Blackhat SEO - Esrun

Good morning vegas.. maybe

Well it took me in total about 22 hours of travelling to get to Vegas. On the plane I had some giant sitting next to me so that didn’t make the 10ish hour flight from UK to Phoenix that great. I had a quick wash and change of clothes and then met up with people for drinks where mr Mike Nott was already leading the drunk race. Then we went to the Wynn and met up with everyone.

Apologies to those I was talking to in the Wynn bar last night who I told I would be right back. I actually went to find a bathroom but got distracted and decided I wanted food so i ended up stumbling across the road to treasure island and then off to bed.

I literally have no idea what time or day it is. I didn’t reset my clocks through any part of the journey so its all a mystery but my head hurts a bit.

Is anyone going to UFC? I really want to go!

Pubcon vegas

I’m warming up for vegas with a bottle of laurent perrier, some american beers (cools) and a gambling game (monopoly) ready for pubcon vegas!.

I’m driving from Southend (6am!) to Gatwick to drop evil green donkey off at and from there onto Heathrow for my flight.

If you’re at pubcon and wanna meet then fire me an email

Its my birthday and I’ll cry if I want to

Well It was my birthday and I turned upto the office to find a tin of strongbow, carlsberg and blackcurrent to make a snakebite in the morning wahey!!!!

I went out with good old mates in the evening to nandos, keeping it real with good quality and well priced food. Although the alcohol is a little over priced. A mate bought me the new radio 1 live lounge CD so I tried to get them to play it while we ate the food but supposedly the CD is “incompatible” with their CD system… rightttttt…

After the food we went onto a quality bar in Southend and bought a couple bottles of laurent pierre champagne. After buying a couple bottles of the champaigne and some shots they were happy to play my CD and put on some tunes which other people in the bar obviously weren’t enjoying all that much.

I went to the bar again at about 11:20pm and they wouldn’t serve me because their licence only went upto 11PM but after offering the bar guy £20 ($40) her sold us another bottle of champaigne which was cool, even if he did get all pissy about one poxy broken glass.

After the bar we went down to the casino and I logged my friends in as guests and we continued to drink ciders, shots and lagers.

I pulled one of the bouncers to a side and asked about strip clubs.. there was two He recommended and one was in Southend. Unfortunately the Southend one had already closed at half midnight so we drove to the Basildon one but when we arrived there they wouldn’t let us in because only half hour was left at the club so I offered some money to get in but they wanted £40 ($80) per person to get in, even though some other people were allowed in without hassle. So I told them they were trying to mug me off, especially since there’s only 30 mins left and it got a little lary. After two big guys and a smaller guy told me I should just leave I was happy to just say “Okay you were trying to mug me off but I know when it’s time to leave” so that was the end of my night.

It was a good birthday keeping it real in Southend

GMAIL Account Creator

Well I haven’t updated my blog with anything useful for awhile and have heard a few people recently mention it would be useful to have a GMAIL account creator script so I decided to whip something together and in true Google style released it in half assed version where it does enough to be useful but not quite a finished product.

Test the online demo and then download the script and test/mod to your hearts content. I will be adding features to the script as and when time is available.

The legendary evilgreenmonkey

I think just about everyone was at the manchester SEO pissup meeting and it was great to meet up with a lot of people I hadn’t previously run into. Big props to 4eyes for managing to arrange everything and keep people heading in the right direction!

I was lucky enough to meet the legendary evilgreenmonkey (aka Rob Kerry). This one man alone has been absolutely revolutionising the whole SEO industry and it was clear at the meeting that people have nothing but respect for this great man. I still can’t believe I was lucky enough to sit down and drink a snakebite or two with this guy and his knowledge just blows you away.

This is still a blackhat seo blog

Many people will know Rob from running search engine watch forums and just recently became the new editor of Sphinn which is a forum and community site launched by Danny Sullivan and Third door media. He also writes for the searchenginewatch expert section.

Random: Moro reflex

Well this post is a bit of a random slightly drunk post… but hey its my blog so I can do that!

I was browsing Digg earlier and came across a story about the Moro Reflex in babies. So most people I have tried to talk to about this think I’m just crazy but oh well! It seems to be that when babies are born, for a long time they have this reflex where if they’re dropped they put their arms out straight away, it’s presumed to try catch something to stop themselves falling. It’s quite interesting and quite funny at the same time.

Example video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2508818082092298520

Anyway, I was in the bathroom this evening and looking in the mirror, I stumbled back in a tired/sleepy way and straight away my arms went up. It really made me laugh.

So there you go, a sad and random post.

Trip to Europe

Okay well the last post about my trip to Europe was pictures of my crashed car… oops! Anyway I now have a new car and I’m still waiting for the insurance company to sort out my claim.

A few people have made comments about me writing “going to Europe” when I live in England which is part of Europe(E.g Dirk! and Evilgreenmoney)… Very true but I think its fair to say that most people living in England would understand that if you said you were going to Europe that you mean mainland.

Anyway while I was over there this time I met up with the legendary fantomaster which as you know is the king of cloaking. It was great to meet Dirk and Ralph. I had breakfast with Ralph and his family and then in the evening Dirk and Ralph treated me to a swanky restaurant with champagne and quite a lot of lager! After the meal me and Ralph had some more drinks outside my hotel… yes they stop serving drinks at a certain time but that rule doesn’t appear to apply when Ralph is around lol! I have to say, I don’t know anyone who knows as much as Ralph… seriously he must have a computer in his head hooked up to the net or something. Anyway big thanks to the Fantomaster team.

On the day of the crash I was actually on my way to an adventure park to do a bungee jump, unfortunately on the way there I was involved in an accident with a subaru travelling about 70mph and the side of my car… oops. Funny enough, subaru wagons are what the fantomaster team drive lol. I didn’t get on well with the french police, both myself and the other driver were breathlised at the scene and then our cars were taken away. I was nearly arrested for refusing to sign forms on the basis that they were french and I couldn’t understand them. It was a long and stressful day getting buses, trains, trams and taxis with all my stuff to travel the 400 miles to the ferry. Not bad enough but then I had to argue for literally over an hour to get them to let me get a ferry home without my car!

I am working on a little something with the fantomaster boys so keep your eyes opened. When they do things, they REALLY go for it. They have the knowledge and resource to do pretty much anything.

SEO sales calls

I know many people cant stand sales calls, I simply love them! You know the deal, your phone rings and you answer it to hear a pause and then someone answering the phone… quite obviously an automated calling system connecting you to operators. I love to wind up these callers and they’re usually trying so hard to build up a good rapport with you that they don’t even realise you’re leading them down an amusing path.

For instance I just got off the phone to someone claiming to be calling from BT business and offering me a guaranteed increase in customers. After a short chat I determined that this would work by them simply running PPC for me. When the woman said “So you’re in XYZ business yeah?” I replied saying that I was actually in the adult industry and sell things like adult videos.   She wasn’t sure if they could promote the adult industry so put me on hold and came back rather sheepishly saying they couldn’t do it “due to Legal issues”. At this point the conversation took a funny turn:

Woman: Actually I just checked and we cant actually do the adult industry due to legal issues, which is a real shame because we would have got you a lot of new customers.

Esrun: Okay well that’s a shame but nevermind. Would you be interested in coming to work for us at all? You know, maybe make a few videos…

Woman: *Nervous laugh* oh no, I couldn’t and I’m working full time in Ireland right now

Esrun: That’s perfect, I love Irish girls! We can get you setup straight away.

Woman: *more nervous giggling and general embarrassment* I can’t, I have kids but uh oh uh thanks for the offer.

Oh well, it was very fun for me :p I had another call not that long ago from another SEO place which had a name like ‘monkey business’ or similar and I managed to get the sales guy to make monkey noises. It was great amusement for everyone listening on the loud speaker in our office.

So the moral? Don’t get angry with sales people, just play along and have some fun!

Macbook pro warranty

Well some readers will remember that about 10 months ago I purchased a macbook pro and have been using it pretty much constantly since and it has been a joy. Unfortunately along the way a few problems did start to appear.

Macbook pro pitting paint

After about 2-3 months of using the laptop it started to develop loads of little black dots where my palms rested, pretty much wrecking the appearance of the laptop. I called to report this to apple expecting them to offer to fix it but instead they told me it was a cosmetic issue which wasn’t covered by warranty. This got me pretty mad considering their warranty states defective materials and If you ask me it wasn’t upto the task of what it was built for and certaintly didn’t last a reasonable amount of time before becoming damaged which to me indicates it to be a defective material! The problem is discussed throughout the internet but apple refuse to accept it as a problem. Anyway I figured that it doesn’t really impact the use of the laptop other than the resale price and of course appearance if used in a meeting or such like so I decided to just ignore it and carry on. The image below shows the problem, although mine was much worse than this.

Fading paint on strip under keyboard on macbook

Soon after another issue appeared which is a strip just under the keyboard which also started to show paint issues. Again I ignored this since I knew what the responce from Apple would be.

Red light coming on when unplugging headphones from macbook

Sometimes I would unplug my headphones from the laptop and a red light would come on where you plug in the 3.5mm headphone jack and it would disable my speakers. I searched for this problem and found out it was a little switch in the hole which enabled/disabled digital output for fibre or something like that. To get around this you simply plug in and remove the headphones several times until it resolves itself.

After experiencing a few more issues I decided to take the laptop into an apple store before the 1 year warranty ran out. Handy tip for those thinking about buying a mac… buy from a John Lewis store and you will get an extended warranty of 2 years.

Right hinge worn out

Macbook latch doesn’t work causing it to not close properly

Optical drive wont eject disks (Resolved by blowing into the drive and then hitting eject, oddly enough!)

When I showed the “genius” my macbook he said it was the worst condition he’d ever seen a mac laptop in and that he’d been working there for many years. I tried to explain that I used the laptop every day and wasn’t just your average user but he just said “Well most people use their laptops everyday”. Oh well, I couldn’t be bothered to explain the different between those who use their laptop and those who really use their laptops, if you get what I mean. He argued that the issues were cosmetic and unlikely to be covered by the warranty but to leave the laptop with them and they’d let me know. He asked me to sign a form which confirmed that I was leaving the laptop with them and that I had declined the £30 backup, I duly signed the form and left the shop with my laptop in their hands. I declined the backup because the harddrive has only just been replaced with stock HD so doesn’t contain any sensitive information, just the operating system.

Anyway, I left the store after about 30 minutes of talking to the genius and giving him all the information about me and my macbook. I got into my car and started to read through the form he got me to sign and it had some text about possible charges and T&C in faint on the back. I was a little annoyed that he advised the form was simply to confirm I was leaving it with them and declined the backup when infact it discusses possible fees etc. Okay fair point you should read all documents in full before you sign them but when someone explains to me what the form is that I’m signing then I generally just accept what they say and sign the document, especially when its somethign so trivial like warranty issues. Annoyed about this and the fact that they were arguing issues which i consider to be covered within warranty I wrote to(well, emailed) Steve jobs on saturday and this morning I recieved a call from a rep on his behalf who spoke to the staff in the apple shop and sorted everything out for me.

Provided it has all indeed been sorted out then I think I’ll buy the new imac when I go to pick my macbook up. I’m a little annoyed that I have had so much hassle getting warranty issues resolved because I have had ipods replaced with pretty much no questions asked in the past so I expected a similar level of service. If there are continuing issues with this warranty claim then I’ll probably not buy the imac just out of principal. I can get dell systems for half the price and with next day business replacement for half the price of the mac systems. Okay I admit it will not look or feel as nice but I reckon I could get over that knowing that if/when something goes wrong they will be on it straight away. You can install mac os x on a standard pc now anyway so that’s not a problem! Get a bog standard dell system, install os X, plug in a mighty mouse and mac keyboard, job done

Funny little argument

Well there is quite an amusing argument going on right now between David Naylor and his aftervote website and Jason Calacanis Mahalo

What is Aftervote?

Well dave I sent you a IM… I can’t be bothered to actually write a description. Put a shorter one on your site for a copy/paste job! Click here for the about aftervote.

What is Mahalo? (taken from mahalo.com , not written by me!)

Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven’t yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.

The argument?

Jason C seems to be getting baited quite well from Dave. I don’t think Dave is really bothered about any of this but like the typical British, he loves an argument Jason C is arguing that the way aftervote is scraping search results is illegal and against various T&Cs. This is one thing which has always bugged me… when Google, Yahoo or MSN scrape your pages, cache them, take your images and make money out of all this by sticking adverts next to them and calling it a search engine no one has any problem with it. When I scrape your sites and put adverts next to the results I’m called a scraper or spammer or god knows what else. Wake up and smell the coffee! Anyway Jason D had a similar view and posted probably one of the funniest videos I have seen from an SEO… So check out the Jason D Mooney.