There seems to be a bit of hub-bub lately over some of what Google is doing with it’s search index regarding spam. And it has many webmasters and internet web developers all up in arms.

We here would call it the oop’s algo (Over Optimization Penalty) .. and there are quite literally millions of websites scattered across the world wide web that are suffering a loss in rankings as a result of this penalty.

As a note to our clients, current and future, I’ll say that though there may be a great cause for concern in some quarters of the net with regard to the oop’s, we here at SETX WebDev are taking it all in stride.

In so very many ways, I would consider SETX WebDev lucky in that we’ve never practiced really any of the dark art web development tactics that so many others across the web have. Functionality is the rule of the day around here. Even as far back as 2005 when Google started to flex it’s muscle, we here never waivered .. always built for the client side, regardless of the threats of disownment that fell out of Googles bucket of buggaboo.

Internet websites should survive, or die, based solely on their own merit .. not on the whims of the internet search giant.

Shortly after April 24th, I began to get calls from Google .. wanting that I should buy Adwords. I had first written the calls off as just some shrew, trying to “resell” a product or a service. It wasn’t until I looked into the WMT that I came to understand why I was getting these calls.

It appeared that a few of our managed clients were receiving less than stellar marks from Google. Yes, they were suffering from the oop’s algo. Upon further investigation, I found that even the crap sites out there can place well in the SERP’s if they had an Adwords account with Google.

When Matt Cutts said, “We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) … “  .. I came away with the notion that Google could stand to make a killing in the Adwords arena.

This isn’t rocket science really .. when you do the math, you can only come to conclude that Google needs to make a sale .. and with this oop’s algo, they’re probably just now raking in the bigger bucks with the sales of their Adword accounts.
I don’t depend on Google for my income .. I don’t work for Google, so I’m not about to start selling Adwords.

Scammers and Spammers have turned SEO into a Cottage Industry, and Google, not wanting to be outdone, has turned those very Scammers and Spammers into a Cottage Industry of their own ..

Our clients depend on us .. they depend on us to do the right thing .. and IMHO, doing the right thing might involve doing a total rework of a site .. correcting a previous web developers mistakes .. putting the client site on in such a way so as to not be influenced at all by whatever scheme Google decides to come up with next.

In our world, it’s not all about Google. It’s about our clients .. I’ve maintained for years that we aren’t here for Google .. Google is here for us .. to use .. as the tool that they are. Misuse of a tool can result in the loss of productivity and profit. If you abuse Google, well, then there isn’t much here we can do for you .. you’re on your own.

I don’t know how many we’ve turned away in the past 5 days that have asked that this oop’s algo be fixed as it relates to their site. I can only do so much. If you’re someone of quality, and of good character, and got caught up in the myths of SEO? .. Well, then I might take on the task of a fix for you. If you are an experienced web developer and knew, going in, that what you were doing to your client’s site was wrong in the end, well, then SHAME ON YOU .. you deserve the loss that you get.

A word to some of our newer clients? .. All of what has gone on before, with your older solution, has gone away. You’re on clean, uncluttered web hosting solutions with all of the backend writes and structure in place. Your site pages are being written to include all of the necessary metadata .. your on page email addresses have gone away .. written into properly coded/scripted forms .. your linking structures are all under review and will be edited accordingly. No hype .. no fuss .. no muss .. it’s all just as simple as that.

There are reasons why we here can launch a new domain in one month and have 3rd place ranking in the SERP’s on the next without a sandbox effect and a page rank of 1 without any backlinks .. and I hate to dissappoint .. but India had/has nothing at all to do with our success. There are reasons why I don’t actively promote or otherwise try to sell SEO .. SEO, at it’s very core, is only just one portion of the entire web development process .. and it’s sad to say, but many would-be web developers miss this very key piece of information when they put their websites together.

Trying to do SEO without including it into the web development solution whole is an exercise in futility .. it’s not too unlike putting 3, 14 inch tires and one, 17 inch tire on your car .. just imagine all of the performance issues you would have if you did that .. and now, apply that analogy to your website ..

Has Google done a good job of getting rid of the spam in their SERP’s? .. Well, it’s only been about 5 days since all of this hit the fan, and from where I sit, all of the spammers and the cheaters are still there .. They may eventually go away .. or not .. who knows?

All I really know for sure is that Google has opened itself up for the abuse .. and until Google eliminates all of those handy-dandy little money making schemes of theirs .. the abuse will continue and their spam in the index will never go away.

I reserve my judgement of the two exclusively with regard to how they handle a load.

Internet Explorer, for all of what it’s claimed to be these days, still chokes on java and flash .. Safari does too. And .. we still have to write workarounds for both when it comes to css3 and html5 ..

At the end of the day though, any browser can be a piece of poop .. we all use them differently, and for different reasons.

On the web development end, I prefer Firefox 10.02 and Opera 10, over Internet Explorer and Safari, simply because the two can handle the load .. on a consistant basis.

I only use Internet Explorer to do the updates on my Windows machines and that’s about it. If I want to know how my work views in Internet Explorer, I just flip open the Safari .. as it views exactly the same as Internet Explorer.

In my web development contracts, I state that the only browsers I write for are Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer .. I would have replaced the term “Internet Explorer” with the “Safari”, but I felt that it might tend to confuse most, in that most don’t use Safari ..

And .. as far as Chrome? .. It’s a Firefox knock-off bundled with a bit of keylogging and spyware, so I don’t even mention it, much less use it.

There was a progressive improvement over the years ..

I have every official Windows OS build (except 1.0) .. ever made.

Each version of Windows was exciting and new and improved. When you compare Windows 3.0 with Windows 95, you would discover that Windows 95 was huge. Windows 98 was a ramped up version of 95, so that made it even better.

Over the years, from 1982 to 1998 there was steady improvement .. There weren’t really any worse operating systems that I can recall, as every new build was better than the previous.

Windows ME changed all of that and stalled the process of “better build” over “better build” that we had been experiencing since 1982.

Microsoft choked on Windows ME. It was because of Windows ME that people stayed with Windows 98 so long.
I remember the time when Microsoft announced the “end of life” date for the Windows 98 OS, and the backlash that followed. It was so great that Microsoft ended up extending the OS for 5 more years.

It was because of Windows ME that Windows 2k never really caught on. Upon after *updating back to Windows 98, from Windows ME, it was a good long while before anyone made the jump to Windows XP.

History is repeating itself I think, in that Windows Vista is the modern equivalent of Windows ME. I see Windows XP going down in much the same way Windows 98 did back in the day.

Microsoft announced the “end of life” date of 2015 for Microsoft XP .. I’m thinking that we won’t be seeing XP going away, really, until somewhere around 2019.

One of the best ways to give an OS a longer life, is to release a new OS that’s worse than the one everyone already has .. Microsoft has done this twice now.

When looking back .. I see the two very best Microsoft OS builds as Windows 98, and Windows XP.

My experience of “best over worst” OS only began with Windows ME. Up until Windows ME came along, there were no “worst” operating systems .. only better ones ..

The only time Microsoft chokes, is when they try to come up with something “new” .. Windows 1.0 to Windows 98SE were builds upon builds.

Since Windows ME was just a gaggle of parts is parts, I can’t really count it as a true OS.

So starting from Windows 2k, thru Windows XP, we have a second round of presumed success for Microsoft.

Then Vista came along, and started the whole road over again. Up until Vista, Microsoft, win or lose, always put a great deal of focus on peripherals.
With Vista, the peripherals all but disappeared .. It’s kind of hard to try and sell an OS that nothing else can write to IMHO, and herein I feel is the fall of Microsoft.

In my business, I can’t be bound to an OS that’s written for gamers and garnered with eyecandy .. Windows XP is quite possibly the very last Windows OS I’ll ever own.

Oop’s (over optimization penalty)

According to Google:

In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.

Read More ..

Notices like this from Google these days don’t seem to carry as much weight as they used to it seems. In the old days, we found Google riding to the rescue of the SERP’s with tools to combat spam, and porn, that showed their own marked improvement over a period of time .. These days? .. What with how totally off the mark Google results have been? .. um .. not so much.

Google has lost much of it’s appeal overall these days as they diversify into other areas, namely advertising. Core product search isn’t really on Google’s dinner table any more.

As far as the announcement mentioned above? .. Fine .. I’ve always maintained that if you put on a finely tuned and developed internet web solution that you wouldn’t have much to worry about with regard to Google and their cluttered algorithm.

When I look around at some of these other, presumed inferior, search engines like Duck Duck Go, Blekko, and a few others, I don’t see all of the game playing. I get the results and go from there. I find it somewhat odd that Google seems to be the only one that has a spam problem. I guess they have to have “the spam” in order to justify paying their engineers to do something .. anything ..

I’m pretty sure that other search engines have spam problems too, but not a single one of them makes as big a noise about it all as Google. It’s as if every so often Google has to jump up and down screaming, “Look at me, look at me” .. I have a 5 year old that does that.

I suppose that, in summation, if Google actually delivered the best results, consistantly, I might pay more attention to announcements like this .. but I don’t see myself getting all too overly excited about Google going after a small 12% of those that actually do try to game the system. I’ve got better things to do with my time…. The internet is so much bigger than Google and it needs my undivided attention.