e-touch
the human side of computing
Monday 30 June 2008, 1:45 PM
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
You’re caught up in the buzz about blogs and you want to make a quick buck or two in the digital world by becoming a niche blogger. Hold your horses, because things could go wrong in a hurry.
Let me explain. Let’s say a friend of mine called Mr Pink set up a small portfolio of blogs to make a little money each from Google AdSense advertisements. Nothing wrong with that. However, one day Mr Pink woke up, logged on, and all his blogs were gone. Vanished without a trace...
What happened? Well, Blogger.com (owned by Google), determined that Mr Pink was violating its terms of service. Google thought Mr Pink’s blogs were what are called ‘splogs’ or spam blogs.
Spam blogs, increasing being referred to as splogs, are artificially created Weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated Web sites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the Google PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate Web sites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed.
Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either inauthentic text or merely stolen from other Web sites. These blogs usually contain a high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless Web sites. Basically, they’re a scourge on the Internet.
Mr Pink called Blogger.com and told support staff his sites weren’t spam, but they didn’t want to know. He never got his sites back and lost around £2K per month income - overnight. The moral of the story? Besides not using Blogger (WordPress is far better), get yourself your own domain names and Web hosting. There’s obviously cost involved, but the security and control you have makes it worthwhile. At least you’ll sleep well knowing your blogs will still be there in the morning.
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Christian Harris
Founder & Editor, BIOS
http://twitter.com/christianharris
Friday 27 June 2008, 10:23 PM
The Internet Is Doomed (& I feel Fine)
One of the world’s leading academics, Professor Jonathan Zittrain, has warned that the Internet may come to an end under the weight of malicious code. [end dramatic music] Zittrain has called for the Internet to be locked down by a solution that does not destroy the creativity and openness that made the Internet such an enormous success in the first place.
Let’s get this right. There are over 171 million Web hosts now in use. Think of each one of these as a distinct Web site (some Web sites do span multiple hosts, but some hosts deliver multiple sites). Each Web site has content within it.
Let’s say, for argument sake, that the average Web site has 100 pages of content. That would mean there are 171,000,000 sites x 100 pages content average = 17,100,000,000 or 17 billion Web pages of content out there. So Google and Inktomi would have each indexed little more that 10% of the Internet. Is this number realistic? I cannot confirm or deny this because my brain just doesn’t do numbers, but the number of pages out there is probably a little higher. What the heck, let’s just shut the whole lot down anyway...
While it may be a little over zealous to suggest the Internet is rapidly coming to an end, it is clear that we’re all in a continuous battle to combat the threats that emerge as a result of increased malicious activity on the Internet. The widespread nature of viruses, spam, worms, phishing and fraud has meant that fending off each new piece of malware as it emerges is next to impossible, putting an end to the reliance on reactive technologies like anti-virus software.
The problem is that we now run around like headless chickens, applying emergency security updates and patching everything except the kitchen sink in response to identified threats and vulnerabilities. This reactive approach to security (typified by anti-virus solutions) has highlighted many inadequacies, placing computers at risk of security breaches. Surely, only by turning security on its head to enforce a ‘known-good’ state, can cybercrime be addressed.
The public and businesses alike need to consider deploying technologies that monitor and only allow known good applications or devices to connect to their PC or network. While this ‘whitelisting’ approach has had a reputation for impacting productivity, the technology has progressed rapidly since it emerged on the market, not prohibiting the user entirely but allowing them to access data and execute programs that are needed to perform their daily tasks while keeping the malicious activities out. Isn’t that better than shutting the whole thing down?
Monday 23 June 2008, 12:09 AM
Behavioural Targeting Set To Explode
We’ve all seen it before. Clicking into your favourite Web site will more than likely serve up a promotion for the product that you’ve already had for the past 12 months. Going online to your mobile provider to top-up our account, only to be shown a promotion for the handset that you bought last month.
The next evolution in online advertising is set to change all this. Behavioural targeting - a buzzword that’s been kicking around in online advertising from way back in 2005 - will change the face of delivering messages to potential customers. Presently, throwing up an ad from an IT services company, for instance, next to a review about a desktop computer is primitive. What these companies who spend lots of advertising cash really want to know is who these people are who are reading the articles and how can they target them individually.
Behavioural targeting is an advertising methodology in which an advertiser’s creative is shown to users based on the sites they visit and/or what the user does on those sites. In other words, incorporating behavioural data about each visitor in real-time to serve more effective product offers and sales messages. The network or publisher creates behavioural segments based on where the user has gone and/or what they have done on various Web pages.
These are typically broad-based descriptions like ‘gamers’ or ‘IT managers’, but they can also be very specific to an advertiser like ‘Users who put items in their shopping cart, but did not check out’. Another example is a segment based on users who have searched for an advertiser’s company name or product name. Finally, it can involve creating business rules to address specific visitor scenarios.
Running a few commercial Web sites myself, I know that online advertisers are increasingly becoming more demanding. It’s a total pain in the ass and requires lots of backend technology, but the rewards can be much greater than general advertisements. These companies who advertise really want to know who are reading your articles, and how they can target them. Where did they log in from? How often do they visit and at what time of day? What browser do they use when they visit? What do they do on the site? All of that information will help them determine at what point in the content consumption cycle they can most successfully target the reader.
Behavioural targeting, as far as I can see it, is the future of online advertising. And if you’re a publisher that runs its business based on advertising, you need to start looking at solutions that will help you to answer all of your advertisers’ questions. If you don’t, you may find that your clients start getting their questions answered by your competitors.
Thursday 12 June 2008, 9:15 PM
Getting Round The Google Keywords Ban
Some UK businesses may find themselves hit by a new keywords ban on Google AdWords. If you’re one of the unlucky ones, you should perhaps use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to maintain Web site traffic levels.
In the last few weeks, the search giant has prevented pay per click adverts from showing against a number of words it considers unethical, including ‘gambling’ and the names of spirits such as ‘vodka’.
Some people are very unhappy with Google forcing its ethics on the UK like this - especially those who sell alcohol in their casinos! Just because a few Americans have a problem showing adverts next to the word ‘vodka’ will affect hundreds of UK businesses. Bah!
It’s unlikely Google will reverse this decision, so affected businesses should ensure they don’t lose market share by putting in place a SEO campaign to get natural search results. But good SEO is not a quick process. Depending on the keywords it can take several months. But it is a long-term investment in the performance of a Web site.
Adverts, on the other hand, disappear immediately when a campaign ends. When you switch off an SEO campaign, it continues to drive traffic. For businesses that rely on Google traffic and have seen it snatched away, SEO is one of the best ways to protect future Internet sales - more than ever if you don’t have a big budget for traditional online advertisements.
