J.C. Penny Games Their Way to the Top

This recent article in the New York Times suggests that J.C. Penny has “gamed” the way Google ranks web pages in order to make www.jcpenny.com the #1 result for numerous combinations of shopping-related keywords. According to the article, J.C. Penny exploited the ranking criteria that ranks pages based on how many pages with similar criteria link to a particular site. Links to J.C. Penny’s homepage were found in sites such as nuclear.engineeringaddict.com, bulgariapropertyportal.com, and elistofbanks.com with phrases like “cocktail dresses”, “evening dresses” and “black dresses”. The abruptness of J.C. Penny’s rise in the search results has caused some to question the fairness and accuracy of Google’s secret ranking formula. With online search becoming more commonplace every day, thousands of companies and individuals will spend upwards of $25 billion in 2011 to get their site at the front of the line. But how will Google and other search engines keep their results relevant and resistant to these types of keyword- and link-pumping schemes?

Worst Customer Service Ever : Comcast

Over the past several weeks, I have gained a complete and utter hatred for the Customer Service department of Comcast. Not by any fault of their own, the company is clearly run by a bunch of monkeys. I have Comcast (unfortunately) both at home and at the office, and I have gotten the complete run-around from both ends. I thought at least their Business Class services would be better, but no--same old story.

I will start with the home. After getting back from traveling on Thanksgiving, I noticed we weren't getting all of the channels (some had an error message "channel will display shortly). After trying numerous things over the phone, the reps determined they would need to have someone come out to fix the problem. Ok, things happen. We set the appointment for after work on Thursday. Towards the end of the installation window they gave me, I called to make sure someone was coming out. "Oh, we're sorry, the appointment has been canceled via the automated system." Strike 1. Dammit-ok, so let's reschedule. They rescheduled the appointment, and the tech actually made it out on Saturday! He determined they needed to rewire the line running to the apartment, which they only do during business hours during the work week. Not good for me, since I work, like most people, a 9-5. We set the appointment for 11-2 on Tuesday, hoping I would be able to make it off to wait for them. After pulling a few strings, I got back to my apartment on Tuesday and waited. And waited. Around 1:30, I called, and the rep told me "Oh, sorry, the tech is running late and can't make it until 2:30-3:30. Well, I can't really afford to miss work waiting on Comcast, so I head back to work, defeated. After numerous calls trying to even get a supervisor on the phone resulted in no luck. Hey, if you're looking for an office environment with no accountability, then being a rep here must be the job for you. Still unresolved--

I am getting to pissed off just writing this, so I will have to divulge our experience with Comcast at work at a later date.

Needless to say, I am completely fed up with all that is Comcast. If I had any other options for cable television, I would drop them in a heartbeat: unfortunately, they have franchise agreements with the city of Atlanta and they are the only cable operator in town--what a sick, sick monopolistic machine. I can't believe they can operate the way they do and stay in business. Surely there are others who have been as pissed off as I am!

Print without URL in Google Chrome

If Google Chrome wants to be seriously considered as a major browser, then the Google development team needs to listen more to feature requests that are standard in Firefox and Internet Explorer, but somehow missing from Chrome. Specifically, I am talking about the ability to print web pages without header/footer content. When I print pages in chrome, I get something like:

http://www.somewebsite.com...

1/1

at the top and bottom of the page. In Firefox, you can go to File->Page Setup and configure each section of the header and footer (or hide it). In Internet Explorer, you also go to Page Setup, and there are two text boxes that let you customize the header and footer.

Google Chrome--Get with the program! My business has a custom web application that looks great in Chrome compared to FF/IE, but we utilize printing from the application and it is extremely unprofessional to have a URL and page numbers on business documents. CHROME, PLEASE FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY!!

</rant>

Top 10 Web Design Companies

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The Future of SEO

What will be the future of SEO? It really largely depends on the future of advertising mediums. If search engines rely less on keyword search in the future, the landscape of SEO will change. Given current trends, there is no reason to suspect a movement away from keyword search in the near future, but you never know with technology...

Until Google invents a robot that analyzes your thoughts and presents relevant content, you might consider giving more thought to optimizing your site for search engines. There are several really easy steps you can take (try Analyze My SEO), and then there are more complex overall marketing strategies that you should formulate if you are trying to seriously market a product or service.

Analyze My SEO

I have just launched my new web site: Analyze My SEO. This is a great site for beginners new to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but also provides useful information for all developers. You enter the URL of your web site, and the site provides a detailed step-by-step report of ways you can increase your page rank and CTR. Check it out!

Michael

SORBS Headache

So, this week we had an e-mail issue at my company. For one of our clients' domains, any e-mail they tried to send to us was returned marked "undeliverable". After several conversations with our IT company and our clients' IT department, it was discovered that the e-mails were being blocked because our client's IP address was on the SORBS blacklist.

The SORBS blacklist was created by an individual (possibly with help from a few others) who appears to have repeated patterns of adding non-infected or secured machines to their blacklist in an effort to extort money out of them. Our client got their IP removed without a donation.

I am unsure whether our IT company set up our mail server to use the SORBS blacklist (as our client claims) or if it is on some server on the mail hop route (as our IT company claims).

Our IT company did install a tool which apparently showed all e-mails that were hitting the server and none of the e-mails from the client showed up, which leads me to believe that it is not on our server but somewhere else.

Any thoughts?