Routine Order

V7N Search Marketing News:

Wikipedia introduced the no-follow tag, presumably as way to prevent people using Wikipedia to pass link juice. Even when most Wikipedians wanted no-follow removed, Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, hs chosen to keep no-follow.

Looks like Jimmy Wales is twice the hypocrite - once for wanting to keep adding no-follow to wikipedia links even after the democratic decision making body of wikipedians voted in majority to remove the useless “no-follow” addon, and then again for not using the said no-follow attribute for links from wikipedia to his other ventures, including wikia.com which happens to be a for-profit venture. I guess the bottom line and business demands are strong enough reasons to controvert established systems at will, for anyone. This is real bad news, but expected new, nevertheless.

No-follow was such a braindead idea - the only folks that ever did gain from the action of webmasters was google - their problem got reduced, but webmasters, including yours truly regularly get pummeled with unwanted visitors.

The V7n folks seems quite cool: check out this post on the art of refunds - they at least seem to get the part about how to deal with unsatisfied customers right - the point John makes about tolerating a few scammers to keep the majority of legitimately disconcerted clients is something that seems to slip by many online dealers, unfortunately.

If someone is copying your content and putting it on their website without your express permission, you have every right to complain to Google. You complaint has to follow the prescribed form. In searching for how to report a violation, where someone was copying and reproducing stuff from another blog of mine on their “re-blog” site, I had a tough time finding the details.

One would think Google would list the procedure and make it easier for you to report violation, but unfortunately, that is not the case.

In my case, this chap was aggregating and reproducing my feed in full without my permission. I tried leaving a comment asking him to stop, but I never heard back. So, just for kicks, I decided to send a letter to Google.

Searching yielded the answer. The procedure for reporting copyright violations to Google is described in detail in the Google DMCA page. You have to follow the nine steps, checking them off as you complete them, and mail a regular letter to the given address, or fax it to the given number.

Your complaint will then be displayed at the ChillingEffects clearinghouse.

With any luck, Google will take steps to suspend the offender’s adsense account (hey, at least they won’t make money using your content), or you can initiate further legal action and seek reparation.

I’ll wait and see what happens with my request.

Go to Yahoo.co.uk and search for “Buy Viagra”.

So Yahoo! UK thinks Google sells viagra. Another possible explanation is that Google is the secret hand behind all the Viagra spam we get everyday - all part of a secret conspiracy to set up a new operation where Google provides you with the drugs, regardless of geographical location, for a low, low price

Look at the fifth result. Wonder what the heck broke, and how.

This was so good, I had to save the result.

First seen at the digital point forum.

You know what I am talking about… If you don’t, here are some prime examples:

You know how difficult it is to search for something when you don’t know what it is called, but you can describe it. I am talking about google here - it is impossible to end up with the right results if you don’t phrase your search in terms of the exact words used on the page that you’d like to end up with.
Well, I knew these things had to have a name, and I just found out what the name was. It is “violator” - so named since it violates the boxy nature and layout of the rest of the page, or ad or whatever.

Peace be unto you as it was unto me a few moments ago!!!

This trick amazes me when I think about it - oh why did it not occur to me sooner!

You can translate a page from one language to the same language using Google. For example you can translate this website from English to English! - Here are the results.

The URL, if you notice it is:
http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=routineorder.com

The “en|en” specifies that the site has to be translated from “English” to “English”. Of course, now you must think I am crazy - how will this help you cut across that corporate firewall, or your dad’s firewall, or the Great Internet Wall of ?

Easy, the translated page is a cached(sort-of) version. So bingo, just ask Google to translate the page from whatever language to the same language and you’re all set!

If you forget the URL, you can always go to http://www.google.com/translate_t and use the tool there to translate the webpage from one language to another. If necessary, change the URL in the browser to make the languages the same.

At Harvard’s business school, it’s forbidden to use Google to “solve” a case study by figuring out how the business actually turned out(Source: Peter Suber, Open Access News).

Now is it just me, or are these guys counter-intuitive? I guess the policy-makers at universities world wide need to grow younger and think lik students do, and I am not suggesting anything subversive, or radical or that they should start thinking like punks. The decision makers probably did not grow with the knowledge-awareness that the young have - where you have a better idea of what is possible, where to look for the solution (or data) and how to best get the information you need. The old have to learn, the young know, intuitively. Stopping the young from using the tools they know best will shackle their growth.

Google Patent Search

Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO—from patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006. We don’t currently include patent applications, international patents, or U.S. patents issued over the last few months

The new search tool makes a joke trivial - have you ever tried to check if your idea is original? Try it now, and be amazed at how many people out there get patents, and for what silly “inventions”.

Heartening news from Yahoo: Google book-scanning efforts spark debate - Yahoo! News

A splinter group called the Open Content Alliance favors a less restrictive approach to prevent mankind’s accumulated knowledge from being controlled by a commercial entity, even if it’s a company like Google that has embraced “Don’t Be Evil” as its creed.

The organization will be doling out millions to an Open Archiving group - the Internet Archive. Works to be scanned include those from a Boston Public Library and the Museum of Modern Art.

So what’s wrong with Google’s scanning initiative, you ask? Well, for one they intend to scan copyrighted material without explicit permission, and then show excerpts from the scans that don’t violate the copyright. And then there is the fact that they don’t want the content to appear on any other search engine besides theirs - A monopoly over knowledge, anyone?

It’s like having this huge, bad-ass “public” library, and then putting a gate upfront, and then charging to include books in the library, and to read the books, and no, the books can’t leave the library. There is nothing altruistic about google’s efforts - think about it - if you have original content that was not available in digital form earlier, that is now available only through you - who profits? I guess “humanity” is not the answer as much as “The Google Corporation” is.

I hope the Open Content Alliance survives, and thrives.