Thursday 29 November 2012

Google is Broken!

Google is broken, and it's killing small businesses and giving it's customers the wrong results. You want an example? I could give you plenty, but here's just one; I searched for 'Top locations to buy a house 2013', now because you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you what results I found, here is a visual for you...

Yep, thats right, I got given a page, (infact 2 pages!) about best honeymoon and holiday destinations and travel tips, not a single relevant page (and no I was not signed in for personal results!).

Google used to be the word for integrity and the best searches you can do on-line I'm worried that now it has built it's brand to a big enough proportion it doesn't care anymore and has become just a money-hungry beast like all the other big corporations.
If your thinking I'm some Google basher, who is bitter because Google threw my site down the rankings and isn't letting me back up to that number 1 spot, well you are kindof right, but there is much more to it than that.
Over the last month I have been doing everything I possibly can and everything that Google tells you to do to get your site back on the first page, perfecting on page keyword %'s, getting more quality and relevant backlinks, creating more content and generally following all the whitehat Google guidelines and rules, I have got nowhere.  Meanwhile, I have been keeping an eye on my competition, one in particular. Now I'm not going to mention their name as I would rather not give them the free publicity but if you Google pretty much anything to do with 'Logo Quiz' they will come up first in the SERP (search engine results page). They are easy to spot, they are the site with almost no content.
I decided to dig a little deeper into this site, some of the big SEO advice out there is to check your competitors links, I did, and what I found was shocking, here are some facts:
  • Website creation date: 19th September 2012
  • Number of backlinks: (on 28th October 2012)  57000+ 
  • Any relevant backlinks? No, backlinks were from sites about Salmon Fishing and Ballet to name just two.
  • Keyword %'s: All over the place, but for the keywords 'logo quiz answers' around 11%.
  • How did they do this: That's exactly what I wanted to know! So I found out....

They are hackers! I didn't have to dig deep to discover this on a Joomla forum:

This is the link if you want to see the whole forum discussion


What the hackers had done is embed a dofollow link to their site in the head of this poor guys website, thus giving them a free backlink. They must have an automatic software they did this 57000 times over, and with most site owners likely not even checking for any extra code, or if they did, like this guy they wouldn't know what to do with it, this gives the hackers a tidy amount of backlinks.
So well done hackers, you got your free backlinks, but hang-on, surely Google is clever enough to figure out that this is a hack, that something fishy is going on?
Well judging by the SERPs, apparently not, there's not even a prospect of the Google dance going on anymore as these hackers have been solidly sitting at number one for the past 6 weeks.
Surely Google has the intelligence to see this, so why are they not doing anything about it? Money. They want more money, which they make a lot of through selling advertising through Adwords.
Adwords is ridiculous  you pay more per click then you could ever justify, but for small businesses who have been shot down the rankings and over taken by hackers it is now the only option to be seen. So, actually clever Google, more money in you tax dodging pocket.
What about the rest of us? Trying our hardest to play by the rules and be good SEO's? Well time will tell, there needs to be another BIG Penguin update to sieve out all these bad guys, when that comes, if the bad guys are still at the top, well then there is only one explanation, Google have gone to the dark side, they can't beat em', so they're joining them and using the hackers to make themselves a pretty penny. Once again, googlebye small businesses, make way for the big corporations.
Sad world.

As an extra, you can do you're own little experiment to see just how broken Google is; we all do at least one Google search per day, so when that time in the day comes to do your search, instead of clicking on the first result and assuming it will be the best, go onto page two, an really have a look, I bet you'll find a better result for whatever it is you're searching for! I have personally been experimenting with this, and have found that approx 7 out of 10 times, the results on page 2 are more relevant, about 1 out of 10 times the first result is relevant and the rest is somewhere in the middle to lower end of page one.
I'm off to Bing!

Tuesday 20 November 2012

Reasons to Play Angry Birds at Work


The moment we have been waiting for is here; we now all have a good excuse to waste our time looking at pictures of baby animals and playing Angry Birds or Logos Quiz on our phones as new research suggests that this will make us more productive.

‘Engaging in some activities we assume are non-productive may actually be a smart way to spend time, especially at work’ says Jane Mcgoniga in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review.

This Kitten has already
increased your productivity
for the day
Mcgoniga, author of Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (Penguin Press, 2011), has now made it a personal goal to waste at least four minutes every hour.
After recovering from a traumatic brain injury Mcgoniga became interested in why some of the seemingly biggest waste of times, such as looking at baby animals, were the things that ended up helping her most in recovery. This led her to the subject of resilience. She found that these seemly time wasting tasks can actually make people ‘more-resourceful problem solvers, more collaborative, and less likely to give up when the going gets tough. In other words, they can make people more resilient.’
She goes on to discuss how greater resilience will make you more capable, and how it will benefit your organization; tell that to your boss when they give you a telling off for getting distracted by suddenly remembering a logo from logos quiz game app!

Its not just your workplace that will benefit from these previously thought of as time wasting actions, you will also personally benefit by improving your emotional resistance. If you try to experience three positive emotions for every one negative emotion over the course of the day, you are able to improve your emotional resistance; making a satisfying hit in Angry Birds counts as one positive emotion, watching a baby animal video counts as another.

Mcgoniga suggests improving resilience by developing a regimen or game to do every day, with Angry Birds, Bad Piggies, Cut the Rope, and other similar mobile games the perfect prescription to momentarily take your thoughts away from work without further exhausting too much of your mental resources. These games are just right to give your brain a break from the intense concentration and thinking of work, so that you can come back refreshed and thus more productive.

There has been enough research out there backing up these theories to make them plausible. A team of researchers at Hiroshima University recently conducted a study which involved showing university students pictures of baby animals before asking them to complete various tasks. They found that those who saw the baby animal pictures did more productive work after seeing those photographs (You can check out that study here)

So strictly for productivity enhancing purposes why don’t you go check out some cute kittens right now, and to increase your resilience why not download some games. We already spend 300 million minutes a day on Angry Birds alone, why not give Bad Piggies or Logos Quiz a try. Just remember, the key is not to try to hard, and not to use up any extra mental resources, even sending an email would count as to much brain action. So what a great excuse to use the cheat sites for these games too, the logos quiz cheat can be found here.

Saturday 10 November 2012

The Disgustingly Wonderful iPhone 5

This is a blog post about my new found love, my iPhone5.
I hate myself for being so materialistic and giving in to the ridiculous price, but can also stand proud at the fact that it took me so long to give into its temptation.
Here's a bit of back-story and a little about me; I hate material objects, I am a nature and animal lover and believe the money spent buying nice cars and designer clothes can be much better spent feeding the hungry. I never, ever, go shopping unless it's for food or if I am being made to find an outfit for a wedding, and even then I refuse to buy the expensive stuff. Take for example my own mothers wedding, I was a bridesmaid AND allowed to pick my own bridesmaid dress, most 21 year old girls from north London would have had a ball and taken the opportunity to find the most expensive designer dress they could find, I was happy with a high-street £25 simple dress, I say happy, I would have been happier in old jeans and a t-shirt but society rules like that. So this is me, call me tight, cheap (I get called it all the time), but materialistic I am not!
Blackberry seemed so advanced
in 2007 - this phone now sells for £30

Unfortunately, there is just something about mobile phones that gets me!... Going back to circa 2007, smartphones were just starting to make their way out into the general market, the biggest providers at that time were Blackberry, with Apple on the warpath and Google trailing pathetically behind. If you wanted a smartphone it had to be a Blackberry, and so I got one for my birthday that year.
It was incredible! Being able to access emails from a phone instead of a computer, being able to stalk people on Facebook the moment you wake up in the morning without leaving the bed to plug anything in on switch anything on! This Blackberry was genius and I loved it!... For a while.
3 months down the line, its 2008 and Apple have finally made an appearance, and what an entrance! After a few rubbish attempts, here was the iPhone 3. It was so pretty and sleek, and had a touch screen, wooooow, this phone made the Blackberry look like a frumpy old mess. My brother got the new iPhone 3 as his birthday present that year.

Time passed, upgrades came and went, I was loyal to Blackberry, they had served me well, giving me my emails and being so big and stable that I could never lose or break it. But on the sidelines, Apple were making waves, with Steve Jobs at the helm they were marching with purpose, they were going to win this smartphone war! It's something you couldn't ignore, the iPhone upgrades were coming quick and often, with each upgrade bringing more ground breaking technology, like 3G, video cameras for Skype calls, and an app store full of possibilities and hope. I wanted one. badly. But I resisted, I was not going to give into this marketing scam, not  lastly because with all these bell and whistles came a very hefty price tag (bring on the cheap/tight remarks again).
I would have carried on resisting had my brother not given me his hand-me-down iPhone 3 that he had spare after he upgraded. By that time at the end of 2009, my old (only about a year old but nevertheless old in phone terms) Blackberry was on it's last legs and just couldn't keep up with the 3G technology, in fact any technology that was coming along, this was the beginning of the end for Blackberry. So I needed a phone, and an iPhone 3 I got.

I had no idea at the time what a huge upgrade I was about to get with this iPhone 3. I could surf the internet more easily and quickly, get wifi in places I didn't even know had wifi, suddenly I was connected to the world of 'right now', the whole world was literally at my fingertips. I realised how much I'd been missing on as I'd been plodding along with my Blackberry, and promised myself this wouldn't happen again! Except that, well, history has a funny way of repeating itself.

The iPhone 4 felt like a dinosaur
compared to the new iPhone 5. 
It took another 3 years until I upgraded my phone again. Doesn't sound like long but in phone terms it is more than a lifetime. By now, Google had entered the smartphone market with Android and were dominating, Blackberry was nowhere to be seen, and even Windows were bringing out their own smartphone. Apple were still innovating, just about, and made enough hype and noise around their new iPhone 5 for it to be completely appealing. Also by this point, my iPhone 3 was on it's last legs, unable to use most apps I tried downloading, and struggling to make phone calls, sending and receiving texts was a matter of pot luck. It was time for a change, I couldn't wait any longer for my brothers hand-me-down (his iPhone 4 was also now a dinosaur anyway) and so I took the plunge, and bought an iPhone 5.

It made me feel very sick. I was so happy yet so disgusted in myself at the same time, such a mix of emotions, I was so ashamed in myself, thinking of all the ways the money spent on just a phone could have been better spent, but that's the thing, the iPhone 5 is not 'just a phone'.

An iPhone is an iPhone they're all the same they say. No, they are not, again, I had no idea what I had been missing. Yes I'd had an iPhone but it was not the same. Its the little details, the panoramic camera option, the built in facebook app, the amazing speedyness of it. The iPhone 5 has again upgraded me and plonked me back in the world of 'now'. The now, where social networking is king, News becomes old news as soon as you click the seen button on your Sky news app, you can dictate a text message while driving and have Siri send it for you. The world has changed and finally I have caught up with the help of a phone.

 Of course whether Apple will be able to keep it's lead is looking unlikely, Android are becoming the new Apple, innovating, and doing it for a lower price too. But for now, Apple and their iPhone 5 are still reigning supreme, will sales through the roof and their loyal followers still raving about them. Lets hope they are not the next Blackberry, otherwise I have another very long wait ahead of me.

For now, I am enjoying finally being able to play my favourite apps that I couldn't download updates for on my old iPhone 3. Apps such as Jumbled, Logos Quiz and Snake (yes that last one is truthfully ironic). Oh and the fate of my Blakcberry, I managed to finally sell it for £27 back to O2 my mobile provider a few months ago. No-one wanted it, I almost had to pay them to take it off my hands!

Sunday 4 November 2012

Happy Birthday Android

This week Android turns 4, and while most kids that age have not yet learnt how to read or even count, Android is way ahead of the class and holding 75% of the smartphone operating system market, making it the world's biggest smartphone OS! No mean feat for a 4 year old!

How has it got there, avid iOS fans may be wondering? It's because Android cater to the everyday man. Not the showoffy, egomaniatical iPhone users, not the 'we are to business focused to have fun' Blackberry crowd, no, Android have placed themselves nicely in the middle of the market with its army of budget handsets, open source app market, and the ability to keep up with moving technological trends. But beware, with a birthday in November, their starsign is Scorpio and my my do they have a sting in their tail! Now that they've successfully settled into their niche, Android are on the attack!

The attack planning started in 2008, since then Android has been improving their operating system with numerous updates, listening to their consumers and adding new features and fixing bugs. Each update release is named in alphabetical order after a desert or sugary treat for example, Cupcake, Donut and Ice-Cream Sandwich (good luck finding a dessert beginning with 'X Android!).

Androids newest update
is Jelly Bean 
Androids latest offering JellyBean is fast and powerful, and with better hardware becoming available such as the Google Nexus or Samsung Galaxy which have better specs but yet are much cheaper than an iPhone,  it could becoming more appealing to even the most hardened of Apple fans, who might just get a bit sick and tired of having to sleep rough for a week outside an Apple shop just to get a handset that can't tell you where the nearest coffee shop is properly (referring to the terrible iOS 6 maps here). It would not be a surprise to see Google and Android increase their lead in this market even further in the next year.

The advantage of the open source app market (the Google Playstore) to Androids OS rankings is not always talked about, but does have an impact. The closed off iOS appstore makes it harder and harder for developers to create innovative and fresh applications, as they will likely be rejected, so they turn to the Android, to their laid-back, anything goes attitude. This will have a knock on effect, with Android having better applications being made for them (yes there will be lots of terrible ones in there too), and these apps will contribute to an all round better OS.

If you have read other parts of this blog you'll know I am the owner of www.logoquizanswers.com, the comprehensive answers and cheat website for the Logos Quiz app. We fully support Android, and actually are one of the only cheat websites to do this (the others almost all solely focus on iOS only).  Check out how much we love Android Logo Quizzes. This also brings up a good point again about the advantage of the Google Playstore. For every one brilliant app for iPhone, there will be 10 in the Playstore, giving the end user more choice, variety and ultimately a better end experience.

For those interested in the breakdown percentage of the OS market and how the other brands such as Apple and Blackberry are doing, here is a lovely pie-chart to sum it up for you. As you can see, Android is dominating by a long shot!

Good for you Android, and Happy Birthday!

And yes, I know how much I moaned about Google in my last post, this still stands, however they don't half make a good operating system! For reference only, I own and use an iPhone.

Friday 2 November 2012

Google is a terrible dancer!

So this past couple of weeks, Google has pissed me off, alot!

My own
websites logo for
logoquizanswers.com
First some background; I run a website dedicated to giving out the answers to the Logos Quiz app on iPhones and Android devices. You can check out that website here Logo Quiz Answers.

I was the first answers site EVER for this game, beginning with the answers for the  popular Logos Quiz Game on iPhone and then expanding to include some of the more popular Android Logo Quizzes.

When I started I had not a single clue about websites, how they run, how they're made, I had never even heard of SEO (I thought it might be some kind of new high school exam). But I learnt as I went along and created what I thought was an informative site that served a purpose and did it's job well. I have encountered some webmaster snobs on various forums who thought otherwise and told me that my site is 'to simple and thinly spread', my reply to them; yes, it is simple, however it's serving a simple purpose, it's there purely as a reference for people who want the answers to their Logos Quiz. [on a side note these snobs also bug me alot! I go on these forums looking for help, trying to learn and better myself, just to get told I'm no good, come on guys, get some soul!]

Ok, rant over for now and back to the story;
For 6 months I kept the site up to date, and kept doing everything I could to improve the experience for the end user - the player of Logos Quiz who was stuck and needed the answer before the game drove them mad!
For a while enjoyed a nice run at the top of the Google search when people were looking for 'logos quiz answers' and had a nice load of traffic. I placed a few adds on the site to cover costs of the hosting fee that I now needed as my traffic was through the roof, it was also a nice bit of pocket money. I was enjoying learning this new web world of technical who-ha that I'd never encountered and that was actually helping me understand the world we are living in, and the world me will most likely will be living in in the future.

At first I went up and down slightly in the Google page rankings, but after a couple of months settled nicely into 1st, sometimes 2nd place, and maybe 3rd place and life was comfortable there. I carried on following the rules and guidelines on how to make a website and keep it running the proper way, didn't do anything naughty that Google, Bing, Yahoo or any other search engine wouldn't like me doing, then suddenly CRASH, BANG, WALLOP! What the hell happened to my site!! Google decided to stop playing fair, have one rule for us and one rule for them, this is why I am angry with Google!

There are strict guidelines (apparently) that websites are supposed to adhere to if they want to be top in the Google search for their specific keywords, for example my keywords that earnt me the most traffic was 'logo quiz answers'. [The reason you want to be first is so that more people find you, after first place the likelihood of someone clicking through to your page is less than 10%!]. You can find some of these guidelines here, 'Google Guidleines', they include things like 'Monitor your site's performance and optimize load times' and 'offer a sitemap to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site', these things make sense, of course you should do them and even without any website developing experience I managed to figure this out. you should do these things anyway to ensure you will get returning visitors, as they won't come back if, for example, the site is not optimised and it takes them an hour to see an image.

Ok that's all well and good, so 'what's your problem' I hear you say, well again you will need some background. About 4 weeks ago my site suddenly started dropping like a lead balloon down the Google search rankings, it was fine at first, just losing a couple of spots, then suddenly on page 2, followed by page 3 and then disappearing completely! How did this happen? What changed? Well it wasn't me, I was plodding along playing nicely by all the rules. Google changed, or to be precise changed its algorithms.

Panda and Penguin, two
Google updates that ruined
many small businesses. 
Googles algorithms decide which websites are placed where in their search, no-one really knows how they do it or how it works, but lots of people like to take a lucky guess, for example one update had to do with how many quality links you have to your website, or so the webbos said.
After many (many, many, many) hours of research, I thought I had discovered what had happened, the latest algorithm change had to do with END's, or Exact Name Domains.

I have an END, my domain matches my keywords exactly, so this must be the problem I thought to myself. I have been penalised for my name! Ridiculas!

Anyway, the research suggested hanging in there, as when Google updates it usually does what's called the 'Google Dance'. The Google Dance is when it is settling and readjusting its update, so your site will move up and down the search rankings for a week or so until it is settled. Ok Google, you want to dance, lets dance! So i waited......

... and things got worse! Google did not lead, they didn't even dance properly, they were your drunk uncle at a wedding on the dance-floor on his own thinking he's dancing when in fact he's just flying his arms around and being embarrassing.

My site kept losing ranking and traffic. The site I'd worked so hard on to get to a good place, that I updated and tried to make better daily. It was upsetting.

I decided to change strategy, maybe I had done something wrong, or missed out some vital something on my site that everyone but me knew about. So I began investigating my competitors site, and this is when I become really angry and the reason I am really pissed off with Google.

The new top 5 search engine results for my keywords 'logo quiz answers' are rubbish!! but seriously my site is better than theres! You can check if you want!
How were they doing so well? They were completely SEO unfriendly I started searching and came up with a common theme among them, thousands upon thousands of backlinks! [A backlink is when another site separate from your own links to your site].

So back to the SEO guideline stuff from before, and here is my problem,  it comes under the 'Quality guidelines' segment which talks about things you should avoid doing, these include, participating in link schemes. These sites that are now higher than me in the rankings have so very obviously participated in a link scheme in order to achieve this number of links. One site for example had only been around 5 weeks and had 57000 backlinks, this is not in any way shape or form humanly or technologically possible without participating in a link scheme.

Come on Google, if even I can pick this up than surely you can to, except your not, your stuck in your little drunken updated algorithm dance. This is not only bad for me, but also for Google users everywhere, as it means the results we are getting are not the best for the information we're looking for, but instead the best cheats.

So this is a plea to Google, from one of the little people that you don't really care about. Admit your wrong, and put my website and all the other good little websites that have done nothing wrong back in their rightful place and stop dancing, your rubbish at it!