Internet Marketing Blog by NoonanNight

According to an article on CNET, email spammers are using Yahoo’s email authentication servers to help fool spam filters and increase the delivery rates of spam campaigns.

So, how exactly are spammers using Yahoo’s mail to achieve this?

What this does is strip out the usual Yahoo advertising banners and help validate the mail as legitimate to escape most spam filters. MessageLabs found that anyone with a standard Yahoo account can also authenticate to the Yahoo Plus servers and send mail, without necessarily paying for the premium service. Sunner said in a interview with CNET News.com that this isn’t a flaw; it appears that’s just how the Yahoo service was designed.

The part of this story that I found the most interesting was that approximately forty new Yahoo mail IDs are being generated everyday. While that in itself isn’t particularly exciting, the fact that they are being automatically generated is. Since the accounts are being generated automatically, the spammers have found a way to defeat Yahoo’s current CAPTCHA system.

Of all the web’s technologies, CAPTCHA seems to be one of a select few that are lagging far behind. However, there are some innovative ideas, they just haven’t been implemented. If you want to try out an innovative system, I recommend Microsoft’s Asirra:

Asirra is a human interactive proof that asks users to identify photos of cats and dogs. It’s powered by over three million photos from our unique partnership with Petfinder.com. Protect your web site with Asirra — free!

Since SEL had a graphic from Elliance demonstrating the difference between 301 and 302 redirects, I thought it would be a good time to collect some more detailed answers about 301 and 302 redirects from around the web.

Q: Time out. I’ve got a question. What’s the deal with 302 vs. 301? What does that mean? What’s the difference?

A: The “302″ refers to the HTTP status codes that are returned to your browser when you request a page. For example, a 404 page is called a “404″ because web servers return a status code of 404 to indicate that a requested page wasn’t found. The difference between a 301 and a 302 is that a 301 status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location, while a 302 status code means that a page has temporarily moved to a new location. For example, if you try to fetch a page http://example.com/ and the web server says “That’s a 301. The new location is http://www.example.com/” then the web server is saying “That url you requested? It’s moved permanently to the new location I’m giving you.” (Matt Cutts)

Q: What does a 301 redirect look like?

A: Your .htaccess will look similar to:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*oldwebsite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.preferredwebsite.net/$1 [R=301,L]

Q: Can you give me an example of using a 302 redirect?

A: New Products, Fresh Content. You run a cell phone information site, and one of your targeted phrases is [newest cell phones]. You have a URL called /newest-cell-phones.php, which is your users’ go-to page for the latest in cellular technology.

For the last few days, the /newest-cell-phones.php page has redirected (via 302) to /lg-vx8350.php, which is the latest phone you’ve torn apart and reviewed. At the same time, you also have a static link in the LG portion of your site directly to /lg-vx8350.php, because you want to get that content crawled on its own as well. You’re not particularly worried about dupe content issues, because tomorrow, you’ll be done with your /nokia-2610.php page, and it will then become the target URL for the /newest-cell-phones.php redirect. (Erik Dafforn)

Yesterday, Google made an announcement on their Official AdSense Blog that AdSense for Search is now powered by their Custom Search.

In case you’re not familiar with Custom Search, here’s Google’s explanation of it:

If you’ve used Custom Search Engine (CSE) before, you know that Custom Search offers advanced customization options to help improve the accuracy of your search results and tailor them to what users are looking for. With the integration of Custom Search into AdSense for search, you can take advantage of CSE’s most popular features without having to leave your AdSense account.

According to the post, the main benefits of this change include:

• Site Search
• Improved Indexing of Your Pages
• Vertical Search
• Tuning Search Results and Ads with Keywords
• Selecting Ad Location
• Quick and Easy Updates

For more information on this change, check out the video below:

SEL made a post today about whether or not your company should outsource some of its SEO work. In my opinion, the answer is yes.

As more companies realizes the potential of having a strong online presence, many are choosing to create in-house internet marketing/search engine optimization departments. However, these in-house departments normally consist of a few (and in many cases, one) staff member. Because of this, if you don’t outsource, it may be impossible for you to focus on the high level tasks that could generate the best ROI for the company.

The article details a list of search engine optimization tasks which are easiest to outsource. Here’s the full list of recommended tasks:

• Business case reviews for SEO
• Product release documents and tech spec reviews for SEO
• Keyword research
• Strategy development
• Site audits
• Presentations on SEO topics that you just don’t have time to devote create.

If you’re an in-house SEO that is considering outsourcing some of your work, don’t hesitate to browse our SEO services or get in touch with us to discuss how we can help.

Judging by many of the conversations I’ve had, most people still don’t understand what Twitter is. Additionally, the small percentage that does understand Twitter still have a hard time seeing it as a useful tool

Although Twitter is growing, a post from Hitwise today showed that it’s still a niche website (as demonstrated by the graph and analysis below):

The chart makes the growth look impressive - and it is. However, to put things into context, the site ranked #439 among Social Networks and Forums last week and #4309 among All Categories of websites.

While one of the beauties of Twitter is that is offers so many methods of access and interaction, this same flexibility makes it very difficult to explain to someone who has never used it before.

Even though it’s hard to provide concrete examples of Twitter’s usefulness, that’s exactly what Chris Winfield did today in his “Let’s Get Social” column on Search Engine Land.

To demonstrate the the value of Twitter, Chris used it to write his column. Within an hour, he had over eighty responses to four questions that he asked, along with additional input.

The four questions he asked for the article were:

• “How can twitter help marketers?”
• “Have you ever bought anything because of twitter?” bonus points for: what? :)”
• “What is the best tool you have used to track buzz or conversations on twitter?”

After receiving his responses, he was able to compile them into an excellent column, which I highly recommend you read.

If you’ve never used Twitter, hopefully his column will finally help you grasp the concept of Twitter. Additionally, if you’re a regular user, this column will probably have at least one usage idea you’ve never thought about before!

Last week, SEOmoz wrote a post called Google Search Results Missing from OneBox. The post included humorous examples of OneBox results that Google should include, such as:

The next day, they reported about the success of their OneBox parody. According to their Holy Mother of Linkbait post, the post not only received over 2400 Diggs, but some of the results they included in their parody ended up influencing Google’s Hot Trends. Additionally, their site received a huge amount of visitors from Digg, as demonstrated by this graph:

Given the successes reported in their follow-up post, it seemed their original parody was quite the successful piece of linkbait. However, Patrick Altoft provided some interesting commentary in his It’s good but is it linkbait post earlier today.

If an article gets on the Digg front page the average number of links is 300. This article got more Diggs than average and has just 66 links and a lot of those are from the scrapers that publish everything that gets on Digg.

As an example of extremely successful linkbait, Patrick provided this example with the following commentary:

The best viral campaign I’ve seen recently got 20 diggs (less than 100 times the number SEOmoz got) and currently has 15,000 links.

The 15,000 links point to the video’s homepage, dothetest.co.uk. A comment on Patrick’s post from one of the creators of the 4 month old site stated they they will eventually redirect the site to a page on their main site.

So, if you want to actually get some value from a piece of viral content instead of simply causing your server to get pounded by Digg traffic, I recommend following this advice:

The reason so many people fail at linkbait is because they start publishing articles like this with no thought to why people would link to them - nobody links to linkbait without a reason.

I agree with Shoemoney 100% on this one.

Why do so many members of the SEO community go crazy every single time Jason Calacanis makes an appearance at a conference related to search?

For those of you who live under a rock and have never heard of the relationship between Jason Calacanis and the SEO community, here’s a quick rundown: for approximately the last year and a half, Calacanis has been building a human powered search engine called Mahalo. His goal for Mahalo is to create a search engine that can’t be gamed. Because of this, he likes to make generalized statements about how SEO is all about gaming the system. However, from the coverage I’ve seen, he actually becomes less and less critical of SEO at each conference he speaks at.

Here’s his latest keynote / Q&A session that has caused the SEO community to throw its latest fit:

Although it seems very few people will admit it, a lot of what he says is true. There are a lot of people who try to use SEO in an attempt to rank crappy content. If you don’t believe me, just look at the “expert SEO” advice that’s being dispensed in forums like Digital Point.

In reality, he’s talking about people that aren’t the leaders in the SEO field. The people who actually know their stuff aren’t spending their time whining about Calacanis or begging for reciprocal links. Instead, they’re creating content that engages people, participating in communities and generally taking a holistic approach to their SEO activities. While Noon-an-Night does offer SEO services, it’s a single tool in our internet marketing arsenal.

And for any SEO that still can’t take things in stride, listen to how Graywolf, who is a much more accomplished SEO than 99% of the people that whine about Calacanis, takes things in stride:

Just think about this for a second:

If lawyers whined on their blogs every time someone made a snide comment about them, how would that make their industry look as a whole? Instead of whining through blogs about why he’s wrong, people need to step up and let their work do the talking.

Silicon Alley Insider wrote a post yesterday about the two free, tasty meals that Google provides everyday.

When they originally wrote the post, they came up with the following calculation:

$30/day for two meals x 9,600 employees in CA and NY x 251 working days = $72,288,000 per year just to keep their employees’ bellies full!

They later added an update to the post that the food cost is closer to $20/day. However, this still means that Google is spending in the neighborhood of $48,192,000 per year on food.

So, why does this piece of information matter? Well, I think we all agree that Google is one of the most successful companies of our time. And it’s pretty obvious that one of the main reasons is that they value their employees and think it’s worthwhile to “invest” in them. So, if one of the most successful companies in the world places a huge amount of value on its employees, it’s probably a good idea to take some time to think about how much you truly value your own employees.

If you want another example of a company taking care of its employees food needs, look no further than another search engine. Back in March, this was tip three on a post Jason Calacanis (CEO of Mahalo) made called How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips):

Buy everyone lunch four days a week and establish a no-meetings policy. Going out for food or ording in takes at least 20-60 minutes more than walking up to the buffet and eating. If you do meetings over lunch you also save that time. So, 30 minutes a day across say four days a week is two hours a week… which is 100 hours a year. You get the idea.

So, next time you’re thinking about whether or not you should give your employees some new perks, think about this: not only can small things such as free food boost their morale, but it can also be a major investment in your company’s overall productivity.

I’ll be the first to admit it: I think that the Seesmic website is awful. It’s ugly, laid out poorly, and simply put: not user friendly.

For anyone that hasn’t heard of Seesmic, here’s a brief summary of what it is all about:

Currently the service could be described as a Video Twitter, however, Le Meur has a grander plan in store for his new site which includes perpetual interaction around both professional and user generated content.

As of now, the company has received six million dollars in funding (which obviously wasn’t spent on a designer for the website).

Now, while I may be critical of the website itself, I do think the concept itself has potential.

Earlier today, TechCrunch made a post that they would be giving users the ability to post video comments on all of their blogs. Since Michael Arrington is a Seesmic investor, I was initially skeptical of this announcement, but it actually looks like Seesmic took a step in the right direction by offering their service through a WordPress plug-in (which was released on Monday).

With this plug-in, users with a Seesmic account can now leave a video comment instead of a standard text comment.

While the video quality isn’t that great and the videos take a few seconds to buffer, it’s definitely an interesting step. I highly doubt video comments will ever fully replace text comments (amount of time to watch, difficulty in moderating, etc.), but I do believe that video comments could enhance the traditional commenting method and create even more personal relationships between bloggers and their visitors.

As I was working last night, an email popped up in my inbox that caught my attention.

The email was from service@youtube.com, and had this subject line: sarahre34 wants to share videos with you!

The email was sent to my personal YouTube account, which I don’t use for anything other than watching videos during my downtime. I was almost positive that this invitation didn’t come from anyone I knew, so I decided to look up sarahre34.

When I navigated to the profile page for this person, here’s what I saw:

First of all, I was impressed at how quickly YouTube detected that this individual was spamming and took action against them.

Secondly, when I saw the screen cap and URL, I naturally assumed that it was simply an attempt at using YouTube to promote an adult website.

However, when I Googled the URL and saw the website, I was quite surprised: it was actually a cookie-cutter affiliate dating website.

The website is currently down, so I can’t get a screen shot of it, but it looked like the default affiliate setup for SinglesNet.com.

While this isn’t the most shocking news ever blogged, the attempted (while misguided) creativity of this dating affiliate really surprised me. This is a great example of people misunderstanding social media. In the time it took to create the YouTube account, upload the videos and send out spam invitations, this person could have created a couple pages of solid content for their website. Instead, they chose to waste time trying to spam their incredibly thin affiliate website.

The moral of this post is that instead of spending your time (which is the most valuable asset you have) trying to spam for a few quick bucks, take time to create content that will have the ability to generate passive income for you in the long-run!