PCISSC  Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.

I first heard of these “requirements” in the bar on the last day at Pubcon Vegas 2008, where someone said “Trust me, you’d BETTER learn about it, because they’ll make your life miserable if you don’t…”, and they were sure right.

In 2009 one of my long time consulting clients actually began GETTING FINED by their processor for not being PCI compliant.

At first the fine was about $40 monthly, but that quickly mushroomed, and all of a sudden, they were told that it was several hundred dollars a month.

We changed shopping carts, then worked with the web host, and all was finally resolved, but it took four months and several thousand dollars. Can you afford that unexpectedly?

Before you ask “who has the authority to fine them?” you should know that in their case it was called a “fee” and not a “fine” and it was imposed by their middleman transaction processor, not Authorize.net or their bank.

The official “power” to impose that fee is actually non-existent and totally arbitrary, sort of like blockbuster charging a late fee – because they can.

Get On Top of PCI Compliance NOW
It likely won’t be long before EVERYONE that will process the credit card you take on your website will have to decline your business transactions, and this will put you out of business.

This simply designed to provide a standardized set of consistent security measures for merchants to follow that are handling credit card transactions. – i.e. it’s for our own good.

Yes it’s going to be a pain in the ass to get compliant, but it’s not nearly as bad as trying to recover fraudulent funds that get their transactions reversed after you have shipped or delivered your product, is it?

Worse, will it be as bad as finding out that not only are you being charged a “fee” but in fact, your bank will no longer accept your transactions?

All you have to do is check your site with a vulnerability scanner for PCI Compliance. There are a number of them out there, and your bank should offer one to you soon, if they haven’t already.

In some situations, you may find the need to move to web hosting platform that is claiming compliance that is willing to offer a statement about their compliance, and here’s our statement…

We are not yet PCI compliant.

There – you like that?

I just completed an evaluation, and while I won’t go into the specifics, even though they may be fixable, they are going to be consuming, and we probably won’t be  compliant  in 2010.

The most frustrating thing is that the last time we scanned for this, nearly 8 months ago, we DID pass the test, although the test was from a a different source.

Also, note that I’ve yet to run an audit anywhere recently (6 hosts in the past month) and find a perfect report, so I think the entire industry has some work to do.

If any web hosts want to leave links to their PCI compliance statements as comments, please do!

What EXACTLY is the Standard?
The standard includes these 12 requirements for maintaining a secure operation:

Build and Maintain a Secure Network

• Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
• Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters

Protect Cardholder Data

• Requirement 3: Protect stored cardholder data
• Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks

Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program

• Requirement 5: Use and regularly update anti-virus software
• Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and applications

Implement Strong Access Control Measures

• Requirement 7: Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
• Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
• Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data

Regularly Monitor and Test Networks

• Requirement 10: Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
• Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes

Maintain an Information Security Policy

• Requirement 12: Maintain a policy that addresses information security

So there it is – right from the horses mouth – You’re gonna get screwed, and may have to move your hosting.

What can you do now?
Try this free PCI Compliance scan from Comodo. The last one we ran, got us back a 39 page report.

The report is self explanatory if you’re a tech person. If not, then you’ll need to run it by your computer service folks or admins so they can explain what’s a server issue for your web host, and what might actually be related to your shopping cart.

After that, start looking for a host that is willing to say they’re PCI Compliant. Then, run a test on a URL they host, and dont just take their word for it. Remember, if they turn out not to be, you’re the one that gets screwed.

And again, if you have any recommendations,  please be sure to leave a link to their actual compliance statement. I’ll update this post in the future…

I need to officially announce some recent changes to the e-mail configuration of our servers that may have caused some distress for our hosting clients, and I’d like to clear that up right now.

As of mid April 2010, any email address (whether we are hosting them or not) that sends more than 25 e-mails to our server within a 60 second period will be unable to send any more mail messages through our server, or send any mail at all to anyone we host.

This applies to the To field, to CC, and to BCC addresses, so in other words, you cannot send an email to more than 25 people. If you try, then will be unable to send mail again until we manually remove your address from this “blacklist”. .

This change has been put in place to put a permanent stop to the random inconvenience that many of our hosting customers have experienced over the past couple of years, with a sudden inability to send mail primarily to Yahoo and Microsoft addresses, for up to 48 hours at a time.

The change was unfortunate, but we simply cannot put a burden like that on 99.9% of hosting clients to meet the needs of so few, I’m sorry.

Unfortunately, this may cause us to lose a few hosting clients but the other 99.9% will be happy.

Those that have offended before have been warned privately, but in the end, they “accidentally” mess up the sending ability of all domains on that particular mail servers IP Address. There are several mail servers, but hundreds of domains and thousands of people are affected. Innocents suffer!

While the vast majority of hosting clients may not even notice this change, a couple have already, and for those that need lists larger than 25, I’ve recommended the iContact email service that starts at just $10 per month, and has a free 30 day trial.

There are dozens of third party mail services to choose from, but I do like iContact for our own needs, and since it starts at $10 monthly for the first 250 addresses, it’s ideal, and it’s $5 cheaper than Constant Contact, which we still recommend also.

You can import lists from Outlook or text files, or you can add contacts there one by one.

I highly recommend looking into iContact, and we have been an affiliate of theirs for several years now. Here’s a nifty banner for a free month to try it out…

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…

The next date for my class at Portland Community College will be on two consecutive Saturdays, July 31st, and August 7th, 2010.

This class is *not* an advanced search marketing class, and in fact, if you are already working in the field of search engine optimization I can say that you would completely be wasting your time.

On the other hand, if you are a small business owner, a web developer, or anyone else with a burning desire to learn all the necessary ins and outs of search engine optimization and Google, then I promise it could be the best eight hours you’ve ever spent for your future.

When: Saturdays, July 31st, and August 7th, 2010.
Where: Mt Tabor Hall – PCC East
Who: Small business owners, website designers, developers, or anyone without a good grasp on internet marketing.
How: Sign up directly at the Portland Community College site
What: Here is exactly what will be covered:

Course Description
Business owners may not need all of the technical knowledge of a web developer, but they should be familiar with various aspects of internet marketing.

This course will prepare small business owners and web developers with all of the major aspects of search engine optimization and internet visibility.

Class Meetings
Two four hour sessions on subsequent Saturday mornings.

Ground Rules
NDQ!   There are No Dumb Questions in our classroom. All questions are welcome. Interruptions are welcome, in fact!

Students are encouraged to ask questions at any time.  That doesn’t mean it will always be answered on the spot, but it will be addressed.

Course Objectives
By the end of this course you will have your own Google account, and will be able to:

• Identify different areas of a search engine results page at Google
• Identify Paid Placements & Ads.
• Identify  local listings
• Identify organic listings
• Be familiar with how each area gets populated with data by Google
• Understand “organic” SEO fundamentals
• Review any webpage for SEO basics
• Perform basic keyword research
• Know how to get listed in the Google “local”, or “Google Maps” results
• Set up your own Google account
• Use Google Analytics
• Use Google AdWords
• Use the Google Local Business Center
• Use Google Webmaster Tools
• Identify your visitors behavior
• Do much, much more!

All of the class materials, all of the handouts etc. come straight from the search engines, mainly Google, so there can be no doubt about their accuracy.

I’ve had free reign to structure everything about the class exactly the way I wish, and I can guarantee that there will be “no student left behind”.

Come join us and register now, for class number CEU935A SEO & Marketing Your Website – or send a link to this post to someone you know who really needs it!

Educate Your SEO Clients

If you’re local, share this post with anyone you think ought to go, even some of those, um… certain clients? You know, the ones that insist on ranking for ego phrases? Or the ones that refuse to let you or your people add any content, and let their site stagnate?

Maybe you could send the ones that seem to be intentionally avoiding contact yet still expect you to make them money as their “SEO”?  Sending them to this class will make your job easier…

Verizon Wireless just missed a golden opportunity to speak to a group of 25+ computer consultants about why their network, and why their handheld devices were the best choice for clients.

They also managed to tick off and alienate that same influential group, by completely blowing them off after giving them the runaround for the bast few weeks, and finally leaving them hanging.

I’m on the board of directors for the Oregon Computer Consultants Association, and each month we have speakers give presentations, in an area that we think the members would be interested.

This month,  we had scheduled the “battle of the handhelds” in an effort to get experts from AT&T and Verizon Wireless to not only show their wares and try to sell us on their service,  but to talk about their network, and bring data specialists to explain the advantages and disadvantages of each type of smart phone, from Droids and Blackberries, to Windows Mobile and iPhones.

It took me no less than eight e-mails and text messages, and four separate phone calls with my rep at Verizon to get them to agree to show up.  I should have seen that as a red flag, because AT&T  was more than willing from the very beginning, and they agreed immediately.

Last week, out of nowhere, Verizon threw a monkey wrench into the gears, by telling me that they weren’t going to be able to speak unless I could get AT&T to agree to leave the room while they gave their presentation.  Seriously.

I thought it was ridiculous, but I acquiesced, and I called AT&T, who also thought it was ridiculous,  but they did agree to leave the room while Verizon gave their presentation, and then both of them were going to come back in for the Q&A.

It promised to be an informative session, filled with lots of technical questions and answers that only data specialists could answer, and not some crappy sales pitch.

We had a pretty good RSVP count, we put out press releases that included biographies of the speakers, and we were looking forward to an informative meeting.

I coach my kid’s Little League team, and was unfortunately not able to attend , but at exactly 5 minutes before the start of the meeting, I received a text message from one of the other board members that “your Verizon rep hasn’t shown up – can you call him”?  Luckily, I had his number in my Blackberry, so I did.

It turned out that he had “forgotten” to get back to me after he found out just last night that the data specialist wasn’t going to be able to make it!   Somehow this ALSO turned into him not being able to come either, and so basically, Verizon just blew us off, and left an entire room of consultants stranded.

Jeremy from Verizon DID offer to come speak to us next month – which was right before I said “Are you kidding me?” and hung up in disgust,

Remember this wasn’t just 25 customers they screwed over, which I’m sure would be a drop in the bucket. It was 25 computer consultants that all provide recommendations to their clients on a regular basis about what technology to use in their offices, ranging from small mom and pops, to some of Portland’s largest businesses.

Way to go Verizon…  Nice  job alienating not only me, but 25+ other local consultants.  How many of them do you think are likely to recommend Verizon to their clients going forward after this?

Unfortunately I own some stock in Verizon too, and I’m off to dump it, then I’m going to research some other phone options. What a massive #FAIL.?

I received a marketing e-mail that was cleverly worded enough to make me click the link, but when I got there the message I received wasn’t exactly a perfect sales pitch.

The e-mail I got told me that my business name was listed incorrectly on the major search engines, and I could get a complete online visibility report by following the link.

It sounded interesting, so I followed the link, and this is what I saw -

If I’m better off than all 111 of my competitors, how can they help me?

And what’s “Multnomah” Oregon?  (Actually, Multnomah is my county, and even if their email software doesn’t know that, their website  for mining local leads should)

Here’s what the email said…

My name is [snip Name] and I’m researching the online visibility of Multnomah small businesses.

I came across Search Commander, Inc. (11124 Halsey St) on Google, Yahoo and yellow pages sites and noticed that the business is listed differently on these sites. I invite you to check if the business details are up-to-date and take a look at your complete online visibility report.

I hope this information will be useful to you and would appreciate any feedback you may have. If this is not your business or if you would not like to receive these reports, please click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.

Sincerely,

[snip Name]
Business Analyst
[snip Email]

I’m not writing this to slam ‘em, I think it’s an interesting campaign, a good looking site, and they DO have a point – Listings should match identically from site to site, (something I learned from David Mihm) and it’s something I confess to being less than diligent about, at Search Commander, Inc.

I accidentally came upon another way that WordPress isn’t working quite right, so I made a quick 2 minute video.

Over at SEO Automatic, I had created a page long ago to use for a new feature, my Automatic SEO Tip of the Week but I never made it live because I didn’t yet have enough content.

This morning, after I completed several weeks worth of content, and we had the sign up form tested and working, I was ready to make it live, but I had forgotten about the old one, and I created a new page.

Here’s a quick 2 minute video showing what I found..

Because the URL was already in use as a draft, WordPress appended a -2 to the permalink, and I didn’t notice until after it was live.

I thought it was ugly, so after deleting the original draft, I edited the permalink to remove the unwanted two characters.

What did I find? Yep, you guessed it… the old page name was now a 404 error. Interestingly, the “thank you page” after sign up DID codrrectly 301, so… go figure!

anyway, I manually added a 301 redirect, and then promptly installed this plugin, to manage things easier inside of the WordPress admin. I know this used to work fine, and I wish they’d stop breaking things…