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….

Aflac is trying to get someone to make changes on their website, claiming that they’re guilty of Federal Trademark violation merely by using the letters a-f-l-a-c as part of a file name.

Even more ridiculous, this is being requested of one of their own licensed agents, with a circa 1998 website that’s never even been moderately SEO’d.

Last week, this e-mail arrived from Aflac Brand Protection:

Dear NAME REMOVED:

As you may know, American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus (Aflac) has used the name and mark Aflac to identify insurance underwriting services for over forty (50) years.

Aflac owns numerous trademark registrations for the Aflac trademark (“Aflac Mark”), including Reg. Nos. 1,570,222, and 1,679,644, registrations which are valid and incontestable.
It has come to our attention that http://www.DOMAINREMOVED/filename-changed.html includes Aflac in its meta data.

We believe that your use of our Mark is an obvious attempt to attract internet traffic to your website while capitalizing upon the goodwill associated with the Aflac name.

Such use of Aflac may result in trademark infringement, dilution and unfair competition in violation of the federal Trademark Act of 1946, 15 U.S.C. Section 1051 et seq.

In any event, Aflac requests that your company discontinue any and all use of Aflac at http://www.DOMAINREMOVED.COM/filenamechanged.html

Please reply to this email confirming your agreement to this request, and your agreement that you will not use in the future any mark or name similar to any Aflac trademark, service mark or URL, to conduct any business or activity on the internet.

Aflac reserves all rights, remedies, and causes of action it may have in this matter

Name Removed | Brand Protection Coordinator
Marketing Services
New Media
Aflac Worldwide Headquartersma
emailremoved
(No phone number was provided or I’d have phoned)

Huh? “…an obvious attempt to attract internet traffic to your website” – Doesn’t the mere existence of the website itself make it pretty obvious that the agent is trying to attract customers?

I took quick look at the site, then viewed just that file, and saw that is was a navigation sidebar.

On the site, there is no AFLAC logo (although there should be but there IS a button for “Get more AFLAC info” which is a graphic, and leads to a form.

Viewing the source code, you can see that either on the navigation file in question, OR on the Aflac form, the word AFLAC is not in the title, not in the description tag, and it’s not one of the meta keyword tags.

Other than mentioning in the body of the page that he’s an Aflac agent, and then in the body of the form once, that’s it – No other mention of Aflac.

So, I sent back this e-mail -

There’s no Aflac in the meta data – it’s an image to fill out an application! No keyword, no title, and no meta tag at all – not even text or an ALT tag!
What’s the problem?

To which I received this reply:

Hi Scott,

Thank you for your email.

For your convenience I have copied and highlighted the meta data at http://www.DOMAINREMOVED.net/filenamechanged.html. Aflac continues to request that your company discontinue any and all use of Aflac at http://www.DOMAINREMOVED.net/filenamechanged.html

And then they proceeded to provide the entire source of the page, with a couple of lines highlighted.
To save space, I’ve snipped those lines, where they remain UNEDITED.

img6on = new Image();
img6on.src = “./images/aflacon1.gif”;
img6off = new Image();

img6off.src = “./images/aflacoff1.gif”
This creates a hover effect over their menu, and is merely a reference to a file that contains the six letters in their name.

Then this:

<a target=”content” onMouseOver=”imgOn(‘img6′)” onMouseOut=”imgOff(‘img6′)” href=”aflac.html”>
<IMG SRC=”images/aflacoff1.gif” NAME=”img6″ border=0 alt=”Area Info” width=”141″ height=”44″></a></td></tr>

Which again, is part of the navigation, and simply provides the link to the form, asking to be sent some Aflac information

So, I sent them this on August 13th -

But that’s not “meta data”, those are file names, and aren’t subject to Trademark, are they? One is a page name, .html and one is just an image reference, and the letters Aflac only make up part of the file name.

I can’t believe Aflac could legally demand that nobody use “those letters” in a row for their file names under trademark law. This sounds like Aflac is overreaching a bit, doesn’t it?

Sincerely,

Now, five days later, I’ve still not received an answer, but I’ve been thinking about it, and here are some questions that are on my mind…

• Isn’t a licensed AFLAC agent allowed to mention the fact that they do that for a living?
• Does a trademark mean you hold the trademark on use of their five letters in a row?
• Was this really looked at by someone that knows and understands what they’re doing?
• What in the code exactly is covered by trademark law?

I think this shows an incredible lack of knowledge about what they’re “enforcing” and amazingly poor marketing judgement too, by Aflac.

Perhaps lawyers can’t be expected to understand all the intricacies of HTML, but surely the ones in charge of enforcing trademark law should know the basics, shouldn’t they?

Also, why would any clear thinking company choose to prevent a licensed agent from legally marketing their own product, making their stockholders money?

Does this blog post violate a trademark? For example, I DO seem to have meta data, with the word AFLAC in my description tag, and in the meta keyword tag, so am I in violation of trademark law too?

This makes no sense to me, and just sounds to me like an overzealous and uninformed lawyer making demands about something they don’t even understand, simply because they can.

“Universal Search” was implemented by Google quite a while ago, yet the only visible change to the search results has been occasional interspersing of some video or news.

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’m leaving this moring for Elite Retreat, and I’m writing this in the airport because my flight is delayed. It occurs to me that I may not be able to productively fill all of my “one on one” time.

Have you looked at who’s speaking at Elite Retreat 2009? Can you imagine not having an agenda of questions ready to ask these guys?

in all fairness, Tigh at Shoemoney sent out a “get ready” email about a week ago, and I saved it, planning to get back to it later, and that’s what I’m going to finish up on the plane.

However, last year at ER, each and every speakers let us “wear out our welcome”, on the last night by hanging around on their own time until EVERY single person had nothing left to ask but “Where’s the bar?”

To be honest, my biggest regret from ER 2008 is that I hadn’t shown up with a mile long list of questions – I had no idea that we would have all that personally devoted time.

This year it’s different, because I know it’s coming, and so do the other 34 attendees. also, my main focus is on furthur expanding services at SEO Automatic as I bring it forward with an affiliate program and brandable agency options.

I KNOW I have a specific agenda. But, like last year, if I were to get the opportunity, what would I do if there was nothing left to ask?

So, PLEASE tell me what questions might you ask of any of these people, and I’ll do my best to get to ‘em.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve put out a few SEO tools, but none have been as well received as my latest addition, SEO Automatic, which gives instant SEO feedback on any given URL.

The concept was simple – we needed to be able to review a website and look at all of the basics quickly so that we could begin to understand how much work was going to be involved in fixing the problem.

I quietly released the tool in late October with very little fanfare, and I didn’t even blog about it. I just mentioned it to my Twitter followers and then left it alone, since it was still in beta, and I thought it was still a pretty rough piece of work.

In November 2008, at Webmaster World / Pubcon I ran into Rand Fishkin in the exhibit hall, who told me that he really liked SEO Automatic, and that he was going to mention it in his presentation.

I was flattered and appreciative, but I had to scramble that night to make some changes to the site so that I could at least gather e-mail addresses! I knew that if “The Wizard of Moz” was going to mention it, I would likely get some good traffic, and to not even gather email addresses would have been extremely stupid on my part.

Little did I know that he was going to make it one of his “Six Killer SEO Tools”, in his part of the “Secret SEO Tools” session that had over 800 people in attendance. Rand actually gave my tool three or four screen shots during his talk, and had some nice things to say about me personally too. (Thank very much, Rand!)

Over the next couple of weeks I rebranded the ste as my own, (rather than just an anonymous tool), and since January 1 2009, it’s been used over 2,200 times, on nearly 1400 domains – all for free, and with no publicity other than word of mouth and Twitter.

This past weekend, the beta period officially ended, all of the pre-registered users were imported into the system, and rewarded with over $21,000 in free reporting credits for future use, with no membership fee required. An email went out to all users Friday night.

New Addition – Agency Option Now Available
The advice shown for each ranking factor in the tool is currently my own, and so is the determination of whether something is “important, or just “worth noting”, and so are the determinations of size or quantity, as in what constitutes “too many” links or what file sizes are “too large”.

However, using the functionality of this tool, some users may have their own ideas that they want to share with clients or prospective clients, using the tool to generate their own leads, or to demonstrate their own expertise.

That’s why I’ve now introduced an “Agency Option”, allowing them to edit ALL of the information shown by the tool, including the informational and educational links that are shown about each ranking factor.

The agency option is branded with YOUR WordPress theme, and runs with your logo, your look & feel, your contact information, and your advice.

Agency level users are now able to determine the importance level of each factor too, or even whether to show a particular ranking factor or not as part of the report, and this is all done from right inside the WordPress control panel.

Pricing for the agency option varies based on volume of use, so please contact me directly to discuss this by telephone, at 877-241-4453. (I’m in the U. S. on Pacific Standard Time).

I hope you’ll like what you see, both at the Lite version at Search Commander, Inc. and at the Pro version at SEOAutomatic.com.

Peak Studios is a “search marketing firm” in Colorado that deserves special recognition for being incredibly stupid. Apparently, they’ve decided to leave fake negative reviews on my local business profile in Google, and they’ve done the same thing to several other members of the SEMpdx board of directors.

The owner, Quince Wyss, has now moved from a simple ignorance about marketing tactics into complete and total idiocy, and I’m sharing the story here because he’s crossed the line with these personal attacks.

The Story:
Back in October, someone posted twice in a row at the SEMpdx forums with two poorly written self promotional articles that were not only poorly written, but also had embarrassingly bad formatting, grammar, and punctuation.

As a forum moderator, I was just going to delete them when I noticed something comical – The “service” being hawked in these two pieces of junk were for an SEO / SEM company in Colorado named Peak Studios.

The person that posted even left their name, company name, and their email address, website and phone number, on both of these ridiculous “contruibutions”.

First I laughed, and then I Twittered this – “If you were an SEO company, would you forumspam us at SEMpdx? Duh. So, I’m calling [unlinked here] Peakstudios.com and I’ll report back”.

I realized it might just be someone trying to make Peak Studios look bad, so I decided to phone the company and alert them to what had been done.

How Did Peak Studios React?
You can imagine my surprise when the owner, Quince Wyss, told me that they DID have an employee with that name, and Quince said he wanted to see what the employee had written.

I forwarded the “articles” to him by email, expecting to get a message back that he was embarrassed and sorry, and that the employee would undergo some training about what is and isn’t appropriate. Certainly he’d train him more about how they want to portray themselves in the public eye, right?

I hung up thinking I had done a good deed, but an hour later I got an email back from him actually defending this crap, and he also “demanded” that I retract what I had said on Twitter!

Well, never one to miss an opportunity, I wrote an article called “Forum Spam is in the Eye of the Beholder” and posted on the SEMpdx blog, calling out Peak Studios by name as defending the practice of spamming forums.

Todd Mintz submitted it to Sphinn, where agreement was nearly 100% that this guy was in the wrong. Well known and respected internet marketers like Jill Whalen, John Andrews, Daria Goetsch, Nick Wilsdon, Kim (Krause) Berg and many others all seemed to agree that yeah, it was totally inappropriate.

But after seeing the internet community lined up against him, did Quince Wyss see the error of his ways and do the right thing and apologize?

No – of course not. Peak Studios continued to argue the point as the only defender on the thread, Opiumden. The debate got so ridiculous that commenting was turned off by adnimistrators.

Was that the end of it?
Oh no, not by a long shot. This genius then actually phoned both Kent Lewis, the past president at SEMpdx, and Ben Lloyd, the current president, and “demanded” that my article be removed, threatening lawsuits, retaliation, and blah blah blah.

Quince claimed both that I had edited his “articles to make him look bad” (LOL – why would anyone do that?), and he said that there was “nothing wrong with what he’d done”.

At that point it became even more ridiculous, as several emails went around among the SEMpdx board before we all decided unanimously that the article should stay up.

I mean, here’s a “search marketing firm” engaging in the same exact kind of forum spam that you see for Viagra, but it was for their own industry, their own business, and they were actually DEFENDING it! We all found it incredible.

So, Ben basically told the guy to take a hike and to go ahead and call his lawyer, because we all agreed he was clearly off his tree.

Was that the end? Oh no, just wait, it gets better…
Earlier this week, someone supposedly named “Jesse Vandalino” posted a silly but negative comment about SEMpdx on a very old outdated blog post at Matt McGee’s Small Business Marketing blog.

Matt emailed Todd Mintz and asked him if the name “Jesse Vandalino” rang any bells, which it didn’t, and we all suspected that it might be this guy from Peak Studios trying to engage in some reputation damagement.

Then Friday, someone at the office of Anvil Media noticed a negative review on their Google Maps profile, and Tom Hale, another SEMpdx forum admin and advisory board member ALSO had a negative review added to his Google profile.

I heard about this all on Saturday, and a quick look at my own Google profile turned up the one and only negative review ever written about my company. Sure enough, it too could be tracked back to this bozo at Peak Studios. Here’s a copy, in case I can get it removed…

Why am I writing this now?
Because after seeing this fake review, I was so mad that I picked up the phone and called Peak, leaving a profane voicemail that he should have some balls and call me. What did he do? Did he “man up” and phone me? No.

After editing out his own name, his company name, and the dirty deeds I was accusing him of, he then posted the voicemail on youtube in another public smear attempt. (I guess it serves me right, but I was genuinely pissed!)

That wasn’t enough tough, and he began contacting others, like the East Portland Chamber of Commerce, and linking to the Youtube edited voicemail with more comment spam.

THEN he went back into my Google profile and added another fake review, this one with reference to the voicemail!

If this guy will spam our forum, then go to all the trouble to attack us personally when he’s so clearly wrong in the first place, what might he do for his clients?

I took a look at just the first client listed in their “web portfolio” and here’s a short video of how they “market”, including:

• Making up fake user profiles
• Leaving fake favorable reviews for clients
• Slandering client competitors by leaving fake negative reviews

Here is my proof that they are leaving fake reviews!

What’s the most disturbing is NOT that he’s too stupid to realize that they spammed in the first place.

It’s not even that he’s so dumb that he used the same user accounts making this so easy to uncover.

No, what’s most disturbing is that there are businesses in Colorado that are falling prey to the supposed “internet marketing services” of Quince Wyss at Peak Studios, and they are risking their business reputation .

Don’t take my word for it; check them out for yourself! Here are a few fake user reviews I found for ChemDry carpet cleaning, a Peak Studios client – One, two, three, four

Here’s one where they also did a fake negative review of a competitor, and here’s another fake negative competitor review. Here’s one competitor hit with 5 negative reviews

It’s one thing to engage in some negative smear campaign against me or SEMpdx – we’re big boys & girls and can take care of ourselves.

What they’re doing is posting fake reviews of their own clients, and they’re posting fake negative reviews about their clients competitors! That is SO far over the top that I I think they should be sued.

Only the most despicable company would engage in a negative campaign of actual lies about the competitors of their clients, right?

Do you think their clients have agreed to let them play that way?

Update – 14 months later, Peak Studios is at it again so i’m closing comments here – please go to the new thread…

An attorney got in touch with me a couple of months ago after reading a blog post I had written at SEMpdx. Google had just drastically lowered visibility of the option where new advertisers could opt out of the Content Network in Google AdWords, and I was compelled to point out that I thought it was sneaky.

During our phone conversation, the subject came up of whether I might consider being the named plaintiff on this pending class action lawsuit against Google over this very issue! Scott Hendison vs. Google? Ummm… no thank you.

What is the Content Network?
Google’s content network allows any website owner to sign up at Ad Sense and display “Ads by Google” advertisements, sharing in the revenue. A large percentage of these sites are known as MFA’s (Made For AdSense) and contain everything from scraped search results to recycled blog feeds. Many of them have simply have recycled content from article directories, and their sole reason for existence is to get visitors to click on an ad.

Google even offers certain display ad choices that can be integrated to look like a part of the site’s menu. My wife hates these sites, and complains every time she hits one, saying she feels “tricked”.

For years, most of my new clients have had pre-existing AdWords accounts. whenever I review them for the first time, nearly all of them are spending between 40% and 70% of their money in Google’s “content network”, unless another consultant had told them to turn it off before. The instant ROI improvement usually results in a very happy advertiser pretty fast.

Some experts believe advertising in the content network is primarily a waste of money, and hurts ROI. There are others that believe that it can be okay, and some are even reporting now that it’s getting better. This isn’t the place to debate that, however, because its the CHANGE that I am referring to. Besides, only 4 out of 5 dentists recommend sugarless gum, so what can ya’ do?

What did Google change?
The change that Google made last fall, was that they went from merely “defaulting” new advertisers into the content network, to actually hiding the fact from plain sight. Say what you want, but I think it was deceptive, and that’s why I wrote this. It seems somehow “slimy” to me, and further adds to the ever tarnishing reputation of search marketing in general.

So I get the call from this guy, and he talks a bit, and shows me his website, and I’m glad he liked the article, but I have to pass on the offer.

Why Did I Pass?
Am I scared of what Google could do to me? Well, I do enjoy some pretty nice SERPS right now for this business, not to mention some other domains I have that also rank on the first page for their niches. I’ve created lots of sites with good content, and have some high quality affiliates, and I’ve shut down any scraper sites stayed pretty much “white hat” for a few years now, and all of my domains are registered in my own name. As a registrar, Google could likely find out every domain I own, and conceivably devastate me with some “rankings of retribution”.

C’mon, do I think Google would really do this to me? Absolutely not. I can’t fathom any company risking the potential retribution for something like that, but I’d STILL have to be a complete idiot to want to take that chance. There’s just not enough reward for the risk, since I’d likely get very little anyway even we won. (Might be good for inbound links though )

But that’s not the reason that I wouldn’t do it. The real reason is because in my opinion, Google has the right to make as much money as they want. As a web marketer looking to improve ROI, I think moving their “opt out of the Content Network” to a less visible location was a good business decision, but I also think it was sort of a slimy thing to do. As a (teeny tiny) Google stockholder, I’m glad to see them extracting advertiser dollars, but as an ethical marketer, I’m bothered by it, and I think they’re taking advantage of peoples ignorance.

There are plenty of slimy insurance salesmen, used car dealers, contractors, electricians, lawyers, plumbers, etc. that all stretch the ethical limits without actually breaking the law. I think it’s ultimately the buyers responsibility to protect themselves, and the SEO industry is no different.

After all, if you give someone money to “submit your site to 100+ search engines” and they actually do it, does the fact that it’s really worthless make it something you can sue for?

Let’s face it; companies have blown tens (hundreds) of millions of dollars with “do it yourself” advertising, PPC advertising because they start out undeucated. Just yesterday I saw a company account driving five figures and 8k visitors per month to their home page. While they would have lost LESS money if they weren’t in the Content Network, they still more maximizing their investment. Can Google be sued for that too?

What about the totally stupid search marketer that ran up a $2200 pay per click tab over 3 weeks pointing to a URL that was down? Can I get my money back they get their money back too? Doesn’t Google also bear the responsibility of making sure that the property for which they except advertising exists? I don’t think so.

Again, I do think it was a distasteful move to bury the Content Network opt out, and give the hard sell, but just like anything in the world, it’s the buyers responsibility not to get ripped off. We’re taught to look both ways before crossing the street, not to take candy from strangers, not to accept rides from friendly people we don’t know, and we should know not to enter our credit card numbers somewhere unless we’re sure whe’re the right one for the job.

Hmm…. who can I think of that’s got a strong opinion of right and wrong, and is not afraid to take on Google?

If you or someone you know is willing to be the name on this lawsuit, contact the attorney directly at their website.

I wrote a few weeks ago on SEMpdx about the fact that if you searched for a domain name on Network Solutions, and then didn’t buy it that moment for their extremely high price, that you cannot go register it elsewhere, because they basically lock it up.

Now it appears they’re getting sued for doing it! While I still think it’s a slimy practice, I don’t agree that it’s an actionable legal issue. I guess guess we’ll see…

This sounds to me like a great thing, being able to bypass all of the bureaucracy involved in bringing fast high speed wireless to rural areas with land lines.

There’s a reason we in the United States are NOT the worlds leader in high speed internet, much less wireless, and in my opinion, it has to do with payola, and not a lack of technology.

This morning it looks like Microsoft is offering 44.6 billion dollars to buy Yahoo. Holy Cow. That’s a far cry from the usual things I see when I browse my morning Twitter feed.

Actually, I’ve been wondering what’s taken them so long, since it’s clear they’re not going to get decent market share any other way.

You can read the gory details here, while I go try and register Microsahoo.com…