Tagged with 'search engines'

Our blog was recently affected by a rather clever little hack, and when I went searching for ways to remove it, I couldn’t find much. Here’s a brief writeup of what happened and how I fixed it.

Our Director of Internet Marketing Strategy, Sonny Cohen, spends some of his time searching Google and other search engines for keywords relative to our business. He began noticing that some of those results, while they would return pointers to our blog, were laced with keywords and links to various male enhancement drugs. When I searched our blog for these references, I couldn’t find anything.

Here’s what I was seeing when I would search our blog for the phrase “test”:

But here’s what Google was seeing when it did the same search:

You may notice that the URL in that is to a local file. There are two ways you can see what your site looks like to Google. One is to change the User Agent on your browser to match that of the Googlebot. The other is to use the Webmaster Tool’s “Fetch As Googlebot” lab utility. I used the latter, and saved the resulting report as an HTML file and then opened that file in Chrome.

So why is Google seeing different results than anyone else who visits my site and runs that query? Something different must be happening when Google visits. I started running through the execution path of WordPress. The first file that is accessed is index.php. All this file does is turn on a theming variable and load wp-blog-header.php. So I moved on to that file. It looked like this:

if ( !isset($wp_did_header) ) {
$wp_did_header = true;
require_once( dirname(__FILE__) . '/temp.php' );
require_once( dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-load.php' );
wp();
require_once( ABSPATH . WPINC . '/template-loader.php' );
}

temp.php? Never heard of it, let’s see what’s inside:

eval (gzinflate(base64_decode(
'vVhtc9pGEP6emfwHRfUUmGLg9IbkhNrUJrZnEsfFOGmKXc1ZOoMmQqInYYea/Pfu'
.'nnjRG6aZzNRj0Em7++yzu3erOw5/fXM4HU9fvnj5Ym8cRnFnz77q9T/2+sPK2WBw'
...snip for length...
.'6reTZEAXdDrl4QNzE/3F3Wy+iKjPxFe0gH7G+ML1IiecBfHiY+LyWLhsVmDlrQ7g'
.'cvonDPkW65UOKh6zCWuM44kvFr6Ialmvw1/fHP4L'
)));

Now that looks evil. Obfuscated code can’t be good. I decided to see what it does by replacing the “eval” with “print” and then I ran “php test.php” from that directory. The results are very long, but you can see them here.

Basically, the program tries to determine if we are a real person or a search engine bot by looking at things like our IP address and our user agent. If it determines we are human, it goes ahead and returns the standard header. If we’re a bot, it serves the content in “theme.html” which is identical to the second screenshot above.

So to clean things up, I removed the reference to temp.php from wp-blog-header.php, deleted the file temp.php and deleted the file theme.html.

It is common for law firm websites to speak about themselves with hyperbole.  Self-important adjectives litter the site content.  Firm’s with exceptional people are one-upped by those with truly exceptional people.  Knowledge is only valid if it is genuine. Experience, it seems comes in a variety of flavors as well. Some firms have wide experience.  For others it is deep experience.  But the most common benchmark of experience is that it be extensive.  Does your firm claim extensive experience?

Now it’s not that I don’t believe it when I read of a professional’s extensive experience. It’s just that this really doesn’t tell me anything. Worse, it doesn’t tell me anything different from the next guy who also has extensive experience. In fact, I would argue, my baseline is extensive experience. Now tell me how you’re better.

If you Google the phrase “extensive experience” there are over 6 million website pages where this value is claimed.  Using the search tool on several law firm websites, I discovered an “extensive experience” ratio of about  35% – 50% (# of appearances of “extensive experience”/attorney). So making this claim doesn’t so much separate one professional from the pack as much as it defines the pack. (Check your firm’s ratio and let me know!)

But the problem with this “extensive experience” language is not merely that it is linguistic laziness. Rather, this laziness results in failing to detail the richness, complexity and detail which this phrase references. And in so not doing, opportunities are lost for using this missing content.  You won’t be found in a search engine because, frankly, nobody is looking for “extensive experience.” And you won’t be discovered in your site search because, well, almost half of all attorneys have the same vague amount of experience. And it is all extensive.

Yes, I understand that, often, considerable descriptive detail must be concealed for privacy considerations.  Yeah, so? Content developers (copywriters) simply have to work harder to anonymize those involved. But, with a little effort, it is possible and essential to provide sufficient detail to make the stories comprehensible and relevant – and content rich.

Go the extra mile to gather the detail that elicits that sense of extensive experience. Boil it down to 3 to 5 cogent bullet points of industry and matter relevance. And post it. Your site visitor will have a better experience. This will result in more web pages consumed and possibly a longer time on the site with more opportunity for engagement. And search engines will devour the details for their ranking algorithms.  And you know how I know this? I have extensive experience.

One of the cool things about the internet is how it gets us closer to a frictionless economy where there are fewer channel constraints or information uncertainties. Or at least that’s what I remember from Econ 101. As a businessperson, it’s kind of scary. But it’s what is. What’s brought me to thinking about this is the most recent communication I received from Google, the Ubiquitous (GtU), about their AdSense advertising program.

Google told me that on my websites where I show (and get paid for displaying) their ads, they were now adding an additional network of “Google-certified” advertisers. This network of third-party advertisers would compete with the Google advertisers for space on my website page. And Google would award this space based on this: “the ad generating the highest revenue for publishers will be displayed.”

Say what?
If you don’t use the Google Adsense or Google Adwords programs, I might as well be talking to you in Martian. If you own Google stock and don’t know what I’m talking about, you ought to research the revenue model of your asset. However, if we’re still connected here, chances are you are a Google AdSense or AdWords customer.  I live on both sides of this coin. I have websites that show ads and I also bid on keywords for advertising space on other websites. Here’s what I’m thinking:

Google AdSense
If you put ads on your website and get checks from Google, you might be able to smile. Google has just increased the client base competing for a presence on your potentially valuable website page. Although website page inventory increases everyday offering increasing options for your prospective advertisers, now there is a larger pool of advertisers looking for – and bidding on – that space.  Congratulations, looks like a win for you.

Google AdWords
If I’m bidding to have my ads placed on websites, it seems to me that I’ve got more competition. It was bad enough that I had to bid for keywords against those ignoramus who bring their egos to the table and bid outside of any meaningful ROI. But now, I’ve got both the ignoramus and the slick automated RoboAgency to compete against. Sort of like simultaneously playing chess against a computer and a 5 year old. I suspect my Pay per Click bid rates will increase.  Bummer.

Today, in a separate article, noted search marketer Kevin Lee wrote, Ten Reasons you’ll soon spend 25% more on search.” He makes some great points having a similar theme but barely touches on this matter of inventory expansion and bid competition.  It will be interesting to see how the factors he identifies together with the upcoming moves by Google to increase the set of advertisers ultimately influences revenue flowing to publishers (AdSense) and cost to advertisers (AdWords).

When I’m not pondering the status of the Internet I help a graphic designer friend by writing code for her clients’ websites. One of our clients owns a hip and trendy spa that marries a massage clinic with a gallery featuring work created by local artists. As I spoke with this client, I discovered that this was more than a business for her. It is a reflection of her passion for wellness, a holistic sense of being.

In addition to her knowledge of the musculoskeletal systems she treated, she considers artwork to be a form of therapy that provides healing for the mind. When she talked about her clinic, her passion was contagious. Fairly soon I began to see the world through her eyes, and started to want what she wanted: for the world to experience total wellness.

Our conversation developed along the lines that she should capture these thoughts and release them on her website as a blog. I suggested this to the graphic designer, who immediately kiboshed this idea, saying, “When I visit a website to read about a spa, I don’t want to read a stupid blog.” So that was the end of that. I promised myself that I would not let this die.

Maybe your business isn’t a massage clinic, but you are probably as passionate about the heart of your business as my client is about hers. I’m not talking about what you do. I’m talking about your business being an extension of who you are. For your business, I believe a blog is the answer. But not a stupid blog.

Why a Blog?

When I told the graphic designer that we should incorporate a blog, her first thoughts were that it would be a collection of meaningless posts amounting to nothing more than naval gazing. I explained that she described “Twitter”, and that a blog doesn’t have to be like that. I’m sure she also thought about how managed blogs on blogspot.com and wordpress.com don’t give users explicit control over the layouts.

A blog engine is a content management system (CMS) that provides the simplest means for content entry and publishing on the planet. Engines differ in scope of features, but most users would find it easy to enter and edit articles, and installing the software on your own web host provides the ability to customize your page layouts. Most engines provide a means to install plugins and widgets that extend the functionality of the blog, adding really cool features that average website users would never have thought possible to include on their own sites.

What Do I Blog About?

My intent is not to convince you to use your blog as a marketing tool, which is the most common use for a blog after random sputtering, but rather an online repository of informational articles, discussions of subjects of interest, news and notes, and in the case of my spa friend, upcoming events and reviews of past events at the clinic.

My spa friend considers herself a “wellness practitioner”, and could write about the role ergonomics, diet, meditation, and regular treatment play in maintaining wellness. Also, their esthetician is passionate about using organic products in her treatments.  If they didn’t feel confident about writing their entries, I could have written the articles for them based on our discussions about what they were interested in.

Likewise, there are aspects of your business that you find work well, and others that are more challenging. You could use blogging as a means to elicit discussion in your search for a solution. Since I started my multifarious blogs, my topics ranged from the foibles in setting up my Tablet PC, coding websites to be compatible with the Mac, and most recently, my struggles learning to code using the ExtJS JavaScript framework. The last post elicited a comment from the development team, which gave me enough hope to continue pushing through.

How Can Blogs Help My Business?

While the impression is that blogs are a one-way, “push” communication mechanism, blogs are designed to be conversations. News sites post articles about recent events (hello—that’s a blog entry) and other users respond to that entry by posting comments. The most controversial articles incite discussion between comment writers themselves, and that adds new value to the existing content on your page. Now, instead of only reading your post on the wonders of caffeine to stimulate your dreams in sleep, readers can participate in the ensuing discussion, more than likely quoting studies of the effect of caffeine on the nervous system, the loss of REM stage activity, et cetera.

The reader community improves the quality of your content, and suddenly, your post takes on a life of its own.

If you don’t feel like you have the time nor the talent to write the quantity of quality entries you want to see on your site, you can hire content creation specialists who can blog for you. You can work out in your deal if the work is meant to be in your voice, or if the writer will receive public credit for their work. Several such services exist, and many content management specialists will contract out to them.

Frequent blog posts of consistent information quality also help your business by adding to the content from your site indexed by search engines.  Your site’s page rank is driven first by popularity—the number of external pages that link to your site, and then by currency—how recent the pages were most updated? Content quality is rated by relevance and keyword frequency—the number of pages within your site that emphasize the same subject matter.

Search engine algorithms are actually a lot more complicated than that, and change often. However the basic rule still applies: websites that contain well-written, quality content, properly structured for machines to read and index well, supported by accurate keywords and summary descriptions, rank higher in search engine indexes. While it’s not a good practice to try and fool Google, it is possible to use blog software to create a site with valuable content that drives your site to the top of the search engine index for your chosen subject matter.

And that can no way be considered a stupid blog.